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Some working perspective from inside the latest novel.  As a writer, I discover that I must reinvent the wheel with each book. Today's wheel: whose story IS it?! Skip this part if you know all about POV. When telling a story, there are a variety of points of view (POV) to pick to make the story do what you want. For instance, you can tell it in first person ("I woke with a freaky sensation"), second person ("So you wake up and you find things have changed.") or third person ("As Gregor Sampsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams."). Franz Kafka selected third person, and then, rather than going with an omniscient third-person, he uses a close third-person, mostly limiting the story to what Gregor sees and feels after his transformation into an insect (naturally you recognized this masterpiece as the opening to The Metamorphosis!). Had he picked omniscient third, the narrator of the story (who is, by the magic of story-telling, not quite the author) would have known everything about each character. But there's genius for you: Kafka picked a POV where Gregor Sampsa's slightly horrifying, surreal experience becomes more and more bizarre because we readers can only eavesdrop on Gregor himself.  All of which to sidle up to that wheel that needs reinventing.  As alert readers know, I've been working on novel #2 for a year. Maybe 18 months. Whatevs. "Which will be ready when it's ready," as Killick has been known to snarl. ANYway, part of the challenge for me has been that this novel, about true love and a curse, is set in a fairy-tale world, which would point toward an old-fashioned omniscient POV. (Think The Princess Bride.) But as it turns out, these characters seem to have complicated interior lives, and the novel's themes would seem to be better served by a close third-person narration.  One of my writing heroes, Kate Atkinson, does this thing with close third/stream of consciousness narrative that absolutely slays: she'll change the very close focus from one character to another WITHOUT losing the reader or making it weird. In general, she goes a chapter at a time with one character then another in a next chapter, which gives the reader time to adjust our bustle, as it were. Oh, Kate Atkinson, you rockstar. Her debut novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, was told in first-person, but with an unexpected and engaging omniscience. She won the Whitbread (now Booker) because of it, I think. Here's the opening line: "I exist! I am conceived to the chimes of midnight on the clock on the mantelpiece in the room across the hall."  But I digress. I am not a master at this. For She Taught Me Everything, I used a straightforward first-person POV so that readers are 100% with the main character as she tries to figure things out. WIth this current book, I wrestle with the focus. It's a story about two kids in love and it's also about their whole village. How can I be sure that the reader knows who's the focus? (Which presupposes that I myself get whose POV would be most useful at any given time. QED) In revision, where I am right now, I want to be sure everything points back to the best POV person to tell any particular part of the story. This means both large and tiny changes. For instance in this exchange between Auda and her father, I want to highlight Auda's viewpoint.  Instead of referring to "his shoulders," she notices "her father's shoulders." Not sure this tiny connection between them is earth-shaking, but I think it adds up.  And then, to make sure the reader understands the mix of feelings and impulses that Auda feels (affection and responsibility), I've expanded on her sense of guilt and presented some physical evidence of how she's managing her emotions.  All this attention for a wee bitty scene in a made-up story: one might ask, without irony, why? I know, believe me, I know. I ask myself this existential question on the regular. Why am I doing this? The short answer: because otherwise these people and their little troubles just rattle around in my beezer, firmly requesting my attention when I have a minute, please, hey you, how does it all turn out? I haven't the willpower, honestly, to ignore them. And besides, it might be fun for someone else to hear.  Thanks, readers, for sticking with me.
Wish the story luck, for it's going back to the editor this week!
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It's quite possible to use a pencil and a pack of cocktail napkins to write a novel. Allen Ginsberg famously used toilet paper when writing "Poem from Jail."
Bruce Chatwin is a Moleskine notebook fancier, while William Carlos Williams used the backs of envelopes. (Don't get me started on WCW and his poems. Not a fan.) Between interruptions, Jane Austen filled thin cream paper to the edges using a quill pen and oak-gall ink. Marilynne Robinson's first drafts are in ball-point in college-ruled spiral notebooks. Not putting myself into that elevated league, but I prefer the smooth slide of graphite across paper when emptying my bony cauldron of thoughts. 
When it comes time to organize these pencilings, I use my laptop and Scrivener, a word-processing/organizational software that has a bunch of helpful tricks not available to cocktail napkins.
With Scrivener, I can make chapters and then shuffle them around without the sort of cut-and-paste formatting consequence that can drive a person to drink. 
Scrivener gives me a list of chapters so I can navigate quickly—plus it builds in handy spots to stow research and background material. I'll pop an interesting phrase or scene into "Extra words," or take notes on a character in the section "Characters," or add a cool website to Notes.
Scrivener also composes a de facto outline of the story as it gets written, which can prove handy if—ahem—a person neither plans nor outlines her story ahead of time. Of course I could make a nested folder of Word files. 
I could also improvise finger-paint in the style of the Marquis de Sade.
But the lingua franca for the industry, and what my editor uses is Microsoft Word.
