Remember my big plan for the new novel?
The one where I’d use index cards and a bulletin board to keep track of the fictional and historical storylines and where they met and where they diverged and all that? It was worth a try, but even as I set the system up I knew it was a long-shot. That’s just not how I work. I’m not methodical in that way. I guess I’ll be flying blind for the first draft of this book, same as I did with the first book*.
I’d come up with that index-card method–so totally counter to my natural freewrite inclinations–in an attempt to keep my hands around the project even though my life is no longer shaped in such a way that I have the freedom to write for six+ hours a day. And now that I’ve given up on the index cards…yeah…I do feel like the book gets away from me in parts, and that I can’t very clearly see it all at once, and sometimes it takes me an hour or two of banging my head against a wall before I can pick back up where I’d left off the last time I wrote, but it’s easier to let go of the illusion of control over the story than it is to force myself to work in a manner that feels too structured. No good ever came of feeling stifled while writing. Or maybe that’s not true at all. Maybe someone, somewhere, writes best when they feel constrained. I can’t imagine it, though.
Ramble, ramble ramble… The kiddo is playing with a big bucket of black beans right now and I’m blogging fast because you never know how long the independent play will last.
So the writing… Some days I write at home in my office, some days in a cafe. That’s another change with this book. I was never able to write in public before–too much distraction. Either motherhood has made me better at filtering out distractions or I’m just so desperate for time to write that I’ve become better at just buckling down and doing it. Either way, I’m glad for the time. And I’m often lucky enough to have a charming office mate to chat with on work breaks. Work goes better when there’s the occasional break for knitty gossip. That, and it’s nice to have coffee close at hand without having to stop to make it yourself.
As for the subject matter, which I blogged about a million childless years ago…I’m finding it kind of daunting. Daunting in that I’m trying to tell a fictional story based in recent history. I’m using entirely fictional characters, but I’m letting my characters move around in a world that very real people moved around in little more than a decade ago. And these real people were/are highly political people. They were/are not pushovers. They wouldn’t/don’t suffer fools lightly… They were my neighbors, geographically, but we lived in different East Villages. I admired the homesteader squatters (not to be confused with the homeless kids who roamed St Marks back in the day), to the extent that I understood what they were doing, but they intimidated the living shit out of me. And here I am, a sympathetic bystander, telling the story of that time in their lives. I’m on their side, but if I get it wrong and if I’m lucky enough that the book gets published and anyone at all reads it, boy will they let me know how wrong I got it.
Or maybe not. Maybe not at all. If I knew for a fact how those involved in the fight to defend the Ea. 13th squats against the city would feel about this book, there’d be less a chance of my getting it wrong, wouldn’t there. Or maybe not.
I knew a couple former Ea. 13th squatters back in the day, but have lost touch and attempts to track them down have been totally unsuccessful so far. After I have a finished first draft I’ll try to get in touch with some even if I have never met them. And maybe the lawyers…I have the names of their lawyers…
But, but, but… This fear of “getting it wrong,” even though I’m writing a fictional story. This fear of being exposed as a fraud or some clueless bourgeois novelist bitch by noble class warriors… Well, that’s something I need to look at as I write this book too. Because in some ways I am a clueless bourgeois and in some ways I am not. (Protesting that I lived in a rent-stabilized apartment but still eventually got priced out of the East Village seems somewhat thin. Especially after I bought a co-op and later a brownstone in Brooklyn… But even that seems simplistic…) And in some ways the squatters were/are class warriors, but not always noble, for sure.
Yeah…I’ve got some complicated shit to work out in my own head as I write this book, class guilt not being the least of it. But isn’t that one of the things that drives us to write? Fiction gives me a place to unravel all the crap in my head and take a good hard look at it. When I’m doing it right, anyway. There have been times I shied away from what I saw on the page, and the writing got weak and thin in those spots and showed me for a coward. Sometimes I’ve gone back and dug deeper and sometimes I just let it be.
Heh. I just meant to fess up about the index cards and get on with my evening. Never planned to actually fess up to anything real. But there you have it. The blog surprises me sometimes.
