I've been told that I have a lot of "what I did" and not a lot of "what I've learned." That's absolutely correct. I won't bother to make the point that what I'm doing and what I'm learning are so closely intertwined that it's almost redundant to write about. I'll just start.
I come from kind of a strange position to this Focus project because I'm not a newcomer, not in the slightest. In the beginning of the year, all throughout first semester, I was in writing workshops, and that's what I did the past two summers, etc. etc. A lot of what is saying is not new to me; I have a copy of Writing Fiction, and I've actually read it. Each teacher has distinctly different language when discussing craft, but the solids are mutually settled upon.
I'm pretty good at solid things. I think because I'm a student, the idea of right vs. wrong doesn't really irk me. I accept that there is a right way and a wrong way to go about writing. I also know that none of the rules are absolutes. Experimental fiction, what I concentrated on in my first semester, concerns itself with breaking certain of those absolutes and obeying others. This is as it may be; I can make no general statements as to which can be broken and what can't, and in many ways that's not what I'm here to learn. That would take a lot more than a semester.
I have learned a lot about craft on a more advanced level from Shelly's class. That much is certain. A very concrete example would be the four kinds of showing (action, thought, dialogue, and the one that nobody can seem to agree on, Wikipedia it for more [and yes eventually I will check my notes on this]). However, I'm lucky. I'm good at showing. If there's one thing that I really catch when I'm writing, it's that I never have a lot of exposition, or a lot of telling. Of course, it can't all be showing--nobody has enough ink for that--but I'm one of those people who sort of has it easy in this department.
I can't say the same thing about point of view. These are the two categories Shelly has discussed the most with our class, and with a few exceptions it seems that everyone is really good at one and not so good at the other. I've always had a hard time with point of view on a very basic level because I don't think writing from my own perspective is interesting. I have written more personal essays than I can count, but creative nonfiction was never my goal, perhaps because at heart I am too old-fashioned and too young. I don't think my story is interesting enough in its own right to merit the kind of work that I'd like to be doing. Maybe it will be, one day. At present, though, I try to avoid the first person as much as I can. The first person to me always seemed like a hazardous choice. On the one hand, I can't imagine anyone else being interested in my own life just for the sake of it being my own life. On the other, how can I separate myself from a character? There are people (Murakami) who can write in the first person so well and so marvelously, all the time, and all of their books are different and all of their characters are tremendous and I admire that, I really do, but it wasn't going to happen for me. I've tried. It's never worked and there's no point in forcing it. On a similarly basic level, the second person is out. not hat I haven't tried it. One of the first experimental novels I ever read--
Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins--is exclusively in the second person, and it is wonderful, but that always seemed too gimmicky. The content always has to fit the discourse, that I know. How it's told and what's being told always have to match up, exactly, intrinsically, otherwise the story will feel forced. Second person is the right choice for some people, but not for me.
I decided on third, and this decision took me a while to come to. In the end, it was more of a coincidence than anything else; the one viable story I had was in third person, so I wasn't really about to alter it. And the part of the story that needs to be in first person--a rather lengthy but often interrupted monologue--worked just as well in dialogue as it would have in not-dialogue. But if it were as simple as first/second/third, I wouldn't have anything to learn.
It turns out that perspective, point of view, is more scientific than any other element of creative writing, and I'm not entirely surprised.
I got distracted by the prom dress group, but I'm back.
Specifically under the third person category are numerous smaller categories that aren't entirely clear to me, even though Shelly's explained them a million times. I am planning on doing a little more reading so I can have an idea of what I'm actually in for. There's a difference between third close/limited and omniscient and all of these things seem subtle until you're being workshopped and they're absolutely glaring. I knew that was my issue. I could tell because I have two main characters in my story and I'm not exactly sure whose story it is just yet. I want it to be both, but that's much harder to achieve than I originally thought.
On this subject, Lynne had quite a bit to say (but she has quite a bit to say about everything, for which I love her!):
As for the shifts in point of view and “persons,” I actually noticed them more in this version, than the first. But before you get in any way shook up about that, I want to say that I’m not sure if that’s because I read your blog entry from a while back where you mentioned that the workshop gang had focused some on that. I was surprised about that because I actually didn’t mind it in the first version. In fact, as I was reading that one I was surprised about how your story seemed to take quite a “traditional” form (compared to other works of yours that I’d read when you were maybe a sophomore, say). So when I read along in the first version, I thought, oh, here’s where traditional meets experimental, classic meets innovative—Serena’s not afraid to shift points of view at will in aid of the story. And, since the story was strong and compelling, I found myself happily going with it and not at all bothered or tripped up by it. And I’m still not in this version, but I felt more aware of it. As I say, I’m not sure if because it’s not quite as smooth as the first or it’s simply that because I read the blog and know that others were flagging it, that I was more tuned in to it.
