Tag Archives: characters

Measurements

30 Friday Nov 2018

Posted by in Advancing the story, art, Attention, character, communication, continuing, creating, frustration, heart, Process, Publication, Reading, slowing down, Story, Uncategorized

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I live in a culture that loves measurements. Resumes, job descriptions, salaries, developments – America loves to count. When I cleaned houses for a living my work was measured not just room by room and task by task, but in bathtubs leaned over and showers leaned into. Rags dirtied and washed and folded and dirtied again. Sponges falling apart, their yellow bits washed down suburban drains. Work was measure in blown out, leaking rubber gloves, and shredding mop heads, and the nubs of feather dusters. In backaches and sore knees and Epsom Salt baths and Tylenol and hours spent on the heating pad, on the couch.

Now my work is measured in how many books I’ve published, in awards received or not, in Tweets and blog posts and movie deals (present or lacking). It’s measured by Oprah and the New York Times Bestseller List, and Youtube channels. These are big, public measurements and there’s not much a writer can do or not do to achieve them. These sorts of measurements are the work of the Gods and Goddesses, and Fate with a capital F. All I can do is show up and write.

I don’t take daily measurements of my writing. I don’t count words or even pages. The daily question I ask myself during each writing session is: Have I moved the story forward? Yes could mean a paragraph or three pages. No could mean ten or more pages, pages that do nothing for the story, pages that stall it out and go nowhere.

I work with writers and many of them study writing in a way that I do not and never have. They study trends. They know the industry standard of word count for a YA book, or a literary novel, or a sci-fi book, and they write to meet those standards.

But asking how long a novel must be is like asking how long a piece of string must be. The answer of course is that it depends on many things – mainly what is the string to be used for. A string to tie one’s shoes will be shorter than a string to tie up one’s tomatoes. A string to tie a 10″ box will be different from a string to tie a 2′ box. A string to wrap around a story will depend on the story, and if the story is dependent on the string, then that string better be cut to fit. And so it is with page count and word count.

The publishing world is a place where you can find a definitive answer to whatever question you ask, but I don’t believe it’s good to look for definitive answers. Nor do I believe the book world should be a place for industry standards. The book world, the world of story should be a place of exploration. But writers just starting out are scared of all the nebulousness. They yearn for information, anything to help get started and keep going. I’m not trying to keep information from anyone, and I understand the urge to search for answers. It’s frightening to me too when I face a story I don’t yet understand, and haven’t yet written.

In answer to my own question of measurement: Have I moved the story forward? there’s an easy answer. Has something happened that is significant? If not have I written something that contributes to the character’s development, or to setting? Am I building a believable fictional world? Does this section contribute or is it just there.

I know the answers to these questions when I ask them, which isn’t to say I know the solution. But it does mean I can recognize a problem and not write into it, not dig post holes and build a wall around it. Acknowledging that the story is stalling is the first step to moving it forward.

Readers want stories that move forward and so do editors. Editors dare not say so though, because they work in an industry, an industry that has gone awry with measurements and bean counting and shiny objects. Pay no attention. Do your work and do it well. The most important measurement of all is how you feel about it, and how your character feels about you. In the end, do you and your character respect each other? If so, you’ve done well, and you’ll be in a better place to defend your work against random suggestions having to do with fattening a book for market.

Letter to a Stranger

31 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by in Attention, character, communication, growing up, Observation, prompt writing, Uncategorized

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This was written from the prompt: Write a letter to a stranger. It made me realize I miss this stranger, whom I always saw around Carrboro.

Dear Sir, I love you, and now you are gone, and I didn’t tell you I love you before you disappeared. That’s because when you were here, I did not love you. In fact, you were always annoying to me, but I miss you now, and I think I love you, and I wonder what happened, where you went and can only imagine that you have died.

The way it happened is that one day I noticed you were gone, and realized that I had not seen you for a long time. I don’t know your name, but you, sir, were  a damn good character, and Carrboro, the town we shared, has become so gentrified. There are no good characters here anymore. They can’t afford it. And so I miss you and feel love for who you were.

