Write A Novel With Me?

Well, now that my short story is written I'd like to move on to something else for a while, something bigger and more unwieldy that my little 5,000-word short story.  Don't get me wrong-- the short story still needs lots of work, but 2011 is fast approaching and I have a burning desire to finish my novel now. I started writing it four years ago but in-between all the roller-coaster ups and downs, the short bouts of writing, and the many, many false starts, I'd like to finally finish the thing.  In fact, I've never felt the urge this strongly before. I think I might actually finish it this time!

Well, we'll see about that, won't we?  Obviously it's going to take a chunk of time to write a novel.  So much time that I might have to blog even less frequently than I do already.  The story has changed dramatically over the last four years and what was initially a simple tale of lost love and second chances has expanded into something much more complicated and (hopefully) compelling.  So my plan is to take the next twelve months to rewrite the novel and then rewrite it again.  Because the story has changed so much, the first rewrite will be almost like a first draft: swift and childlike.  The goal will be simple: to get the new version down on paper.  In the second draft I'll focus more on specific problem areas of the story and different elements of craft.  Again, I'll be turning to some of my favorite authors and writing mentors for examples, advice, and an occasional kick-in-the-pants along the way, and I'll be sharing everything I learn with you here, in a series of posts on this blog.

The one stipulation I've made for myself is this:  I'm only allowed to post something new when I finish writing three chapters.  That could take a week, or it could take a month.  No chapters, no blogging! We'll see how that goes.

Do you have a novel you'd like to finish? Or a novel you'd like to start?  I'd love it if you would join me in this mammoth writing endeavor.  Let's do this thing together, shall we? How about this: we write one chapter a week for as many weeks as it takes us to finish.  Then we'll come back here and sort it all out like we did for the short story.  What say you to that?

For the first exercise, there are so many directions, so many different aspects of craft we could choose to explore.  An exercise on beginnings would seem an obvious starting place.  (Maybe we'll tackle that next, just before we launch into chapter one of our novels (coming soon!)).  In the meantime there's a book I've been wanting to share with you, the book being one of the main reasons I'm so excited about finishing my novel now:  Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose-- "A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them."  USA Today calls it "A love letter to the pleasures of reading," but to my mind it's a a love letter to the pleasures of writing. The back cover copy reads: "Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and tricks of the masters to discover why their work has endured."  I wouldn't be surprised if this book gives you the desire to make your own work endure as theirs has-- as well as the tools and insights to make that happen. That's something to shoot for, anyway.

In the first chapter Prose talks about "close reading"-- how she learned to write from reading the works of the masters:

     "I read closely, word by word, sentence by sentence, pondering each deceptively minor decision the writer [has] made.  And though it's impossible to recall every source of inspiration and instruction, I can remember the novels and stories that seemed to me revelations: wells of beauty and pleasure that were also text books, private lessons in the art of fiction."

• • •

        "I've always thought that a close-reading course should at least be a companion, if not an alternative, to the writing workshop.  Though it also doles out praise, the workshop most often focuses on what a writer has done wrong, what needs to be fixed, cut, or augmented.  Whereas reading a masterpiece can inspire us by showing us how a writer does something brilliantly.

        "Occasionally, while I was teaching a reading course and simultaneously working on a novel, and when I had reached an impasse in my own work, I began to notice that whatever story I taught that week somehow helped me get past the obstacle that had been in my way.  Once, for example, I was struggling with a party scene and happened to be teaching James Joyce's "The Dead," which taught me something bout how to orchestrate the voices of the party guests into a chorus from which the principal players step forward, in turn to take their solos."

I encourage you to read this wonderful book.  Then come back in a week or so for our first exercise in writing (and rewriting) our unwieldy novels...

Leslie


~
Francine Prose: Reading Like a Writer

Sound

For me "sound" has always been the most difficult of the five senses to describe.  It's easy to write: a truck rumbled past, or the neighbor's dog barked; she heard a scream; his voice was higher than usual; the sound of silence filled the air. A little of that is fine I suppose, but when we allow ourselves to become lazy and rely solely on the fill-in-the-blank technique, it seems to me we miss an opportunity to engage the reader by drawing him into our fictional dream. 

This week, while approaching my story from a new and hopefully more illustrative angle, I've begun to pay closer attention to some of the more creative ways writers describe sound. Here are a few of my favorites:

A scream:
There was no fear in the scream.  It had a sound of half-pleasurable shock, an accent of drunkenness, an overtone of pure idiocy.  It was a nasty sound.  It made me think of men in white and barred windows and hard narrow cots with leather wrist and ankle straps fastened to them.  [Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep]

Silence:
Hotels, late at night, are never still.  The corridors are never entirely silent. There  are countless barely audible sighs, the  rustling of sheets, and muffled voices speaking fragments out of sleep. But in the ninth-floor corridor, Coretti  seemed to  move  through a  perfect  vacuum, soundless, his shoes making no sound at all on the colorless carpet and even the beating of his outsider's heart sucked away into the vague pattern  that decorated the wallpaper. [John Shirley & William Gibson: "The Belonging Kind"] 

Background noise:
Lifting the old-fashioned black instrument to his  ear, he heard only music at first, and then a wall of sound resolving into a fragmented amalgam of conversations. Laughter. No one spoke to him over the sound of the bar, but the song in the background was "You're the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly." [John Shirley & William Gibson: "The Belonging Kind"] 

Footsteps:
"You and Francis are on the hiding side," a tall girl said, and then the light was gone, and the carpet wavered under his feet with the sibilance of footfalls, like small cold draughts, creeping away into corners. [Graham Greene: "The End of the Party"]

Rain:
It was a dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the house. Through one of the broken panes I heard the rain impinge upon the earth, the fine incessant needles of water playing in the sodden beds. [James Joyce: "Araby"]

A woman and her granddaughter hide under a dock and listen to the sounds of the men who are searching for them:
They crouched there then, the two of them, submerged to the shoulders, feet unsteady on the slimed lake bed.  They listened.  The sky went from rose to ocher to violet in the cracks over their heads.  The motorcycles had stopped now.  In the silence there was the glissando of locusts, the dry crunch of boots on the flinty beach, their low man-talk drifting as they prowled back and forth.  One of them struck a match… The wind carried their voices into the pines…. The carp, roused by the troubling of the waters, came nosing around the dock, guzzling and snorting…. The bike cranked.  The other ratcheted, ratcheted, then coughed, caught, roared.  They circled, cut deep ruts, slung gravel, and went.  Their roaring died away and away.  Crickets resumed and a near frog bic-bic-bicked.  [Mary Hood: "How Far She Went"]

Sounds of a neighboring homestead:
From the Workman's valley came the sounds of industry at all hours of the day: the buzz of chain saws,  the crashing of timber, the splitting of wood, the jingle-trace rattling of mules in chains pulling stumps and stoneboats….  the next day the sounds resumed: the clangings and bangings, the shouts and orders and complaints, the buzzings and grindings, the hammerings and sawings, backfires and outbursts. [Rick Bass: "The Lives of Rocks"] 

John Shirley & William Gibson: "The Belonging Kind"

Rick Bass: "The Lives of Rocks" in Zoetrope All-Story, Spring 2005

Mary Hood: "How Far She Went"

James Joyce: "Araby"

Graham Greene: "The End of the Party"

Raymond Chandler: The Big Sleep