Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
The first two parts of Entangled States, ten chapters, are like reaching a coast. The direction doesn’t matter. You hit the stretch where the land and sea meet. It’s turbulent, with crashing waves and hissing, seething waters. Taking it all must be done in pieces. There is the sea and the land, and there’s also the sky. Each exercises its own elements, colors, and behaviors. Once you pass this borderland, you’re released from the complications inherent to progressing from sea to land and freer to relax and take more in.
Now into part three of the book, it settles down again. I remember writing all of this, and recall thinking about the parts, and the placement of these chapters and scenes, and how they’ll interact. At that point, it was like being too close to a pointillism piece of art. Distance is needed for the colors to blend and become something more than blobs.
Wild, to think, while writing it, I saw these blobs and strokes, and applied them, and now I need to step back to comprehend the whole. I was realizing the whole on one level while I already saw and comprehended it on another level. Then, not so wild, as I write to help clarify and understand what I think.
I dreamed about my work in progress last night, specifically about the story-line now being addressed. My mind, being what it is, inserted me sometimes, so that I was part of the story. My mind, being what it is, would see that I was dreaming about my writing and including myself as a character, and then try to untangle me from the fiction being written. “I’m the writer. I’m not supposed to be in this story.” That would lead to dream-confusion among the dream participants (dreampants?) about what was going on. It was really…interesting.
Which, after awakening to think about it, demonstrates an intriguing intersection between who I am and how much I put of myself in my writing. Even when I deliberately decide to have a character do or speak in ways that I wouldn’t, that choice is based on what I’d be doing. My characters are composites of other people, but I’m essentially imagining how those folks would respond. I don’t know, though. I don’t have a secret window into their lives. I guess at what they’d do, twisting their responses into madness and lies, and courage and hypocrisy, betrayal and honor, all based on what I think I’ve heard them say and do, and the character’s arc. You all know how unreliable we are as witnesses. We color it all.
But in there, in the intersection between my dreams and imagination, and my choices and decisions, is where my writing takes place. Sometimes it’s a large intersection – or even a roundabout, with too many cars traveling too fast, all trying to change lanes and enter and exit at the same time – and other times, it’s two small animal paths meeting in a quiet field. Whichever intersection it is, I sort it and write.
Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
“They wanted to go to the movies,” she said, “but I told them you said, “I want to see that movie, too.””
Her impression of him sounded like Disney’s Goofy talking. “That’s not how I said it,” he said.
“It was in the way I told it,” she said.
He knew she was right. The story-teller always sets the tone.
I read a wonderful book during recent flights. ‘Ordinary Grace’, by William Kent Kreuger, won a few prizes since its publication. My wife recommended it to me. “It reminds me of ‘Peace Like A River’,” she said, a book we both enjoyed.
“Who wrote that?” I asked. We both came up with Leif and nothing else. We were in the car, without computers and the phone wasn’t picking up a signal, so we couldn’t look up the name. Finding the novel’s author was put on the to-do list.
Yes, ‘Ordinary Grace’ reminded me of ‘Peace Like a River’, but I also thought of some of Louise Erdrich’s novels, as well as ‘A Separate Peace’, by Thomas Knowles, and even Harper Lee’s treasure, ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’. Gorgeously written, it was beautiful story telling, the sort of writing that incites a riot of fears, envy and worry in me. I want to write novels like this, and after reading ‘Ordinary Grace’, I was afraid that I wouldn’t. I was afraid the current novel-in-progress (NIP) was a miserable failure.
After finishing the novel, I stewed while visiting with friends and family and suffering through the requirements of socializing. They say you’re not normal if you don’t socialize, if you fail to sit down and chat, making small talk or exchanging witticism and sparkling insights regarding movies, politics and the economy. Though I’ve lived sixty years, employing my tongue to make demands for food, answer questions, and make presentations and speeches, I remain a novice socializer. Contrary to some opinions, it’s not a choice I consciously embrace, but that’s an altogether different post.
