I didn’t plan it that way. It just happened. The more I look around, the more I realize I’m surrounded. I know I’ve talked in the past about how amazing creative women have come into my life to help me birth books, but today it struck me just how many of my friends are writers and how many of those friends I made before any of us knew we leaned that way and how the intricate tapestry made at the hands of lovers of words has been forming itself all along.
My best friend from second grade, for example, my oldest friend by a long shot – way back to Touch the Ground You’re Dead and the Training Bra Club. In 4th grade we were tasked with writing a newspaper style article about a nursery rhyme. I chose Jack and Jill. Here it is: (I did not edit, as much as I wanted to.)
Villagers Fall Down Hill
By Gaaby Rappaport
It is reported that in a small town west of London, two villagers fell down a hill. They fell down going to fetch a pail of water. Their names are Jack and Jill. They are both in critical condition. Jack, the doctors say, may have brain damage. Jill is in a coma. She could remain there the rest of her life. Jill is now being kept alive by machines. Her mother disagrees with the doctors and says, “I do not want my child to be kept alive by machines. I would like her to die naturally.” She has little hope of regaining consciousness. There is a great feeling of tragedy in the village especially for the families of these poor children.
For real. That’s it. I like it for so many reasons. Not the least of which is my nine-year-old concern for a person’s right to die.
When I was 16, the boy I was madly in love with was a writer. Once he helped me write a sonnet for my boyfriend, who was obviously someone entirely different than the boy I loved. We sat on my porch on 13 Mile Road looking at the Kentucky Fried Chicken across the street. My teenage heart was bursting in my chest under the complication of my circumstances and this is what came out:
If I treat you as if you were beneath me,
You bear my steps without complaint.
My torrential bursts of misery
You let pass over with epic restraint.
I ignore your weak attempts to serve
My wants with half-true care,
My harshest words to crush the nerve
Your lips lean to repair.
I taunt your strings and you perform,
With a smile and a bow you take your leave
Of the stage I have set for you to conform
To the parts I create for you to believe.
And if I fail to see that you’ve been true,
Then who’s the fool, me or you?
I treated the boyfriend like garbage because he wasn’t someone entirely different than who he was, namely the boy I was in love with. There are actually many great things that came from this situation. First and foremost, it has proved unbelievable grist for the mill.
Later in life, shortly after Dan and I started “dating,” the best friend from second grade became our roommate. This involved accidentally seeing Dan naked one too many times and watching us attempt to destroy one another in many horrifying ways. (Don’t worry – it all turned out okay.) Boy oh boy, though, back in those days we had F-U-N.
By this time, she and I kind of knew we were writers. She was a creative writing major, nearly done. I was a 20-year-old freshman taking my first creative writing class. I remember sitting in the backyard of our druggie/hippie commune at a little metal table that had been left behind by a previous tenant. I was sufficiently… altered and attempting to write a paper for said creative writing class about my favorite place, which happened to be my bed. It was a paper fraught with delicious descriptions of the feel of worn down, nubby flannel sheets on my feet and yummy smelling pillowcases that had been steeped in that magic combination of Trésor and saliva, with a little cigarette smoke mixed in (I wasn’t as into clean laundry then as I am now). I wrote about how he got into bed and slept where he fell, while I, on the other hand, was an eggbeater, which is an accurate depiction even 15 years later.
My memory is that my friend gave me a secondary assignment to encourage me to use my brain in a different way. Or maybe just use my brain. My memory could be inaccurate, but it went something like this: you have to use three yellow words somewhere in the paper, you know, lemon, sunshine, brick road. That’s good stuff. Delightful. It was a great paper. I tried to find it, to no avail. I tore apart my laundry room (where I keep a tub full of old writing) and my office (where I keep many files full of old writing). I’m sure I’ll find it as soon as I’ve posted this.
Today, this very oldest friend is a working writer, a professor, teaching young, probably sober minds how to access the good stuff. That boy is a writer too I think. My two best friends from high school – writers. One of my mothers – writer. My husband and two of his best friends – you guessed it – great writers. My sister-in-law and no less than five of my very closest friends, all of these lovely women are brilliant writers. And I found almost every single one of these people before any of us knew what we were, so that list doesn’t even include all of the amazing writers I’ve gotten to hook up with since I finished my first real draft.
http://mrsjanellewilson.blogspot.com
http://norwegianlutherangirl.blogspot.com
http://spearsfamilyproject.blogspot.com
http://notapeach.com
http://blythewoolston.blogspot.com
What prompted me to write this post was one of those crazy Facebook reunions. I’m sure you’ve all had them. Some shiny diamond from your past shows up and reminds you of who you used to be. And it turns out that now you’re both writers. And it turns out you’re both pretty damn happy about the whole thing.
http://thedadscene.blogspot.com
So who cares if I’m a brain slave, forced to sit in the dark of the night while the rest of my house is asleep because I have to use it up or lose it? Who cares if I close up shop and crawl into bed only to be driven back out to my computer because the words won’t leave me alone? Who cares if I’m neurotic and full of fear? Who cares if I alternate between being an ego maniac and a sniveling, insecure nutjob? Who cares that it hasn’t work out like I’d planned or that it’s been so f-ing hard? Who gives a roaring rip about sacrifices and rejection and hurt and struggle and walking around with my nerve endings on the outside of my body for all the world to see?
