Thanks to my new Netflix subscription (squee!!) I finally watched the movie version of THE KITE RUNNER this weekend, and I loved it. I thought everything (i.e., the controversial rape scene) was handled tastefully, the two young actors were fantastic, and the story was absolutely amazing. For the first half of the movie I nearly forgot I was watching a movie set in Afghanistan, which I had always pictured as a bleak, war-torn desert. (That comes in the second half.) So I really appreciated that in addition to a high-quality story, I got a fresh take on a foreign land and culture. Now I’m definitely motivated to read the book, which has been sitting in my “to read” pile for about three years…

Whenever something excites me like this story did, I Google the sh*t out of it. In my attempt to discover how autobiographical the story really is, I came across this interview with THE KITE RUNNER’s author Khaled Hosseini, and I enjoyed much of what he had to say about the writing process. A couple highlights:

For me it always starts from a very personal, intimate place, about human connections, and then expands from there.

Me too. As a reader/viewer, I enjoy all sorts of stories — action, history, romance, scifi — but as a writer, I have a hard time staying focused and finishing unless I care about the characters and their journey. This means I probably won’t write stories quite as action-packed as Tom Clancy’s or Stephen King’s, but hopefully I can find a good middle ground (like J.K. Rowling did with Harry Potter). Or even Khaled Hosseini, in this case.

Often, as I write, stories are transformed, turn into something altogether different, and I am always surprised by where they end up taking me.

Yaaaay, another point for the non-planners!

“Huh, what?”

Allow me to explain.

The outline vs. let-it-flow debate is a fierce one. I see the pros and cons to each side, and I think I’ve ultimately settled upon a good (copout) answer: it depends on the story. Some need very disciplined direction; they won’t work unless you know exactly where you’re going and more or less how you plan to get there. But others would be stunted by that structured of an approach; they would lose their natural ebb and flow, becoming more of a swimming pool than a sea.

Personally I go for an in-between method that I call connecting-the-dots. I plot out certain points and then just try to write a path from one to the next.

For my first manuscript, THE GOOD DAUGHTERS, I started out with no real plan, just a few very spread out dots. (Not so much “A to B” as “A to Y to Q”…) Then when I made it my senior thesis project, I tried to give it some more structure, plan it out a little better. That helped me stay on track for deliverables to my thesis advisor, definitely, but because I’d switched tacks partway through, the novel didn’t cohere very well. Now that I’ve “finished” it, I find myself extremely daunted by the revision because it’s going to be so. much. work!

For my second manuscript, I’m trying to be a little more strategic. I’ve got an “outline” (i.e., significantly more dots than I had for THE GOOD DAUGHTERS) and I think it’s going to work. But ask me again in six months. We’ll see.

ANYWAY, as I was saying, THE KITE RUNNER movie is quite good, and I highly recommend it to anyone who can take a serious — but ultimately uplifting — story.

Do you know what being all caught up with Dooce is like? It’s like being forced to read Harry Potter one page at a time. And do you know what being forced to read Harry Potter one page at a time is like? It’s torture.

TORTURE!

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(And yes, that means I have read every. single. (currently public.) post. on Dooce.com.)

A heartbreaking find:

A recent report by the National Endowment for the Arts found that 53 percent of Americans surveyed hadn’t read a book in the previous year.

… I’m sorry, WHAT?

For someone like me, that’s like saying, “Hmm, I think I saw the sun twelve months ago.” I mean, I may not have as much time to read as I used to, but I don’t think a single year of my life has gone by without my reading at least 1 book.

Seriously, people?

[sigh]

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Rule #1: Do your own thing.

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Every now and then, I get into a phase. Some might call it obsession. Me, I just call it enthusiasm.

Among my past phases: Sanrio, the Spice Girls, boys, and Harry Potter. Because I’m extremely nostalgic, and still a kid at heart, I will love each and every one of them until the day I die, but (thankfully) the intensity of that love will fade.

(Making room for NEW intensity!)

Right now I think my friends would agree, Dooce is my big obsession current phase.

I’ll be honest, I’m addicted. But I do think I’m learning a lot by reading each and every post in her archives. Sometimes it’s useless info (like what she was reading on July 30th of 2004) but sometimes it’s truly brave, or hopeful, or heartbreaking (in the most beautiful way), or just plain hysterical.

Her ability to turn anything — the ordinary – into a captivating story, it’s spectacular. It’s what I’m enjoying, and what I’m trying to learn.

That’s why I originally had “learning to be funny one dooce at a time” as the subtitle in my header image. But as Andy pointed out, that sort of gives the impression that I’m copying her, that I’m not that original, that I’m not doing my own thing. And that isn’t true.

(I’ve since changed the subtitle to “always leaping before she looks,” which IS true. I plan to change the header every few months anyway.)

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I FINISHED ANOTHER SHORT STORY!! YAAAAHHH!!!

Now I have to revise.

-_-

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In general, I don’t do well with things that are hyped up. Like, god forbid I take part in a trend, right? So I refuse and resist beyond all reason (just ask Angie) and I deny myself the wonder of things like capri pants, ballet flats, and Harry Potter. FOOL! (And yes, Angie, you were right about all of the above.)

In short: me? Not so good with the fads. And in literature, writing in the first person seems to be a very, very big fad right now. It’s something I’ve always sort of thought of as a cop-out, like, shouldn’t you be able to tell a story without having to pretend that YOU are actually telling the story?

BUT. (Butt!) I’ve read a lot of great books written in first person (like anything by Paulo Coelho and Amy Tan) and I know that this stupid prejudice of mine is just that: a STUPID PREJUDICE.

Not only that, but I’ve been thinking. And let me tell you, me thinking only leads to bad things. (Often tears. My own, of course. I don’t make other people cry.) In this case, the bad thing I thought of is that I probably need to rewrite The Good Daughters. In first person.

(I bet if I’d asked Angie, she would have told me that from the start.)

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