The Writing Process

By Sharon May

Textbooks describe writing as both a linear yet recursive process. They give activities for researching, prewriting, planning, drafting, revising, editing, publishing, and proofreading. Of course, don’t forget to pay attention to audience, purpose, and style along the way. This looks like such a clean process, like a paint-by-numbers kit, but beginning writers learn quickly that the process often brings more chaos than direction. Writers do all of this even though textbooks don’t describe anyone’s actual process.

The classroom setting further makes the writing process unreal for beginners. Writers don’t sit in uncomfortable, undersized desks arranged in rows filled with other struggling writers. Teachers usually demand silence, although it is broken by pencil sharpeners, shuffling through book bags, crumpling of pieces of paper deemed useless, and the occasional sigh or groan.

Beginning writers want the process to be easy like the textbook describes. They envision “real” writers following these steps and producing the finished product in one sitting and in one draft. These beginning believe in their frustration that they aren’t real writers because they have to keep revising.

If they only believed me when I explain how many pages and versions the authors probably wrote to produce the textbook. If they only believed me when explain that they have to find a process that works for them using the toolkit provided. And many times that process will have steps no one else does.

 

Let’s admit it. All writers have quirks that drive their process. Some have favorite places to write – a coffee shop or library. One of my groups in a reading class produced their papers in a McDonalds. I knew a writer who sat in his car in a parking lot far from home because he had to be alone without the chance of interruption.

Some prefer the predawn dark, either because they’ve stayed up all night or just gotten up. This is the only productive time for many female writers with children. Some need background noise, which is why I let my beginning writers use their IPhones.  

Quirks get quirkier when trying to solve writing problems. I have a colleague who writes a sentence or two and then paces around the room until the next sentence comes. A poet friend shuts down his Mac, and rolls a sheet of paper into one of his many collected manual typewriters because he loves the clanking of the keys capturing his poem. Another colleague wrote her Masters’ thesis on sticky notes that decorated her walls for months. If I’m stuck, I leave the computer, lie down on the couch, stare at the ceiling, and concentrate on the characters and what they would say or do.

Take a few minutes to examine your process and quirks. Learn to appreciate them and be thankful you found what works as you weave your way through the chaos of trying to say what you think, feel, and imagine in ways never been written before. 

On Seeing People

By Olga Agafonova

Over the last couple of weeks, I spent some time reading about nuclear warfare – the escalation of tensions with North Korea first gave me anxiety and then an idea about a short story. I needed to know what happens in the first few minutes after the detonation of an A bomb.

Michie Hattori’s first-person account of the bombing of Nagasaki is as harrowing as one would expect but it’s not the descriptions of death and suffering that struck me the most.  After the war ended, Michie studies English and ends up marrying an American attorney. Here is what she says about her relationship:

“ […] His work took him all over Texas and to surrounding states. I found myself more and more left at home when he traveled. His circle of American friends seldom included me.

One day, after seven years of matrimony, he presented me with divorce papers, saying our marriage had been a mistake. […] ”

Our marriage had been a mistake. After plucking out the girl from Japan and bringing her over to the U.S., half a world away from everything she knows, this guy decides it isn’t going to work out after all.  To me, this passage means that Michie’s husband never took the time to understand who Michie was. It’s deeply disturbing how commonplace this is – it is as if we collectively don’t care to get to know each other well enough to see the complexity of each other’s lives.

As writers, we don’t get to say that men are ultimately unknowable and leave it at that.  We try to get better at reading people so that we can create engaging, persuasive literature, fiction or non-fiction.

In 2012 Andrew Solomon released Far From The Tree, a book remarkable for its candor. He wrote about children who are different from their parents: some were gay, others disabled, yet others prodigies and so on.  I was surprised that Solomon managed to get to the essence of these relationships – the gifted children who resented their parents for their explicitly conditional love; the parents of severely disabled children who resented the kids for changing their lives forever.

Solomon took the time to listen to the stories that these people told. All of the narratives included in the book are multi-dimensional – not one descends into sentimentality and platitudes about overcoming challenges in the face of adversity. There is no “putting on a happy face” here: people tell Solomon what they think and feel and it is often not pretty.

I can’t think of another way to learn to see people for who they are except to talk to them. To talk to them about the stuff that matters: the fear of death or poverty, the loneliness of parenting, the unhappy marriages, the disappointing adult children. The effort we make in reaching out and understanding someone is bound to pay off not just in better writing but in being better humans.

Writing Film Reviews

By Laura P. Valtorta

www.gattafilms.com

www.thearthousemovie.webs.com

laurapv.wordpress.com

Attending film festivals means watching films – a lot of films – some good, some terrible. Reviewing these films would be like riding a roller coaster, even if we were not subjected to “talk-backs” with the directors afterwards. Better not to meet them. These people can be jerks. Or the director of a stinky film can come across as pleasant. The personality of the artist is an inaccurate measure of the quality of art he or she produces.