*And before you ask, my agent is still shopping the first novel around to publishers. It’s proving to be a SLOOOOOW process. One editor we haven’t heard back from yet has had the manuscript since May. I bet they haven’t even opened the damn box yet.
Have you tried TiddlyWiki? You can keep nonlinear notes in it, and find them later. 😀
Posted by: Christy
I have to admit to being secretly (okay, I guess it’s not a secret since I’m telling you here) delighted to hear that you’ve abandoned the attempt to go against your naturally organic inclinations.
I guess at least partly because I write the same way – feeling my way through the dark as blindly and instinctively as possible. And also because I think that method allows as much magic to enter the process as possible.
And that applies to blogging, too – we find out who we are, sometimes, just by following the path that doesn’t exist yet.
Posted by: Lizbon
God you write well. I love getting lost in your stories. 🙂
Posted by: Alison
Have you tried TiddlyWiki? You can keep nonlinear notes in it, and find them later. 😀
Posted by: Christy
I have to admit to being secretly (okay, I guess it’s not a secret since I’m telling you here) delighted to hear that you’ve abandoned the attempt to go against your naturally organic inclinations.
I guess at least partly because I write the same way – feeling my way through the dark as blindly and instinctively as possible. And also because I think that method allows as much magic to enter the process as possible.
And that applies to blogging, too – we find out who we are, sometimes, just by following the path that doesn’t exist yet.
Posted by: Lizbon
God you write well. I love getting lost in your stories. 🙂
Posted by: Alison
I think you have to write the way that’s natural for you so it’s from your heart. Sure, you want some idea of where things are going overall, and you need to know some of the details, but you don’t want the whole thing to be mechanical. It can’t flow from you if you don’t let it be organic.
Posted by: Riin
Writing about real places and times is intimidating. Says the woman contemplating a book based in Haiti during the 1980’s. And who’s never been to Haiti.
Posted by: Amy
I am like you as far as writing goes. With the fiction, I just sit and let it happen. Of course the freelancing requires notes, but that drives me nuts! I would say to do what comes naturally and not what “should” be done.
Posted by: Christy
* This sounds a lot like academic publishing — I submitted a journal article in August and am still waiting to hear beyond “We received your submission.” Hello?
Posted by: alison
Hey you can go and ‘fess up to whatever you want to – I enjoy getting a glimpse of your thought process. Seeing how someone else works those things out is really interesting!
Posted by: no-blog-rachel
I really like the way you use words. I hope the potential editors will, too.
Posted by: Mary K. in Rockport
I think you have to write the way that’s natural for you so it’s from your heart. Sure, you want some idea of where things are going overall, and you need to know some of the details, but you don’t want the whole thing to be mechanical. It can’t flow from you if you don’t let it be organic.
Posted by: Riin
Writing about real places and times is intimidating. Says the woman contemplating a book based in Haiti during the 1980’s. And who’s never been to Haiti.
Posted by: Amy
I am like you as far as writing goes. With the fiction, I just sit and let it happen. Of course the freelancing requires notes, but that drives me nuts! I would say to do what comes naturally and not what “should” be done.
Posted by: Christy
* This sounds a lot like academic publishing — I submitted a journal article in August and am still waiting to hear beyond “We received your submission.” Hello?
Posted by: alison
Hey you can go and ‘fess up to whatever you want to – I enjoy getting a glimpse of your thought process. Seeing how someone else works those things out is really interesting!
Posted by: no-blog-rachel
I really like the way you use words. I hope the potential editors will, too.
Posted by: Mary K. in Rockport
Hi, just delurking to say that I completely understand the fear. I’m in the beginning phases of a novel about my family’s experience as Puerto Ricans in NY from 1945 to the present. I’m terrified of getting wrong. But, I’m terrified of being sued if I don’t censor myself and get it right.
Anyway, I love it when you talk shop!
Posted by: Jen sans blog
I think writing a novel is a good way to wrestle with class guilt, and hopefully put something out there in the world to balance some of the injustice that has resulted in you (and me too) being haves and others being have-nots. As a descendent of generations of Southerners, and slave-holders (and even one lynch-mob participant) I hear you on the class guilt. Anything you can do to bring attention to the injustice, and to the humanity and courage of the people working against it is bound to be worth more than allowing class guilt to silence you.