I miss seeing you in Harris Teeter blowing that one note on your harmonica. It was always one note. Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm. It never varied. You never played two notes or a different note. It was like your lips were glued to the one place on the harmonica you always carried and always blew into. You never breathed in, only out, and you walked around Harris Teeter playing your one note. It used to annoy me so badly, but today… today I miss you. Perhaps I’ve grown a little.

I miss your harmonica, but even more than that, I miss your car. It was a big green car, long with a big hood and on the hood you’d glued a huge rag doll in a crucified position, and there was a bumper sticker on the back that said, “Be Patient. God Isn’t Finished With Me Yet,” and on the top, just above the driver’s door was a bunch of bananas. The bananas were always there. They were real bananas too, and they were always fresh and yellow and they weren’t glued down. People would drive up beside you and roll down their windows and point and say, “You have bananas on your car.” And you’d nod and smile and say, “I know.”

You used to run a junk shop out at the county line. It was in an old white house. I stopped in a few times. I even sold you some things. I never bought anything. There was a lot of stuff, inside and outside, and after a time the neighbors complained about your place. They said it was an eyesore, so you lined up barrels along the roadway so they wouldn’t have to see it. They complained about that too, and finally you were forced out and they tore down your house. There’s a Walmart there now, but that’s long after a series of other businesses in a series of other brick buildings. They just couldn’t get that corner right. I wonder if you cursed them.

I think now you knew more that I ever gave you credit for and I’m sorry. If I knew where your grave is, I’d go there, clear the weeds of it, maybe put a jar of wildflowers on it, maybe a harmonica.

I want you to know that I think you wouldn’t annoy me now. I think I’d be happy to see you. I’d love to hear your one-note harmonica in the aisles of Harris Teeter. I’d be happy to see your big green car gliding through the traffic of Carrboro, people staring at the crucified rag doll. I’d love to pull up behind you at a stop light and watch the person in the car next to yours roll his window down, point, and say, “You have bananas on your car.” I’d love to watch you nod and smile and say, “I know.”

Sincerely, Nancy

 

Writing a Letter to a Character

08 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by in Advancing the story, Alchemy of writing, Attention, character, communication, creating, frustration, Process

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I wrote a letter to my character today. I told her that I thought we’d gotten off on the wrong foot. It was my fault – all my fault – or the fault of social media. But I’d made the choice to be on, and overuse social media. And as a result, I was fractured. My inability to focus, to nurture, was no way to treat a young work just trying to take hold. As a result, our travels together have been rocky and strange.

My inattentiveness did not strangle her, which tells me she is a strong character. But I cannot say she wholly trusts me. Or maybe all those fissures at the beginning of the work are fissures carried through, the way a crack in porcelain will spread until the whole white surface is a web of thin grey lines. This is not what I want for my work, and not what I want for my character or for me. I wrote a letter saying all this, and apologizing. It was a sort of “I’ve been a bad boyfriend” letter. Will you please place trust in me? Will you please help me be a better writer of your story?

I kind of despised myself as I wrote that letter. I’ve been with this kind of man, and I’ve let this kind of man beg his way back into my graces only to be dashed by the same sort of bad behavior he apologized for in the first place. Why should my character trust me? Why should she open up to me? What have I done to prove I deserve it?

Well, to make my case: I’ve stuck with it, even through my own inabilities and frustrations. I’ve written 306 pages. I’ve shown up every morning and written – well, most mornings.

So, is she speaking to me? Or am I blocking her with my own ideas or doubts? What if I keep writing and the end never comes in sight? What if I declare an ending, even though I know it’s not right? What if I wrote a letter to myself reminding of all the beautiful things in this novel, the rich fictional world I’ve created? What if my invitation for her to tell her story in this world is already being answered? What if I can’t hear it? What if I hear it but doubt its sincerity? What if? What if? What if?

