I’ve been feeling unsettled lately. Been feeling that way since that damn scene in Rabbit, Run, actually, but I think my reaction to that scene was partly a symptom of the state of my head rather than the cause of it. It’s not an entirely unpleasant feeling…just feels like something’s getting ready to shift one way or another. For the better, hopefully. But I can’t settle down, can’t stick with one book or even two, or three. Nothing I’m reading right now is quite doing it for me. I’ve been picking up and putting down You Must Remember This for months now, and I’ve been reading Say Her Name only in the bath, which means I read it in little bites once or twice a week when I’m lucky enough to hand both kids over to Billy and sneak up to the tub. I was reading Rabbit, Run after the baby fell asleep but before she was asleep deeply enough for me and my nipples to get out of bed. (Yes, I was nursing the baby when I read that baby-drowning scene. I don’t know if it was easier or harder to read it with her asleep beside me.) Her bedtime and naptime nursing is Kindle-reading time, for the most part, so from there I turned to my collection of “free classics” because there’s no room in the budget for new books to feed the Kindle just now. I got a little ways into The House of Mirth, but that didn’t take so I started rereading Middlemarch, then drifted away from that and started rereading Women in Love, then clicked away from that, thought I should read something for the first time and started to read A Tale of Two Cities because I’ve never gotten around to that one. That didn’t grab me and…well, you see my dilemma. The books aren’t the problem. It’s this shifty, slippery brain of mine. Right now the kids and Billy are asleep and I don’t have any freelance jobs on my plate and so this is prime writing time, and here I am blogging about not reading instead of writing.
Yeah. That’s exactly the right reaction to my severely limited work time. Instead of working on the novel revision, I talk to myself in public.
No mystery there. I’m avoiding the scene I’m supposed to be working on right now because it’s not going well. Adding three additional points of view means I’m writing many new scenes in this draft. For the most part it’s going great and definitely feels like the right choice (good thing, because it’s seriously heavy lifting), but there’s one character in particular who’s fighting me. Can’t quite get her voice, can’t quite get her story. It’s there, kind of…I mean…I see the basic shape of it, but it’s not coming easily to the page. Not like the other two new povs. Those guys snapped right into place, like they’d been waiting since I started the first draft (October 2005, for those of you playing along at home) to get to tell their sides of things.
Though maybe it’s more a matter of the fact that the characters coming easily to me are male and the one I can’t pin down is female. I usually struggle with my female characters; my tendency is to stay too surface with them. Part of that is my reluctance to look too deeply into my own shit, no doubt, but plenty of my own shit turns up in the male characters, too. They’re as much me (and as much not me) as the female characters. Mostly I think it’s because my inner editor is always aware that the reader is going to look for me in the female characters, and perhaps jump to all kinds of conclusions about who I am and what I really think and feel and what evil dark very bad things I’ve done and/or thought about doing. Which wouldn’t be a big deal except that sometimes they’d be right. And then there’s all that vulnerability and exposure and so there I am in the corner, tugging the towel back down over my ass and muttering about how “it’s fiction.”
Of course it’s all 100% fiction, and none of my characters’ thoughts, actions, fears, etc are mine or ever possibly could have been mine. Pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain.
Alright. Back to it. I’m going to set MacFreedom for another 45-minute sprint and hope the baby sleeps until I come out the other side.
Wish me luck.
And reading suggestions.
Cari, you psychoanalyze the shit out of your work.
The subpsychoanalytic element of my work revolves around my profound disgust over the fact that we get to live only once, at least with this consciousness. And I am passionately curious about other lives, other places, and other people’s stories — all things I cannot experience because I am limited to just one time around.
I am, then, a Walter Mitty writer. My novels are how I live other lives in other places inside other stories.
I write about places I am curious to have spent my life; my male characters do things and live in ways I would like to either try or at least understand. My female characters are always women I wish loved me and lived in my world. The stories of other lives is my version of reincarnation.
In more direct words: being a novelist is how I overcome the tragedy of one brief life.
Maybe a bit of froth like Miss Pettigrew will suit?
I have two questions. Is the unruly POV absolutely necessary? Maybe it doesn’t want to come out to play because it’s not needed? It it’s the character I think it is I am not surprised she’s recalcitrant.
When I get in that sort of mood I read the most frivolous whismsical stuff I can get my hands on. PG Wodehouse. Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries. They act as a tonic.