I guess I was extremely comfortable with the shifts in point of view, mostly you alternate them in chunks at a time—at least by paragraphs, but usually longer passages. But occasionally the POV shifts for just a sentence within a paragraph. Maybe that’s when the faint-of-heart traditionalists get a little flustered. The one other thing I can see as potentially rattling the same cages is that major shift from third person to first person in the same, um, I guess, call it the same subnarrative. So we’ve got the story of Carl and Ollie at the cathedral within the bigger story. In the beginning of the telling of that we’re getting it (I think) third person from Rodger’s POV (or is it Carl’s or is it an omniscient narrator?)—
Ollie was fascinated by the rose windows….
Ollie hadn’t washed her hair for three days…
Ollie, though, was no pillar…
Then, later, it’s part of first person dialog from Carl
“We were walking back to the hotel and I could tell something was wrong with her…”
“I thought it might have been the cathedral…”
“We ate, sort of, but it wasn’t really night yet..”
You get the idea. So is it something that has to be “fixed”? Depends on if you think it’s “broken!” The important thing to me is that you have a solid, compelling, sharply observed, well-written story. The mechanics can be changed in any number of ways—should one feel compelled to do so. The reading public at large got all freaked out a while back when a new generation of writers started, seemingly as one and overnight, dropping attribution in dialog. Instead of the constant xxxxxxx, she said/ xxxxx, Pablo replied/, writers dropped those tedious, arguably unnecessary extras and just let the exchange itself signal the reader who was speaking when. So maybe you’re just on a leading edge of breaking down POV rules to go with a more natural shifting that occurs in any dynamic situation between characters.
Obviously she likes my writing a lot more than I deserve, but she's sort of right (and I am one of those people who really like the new dialogue, as opposed to the old. I used to have the current story with no "saids", just all names, if I needed anything. I took a lot of flack for that). I sort of like the way the story slides. That said, I recognize that it has to become a lot smoother before it's anywhere near done. I'm definitely learning a lot about point of view as this goes on, but at the same time I'm trying not to learn too much, which might sound weird and counterintuitive but it's true. I want to understand the technicalities of point of view, but at the same time I don't want to start thinking about them like they're solid, because they aren't. I really do like the idea of third limited, because following one character seems like a much better idea than trying to do everything at once (and a lot more interesting) but I can't seem to figure out which character wants to be followed. They pull me in opposite directions because my two characters have essentially different lives, but both of their reactions are equally important. How do I make that make sense?
In terms of what I actually have to do, and have been doing, it's fairly simple. I went to class last night and realized that I have to hand in to workshop on Monday, which is short for me panicking. I haven't quite started doing that yet, because I have six days left, but I'm pretty close. I don't know how I"m going to have a totally new and fresh and exciting revision done by that time, but I can't imagine having a fully story turned out by then. I know I do my best work under pressure, but it doesn't make it any less painful. I finished a pen revision under some pressure and I started retyping today, but I haven't gotten too far (my project for tonight, I'd imagine). I'm also meeting with my mentor on Thursday and I'm so glad to talk to her. I'm not really stuck just yet, more confused, really. I'm also in a terrible mood, although that has nothing to do with Focus other than that it makes it very difficult to write.
My next writing workshop is with Myla Goldberg, who I hear is kind of a big name in the literary world, how big I don't know. She's a very nice lady, I've taken a class with her before. We received one of the pieces we are going to have to read for workshop and it's quite long. Shelly enforces a 5,000 word limit, which I think is reasonable, while the first workshopee was already far over that. I can already tell it's going to be a lot of reading and a really rough bus ride. But that's okay. I signed up for that.
My last note, and I swear to God I don't know why my entries are so long, is that I need a book to read and I've been trying to avoid it. I read another Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart, and it finally started to get a little old. I've got Henry Miller on Writing sitting on my desk and obviously Women in Love has been driving me crazy because our good friend DH is brilliant, but nothing hits me like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles. That's not the right way of putting it. I've been contemplating Women in Love for weeks but I don't know what to write about it. I don't know what to write. All I can do is revise and more and more things come out of the revisions. I hope I'm going in the right direction.
