Regrets, I've had a few...

Like about five seconds after posting my last entry.

What was I thinking putting such first draft work out there in the public domain? Chapter two has already changed so much since that first draft version, and to be honest, I've hardly been working on it. What's with all the rhetorical questions in it? (See what I did there?) I've worked hard to get them out as I find them annoying.

I'll continue to post first draft work as it comes, cause what the fuck else am I gonna put on here?

Round about now is the time when I start second guessing everything I've written so far. The girl's not morbid enough, the boy's not scary enough. How do you write characters that are basically sociopaths, but then have them fall in love with each other? Isn't the whole point of sociopaths that they don't have emotions? So, are they just weird kids that have an overly complicated fascination with death? I like the beginning, but not the most recent bits so am I heading the wrong way? And what's with all the rhetorical questions?

I figure what I have to do is keep at it. If I start second guessing everything I've done so far I will stunt myself from being able to go further. If there's anything I've learned from my research into SNS it's that the best thing to do is just keep writing til you get to then end, then you have to go back and sift through all the shit to find a nugget of gold.

And then write it again...

And again...

*sigh*

I've been asked to come and read some of my work at the library for an International Women's Day event. The only readings I've ever done were from my first book, but I feel so removed from it these days that it would be strange to read from it now. Plus, I find it incredibly cringe-worthy. Talk about regrets.
I was talking to some of my students at a reading I organized for them (I think it's really important to be able to read your own stuff in front of an audience if you're a writer). They were saying how it's hard to know when you've finished a piece because they keep finding things to change. I told them, it's always like that. At some point (like when it goes to print) you have to accept that it's done, but you'll always find things in it you regret, or you wish you could change. I don't even look at my first book anymore, it's so littered with those bits.

So, I certainly can't read from it. I've decided to read the beginning (still very first draft-y) section of the new novel...

We'll see if I end up regretting it...

Chapter 2: Like a Child in its Parents' Bed.

Am beginning to get concerned that in the first 26 pages of this novel I have killed three different animals and that where in my last novel everything hinged on a scene involving a dead cat...in this one, everything begins with a dead cat. Perhaps need to rethink my catalysts or I may be accused of having limited literary preoccupations. But it is a book about death. Of that much I am certain. So a small amount of death may be required.

As promised...some writing. This is the entirety of chapter 2 at the moment. Thought I might as well put a big chunk out there since I've been off the radar for awhile. If you don't like it...go fuck yourself. Kidding. Kind of.

Brandon stormed into his house, slamming the screen door behind him. What the fuck was her problem? Why did she care so much about some dumb lizard? He opened the refrigerator and took a bottle of Budweiser out of the door and twisted it open. His dad would just think he'd drunk it himself. He took a long gulp from the cool bottle and slammed it on the counter, flecks of foam splattering out onto his wrist. He didn’t feel guilty. Why should he? Who was this dumb girl that kept showing up and trying to make him feel guilty?

Who was she?

He hadn’t even recognized her at first, when she knelt beside him in the park. Had ignored her, hoping she’d get bored and slope off. But then he’d looked her straight in those swamp colored eyes and it hit him like a punch in the stomach. Those same eyes glaring hate and disgust into him only two weeks before. That breathy voice, far too deep and throaty for a girl who couldn’t be older than ten.

This time she wasn’t looking at him with hatred though, but with something else. Openess. Forgiveness maybe?

Heat gripped his stomach as their hands touched and at first he wondered if maybe she didn’t recognize him. If maybe he could start again from scratch. Pretend to be somebody else.

But she knew who he was. She’d started to say it…to ask about the cat. And the hot clutching in his stomach had turned to ice and he’d felt shame. And that made him angry.

And when he got angry he hurt things.

Why had she come over in the first place? Why if she knew it was him? What did she want from him?

He’d had a second chance and had blown it. She’d certainly never come to him like that again. Warm and open and curious. Like she cared about him or something. But she couldn’t. ‘Cause she didn’t even know him.

We wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and pressed the sweating bottle to it. He took deep breaths, trying to get his heart to slow to its normal plodding pace. He felt one hundred years old.

Upstairs he crept to the door of his parent’s bedroom which was open an inch, a soft light emitting from behind it. He could hear his mother's short breaths coming from inside. He pushed the door open wider and let his eyes adjust to the dim light. She looked so small in the bed. Like a child in its parents’ bed. He wanted to gather her up in his arms and hold her, and even at a mere fourteen, he easily could have, he was so tall and broad. And she had wasted to almost nothing. A fading Polaroid of herself.

No, what he really wanted was for her to wake up and hold him on her lap and rock him in her lithe arms like she had done when he was small. But he’d never be small enough for that again. And she’d never be strong enough. He wanted to cry then, but couldn’t do it in front of his mother. Even if she was in a sedative induced sleep and would never know. He shut the door behind him and entered his bedroom at the other end of the hall. He drew a battered pack of his father’s Lucky Strikes from his untidy underwear drawer, pulled a matchbook out of the plastic wrap and lit a cigarette with the last match inside it. He collapsed onto the unmade bed, sucking smoke.

He stared out the window, sipping beer and ashing into an old cereal bowl, encrusted with yellowed milk residue. It hadn’t been that long ago that his mother had come into his room every Sunday, ranting about what a mess it was and whirling around him throwing dirty socks into a laundry basket tucked under her arm, gathering up old dishes while he snapped and shouted at her to get out of his private space. The mess was now at least two months old and he wished he'd never given her such a hard time about trying to take care of him.

The fierce look in the girl’s eyes kept coming back to him. He shook his head to rid himself of their disapproval but they stuck there even when his eyes were closed, like the after affects of staring into the sun.

His mother would have cared too. Would have cared about the salamander and the cat. But she barely existed anymore so what did it matter?

He took a last sip of beer but spluttered it onto his tee shirt as silent sobs overtook him. He shook and buried his face in his pillow. He wished the girl was there now, in his room, on his bed. He wanted her to rest her small head on his back while he cried. He wanted to feel her cool hand on his burning face.

Suddenly Seeking Reader

So much for New Year's resolutions, huh?

It's already the middle of February and I've spent most of my time this past month drinking, dancing, playing roller derby and generally finding any excuse not to write. My husband's been in Siberia for a month and I was honestly convinced that his absence would motivate me to write more. That while he was gone I would be so bored in the empty house that I would be forced to sit down and write. Turns out, I was so bored in the empty house that I left it at every possible opportunity and stayed out til four in the morning drinking vodka sodas and dancing to Journey.

Apparently, when left to my own devices, I revert to my natural state. My natural state being...drunk.

But he's back now and I've dutifully returned to the keyboard to write both here and in 'the novel'. It was hard to sit down and start, with my old friend panic joining me quite quickly, but once I did, it's been moving ok.

I'm currently dealing with the fact that up until now, the narrative has swirled around Wendy and has been told mostly from her perspective. The newest chapter however, is from Brandon's perspective. I'm not sure why I'm doing this, but it just seemed right at this point in the story. But I can't help wondering whether this will be sustainable in the long run. Really, it doesn't matter and I should just write it however it is coming out for now. That's what redrafting is for! But it's hard not to at least try to be thinking three, five, seven chapters ahead.

What I really need right now is a reader. Every writer needs a reader. If you write a whole novel in a vacuum, with no outside perspective (I've been using that word a lot), you'll become blind to it. Won't see when it's strayed too far off the path.

My husband's a writer. A really good one. But he's my husband so I could never trust him to be objective (even if he would be). I have a great deal of extremely smart and well read friends who I know would be willing to read for me, but they might not read with the same close, critical eye that another writer would. I have writer acquaintences, but none that I'd feel comfortable asking to read something at such an early stage. It's a big ask really. It takes time and effort and most of these people are working on their own writing while marking student's writing. It's like whether they know you really well or hardly at all, it's difficult to be honest. There's always my agent (Hello Caroline!), but really it's not her job to read early stages of first drafts. She'll get the second draft.