As someone who reads a lot, I have to say, I have never equated the thoughts or actions of a character in a book as being the personality of the author. The most I’ve thought of (reading a lot of grisly mysteries) is “how did they come up with that idea” , not ” OMG, she wants to be a serial killer”, or “OMG he’s a secret pedophile”. The most I would say about an author is that, oh she has a really dry sense of humor, or oh, she always writes deep or dark or sad stories. It’s all ideas that you have the imagination to flesh out. I have lots of ideas, but don’t have the ability to turn them into stories, not even short stories. So get back in there and WRITE!! No one’s looking at you!
Can you see the female characters as liberating instead of restraining? This is your chance to be ‘mysterious’ and leave us wondering about how much of the character is you and how much is wild imagining. Maybe even write in something really wild and then take it out next time (or not)? Anyway, good luck and take my advice for what it is worth – not much from a nonwriter!!!! Free reads: Beauty and the Beast, Around the World in 80 Days, The Man Upstairs and Other Stories (some of these may be on the Kobo app I’ve downloaded, some on Kindle.
I agree with Ellen–I more wonder how the idea came to the writer. I know all art is semi-biographical and as a long time reader of your blog, I like your shit.
I don’t have kids, and do understand your upset about Rabbit, Run. It has been in my ever growing reading pile for years and has now been donated. Thanks for the preview. I read almost everything you write about…It pulls me away from my usual genre.
If you want a real diversion, Steven Tyler’s book will do it.
Just a reading suggestion…Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Zafon. (if you haven’t read it, it’s not new.)
I read it recently and loved it.
I love books that don’t spell out everything for me but leave plenty of room for my imagination to fill in the blanks, and keep me guessing.
Just read “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” by Mohsin Hamid, which still keeps me thinking.
Also “Water for Elephants”, great for visual thinkers. I couldn’t put it down.
My favourite author though, has to be Graham Joyce , for his combination of reality and fantasy, also a great visual read.
As a textile artist I find that if I think too much about what peoples reaction might be to my work, I might as well just quit, since if I stress about it so much I can’t focus enough to work.
I think eventually you reach an age where you either say to hell with it, I’m going to do what I want to do regardless of what people think or you give up, and quite frankly life’s too short and I only have one shot at it!
I wonder if there is not something in the air or with the season. I can’t seem to give anything my full attention and am constantly flitting from one thing to another.
‘A Visit from the Goon Squad’ is getting a lot of justifiable hype right now, and the female characters are pretty complex – which I liked. ‘Tale of Two Cities’ strikes me as being more of a winter read. I’ve read the first Rabbit novel and the baby drowning horrified me. I had no idea it was coming, and it came as a shock when it happened.
You know, I don’t generally assume that writers are writing about themselves when characters have a lot going on…though I often wonder if they’ve had some experience with what they’re writing about – either their own or somebody close to them.
I have read — and enjoyed — your blog for years (since before you went to Ragdale) but have never commented (sorry). Delurking now to offer you a few Kindle books. Most of the books on my Kindle are not “loanable” as they were free (lots of classics I am rereading) but there are a few I have purchased or received as gifts that can be loaned. Let me know if you are interested and I can email you a list. Just finished Zazen (which I bought based on your recommendation). Loved it. Thanks
A dry book buying budget is a curse. Fortunately, many public library now have downloadable books to loan. Current stuff, not just out of copyright classics. You don’t even have to physically haul the kids to the library.
How about a reading suggestion out of left field. H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy. It’s a quick fun read. Sci-Fi, so I know it’s not something you would usually pick up, but it’s a free Kindle e-book so you have nothing to lose, and maybe something out of left field will break you out of your mood.
If I was a novelist — and I’m definitely not! — no one would speak to me anymore because I’d put everyone else’s naked ass in my book instead of my own. My mom, my sisters, that girl with the cool hair who used to be in my home room…
Do you usually only read fiction? Why not try something different, like history or a biography? Short stories and poetry are good for when your attention span is off.
…I’m assuming you’ve already read all my favorites anyway? Immortality by Milan Kundera, Isabelle Allende’s Zorro, anything by Margaret Atwood… Hey, if you want something easy to get wrapped up in, why not try a children’s book? I know your kids are younger than mine. Have you read Harry Potter yet?