A Really Long Absence

It has been a long time since I have come back to my blog and I don't know why I have internalized as much as I have but it has been a nice change of pace. I have been reading a lot lately and working on some revision but I have not come back to the blank page in a long time. I think this has been the longest respite from new work I have allowed myself since I began the program. It is a total shifting of mental priorities to go from working on new material to working on revision.

New works, for me, are blustery and full of energy and revision is a very quiet process that involves looking at the smallest details, reading aloud and dwelling on the story and the characters, trying to make them full. It is important, I believe that I come to understand this process better. I have always written in a way that avoided revision. I have been so desperate to move on to new material that I rarely spend a lot of time working on things I have already produced.

As a result of this semester, with the work on the essay and my one story, I have come to understand that the depth of story that I adore comes from revision. I will not be able to produce those swelling moments of realization in a first draft. I may come close, I may point in the right direction, but it will almost never occur in the first, or even the second or third, draft.

This process has seen me retreat inside myself and quiet the raging typist for a few weeks. It's been a nice break but I will try and be a little more responsive with my blog to keep myself from collapsing inward and becoming hermit-like.

Why Do I Try?

I don't know why I keep going to writers conferences and writing groups, they are REALLY frustrating. I went to my writers group today and met with four other young/new writers and for the most part it was a good experience, I enjoyed the company of others engaged in this craft but somewhere in the midst of everything I get this comment, "It feels too safe, too normal." I can understand if the comment was addressed towards an element of craft but it was, rather, addressed to the content of my story, to the characters who occupy it, and, I would hope without intent, to the mind that created it.

I am fascinated with ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances and I feel like if I am not playing with form, adding some supernatural element, or writing about the most traumatic thing I can think of, I am being dismissed. I don't really understand it. The point for me is to document the human condition in all of its glory and, yes, there were problems with the piece I handed into the group and I got some great feedback on it, but this isn't the first time I have ran into the issue of the "too normal, too small-towny" argument and it just pisses me off. At one point someone wrote on my manuscript, "here we are in Amish country." Give me a break.

If I am learning anything these days, it is that I need to be much more selective with my readers and who I open myself up to in terms of commenting on drafts of my writing. Plus, talking about writing is not the writing itself and I need to pick and choose the events I attend where I know people will be "talking" about the writing.

Production Levels

So I've been thinking a lot lately that I haven't been getting much done in terms of the writing, anguishing over the one story, nitpicking lines, trying to flush out scenes, and it brought me to a realization.

When in the revision phase of the writing process, it isn't going to be the blustery energy of original conception. I'm not going to fill pages with new text, paragraphs aren't going to be streaming out of my fingertips as I work on revision, rather, it is a quiet process, the opposite of blustery but powerful in an entirely different way.

As I sat last night working on my story, it came to me that what I was doing was finding the exact sense of what I was meaning to say. It was very similar to the refinement I did when working on the essay. I finally had the breakthrough that I don't need to be filling reams of paper with text, or rather reams of screens. There are going to be times where I need to sit down with the work I have already created and work at the task of refinement, specificity, etc.

I added two or three lines to the closing paragraphs of my story last night and all of a sudden it came into view, the thing that I felt missing from how I had written it before. The sympathetic element from son to father was missing because I had cut the sentimental version earlier and then hadn't done the hard work of putting it back in a subtler form that didn't lapse into sentimentality.

When I was able to quiet myself, to sit and not press against the story, but listen to it, I found my ending, at least until I revise it again.

Depth

Stories tend to spring almost full form from my mind when they are working. I'm not saying that they are polished, but there is an organic cohesion to them that is present even in early drafts. It isn't exactly an easy process, but in comparison to the revision process, it is a cakewalk.

I am currently revising a story for the third time and really trying to find the ending to it. One that expresses the proper sentiment without falling victim to the trappings of sentimentality. It is a hard process. Each time I come back to it, it shifts a little bit, the main character's understanding deepens and I am forced to look into the very heart of him, which in turn is looking into the heart of my own understanding of life. This story is a true fiction. There is nothing in my life, in terms of events, that has infiltrated this text but there is something of my understanding, my outlook that permeates it. I guess that is where it is hard for me...trying to find what is true for Jack and not true for me, the writer. The story revision is due in a couple of days and I'm hoping that the weekend affords me a couple more days to work on it. Here's to hoping!!!

Talking about writing...

is not the writing. I learned that this weekend as I went to a writer's conference in the Bend, OR area called "The Nature of Words." The readings were great and parts of the "workshops" were good but I discovered an all together unsatisfied feeling at this event. As I listened to the presenters (I went to two different presenters workshops), I became weary with the task of talking about the writing. Well, that's not true, I got sick of talking about publishing.

I signed up for these workshops because they had titles that appealed to me: Tropes, Dialogue and the Revelation of Character , Mapping the Novel: Location, Location, Location, and Voices. What I found in two out of four of these workshops is that the people in attendance are not concerned with the elements of craft being discussed but want to know what it is like working with an editor, how do covers get selected, what's the best publishing house for mysteries, children's lit, etc. It was really frustrating.

When we were on topic I got a couple of real good bits of information but I'm wading through a group of people who are raising their hand and asking, "Do I need to have my children's book illustrated before I send it to the publisher?" Which, of course, is a perfect question to ask someone who writes crime fiction.

So, I took what I could, attended the readings, which were great. I made a connection with an old professor from the University of Montana, got to see the lovely Pattiann Rogers read and chat with her, met a classmate for a drink, stayed with my in-laws and got a chance to catch up and, all-in-all, had a nice weekend but I've missed the computer, I've yearned for the keyboard and I'm excited to be sitting right back down in the driver's seat ready to begin again this creative act I love so much.