I miss the workshop environment of University. Lots of writers, all at a similar stage in their 'writerly life'. All expected to be critical and constructive. It's invaluable and I worry that without that I'll forever struggle to get the words right.

Reader wanted: Objective, critical but not cruel, to read first two chapters of the first draft of my barely started second novel and tell me whether it's shit or not. Why or why not? No time wasters.

Expect a writing post later today. If you expect it, maybe I'll actually do it.

How Technology Rescues Us from Itself

So it has been a week since my last post, which is obviously pretty slack. I can give you a bunch of shit about how busy/stressful/whatever my week was (and it was) but it's not relevant.

I have been regularly using Write or Die and it has been working miracles. I can bang out about 500 words in twenty minutes. Granted, they are repetitive words formed into messy, grammatically incorrect and often uninteresting sentences. BUT they are still words. And you gotta have SOMETHING to work with. No point trying to put a puzzle together with no pieces. Am I right?

So, I have taken one small chunk of rubble and had a go at carving it into something. Wendy has just stumbled across a praying mantis in an azalea bush...

"At first it stayed perfectly still. Then slowly it began to make its way across the leafy branch. It moved steadily. Its steps were soft yet deliberate, as if it thought it might wake someone. Wendy was taken aback by how green it was. Neon, lime, chartreuse. It was large too, larger than she was strictly comfortable with. Coming face to face with it while it was in its shrub was ok, but she imagined meeting it in her bedroom in the dark. Or what if when she switched the bathroom light on in the middle of the night, instead of the usual curled up spider in the corner, this unfeasible creature was crouched waiting for her? She would be terribly shaken. Things belonged where they belonged. Every thing is made to fit within the place it is meant to exist in, and if some thing is encountered outside of its place, it can seem monstrous. This twig-like thing, painted in all its chlorophyllic beauty, belonged in this shrub.
She surveyed the space around her, the school yard, the upstairs windows of her apartment, the steeple on the Presbyterian church, and wondered if she was in the right place. Or if she was a monster."

I'm sure this bit will change and change again. Maybe it will even get deleted from the narrative altogether, as that is the nature of constructing a story. You have to not only know what to leave in but what to leave out as well. But for now, I like it.

Anyway, my latest hurdle to true writerly focus is the ever present Facebook. It's like a scab that you just can't help but pick. I can be writing along all fine and dandy and then all of sudden, I'll just HAVE to check facebook. It's obsessively habitual, unnecessary and incredibly unproductive. Like smoking. So, I did a little research and decided to give this a try. It shuts off all access to your internet connection for however long you program it for. If you absolutely NEED to get online during this time you have to reboot your computer, which is such a hassle that it's meant to keep you from cheating. The first time I used it I had urges, cravings even, to refresh Facebook and Gmail. But I couldn't. Which was weirdly unnerving. But eventually I let it go and just wrote through to the end of the time period I had set.

There are two downsides to this at the moment. One, I only have the free trial which means I can only use it 4 more times. I think I am going to have to shell out a tenner and get the proper one and really retrain myself to have an attention span. But, number two is, I can't use the free web app of Write or Die while I have Freedom set. So this meant I actually didn't write straight through the time frame. I kept stopping, pondering specific words, going back and re-reading what I had just written. All the things that I am trying NOT to do. So, I suppose I will have to shell out a second tenner for the desktop version of Write or Die so I can use it while offline. And then, SURELY, I will be unstoppable.

Luckily they are only American tenners.

New Year's Resolution? ...Do less.

...and write more.



So, it's offically 2012. I've never been much on New Year's resolutions. Usually I go with something like, eat more, drink more and smoke more, as my 'oh so clever' anti-resolution. This year my 'oh so clever' anti-resolution is do less...(but write more).