When I was finally freed to sit down and write, I entered my NIP, prepared to revile it. Surprise instead comforted me, surprise that it wasn’t the miserable pastiche of words that I’d decided it was, because it came to me. After reading the opening chapters and correcting a sprinkle grammar, spelling and punctuation issues, I went away satisfied that I’m not the horrendous hack that I’d accused myself of being.
I continued to think about why I liked those books so much, what it was about their imagery, story-telling, pacing, arcs and characters that reduced my writing confidence. First, these stories all harkened to eras that I understood through living, television, movies or other books. That’s a helpful, useful advantage. Phrases and expressions of the times could be used without elaboration or explanation because we knew these things.
Second, I recognized that I could love to read certain types of novels without being a writer in those genres. Third, I can create the imagery and other matters I regarded as so masterful. It is work, requiring more critical and ojbective appraisal of what I’ve written to refine, polish and improve.
Yet, another truth runs under the surface. Years ago, I learned about the window of five. Its application then was about approaching suppliers and customers, and viewing their requirements through five windows to develop deeper understanding and forge stronger relationships. I’ve since extended windows of five thinking into other realms, such as fiction writing. Without resorting to extensive diagnosis, dissection and explanation, it’s possible to utilize windows of five thinking to peel layers back and garner insights into novels.
The truth about these novels was their power to engage, involve and inspire me is intimidating because it was artfully accomplished. Regardless of the genre or author, my goal as a reader it to find books like these, because, in the window of five about what they bring to me as a reading experience, I escape now, and am transported to somewhere else. I’m moved by the characters’ experiences and I identify with their issues. I learn some lessons, often about myself and how I think and feel about different matters.
Those are also my writing goals. I want readers to be engaged in my novels, to become transported to somewhere else. I want them to be entertained, but I’d also like them to think, without me prodding them to think.
Through all this thinking, I end up where I began as a writer, wanting to write something that I enjoy, that others will hopefully enjoy. I need to satisfy myself first as a reader when I write, understanding that others’ enjoyment will depend largely on what they bring to the book, but that it’s my writing skills that will help them enter the book and live through its experiences.
I can’t say with authority that this is what it’s all about; I’m self-taught. I’m probably often profoundly incorrect about my conclusions. That’s acceptable. What’s required is to keep thinking about what’s been learned and to keep striving to learn more and improve. I will probably never been completely satisfied with anything I write, which can be useful incentive to encourage me to keep attempting to improve myself.
It’s a truth I lose and find, again and again.
Writing like crazy….
Well, actually thinking like crazy and developing background information to help me advance my understanding of what the hell’s going on in ‘my’ novel. I don’t know if I claim it as much as it has claimed me.
But, as frequently happens with me, this noodling about background sprouts tangent ideas. Writing about another intelligent race (the Milennial) and their complexities (the Lavie (which are their elders) gain weight and lose their limbs, becoming a food source for the larvae), my writing brain comments, “Boy, there’s a terrific short story in that.” Naturally, an argument commences between the novel writer in residence in my brain and the short story writer.
Does this ever happen to you? You’re writing one piece but another suddenly calls and makes an inviting proposition?
Naturally, I said no. The short story writer in me has less traction. I enjoy short stories, love reading and writing them, but I enjoy the novel form more. I tilt toward the novel. So I tell the short story writer, “I appreciate the idea, but we need to stay focused.”
“Come on, it doesn’t need to be long, just twenty-five hundred, maybe five thousand words.”
“I said, no.”
“But it’ll be easy. You can knock it off in a couple days.”
I laugh. Writers are always making such promises. “No.”
Pouting, the short story writer sulks away. “You’ll be sorry someday,” I hear him muttering. “You’ll see.”
The novelist doesn’t let me dwell on that. “Excellent,” he enthuses. “You dispatched him with aplomb. Now, on to the Profemies and the heritage left behind their departure….”
Michael Seidel, writer 