Posted by: Saralyn
Mildly apropos, have you ever heard of Scrivener? I forget if you use a Mac. I’ve never come across anything better for organizing a big project and think it would fit a forced fragmentary work style rather well. http://literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html
Posted by: sutton
“I forget if you use a Mac.” Then I scrolled down to the next post…
Posted by: sutton
I am glad you found a nice office mate. I have read her blog for a while now and really it. I think moving back more towards your natural process sounds healthy. Don’t second guess yourself too much. You surely have lots of fans and for good reason!
Posted by: knittripps
I am familiar with that the wall you speak of–the one covered with the dried blood of writers all over the world…
Margaret Atwood has said that she starts each chapter long hand and then types the rest of it out to get a handle on where it’s all going. She also writes in long hand the very last thing she works on that day, so that she can begin with typing the next time. I haven’t tried this myself, but it seems promising.
I look forward to your book!
nstssj
Posted by: nstssj
Hi, just delurking to say that I completely understand the fear. I’m in the beginning phases of a novel about my family’s experience as Puerto Ricans in NY from 1945 to the present. I’m terrified of getting wrong. But, I’m terrified of being sued if I don’t censor myself and get it right.
Anyway, I love it when you talk shop!
Posted by: Jen sans blog
I think writing a novel is a good way to wrestle with class guilt, and hopefully put something out there in the world to balance some of the injustice that has resulted in you (and me too) being haves and others being have-nots. As a descendent of generations of Southerners, and slave-holders (and even one lynch-mob participant) I hear you on the class guilt. Anything you can do to bring attention to the injustice, and to the humanity and courage of the people working against it is bound to be worth more than allowing class guilt to silence you.
Posted by: Saralyn
Mildly apropos, have you ever heard of Scrivener? I forget if you use a Mac. I’ve never come across anything better for organizing a big project and think it would fit a forced fragmentary work style rather well. http://literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html
Posted by: sutton
“I forget if you use a Mac.” Then I scrolled down to the next post…
Posted by: sutton
I am glad you found a nice office mate. I have read her blog for a while now and really it. I think moving back more towards your natural process sounds healthy. Don’t second guess yourself too much. You surely have lots of fans and for good reason!
Posted by: knittripps
I am familiar with that the wall you speak of–the one covered with the dried blood of writers all over the world…
Margaret Atwood has said that she starts each chapter long hand and then types the rest of it out to get a handle on where it’s all going. She also writes in long hand the very last thing she works on that day, so that she can begin with typing the next time. I haven’t tried this myself, but it seems promising.
I look forward to your book!
nstssj
Posted by: nstssj
I love when you post things like this. I struggle with issues of class and gender guilt too. But that’s what makes it all interesting.
Posted by: Dr. Steph
My twins were born in October and I had a January deadline for an essay for the Oregon Quarterly essay contest. I also had a baby with reflux who had to be held upright most of the night. I set my notebook on the breadboard in the kitchen and wrote from 1-4am walking the length of the house. Each time I got to the kitchen, I’d pause and write the next sentence. It was a bitch of a way to write, but I was desperate to express myself.
The essay made the finals and I got to meet Barry Lopez, my favorite author who was judging that year. Wish I could have had better material, but hey, you go with what you’ve got at the moment.
Best luck with the book. Strength to your sword arm, as they say.
Posted by: Shelly
I love when you post things like this. I struggle with issues of class and gender guilt too. But that’s what makes it all interesting.
Posted by: Dr. Steph
My twins were born in October and I had a January deadline for an essay for the Oregon Quarterly essay contest. I also had a baby with reflux who had to be held upright most of the night. I set my notebook on the breadboard in the kitchen and wrote from 1-4am walking the length of the house. Each time I got to the kitchen, I’d pause and write the next sentence. It was a bitch of a way to write, but I was desperate to express myself.
The essay made the finals and I got to meet Barry Lopez, my favorite author who was judging that year. Wish I could have had better material, but hey, you go with what you’ve got at the moment.
Best luck with the book. Strength to your sword arm, as they say.
Posted by: Shelly