One of the pieces to my SNS has been the wonderful distractive qualities of extra-curricular activities. I've always been the kind of person who embraces a new idea or activity with frightening gusto, usually to abandon it wholly within six months so that I can pick up another one. These include but are not limited to...painting, the banjo, horseback riding, pilates, making and selling handbags and purses and baking. Oh and at least three novels, started then abandoned. Of these, the ones that I took up in my adult life have proven a great distraction from writing, which is the one thing that has remained a constant 'extra-curricular' since I was twelve. So much so that I strive to make it my main 'curricular' activity. So, these things distract me from writing and therefore I do them even more and get even more wrapped up in them as an excuse to not write. A few months ago I wrote a little piece as an excercise in writing Salinger-esque prose and dialogue entitled 'Nobody Talks Like That Anymore' which opens with a (semi-autobiographical) list...

"First, as often seems to be the case, there was the piano.

Followed by the ubiquitous trifecta of ballet, tap and jazz. Then, horseback riding (English and Western). A brief stint with the flute. A concerted effort at singing and acting, which very nearly led to a period of theatrical study at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts. Oil painting classes on Saturdays and watercolours at home. A summer craft camp where she attended full day week long classes in sculpture, block printing and macramé. Poetry, of the melancholic teenage kind. The Optimist’s Club Oratorical Contest, at which, aged seventeen, she earned 2nd place at the state level. Self-taught Tarot readings in the campus café for a gaggle of giggling undergraduates. An exuberant year skating for her local amateur roller derby team. Which, in itself, led to an intense, yet focussed fitness regime of running, cycling and Pilates. In her third year, she bought herself a 5 string bluegrass banjo and taught herself up to page sixteen of the ‘Complete 5 String Bluegrass Banjo Handbook’ so she could accompany herself on June Carter Cash songs at parties.

Upon moving out on her own she took up baking, sewing, carpentry and gardening (vegetables, not flowers) and, along with some artistic types she met whilst living in SoWash, wrote, directed, shot and edited a 5 minute short film adaptation of a story she’d written some years before entitled ‘Sorenson’s Camel’s-hair Coat’ which took place almost entirely on a train station platform.

In her short but productive twenty six years she had begun six novels (completing two of them, along with a book of verse) and dated approximately nineteen men and two women. Although, ‘dated’ may not be a useful term in this case as many of said relationships lasted no longer than from the instant of first meeting until the following morning.

And even if she’d never managed to really stick to something in the way that parents and professors expected her to in order to embark on a successful and fulfilling career choice, no one could say that she wasn’t accomplished. Granted, for most of her youth, her parents had been positively over the moon that she’d been so keen to try so many things, and proven herself, if not entirely naturally talented in all of them, a deft and quick learner who excelled in almost everything she attempted."


So, this year, my resolution is to do less. Do less of all the extra stuff. Settle down and focus on myself as a writer and not anything else. That isn't to say I won't be doing other things with my time, but just that I will only devote as much time as is necessary to them, and will not take on excess responsibility/projects and use them as excuses to not be writing.

The second part of that resolution though, is to write more. And I have now used this twice. The first time, I wrote 500 words in twenty minutes...the second time, 704 in 21.

Now, I will not attempt to argue that they are good words, because they aren't (at least not all of them) but that is the beauty of Write or Die. It's actually quite a good tool for removing the self editing impulse while writing. It allows you to just get words on the page to be shaped and sculpted later. It helps to conquer the fear of the blank page. I highly recommend it. And for anyone trying to write a novel or dissertation or longer piece like that, I strongly suggest using it in conjunction with a simple outline. What I've been doing is setting myself a word goal and time limit and then going in with one bullet point/scene on my outline in mind as a starting point. Then just see where it goes. This way I'll have loads of little pieces of the book to start stringing together and filling out. Seems to be working so far.

So happy New Year to anyone who has been kind enough to stop by and read this far.

Free Indirect Death

So I promised some actual writing today.