Together we have written books, plays, poems, songs. We get to be the trusted transcribers. Trust me, my friends, we are the lucky ones.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Drafts
In case you’ve been wondering, I’ve been writing like crazy. Deep into revisions on my fourth draft, fueled by gorgeous and mind-blowing notes from Blythe. So who can blog under those circumstances? My sister-in-law can, so inspired by her, the woman who blogs under the fieriest of conditions, I thought I would spend some time this morning catching you up. I’m mulling over a troublesome scene and I can’t dive into the book just now, so I thought I’d write down a few things I’ve learned about revison.
I’m on my fourth draft. I think. It’s all a little blurry by now. I’ve said it before (or at least implied it): I thought this would go much faster than it has. Throughout the beginning of this process, I had Stephenie Meyer visions – six months to write it, another month before someone picked it up, maybe a few days after that before it was being auctioned off to a very prestigious publishing house and voila! Now, three years and four drafts later, I’ve come to accept a very different fate. Today, I think I can appreciate it a bit.
It used to be, in my youth, that I never looked at anything twice. Even in my brief stint in college I was reluctant to edit. Editing stole from inspiration, I thought. I was foolish in many ways.
I’ve had some incredible experiences with editing this book. Mostly, I’ve learned that there is always more in there, which kind of makes me wonder if I’ll know when I’m really done. I’ve gotten to go deeper, uncovering what really happened, finding things out I didn’t know before – an occurance that never ceases to amaze me. The other thing editing reveals is that, in the end, as my friend Ms. Lamott says, the writing is the thing. I am continually surprised by my own self, and what could be better than that?
My second draft was spured by the Bad Things Happen woman. My main lesson was finding a way around how confined I was by my main character Iso’s voice and experience. I ended up writing about 40 pages from Jack’s point of view. It was great to write from a man’s perspective and to find out what had happened to him in the years they were apart. I brought in a bunch of new and delicious characters and got fabulous information from one of Dan’s best friends about what it was like to be in music school and to then become a working musician.
Through the months I was working on those pages, I leaned heavely on my husband for peeks behind the boy curtain and learned things like, No, they would not have a talk after punching each other and, Yes, he probably would have sex with her, even though he was in love with someone else.
That draft gleaned some really important and humanizing information about Jack. Until then, he’d pretty much been perfect – too perfect many early readers said. Being able to look at life through the filter of his pain dirtied him up a bit, a theme that has been prevelant in each and every draft.
When the time was right, I got hooked up with a marvelous editor in LA who loved my characters as much as I did, and because of that agreed to work with me for free. Also because she was just starting out on the editing side – she had already published two books – and I came along around the time she needed a guinea pig. Divine Intervention! (Matthew Sweet song. Yum.)
She really pushed me. “You might want to kill me when you hear this,” she would say, and even though I would be scared, I would also be crazy excited, because I knew something was coming that was going to open another brain door I hadn’t even known was there the second prior. I would sit at my desk with my head in my hands, staring off into space while that portal opened and my entire idea of what was supposed to happen expanded. A short burst of magic mushroom awareness, if you know what I mean. Not that I know what I mean or that I would ever advocate anything you might infer from that last sentence.
We decided that all those wonderful new characters didn’t fit in this book, that it was really Iso’s story, but that the experiences Jack had while he was away from her were important and life-changing experiences that we needed to see, but not so blatently. “I think you should write some songs,” she said. “It would be a good way to see where he’s been without actually seeing where he’s been.” Even though my stomach dropped at the prospect, I was excited too. So she ended up teaching me that I was capable of writing songs. She also helped me see that still I spent too much time telling, not enough time showing and more time than anyone would ever want inside my main character’s head. I ended up changing my timeline, peppering Jack’s voice with Iso’s chronologically. I always wondered how that happened in books.
I’m losing track of drafts here. I think that brings us current. When Blythe and I sat down for coffee after she’d finished reading the book she said, “I’m going to be spending the next several weeks talking to you about Iso.” Yippee! I knew good things were coming.
What has happened with this draft is basically the same thing that has happened with all the drafts: opportunity to go deeper. I saw right away that I had only exposed Iso’s childhood insofar as it mingled with Jack’s. How silly of me! And how typical. I really like boys, in case you didn’t know. It’s easy for me to mistake obsession for depth. I needed to find out what her life was like all the other times, to write down in black and white why she became who she became.
