Without revealing too much about myself, I will say this: most of my epiphanies about writing come in the shower. It’s there that I recognize the source of a problem, or come to some resolution of a dilemma. Yesterday, in the shower, I realized the difference between writing fiction and nonfiction: nonfiction tells itself in order. Fiction? Not so much. Nonfiction provides a specific, linear, chronological narrative. As a writer, you can choose to follow that narrative, or toss it out, but there’s no denying its presence. I was born, I lived, I died. Nonfiction gives you an “ending” or at least helps you understand you’re writing your way right up to the ending, and if you’re patient, the true “end” will reveal itself. Fiction? Well, most endings are gifts from the Gods. They appear, but you never know when.
All this came to me apropos of my new writing. My early mornings still offer promise, and, amid the hard work and plain old silly stuff like procrastinating over word count, some interesting twists and turns to this book I envision. There remains the pleasure of the pen across the page, stringing the story word by word, open to surprise, disappointed by dead ends, finding myself taking notes on plot points and character names later in the day when I’m not inside the work itself. First drafts are indeed like small children: a lot of work, a lot of obsession, a lot of promise. Let’s not talk about what happens when they take their first steps, and the mess and worry that involves. I’m in the infancy, baby, and it’s all okay.
Except it’s not. It’s confusing, and distressing. The problem that had me in the shower the other day (yes, another secret: sometimes I head into the shower to solve a problem) involved time–hence the insight into nonfictional versus fictional time. I worried I had created a character trait (“reluctant bomber”) for my protagonist that went against all I’d configured for her up til then. “No, she’s not a bomber at all! That’s been the point! The rest of them are, she’s not.” But I’d gone and done it, given her a new trait, and once that happens, there’s really no going back. Had I told something about her out of order? Did I need to include these details earlier? Was there now new plot that had to happen before the revelation?
A cardinal rule for me is that when drafting I never go back. If I return to the beginning, I’m like Penelope, endlessly unweaving the day’s work. So I let this new detail stand and thought more about what it showed me: fiction tells itself out of order. There is no getting around the disjointed, nonlinear, non-narrative aspect of the form. A good writer, having performed an outstanding revision (or a dozen), hides this secret from the reader. The overarching story may have a beginning, middle and end that carries the writer through that first draft, but the details, like my newly-discovered reluctant bomber, are a mess. Allowing these disjointed, out-of-time moments to inhabit the book, even if they make no sense at all, are what gives you the stuff you can then reorder and turn into magic.
I often tell my students not to be too attached to cause and effect; the relationship matters, but the order may be reversed. Instead of editing away that reluctant bomber, I’m letting her stick around, for now. Because, as always, the writing itself is about the process. When is it not?
“It was like Sturges’ maze; Luna had just found the center, as if all the way inside a bird had been singing on a branch for a month, day and night, only to hear its mate two valleys over call out, I’m coming, I’m coming. Now she simply had to find her way out, and over.”
Chicken car, La Canada, April 2010.
Comments 13
I love reading about your process. I don’t get much in the way of inspiration in the shower, myself. The shower has been, sadly, a place where tears can roll freely with water. Weird, right?
And that chicken car is a sight the boys and I used to always see on our way to the pediatrician in Santa Monica! Could there be two?
Posted 20 May 2010 at 8:41 am ¶I am with Elizabeth.The shower and I have a love hate relationship.Over the last 3 years it has been a place I have felt myself most vulnerable and exposed. Therefore,in those moments of deep,overwhelming sadness,the tears come.Easily and without warning.And if I am fortunate enough,on some days,the water and quite frankly the tears,become healing.
Write away.We all wait anxiously and enjoy the process from the sidelines.
Posted 20 May 2010 at 9:34 am ¶G and I were just talking about the shower. I told him a lot of people like to sing in the shower and he told me he likes to “imaginate” in the shower. Tonight he imaginated his son’s birthday party, during which he gave his boy a Ferrari shirt and a wooden playset for the backyard. Do you think he’s trying to tell me something?
