Even after all these years of writing stories and writing about writing stories (how’s that for keyword density), I still ask myself that question. Lately I feel like I’ve gotten a bit of a handle on it. This doesn’t mean I’ll be able to articulate my thoughts in any helpful way, but that’s never stopped me from trying before so why not give it a go?

Stories begin life in many ways. You may have an idea for a character or perhaps a floating bit of dialogue. You may even have a complete and perfect picture of a series of events that comes in a flash of pure artistic insight (in which case I recommend you keep the origin to yourself lest you receive a beating from those less fortunate).

That said, possession of raw materials is not a story. You can forge a wonderful bit of prose from the portrait of a person or even a sequence of beautiful events, but it isn’t a story. People may read your carefully wrought masterpiece and sigh from the sheer pleasure of your words careening about in their heads, but it isn’t a story… A story needs something more.

The actual Albany Cutter.

Down at the bottom of this post is a piece called “Albany Cutter”. This piece was inspired by a weekend in the deep country. My wife’s family farm had just gone to auction and sold, and the family was gathering for Easter. My father-in-law had salvaged an old sleigh from the woods near the farm and I was overwhelmed by the sight of this ravaged bit of history in his workshop.

Mixed in with lots of other emotions I probably had some wonderful material for a poem or even one of my little travel narratives. But underneath all of that, I began feeling the stirring of something else, something that did not exist anywhere but in my own mind. I felt like I had a story.

So I set about trying to create a story from this material. I began by writing down everything I knew about the events of the day and then I stitched them into a more palatable sequence for dramatic purposes. After that, I looked under the covers to see what magic could be found.

By “magic”, I mean the things that never happened. All of those characters and actions that never existed anywhere but in my own mind. As I dug there, I found that I had a very dark story emerging and I was afraid of it. I was afraid because I was worried that I would hurt someone’s feelings if I told it as it was being told to me.

Now, let’s think about this for a second. I was worried about something that didn’t exist anywhere but in my own mind. Truly, there is nothing to connect what I was thinking to the real events of that day or the people in my wife’s family. It’s completely made up. And yet, there is that fear. What on earth was I afraid of?

When you feel that fear creeping in, you’re on track to getting the story out of your raw materials.

This doesn’t mean that every story has to be some dreary affair where people are tortured and killed or lots of bad things happen (although it helps). The fear is just a guide, a marker, that indicates the entry-point to the dramatic events that should shape the story. As a writer of stories, you have to dig into this fear and find out what’s itching under the surface.

The reaction from readers of “Albany Cutter” (and editors who rightly rejected it) was fairly universal, “Nice. Nice but… ‘Meh.'” When I look back at this piece and my notes, I see that I was reaching for a large social commentary on the decline of the rural way of life, the farming life. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s just a theme really, not a story. The story is completely untold.

So where is the story? The jumping off point is way down on page 9…

George put the boy into the bucket. How he knew to snap the reins, George couldn’t guess, but he laughed and played along while the boy went like hell across the countryside on a frosty winter’s evening.

But where did they really go in that cutter? George wondered if they raced it across the powdery snow of early morning or under the stars all night. A person couldn’t take a fancy sleigh like that to church. It was only big enough for one person anyway, like something that might have belonged to a doctor.

I wrote up a little section about the real story in my notes and in fact it is the place where I completely froze. I had a picture in my mind of a man, a horrible man who ruled his family like a tyrant. He’d race that sleigh like hell over the froze road, like the devil himself churning sparks in the pitch black night. This man was absolutely brutal. The real story is the murder of this man at the hands of his son who butchered him one night in the snow outside their house.

This is how the cutter came to be forgotten but also how the family could never seem to get rid of it. Only the old man (Henry in the story) knew the real story. Of course, Henry is based on a real man but the events I just mentioned above are completely fabricated – mostly.

Yes, that mostly should make you wonder and I think that’s inherently what makes a story a story. The something that is mostly if not probably true, if not in deed at least in thought. This is what makes you pause before writing or holds you back completely.

You must push through the fear or else you’ll end up with piece after piece like “Albany Cutter.”

Albany_Cutter.pdf

“It is in the impartial practice of life, if anywhere, that the promise of perfection for the novelist’s art can be found, rather than in absurd formulas trying to prescribe this or that particular method or technique or conception. Let the novelist mature the strength of their imagination among the things of this earth.” ~ Joseph Conrad

A shoddy sketch of Joseph Conrad.