Well it turns out this book I'm (still only sort of) writing, is definitely about death. The first one was in a lot of ways, but it was mostly about fucked up love. Like, 90% fucked up and twisted love and 10% death. I have a feeling this one is more like 90% death and 10% fucked up and twisted love.

I don't usually consider myself particularly morbid, but that's only because I actually am quite. I'm fascinated, intrigued, curious and to be honest, not the least bit scared of death. But it does upset me, and so I write about it (see my earlier post).

Also, I am attempting to use elements of free indirect style in this book, opening and closing the psychic distance of different characters perceptions. This is something I've never tried before but it seems to be working quite naturally so far. I've always had trouble with third person, but then first person is quite limiting. By using free indirect style and playing with psychic distance I can get the best of both. And it makes it far less complicated to switch character perspectives whenever I need to.


Anyway, here's a nice little chunk of deathy stuff...

 

So, when, after nearly eight years of breathing tubes and oxygen tanks and catheters and staring at the same four walls and never putting her feet on the floor, let alone standing up or going anywhere, Wendy’s grandmother finally died on that vulgarly sweet spring afternoon, Wendy was justifiably nervous about following her mother up the stairs to her grandmother’s bedroom cum sick room to ‘say good bye’. Wendy’s grandfather, as liberal leaning as he was for a man his age, still thought it was inappropriate to bring a young girl in to see a dead body, but Rose, the hippyest of his three hippyish daughters, insisted it would bring closure and that it would be much more scarring if suddenly Wendy’s grandmother was just gone. Wendy was just worried that there’d be maggots undulating in her grandmother’s open mouth and flies alighting on her open eyes. The thought scared, but also intrigued her. And even though she loved her grandmother more than anything and had always known that to her, Wendy’s presence had never once been a burden, (which was not true of any of the other adults Wendy knew), and she didn’t necessarily want to see her grandmother in that kind of state, she knew that whatever she was about to see was no more her grandmother than that mass of insect and rot had still been a baby bunny. And as with the bunny, she’d be hard pressed to pass up the opportunity to get a glimpse.

When she did finally enter her Grandmother’s perfumed bedroom a few steps behind her mother, she was both relieved and disappointed to see her grandmother, there on the bed, just as she’d always been, if maybe a shade or two paler, skin slightly translucent.

Wendy didn’t cry often and when she did, it was usually big gulping wails over skinned knees. But she cried then. Silently. Standing beside her grandmother’s deathbed. Stinging tears marching steadily down her cheeks and under her chin, before dutifully plunging to the threadbare carpet.

After the funeral Wendy’s grandfather left his three daughters to squabble over their mother’s jewelry, furniture and keepsakes, and moved down south to a cottage on the Chesapeake Bay. He instructed them to sell whatever they didn’t want and split the profits. What he took with him only just filled a Volkswagen Rabbit. One box of books about astrology, ornithology and sailing knots, a suitcase of socks and underwear, a portable record player and about a dozen records of depression era songs about hobos, trains and dead dogs. And a simple brass urn holding her ashes. He was going to buy a sail boat, take her way out into the bay and leave her there among the crabs. He imagined the ash of her flesh mixing with the sandy silt and sifting through an oyster, irritating its mucusy muscle and becoming a grey-black pearl.

He never did though. He just got older and more used to being alone. Until sailing became unfeasible. And she just sat on the mantelpiece gathering dust. An urn full of dust, covered in dust. Becoming less and less a person and more and more furniture. And Wendy and Rose only ever saw him at Christmas. 

I haven't written much new in the last week but I have written an outline. Something I used to swear up and down against. The last time I tried to outline a novel I did it in such great detail that by the time the outline was complete I was so bored of the story I couldn't bear actually writing it. But that was before the first novel.
This time, I had this very broad, general idea, with only a handful of scenes. By writing each scene up in simple one phrase lines in some kind of passable order, I was able to conjure up all kinds of ideas for other scenes and characters and narrative development as well as get a better view of the piece as a whole. I've purposefully left it very simplified and easily altered so I don't feel it's written in stone or too detailed.