Keep writing. It’s fascinating to hear how it unfolds for you.
Posted 20 May 2010 at 3:51 pm ¶Brilliant, Vicki. This is so enlightening! I love your insight about the process of writing fiction.
Posted 20 May 2010 at 4:29 pm ¶I swear that (along with some of my worst) I too have many of my best moments in the shower.
Every time you write, my dear – even when you write about writing – I walk away with a gift. Something youve tucked in there just for me, like a deliciously sly inside joke hiding in plain sight. The reading is a treasure hunt of sorts – enjoyable in and of itself, but nothing compared with the prize I walk away clutching.
Today I leave with this:
“And if you’re patient, the true “end” will reveal itself.”
And with it, a sense of peace and promise.
Thank you, lady. Again. Still.
Posted 21 May 2010 at 12:24 am ¶I love reading about your process, too! I just read how showering cleanses our auric fields, perhaps that’s part of it…
Posted 21 May 2010 at 8:23 am ¶I like this. So much. I am there working through the stuff too, avoiding Penelope’s fate, I hope.
I float in the hot tub though.
Posted 23 May 2010 at 12:22 pm ¶i am constantly, constantly going back over my novel and changing sentences and adjectives and adding sentences. it is painful for me to just jump in and write, and i wonder often if i might try to make myself do it differently for a chapter, to see what happens, if i can be more productive.
Posted 23 May 2010 at 2:50 pm ¶Vicki, it’s so exciting to read about your new work! As a reader, I love waiting for books and then finally seeing them appear (I’m very excited about Mona Simpson’s _My Hollywood_ this summer–that’s 8 years since I heard her read a chapter). And I like your drafting advice.
Posted 25 May 2010 at 6:52 am ¶Vicki – When your novel emerges into the world, however many hundreds of showers from now, it will be all the richer for the readers of your blog, who will know how much you went through to achieve the perfect dream they will then be holding in their hands.
Posted 30 May 2010 at 6:29 am ¶I love this post, as well, Vicki. And I think you’re just right in not going in to mess with things yet. They will reveal themselves to you. And you can handle all the twists and turns and new character traits.
Running is my shower. That’s when it all seems clear to me. (And maybe it’s actually the shower that washes away the ideas?)
Posted 03 Jun 2010 at 3:31 pm ¶i love reading the way you articulate this difference, really a difference in process, mental process anyway.
i have to say that i think memoir is at least as funkified to me in its progress, because when memories occur (often during the writing itself), i almost literally feel like i am back in that past experience, down to the bodily sensations and sensory details. shaping it becomes like the proverbial cat-herding. probably why i like the segmented or lyric essay so much!
but then i have so rarely written fiction that i don’t know what that process would be like for me, just that when i work with fictional characters i feel more like a kid with new crayons, a 64-count box with sharpener. anything can happen. often i just end up picking out whatever color strikes my fancy and scribbling away in a corner of the sketch pad. then turning to a fresh page. or getting a coloring book and trying to stay inside the lines.
poetry is sort of a combination. poems that start in the autobiographical compost pile, written in first person, are memoiristic of course, but i don’t have to stick with the strict facts because it’s a POEM. (something i try to tell my students over and over when i suggest they change a detail and they say, “but that’s what happened!”).
thanks for this food for thought!
Posted 07 Jun 2010 at 6:35 am ¶Hi–
thanks for the great post and food for thought about process. I tend to agree wtih Amy, but then I don’t write much fiction either. I rarely, though, experience my life as ordered into the I was born I loved I died paradigm, although in some absolute sense it does fit that. it’s just that we don’t experience that way while we’re living it most of the time. Or some of us don’t.
Esoterically, water is an amplifier of spiritual and emotional energy. For me it’s the bath tub–same phemonenon.
I also enjoyed reading all the comments–thanks again for the great insights, Vicki, and food for thought.
xo
Maria
Posted 18 Jun 2010 at 8:11 am ¶Post a Comment