I’m not really sure I know what all that means, except that maybe I shouldn’t be putting it at the top of a post that has absurd formulas and prescribes techniques and methods for dealing with failed books. Still, if I let the espresso do the talking, I have a sense that Mr. Conrad is saying something about creating fiction from life and not allowing ourselves to define failures by the strictures of others. And if not that, well, at least it reminds me of the shoddy sketch I made of Joseph Conrad in my notebook last year.

My failed books are a favorite pastime of mine. In fact, every 18 months or so I take it upon myself to make a private journal entry where I list all my past failed books and then set about tearing myself to pieces. It’s good fun and it’s probably something that sounds familiar to many of you.

In case you were worried about me going through the list right here, let me put your mind at ease. The list is my own private issue. However, I do have some criteria I’d like to share because not just any bit of scrawl makes it onto my list of failed books.

Criteria for a Failed Book

1. The written form of the book needs to be at least 10,000 words.

While I’m all for picking arbitrary boundaries as a means to defining success or failure, I actually have a reason for this number. (Shocking, yes, I know.)

Between 7,500 and 10,000, a bit of developing fiction might still have hope of becoming a story. Yet, once I get beyond the 10K mark I find that I just have too many threads going to hope for getting away from the tale. Clearly, if I can do what’s necessary to produce 10K, the thing is really gnawing at me.

2. A deep sense of dread about never being free of the story or fear about having a story too big for my talents.

Believe it or not, I’ve written stories I’ve completely forgotten about. Right now, I can open up the folder where I keep all my stories and find a wonderful trove of surprises. That’s what short stories tend to be for me. Little interludes. Intense interludes, mind you, but interludes nonetheless. I write them and then I pass on by.

Books are different. They usually start as stories (although I’ve had two that began with a full flash of the entire thing laid out end to end) and as I uncover the details and begin to allow the characters to take hold, they just keep expanding. I have no idea where all of this comes from, but this is how a story becomes a book in my eyes.

The sense of dread enters when I realize that I’ve got a big fish on the line. I see that I’ve blundered into something important, a bit of life that feels so real that I feel bad for the characters for having such a poor vessel as myself to bring their tale to light. Rather than butcher the thing, I bail. But it’s too late to bail. The proverbial big fish that got away is already at the surface and I’ll never forget it. This is one reason I can’t watch melodramas on television. Once I see what’s coming, I feel all nervous and I don’t want to see what happens next even though I know exactly what’s coming.

3. I have more notes than story.

I like to write out my thoughts about a story. It helps me work through the details. If you read these notes, it would be no different than sitting down across from me at the cafe and hearing me go on and on. The only difference is that the notes are actually cogent.

So when a book takes hold, I tend to work out about a thousand different angles. I write about the characters and the places. I write about potential plots, scenes, bit of poetry I’d like to work in, the grand themes. It all sounds great but of course these are just notes.

In my last post I mentioned the book called Revisions. The text of that book is about 70,000 words. The notes are well over 150,000. I have another fragment that is about 30,000 words but again the notes crack the century mark.

P.G. Wodehouse went about writing books in a similar fashion. He’s write about 150,000 words and then he’d get on with the tale. At least, this is what I read in his book on writing.

What to do about Failed Books?

It would be a little silly of me to talk about the right course of action for dealing with failed books. After all, I have half a dozen that fit the criteria above along with two others that are actually “complete” and yet have not been published. Still, here are a few things I know:

1. Understand that your book isn’t as bad as you think it is.

Truly, it isn’t.

This doesn’t mean that it isn’t a bad book, but I seriously doubt that it’s so bad that a mob of literati are going to appear on your doorstep and demand that you give up your typewriter so that they can destroy it in the town square. No, I assure you that your book isn’t that bad.

If you keep thinking your book is bad, you will abandon it just like I have done with each and every one of mine. Your book will sit in your drawer unfinished, just like all of mine. And if that doesn’t sound like the enough fun, you will find yourself haunted by those books for the rest of your life (or at least for a brief period every 18 months like me).

2. Get a second opinion.

Who reads your books? Your mom, your spouse, your best friends?

You need to get a second opinion from another writer, preferably one who has actually published a book or two or ten. While finding that person may not be the easiest task, it isn’t climbing Mount Everest either, unless the people you seek are wildly popular or dead writers of immortal literary stature.