Woody Allen is an excellent example. He’s made some major mistakes in his life.

Yet, Deconstructing Harry, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and Annie Hall are some of the most influential and well-loved films ever.

This weekend, I watched several independent films at the Long Beach Indie Film & Music Festival (www.longbeachindie.com) and tried to jot down reviews.

Nowhere Michigan was a feature drama about cooking meth in a small town. Granted, the subject matter was old and overheated, but good acting and clever casting saved the day. I enjoyed the gross, funny caricatures among the meth dealers and the townspeople. Unfortunately, the director was a prick: very self-satisfied and congratulatory during the talk-back. If they keep that guy away from the public eye, his films might go somewhere.

“Naranja, the mini series” employed some rabid stereotypes to put across a couple of glaring messages: crime is oftentimes a set-up. Criminal suspects are unfairly profiled by police. Duh. The director, Martin Barshai, could have employed more subtlety, but his actors were talented.  Also, Martin came across as a nice guy, willing to listen – to a degree. He receives a semi-positive review.

Sometimes I got side-swiped by famous actors in the credits. “Ingenue-ish” was a short narrative comedy about an L.A. actor sleeping around in order to advance her career. It was light and cute. The running joke was that the main character was an “ethnic mystery” because she was Asian with freckles. Apparently, no female actor in Hollywood gets cast based on her talent. (But what about Brenda Blethyn and Meryl Streep?) When I realized that the director was John Stamos, I became more interested. This means I’m just as much of a sell-out as anybody in the film.

Films about sports included Touch Gloves about a boxing gym in Massachusetts. It was so much like my own film, White Rock Boxing, that I’m guessing the director must have seen my work, which came out in 2013 and appeared on public television. The director wasn’t present. Otherwise, I might have punched him.

The best film (besides my own, “Water Women,”) I saw was a complete surprise: Robert Shaw, Man of Many Talents, directed by Peter Miller. This was the biography of an unschooled orchestra conductor and choral leader who became very popular in the 1940s through the end of the century. He headed the Atlanta Orchestra and was instrumental in integrating orchestras and choruses. Loved the film. No director in sight to spoil the effect.

The Thin Plot

By Bonnie Stanard

As I’ve been reading the novel Empire Falls, I wonder how author Richard Russo keeps me hooked on a story in which only ordinary characters go about their ordinary lives. Isn’t that a formula for a ho-hum book? The plot revolves around the manager of a diner in Empire Falls, an economically depressed town in Maine. You can read pages in which hardly anything happens but that’s not to say it’s boring. To the contrary, it’s engrossing. It reminds me of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, another novel that showplaces the ordinary. In that case, I surprised myself by continuing to read it to the end.

If you Google “plot” you’ll get lists of the many types (as many as 36 listed by Jerry Flattum), but you won’t find a type such as “ordinary-day” or “slice-of-life.” However, this plot was proved viable in 1922 when James Joyce wrote the classic Ulysses (which lives up to Mark Twain’s definition of a classic). Essentially, Joyce wrote about an average day in the life of Leonard Bloom. How did Joyce recount mundane events in a way that created a significant novel?

Most of us live ordinary lives, but at times, a person or situation may affect us in such a way that we need to put our thoughts in writing. It’s not unusual for workshop writers to bring fictionalized accounts of events that impress them. I’ve written such stories myself, in an effort to recapture something meaningful to me. Or to pass along to others something I think is valuable. Even as I’ve read these stories in workshop, I’ve felt my own excitement, only to hear “ho-hum” from others.

Once I responded to an agent’s criticism with “But that’s the way it was.” My story was pure reality, delivered with my tears and laughter. And I thought it was worth telling. However the agent answered with, “Just because it’s true doesn’t make it interesting.” After reading manuscripts for years in our workshop, I understand. In fact, I’ve appropriated her comment in critiquing other writings.

A strong component of ordinary is predictable. That is to say, our everyday life, by its very nature, is predictable for the most part. And when we are formulating a slice-of-life story, predictability is already there, a toxic part of the plot. Even though Empire Falls is ordinary, it’s not predictable. Russo has an eye for the elusive, a way of seeing what the rest of us don’t.

I think another aspect of success with a slice-of-life plot is the author’s ability to convince us that we care about what happens. The writing of Jonathan Franzen is a good example. He is fascinated by his subjects. There is a tone, an author’s voice, that is nagging us on. Between the words, he’s telling us this is something we can’t miss. This is important.

Though Russo’s novel is short on plot, it is strong on characters. However, the central figure, Miles Roby, doesn’t provoke excitement in the usual sense, nor is he controversial. In fact, he’s a really nice guy, adores his daughter, tolerates an abusive father, and hopes for the best for his soon to be ex-wife. Now how does Russo make this milquetoast an engaging protagonist?