So the time comes when one must bid a fond adieu to clever and kindly Scrivener. Instead, I wince under the brutal overhead light of Word. A software that does count up my words on this project, along with offering the odd bone-headed grammar suggestion and—IRONY!—refusing to accept the existence of new words.
Sidebar: Even now, in 2024, editing and proofreading seem to come easier for me on paper: not for the use of a colorful pen and the elegant symbols of the copyeditor, there's science that suggests we slow down and read more carefully when it's on paper. Which tracks for me.
Science behind the paper v. screen rivalry
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7510370/ This study on the same topic has some flaws, and is focused on non-fiction and study, but it's interesting: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1747938X18300101?via%3Dihub 
And yes, for those of you dear readers following along: a morning spent on Pass-A-Grille—that generational home-beach— brought the name for this second book a little bit closer.
I circle it like a moth hoping to touch flame. That faint tang of singed Lepidoptera? Impending good news.
I'd been working on novel #2 for most of the summer, Irish-fading from regatta parties to get to my portable writing study, listening distractedly to friends while thinking about that story, welcoming rainy days for the chance to sidle past regret as I put my head down and set my fingertips to the keyboard.
Stealing time from real life.
The book is past Draft 1, which means I kinda know how the story starts, goes, finishes. I know the theme and the setting, and I've gotten to know the characters. It's all flexible: characters might get cut or split into two people, events might change order or get worse, and so on, but I have the general shape.
Draft 2 should be hugely better, with plot holes filled in, structure revised, themes bolstered, and characters grown rounder. I tend to underwrite sections as the plot takes me, and overwrite scenes that I have known for a while. But it's not always easy to get there. 
To a great extent, writing equals me daydreaming about my imaginary friends. So late this summer, I sat on station, butt in chair, hands poised over the keyboard, imagination flapping around the story when it occurred to me, obvious as a brick to the back of the head: the friendship between the two young women in my story was big and important, but it got very little screen time in the story as written.
Aha, I thought, how can I show the depth and importance of this connection? More scenes? More conversations! More! My characters—then called Annie and Lila—were already sitting together and chatting while sewing in chapter 5; I sat back and eveasdropped, knowing that they are best friends. Lila's nursing a crush on one of Annie's brothers. Annie's beloved has disappeared. The chatter goes back and forth, with Lila eventually crossing a boundary to ask a painful question of her old friend. I jotted down their conversation as I imagined it, not judging when they nattered on, knowing I—mighty queen of this universe—could take a nip and tuck at will later. Here's some of what I kept pressing them/myself to know: How to express the tenderness between best friends? How to show that they've been friends for ages? I knew what Lila was jonesing to ask Annie, but how to show Annie's feelings, the pressure she feels, and and how to present this all without sounding 21st Century-ish? As I wrote "Annie said," "Lila said." "Annie replied," and so forth, I realized two things: first, Annie is far too modern a name for my maiden hero and second, the names Annie and Lila are not nearly distinct enough from one another. These are my own dear creations, and I'm getting them confused? That cannot be good. 
It's quick work to do a global change, but to what? O high-speed internet on the farm, how we do thee entreat? Clicketty-clatter ensues.
A morning passed as I stopped by baby name sites, checked etymology, and consulted the mighty Goog. Annie has become Auda, a name with a Scandinavian twist, as befits the setting, and Lila has become Lilan, a name that appears in a variety of cultures and calls to (my) mind the flower. These names, I hope, make sense in the vaguely Northern, pre-Industrial, magic-exists, wool-processing, flax spinning, small village setting. I like to think these names give them a bit of depth and roundness. And to my shortcut-favoring brain at least, the names appear different enough on the page to keep me from confabulating the two. Victory is mine! One scene down, half a dozen more to go. In the strictest of honesty, the accompanying photo is actually where I might write, but only when it's above 45 and not pouring rain. Which, as many know, is uncommon conditions for the Would-Be Farm in springtime.  But who cares about the weather outside? I have a heavily notated Word document to peruse.
I hired an editor. Oh, believe me, I know the irony. Having made a living editing the idea that it's taken years for me to pay someone for this service? Oy. I've thought idly about what metaphor might illustrate my giddy joy at having someone read the novel so closely, with such candor and insight. Is it like giving yourself over to a really good massage? One that might hurt a little, but that will leave you better off? Or is it like having the undivided attention of a professor you really admire when that professor is in a generous mood to discuss you and your marvelous ideas? Erm, I'm going to go with massage. Some strong-fingered person who's really good and can find pockets of soreness that need to be worked away. Anyhow, I'm less than a third of the way through her suggested edits. I don't know if it's relief at having direction or sheer vanity at getting someone's lavish attention, but I'm bubbling with happiness. Granted, I may indeed need an actual massage at the end of these long days at my computer screen, but perhaps that too is part of the new publishing world. |