Right now I’m reading Wallace Stegner’s On Teaching and Writing Fiction. I like what I’m reading but Mr. Stegner is not available to give me a second opinion on my books. Mr. Stegner is dead and has been for a long time. Another option is Philip Roth, but for some reason he isn’t returning my phone calls.

3. Get over yourself or at least get out of the way.

A friend over on LiveJournal put up a link to my last post and then went on to talk about her problems (which are different than mine). She talked about getting over herself so that she could move on with writing what needed to be written. I like that idea though I usually see it as getting out of my own way.

I’ve talked about both angles many times here and if you reread that section about making more notes than fiction above you’ll see that I tend to get in my own way quite a bit. I figure that I won’t ever get away from making notes about my work, but what I can do is realize that I’m only hurting my chances of finishing the book if I stay in that world too long. That outcome has to become unacceptable – I have to get out of my own way.

In keeping with my new habit of sharing actual writing, I’ve attached a chapter from a book called Syntax. (I know, I know…. What’s with these one word titles?)

Syntax is a book based roughly (and I mean very roughly) on the time I spent in Switzerland some years ago. I actually started writing this book before I took up the character of Burt Thompson in Revisions. I ended up bailing from Syntax for the reasons stated in #2 above: I saw the whole story in front of me and I became afraid of writing it.

The book meets the minimum requirements as defined above. I have about 20K words along with 80 or 90K of notes. And of course, I’ve never forgotten the story. In fact, I recently wrote out 15 long hand pages about the story.

The chapter is about 20 pages (~5900 words), and this time I’ve even figured out how to spell “chapter” correctly in the filename. Hooray for me!

Syntax-Chapter-2.pdf

“In order to move others deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond the bounds of our normal sensibility.” ~ Joseph Conrad

Considering the highly personal posts on this site, it may seem strange to hear that I have a problem sharing my work. Writers who have been in this position will recognize my anxiety not only in its description but in the work itself. The work tends to be far too tight, wrung clean of many emotional passages as described above. And yet, as Joseph Conrad said above, when I was drafting the work something helped me toss aside the normal sensibility to produce original works that had the potential to move others deeply.

Over the years, I’ve learned to take great comfort in the process of revision. It’s a safe place. A place where no one needs to read what I’m working on, or if I do share it, it’s “just a draft”.

As a draft, the story retains all of it’s potential. However, after each revision, it gets a bit more difficult to carry off the next round. Friends who may be involved in the process lose interest in reading yet another rendering of the same old scene. The author (i.e. Me) begins to whittle away at the real energy behind the characters and the dialogue. Those moments of complete abandon that formed the near magical paragraphs written by someone else end up falling to the wayside in favor of safer alternatives.

For example, below is a paragraph from a book I wrote six years ago. The text comes from the seventh revision:

Thompson sounded like her father. His hand had worked its way down to her hip and it made her cringe. He was old enough to be her father. Trying to let the genie out of the bottle, Thompson rubbed her hip, but Renee was iced up, a ghostly harbor in the arctic. He rubbed harder.

Now, let’s go back to the very first revision:

His hand on her hip made her cringe. He sounded like her father. He was old enough to be her father. He was rubbing her hip, trying to let the genie out of the bottle. She was cold inside, frozen like some ghostly harbor in the arctic. He rubbed harder, trying to loosen her, make her warm.

Of course, dealing with paragraphs in isolation is not very helpful for getting past a fear of sharing the work. I know that you, the reader, have no context here so the paragraphs probably mean next to nothing. Who is Thompson? Who is Renee? What is the relationship between these two? Why on earth do all male writers insist on stereotyping women as frigid and then slap on tired metaphors about the arctic and assume they are creating art?

If we lay aside the bad writing for a moment, the real question is – why am I not sharing the whole page with you?

Frankly, the page in question makes me feel uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. The whole scene is uncomfortable. I use the excuse of poor writing to hide it away, but the subject itself is what I’m really trying to shove into a corner.

If I shared the entire book, you would see the fear reflected throughout the story. There are places where I go way off track, trying to distract myself from the real core of the story. The result is a disjointed hodge-podge.

Get on with it…

The real way to deal with your fear is to stop beating about the bush and put it out there.