Truthfully, I’ve been resistant to seeing what was there this whole time. I didn’t want this book to be about an absent dad. I didn’t want it to be about a crazy neglectful mom. Like I felt about myself at one point in my life, I wanted it to be about a girl who was damaged, but not by anything you could put your finger on. Now I can see that that thought is too abstract, even for me.
So I’m finding out, and it’s as thrilling as you might expect. Every once in a while I have to check with Bestie B to see if what I’m writing is what really happened, which seems like a funny thought, but she understands.
I’m on my fourth draft. I think. It’s all a little blurry by now. I’ve said it before (or at least implied it): I thought this would go much faster than it has. Throughout the beginning of this process, I had Stephenie Meyer visions – six months to write it, another month before someone picked it up, maybe a few days after that before it was being auctioned off to a very prestigious publishing house and voila! Now, three years and four drafts later, I’ve come to accept a very different fate. Today, I think I can appreciate it a bit.
It used to be, in my youth, that I never looked at anything twice. Even in my brief stint in college I was reluctant to edit. Editing stole from inspiration, I thought. I was foolish in many ways.
I’ve had some incredible experiences with editing this book. Mostly, I’ve learned that there is always more in there, which kind of makes me wonder if I’ll know when I’m really done. I’ve gotten to go deeper, uncovering what really happened, finding things out I didn’t know before – an occurance that never ceases to amaze me. The other thing editing reveals is that, in the end, as my friend Ms. Lamott says, the writing is the thing. I am continually surprised by my own self, and what could be better than that?
My second draft was spured by the Bad Things Happen woman. My main lesson was finding a way around how confined I was by my main character Iso’s voice and experience. I ended up writing about 40 pages from Jack’s point of view. It was great to write from a man’s perspective and to find out what had happened to him in the years they were apart. I brought in a bunch of new and delicious characters and got fabulous information from one of Dan’s best friends about what it was like to be in music school and to then become a working musician.
Through the months I was working on those pages, I leaned heavely on my husband for peeks behind the boy curtain and learned things like, No, they would not have a talk after punching each other and, Yes, he probably would have sex with her, even though he was in love with someone else.
That draft gleaned some really important and humanizing information about Jack. Until then, he’d pretty much been perfect – too perfect many early readers said. Being able to look at life through the filter of his pain dirtied him up a bit, a theme that has been prevelant in each and every draft.
When the time was right, I got hooked up with a marvelous editor in LA who loved my characters as much as I did, and because of that agreed to work with me for free. Also because she was just starting out on the editing side – she had already published two books – and I came along around the time she needed a guinea pig. Divine Intervention! (Matthew Sweet song. Yum.)
She really pushed me. “You might want to kill me when you hear this,” she would say, and even though I would be scared, I would also be crazy excited, because I knew something was coming that was going to open another brain door I hadn’t even known was there the second prior. I would sit at my desk with my head in my hands, staring off into space while that portal opened and my entire idea of what was supposed to happen expanded. A short burst of magic mushroom awareness, if you know what I mean. Not that I know what I mean or that I would ever advocate anything you might infer from that last sentence.
We decided that all those wonderful new characters didn’t fit in this book, that it was really Iso’s story, but that the experiences Jack had while he was away from her were important and life-changing experiences that we needed to see, but not so blatently. “I think you should write some songs,” she said. “It would be a good way to see where he’s been without actually seeing where he’s been.” Even though my stomach dropped at the prospect, I was excited too. So she ended up teaching me that I was capable of writing songs. She also helped me see that still I spent too much time telling, not enough time showing and more time than anyone would ever want inside my main character’s head. I ended up changing my timeline, peppering Jack’s voice with Iso’s chronologically. I always wondered how that happened in books.
I’m losing track of drafts here. I think that brings us current. When Blythe and I sat down for coffee after she’d finished reading the book she said, “I’m going to be spending the next several weeks talking to you about Iso.” Yippee! I knew good things were coming.
What has happened with this draft is basically the same thing that has happened with all the drafts: opportunity to go deeper. I saw right away that I had only exposed Iso’s childhood insofar as it mingled with Jack’s. How silly of me! And how typical. I really like boys, in case you didn’t know. It’s easy for me to mistake obsession for depth. I needed to find out what her life was like all the other times, to write down in black and white why she became who she became.
Truthfully, I’ve been resistant to seeing what was there this whole time. I didn’t want this book to be about an absent dad. I didn’t want it to be about a crazy neglectful mom. Like I felt about myself at one point in my life, I wanted it to be about a girl who was damaged, but not by anything you could put your finger on. Now I can see that that thought is too abstract, even for me.
So I’m finding out, and it’s as thrilling as you might expect. Every once in a while I have to check with Bestie B to see if what I’m writing is what really happened, which seems like a funny thought, but she understands.
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