Some novels come on full force. Some characters grab you and say, “Listen up,” and you have no choice. Some characters are quieter than others. I have a quiet one here. I should understand that, since I’m quiet myself. I have a woman’s story, and because of our society women’s stories are complex and sometimes mysterious. I should understand that too, since I’m a woman.

I think what I will do now is write another letter. And this time I will let her write me back.

 

Weaving a Blue Horse

01 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by in Attention, creating, Fiction, Guidance, Nancy Peacock, Process, Revision, Story, Working

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This weekend I tried to weave an image of a horse on my small tapestry lap loom. It had been a long time since I’d tried to shape a horse with yarn across tightly stretched warp, and it wasn’t coming easily. I unwove my horse three times.

Unweaving is simply undoing what you’ve done. Instead of going over and under the warp threads to build, you go over and under to take down what’s there. It’s not unpleasant. It’s the same motion as weaving. But no matter what I did, my horse kept looking like a rabbit. I found the rabbit imagery interesting and thought I might try a leaping bunny at some point, but what I wanted was a horse. A blue horse.

Tapestry weaving is simple. Warp and weft, and only two sheds (the space opened between the warps). But it can get frustrating when your image does not progress after having woven and unwoven and woven again so many times. Writing stories can also be frustrating. To use a weaving metaphor, you need to weave a lot of plot and character and setting and what-all-else threads into the story. In weaving this is called the weft. In tapestry weaving it creates what you can see, and the warp, the strings held tight on the loom, become the invisible foundation. In writing warp and weft are the same, both the picture (reader’s experience) you’re building and the foundation of the picture you’re building.

One thing I’ve noticed in both writing and in weaving tapestry is that there is a lot of forgiveness in the medium. You really can fix things that come out wrong. You can unweave, revise, rewrite, patch, or splice in a new warp thread. A lot of beginning artists don’t know this. They look at a finished tapestry or read a published book and feel awed by it, as well they should. It’s important though to realize that things rarely come out perfectly in the beginning.

I could say that the miracle in making art is that sometimes things do come out perfectly the first time around, but I think there are deeper miracles.  Three to be exact, three miraculous gifts every artist is given, a sort of holy trinity of the creative process. This holy trinity is something on which you can build your creative life.

Miracle #1 – We get second, third, fourth, fifth, and endless chances to make it right.

Miracle #2 – What we create will never look like our original vision, and we should rejoice in this.

Miracle #3 –  Often our “mistakes” end up not being mistakes at all. “Mistakes” can be our guides, not guides that tell us what not to do, but guides that show us what we did not know we could do. A “mistake” can send a writer or artist down a path they’d not consciously set out on, but that becomes the backbone of their creation. (A reason for rejoicing in both miracle numbers 1 and 2)

That blue horse I was weaving? After unweaving it for the third time, I set my loom on the couch and went about my day. Each time I walked by I looked at it. I squinted my eyes. I took the long view. I related to it. And I studied the two weavings I’d done previously that had horses in them. I looked closely. How did I do that? I really couldn’t remember exactly, but that night, while watching TV I took my loom back into my lap and I wove a horse. He’s not perfect, but I’ve got some ideas on how to give him a nip and a tuck to make him prettier.

The process for weaving my blue horse was similar to my process for writing. Sometimes I have to back away before I can go forward. Sometimes I need just a nip and a tuck to fix something. Sometimes I need a big overhaul. Sometimes I want a horse but it really should be a bunny. I think if my weaving had come out bunny-like a fourth time I would have accepted it as a bunny, and it would have been fine. As it happened, I did finally end up with a horse.

Every time though, no matter how I feel about it, my art was guiding me. Your art will guide you, too. Trust that.

How Not to Write a Novel

04 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by in Attention, Process, Publication, Working

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The title says it all. I could just leave this space blank. The way to not write a novel is to not write. Or the way to not write a novel is to start and then stop writing. The way to not write a novel is to not dedicate yourself to it, to not develop the habit of writing, to expect it to be perfect first time around, beginning to end. If you get that far.