It doesn’t matter how it got written. If the story meant enough to you to work on for weeks, months, years (decades?), you ought to share it. So, I’m going to put up the chapter that includes the paragraph above.

Although the book had a few very bad titles (including The Slaves of Burt Thompson), I eventually settled on Revisions. Revisions is the story of Burt Thompson, an award-winning novelist in his later years who feels like his entire life’s work is a failure.

As a cure for the “ills” of storytelling, Thompson takes it upon himself to forget language, to completely divest himself from the ability to understand or use words. He figures that if he doesn’t have the capacity to understand language he can be free from the stories that plague him and insist on being written (does this sound familiar?).

The novel begins with Thompson after he has achieved his dream. However, even though he is completely happy with his new, language-less self, a drama erupts around him as his agent, his ex-wife, and a young writer try to unravel the mess and restore Thompson the Novelist.

Disclaimer: The entire text of Chapter 15 just seven pages) is in the linked PDF file below. I feel like I have to say that this is not sunshine and roses. It contains adult themes, adult language, and some truly awful writing. If that isn’t enough to whet your appetite, let me just say that I’m putting this up because I believe that fear of sharing deeply emotional work is something all writers deal with.

Chatper 15 of Revisions

Photo credit: shell_s (Flickr)

Every writer has tricks.

Tricks to write and tricks not to write. It’s a bit of cruel fate, but most writers are far better at the latter.

If you look back through my archives, you’ll find that one of my tricks has been to crank myself up into a terrible rage. To burn off the block that’s holding me back. It always seems to get things moving. I suppose it does in a way, but I don’t think it’s very healthy. I don’t think it makes me a better writer, but sometimes it’s necessary.

Another trick is splitting myself in two or even three. Tackling as many projects as I can.

But what happens when you’re all out of tricks? Or when you know the trick you are trying to play on yourself before it even gets started? What happens when you’ve pulled away the curtain and you know what’s going on backstage?

I think this is when you really start to write — or maybe you become a monk or float off on a cloud. I’m still not quite sure yet (though I feel a little lighter than usual).

Speaking of monks and tricks, here is a little story I heard once.

Four Jugs

Each day, the monastery tasked three young monks with bringing up water from the valley. The monks used large, clay jugs to carry the water. The jugs were tied to either end of a fat pole, which made it easier to balance the weight on their shoulders.

This is the way the water had come from the valley as long as anyone could remember. And no monk, no matter how fast or how strong, had ever brought more than four jugs of water to the monastery in one day.

Yet no one could quite recall three young monks like Dai, Taku, and Kisho.

Taku came from a village in the valley where the land was flat. The runners in Taku’s village were well known for their speed. Dai came from a mountain village near the monastery where it was said that even children could lift rocks twice their size. As for Kisho, no one knew where he came from. He simply arrived one day at the monastery and never said a word.

On the day before these three young monks were set to the task of carrying water, the Abbot of the monastery came and reminded them of the work ahead. Both Taku and Dai had thoughts that they might be the first to bring back more than four jugs of water in one day.

“I have a plan,” said Taku. “As you all know, I’m very fast. In fact, I’m so fast, that it will be no problem for me to make six trips down to the valley before the sun sets. I doubt I’ll even get winded.”

Dai reached over and gave Taku’s arm a squeeze. Taku grimaced in the grip of the big monk’s strong hand.

“How will you carry the water with those arms?” Dai laughed. “Look, I grew up hauling rocks in these mountains. I’ll have no problem hauling up six… No, eight jugs of water! You’ll see.”

Kisho, whose task for the day was sweeping the courtyard, said nothing as always. He merely stopped for a moment to look at the two young monks and then went back to his work. Dai and Taku continued their banter and those who heard them felt sure that the next day would be special.

Just before sunrise, two monks stood at the gates of the monastery. Taku held a single jug in his hands, while Dai had two of the long poles balanced on his shoulders both with two pots tied to each end. Kisho arrived a moment later, yawning a bit as he was never good at being an early riser. He set his long pole on the ground and carefully secured his two jugs while the other two monks continued their banter.

“I bet I’ll have three jugs done before you even reach the valley,” Taku said to Dai.

Dai’s laughter rattled his jugs, “And I’ll just swoop in and fill all eight of these in one go.”

Kisho finished just as the sun peeked over the horizon, but before he could lift the pole, Taku was already flying between the trees and out of sight. Dai lumbered after the speedy valley monk, huffing and swinging his empty jugs. Kisho followed along calmly, passing through the gate and into the beautiful morning.