It's definitely calming to feel like I've got a better idea of where I'm going with it. Will be trying to get some new words on the page tonight and tomorrow. Am thinking of giving this a go. Will let you all know how it works.

And two notes...one, if you're interested in blogs by writers struggling to get words on the page through the daily mayhem of tedious jobs and online chess, please check out the two blogs I've linked to on the right of this post...two, my blog title is not very Google friendly (as there are about a kazillion articles/blogs etc dealing with SNS out there) so any and all ideas welcome for a new blog title that still incorporates the base struggle of living with Second Novel Syndrome.

If I choose your idea, you'll get a prize (which may or may not just be a name check in this blog...and by that I mean it will be). 

innit.

Birthdays and Stephen Fry

So my posting has dropped off completely over this holiday period but I am now coming up for air, gasping for breath after having been plunged headfirst into booze and food for a solid week. My 29th birthday was last Thursday (22nd) and I have not written a word since then. Which is probably not the best way to start off my 30th year on this planet, however, drop in productivity is one of the many downsides to a birthday so close to Christmas.

Turning 29 has felt surprisingly normal. Perhaps it's because I went through a bit of existensial crisis when I was 27 so I've gotten it out of the way for awhile. I am proud of having published a novel by this point in my life, but it feels so far away already and changed so little in my actual day to day existence that sometimes I forget that it ever happened.

I have managed to squeeze in some research on SNS over the holiday and am actually surprised by just how similar the experience is for so many writers.

Don DeLillo explains the 'first novel writing itself' feeling with his usual grace and brevity...
"A first novel comes to the writer as a gift and he doesn't necessarily know how he wrote it. It's the second novel that teaches him how to write."

This makes me feel better about the fact that writing the second one feels like it's actually physically harder than the first. Like I never wrote one before. Like I have no idea what I'm doing.

Jefferey Eugenides (a poster child for second novel syndrome) explains the panic...
"No one is waiting for you to write your first book. No one cares if you finish it. But after your first, if it goes well, everyone seems to be waiting. You're suddenly considered to be a professional writer, a fiction machine, but you know very well that you're just getting going. You go from having nothing to lose to having everything to lose, and that's what creates the panic."

It's like you're inside my head, Jeff. It's hard to explain to people the pressure that builds up after you've done one. And it's not even necessarily from an agent or editor, but from your friends and family. How it feels like every time they ask you 'are you writing?', 'what are you writing?', 'how's the writing going?' what you hear is 'well, you've done the hard part now, where's the next one?', 'you're a writer now, so why aren't you writing? Isn't that what you do?'
And of course that's ridiculous. They ask you those things because they're genuinely interested in what you're doing, and the process. Ah, but the panic...the panic.

And last, but certainly not least, my favorite SNS quote from one of my (and everyone's) favorite people, Stephen Fry.
"The problem with a second novel is that it takes almost no time to write compared with a first novel. ... If I write my first novel in a month at the age of 23, and my second novel takes me two years, which have I written more quickly? The second of course. ...The first took 23 years, and contains all the experience, pain, stored-up artistry, anger, love, hope, comic invention and despair of that lifetime. The second is an act of professional writing. That is why it is so much more difficult."

Bingo, Steve. My first novel, is SUCH a first novel. Semi-autobiographical, short, first person, present tense, and all the other cliched first novel-y type things. Everything I've ever written since I was twelve. Every scrap of diary-esque prose, every angsty teen poem, every attempted short story, all somehow, in some way, found it's way into that first book. Each was a stepping stone, a brick in the wall of the right voice, theme, structure, to that first book. Now that that project is completed, it feels like I have to start the next one empty...without any reserves of words or thoughts or feelings.

It's why I am trying to keep a notebook while I write it. Why I am trying out this blog to see if any writing is all writing.

Anyway...at the very least, it's nice to know I am not alone, that far greater minds than mine have struggled just as hard with novel number two.

Tomorrow...
a snippet of actual writing...I promise.