For me the way to not write a novel also includes talking about it. I don’t talk about my specific projects except to other writers, and even then I am selective. I tried once talking about a work-in-progess. I wanted to seem as though I was confident, and knew what I was doing with this novel, so I spoke about it publicly. I gave a brief summary that didn’t reveal very much. I mentioned the setting. I said the characters’ names. They didn’t like it. That’s all I can say. The story left me. It did not want to be paraded about. It wanted a private, intimate relationship with me. It wanted a partnership. It was not ready for relationship with anyone else. That’s what publication is for.

I know all this makes me sound like a nutcase. That’s okay. I am a bit of a nutcase. I believe in things we don’t know. I believe in working intuitively. It’s not always comfortable, and it doesn’t give me confidence, but that’s the point. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just doing it. It’s very hard to understand that for many writers, it’s a blind grope into a story. It’s stepping off a cliff. Sometimes we are caught by our characters, and sometimes we are allowed to crash to the bottom of story the canyon. But that’s the process. Always there’s a point of stepping out into the unknown, be it the stage of plotting a novel, if plotting’s your thing, or the stage of writing it for someone like me, who flies by the seat of her pants. Novels are unknown until they are written. And even then, throughout the process, they reveal themselves slowly, sometimes reluctantly. You have to keep showing up. You have to be committed.

 

It’s easy to not write a novel.

On Getting Lost

04 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by in Attention, Fiction, Process, Writing Advice

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Peacock

 

Not everyone has a natural area to visit in their daily lives. I count myself blessed to be able to step into nature regularly. My studio is located on land that has been in the same family since the 1700s. They work hard to hold on to this land, but who lived here before this family arrived? I’ve never found arrowheads here, although I have found several along the Eno River, close to my home. Those arrowheads were surely made by the Occaneechi Tribe who occupied the area before the British colonized it. I am sure there were native people living and hunting the land my studio occupies too.

On that land there are many trails through the woods. The trails loop and connect to other trails, and backtrack on themselves and spiral within each other, or so it seems to me. When I first started walking these trails I tried to orient myself to the pond and know where I was, but I ended up places without really knowing how I got there. Whenever I am in the woods, I make sure to pay attention to landmarks as I walk. When I got lost, I would finally stumble across something familiar. The big rocks. A familiar fallen tree. Another tree with its bark stripped off. The stream flowing into the pond. A deer stand. I found my way by getting lost. And so it is with fiction.

A story is not a series of disconnected events. A story is a series of events that play off each other. If this happens to this character then what happens because of that? Every scene has a reason for being there, and ends with either conflict or a consequence. That’s a tough row to hoe if you ask me. I know, because I’ve done it.

But doing it, or having done it, doesn’t mean I know what I’m doing when I start out. Often, in the beginning, I have only a glimmer of a character, or an opening line, or a snippet of dialogue. Something that intrigues me that I’m willing to follow, like a path into the forest. I get lost often. Sometimes I thrash my way out and leave a trail of massacred scenes in my wake. Sometimes there’s a guiding hand. Always, I am looking for those landmarks, noticing points in the story that seem similar to other points in the story. For instance, I really don’t want to forget that a character does not eat meat, and then have her date a butcher. If I forget that she’s a vegetarian, then I have forgotten something major. A driving force for her, and a potential conflict or compromise between the two of them.

What I am saying here is pay attention. Get to know your characters the same as you get to know strange paths through the woods. Entering lightly is probably not a good idea, but neither is hanging back and not entering at all. Enter respectfully. Know you can get lost, and probably will. The great thing about writing is you won’t die of hypothermia (unless you can’t pay your heating bill) and you won’t starve (unless – well, you get the picture).

A walk in the woods, in my opinion is always worth it. I don’t always come out of it with an arrowhead, or a story, but I do come out closer to myself, and closer the bone of something deep and primal. And so it is with fiction.