It wasn’t long before Kisho caught up with Dai. Even though the larger monk was trying to move quickly between the trees his poles kept getting tangled and he’d have to stop and get himself organized again. Kisho moved between the trees and soon even the sound of Dai’s shouting and grumbling was lost behind him.

When Kisho was halfway down the mountain, he saw a blur in the trees below. Taku had the biggest smile on his face as he raced past. Kisho stopped and watched the valley monk zip between the trees like the wind before a storm.

By the time Kisho reached the river, it was hot. He found the spot where the monks were supposed to fill their jugs and took a moment to scoop some of the water from the river onto his head. It felt cool and refreshing.

Kisho filled his jugs and tied them to the pole. Taku came sprinting out of the trees, but this time he was not happy. He came to the spot where the monks were supposed to fill their jugs and skidded to a stop.

“I tripped!” Taku shouted. “Can you believe it? It wasn’t long after I saw you that I came across Dai struggling with his ridiculous poles. I started laughing so hard that I didn’t see a stump right in front of me. Thankfully the jug didn’t break.”

Kisho did not reply. He lifted his pole and started back up the mountain. Seconds later, Taku sprinted past him and up into the trees.

Somehow, as he came up the mountain, Kisho missed Dai. He saw a place where someone had broken one of the clay jugs, but he didn’t see or hear Dai at all. He did pass Taku, or rather the valley monk passed him going back down to the river.

“One down!” Taku said. “See you back at the top!”

At the monastery, a crowd gathered around Kisho. They asked him where Dai was, but Kisho said nothing. He set down his jugs and began fastening an empty pair to his pole. As he was heading off, Taku arrived with his second jug. A cheer went up from the monks. Taku set off again and passed Kisho before they reached the trees.

When he was nearly at the river, Kisho heard the sound of clanking clay jugs. Dai came following the sound. Kisho noticed that the mountain monk was sweating in the heat and that he had broken a second jug.

The two monks walked along together to the river. They found Taku was relaxing under a tree near the spot where the monks were supposed to fill their jugs.

“I only count six jugs, Dai. Did you get hungry and eat the other two? I can’t imagine that would be good for your teeth.”

“Very funny, Taku. Did you manage to get any water up the mountain or have you spent the rest morning here staring at your reflection in the water?”

“As a matter of fact, I’ve already taken two jugs up. I saw Kisho there. He can tell you.”

The two monks looked at Kisho, who was cooling his head off again in the river.

“Or maybe not,” said Dai. “Anyway, I’ve still got six jugs. There’s no way you’ll make four more trips before sundown.”

“I don’t need to make four. I’m pretty sure you’ll just get lost again. So I just need to make three trips, which is no problem.”

At which point, Taku stood up and started out again while Dai joined Kisho in the river.

“I don’t know how I got lost. I guess it was all that turning around when the poles hit the trees.”

Kisho filled his jugs and secured them to the pole, while Dai began filling his six remaining jugs. Kisho waited for the mountain monk to finish and then they began walking together.

By mid-afternoon, they reached the halfway point but it was slow going. Dai had no problem carrying the jugs, but again he had trouble maneuvering between the trees. More than once, his jugs slammed together and the water sloshed up over the top.

A little further up, they found Taku sitting on a stump. He was holding his leg.

The jug had shattered on a flat rock and that part of the jug must have bounced back and cut Taku’s leg. The cut wasn’t deep, but it was bleeding. Kisho set down his water and tended to Taku’s wound. Dai put down his load and stretched out on the ground.

“I dropped the jug,” Taku said. “With this cut, there’s no way I’ll be able to make it back to the monastery and back down again even twice let alone three times.”

“That extra hike really took a lot out of me,” Dai said. “I don’t think I can carry all six of these jugs back up the mountain. I’m so tired.”

When Kisho was done wrapping up Taku’s leg, he went over to Dai’s jugs. He retied the load so that two jugs were attached to one pole and four jugs to the other. Then Kisho went to his own pole, took it up on his shoulder, and started for the monastery.

Taku and Dai watched the silent monk move up through the trees. They realized they had just enough time left to follow along before they lost sight of him.

And even now, no monk has ever carried more than four jugs up the mountain in one day…

Happy writing.