I went to this page to support a friend; I was pleasantly surprised to get a good story, too.

Madeline DeGrace’s Fundraising Home Page

I’ve only met her a few times (including once in Spain!) but even in those brief meetings I could tell that Marci’s mom was as wonderful and strong as Marci says — if not more so.

And how could I not like someone with the same first name as my first novel’s protagonist?

“A Writing Woman” by Gail Godwin is a really excellent piece — almost more a story than an essay or an advice column.

(This is the fourth and final of the Atlantic Monthly articles I mentioned, BUT then there is their whole archive of literary interviews, plus a few articles I found elsewhere. It never ends!)

Fact and fiction, fiction and fact. Which stops where, and how much to put in of each? At what point does regurgitated autobiography graduate into memory shaped by art? How do you know when to stop telling it as it is, or was, and make it into what it ought to be—or what would make a better story?

I think that’s something every fiction (or “fiction”) writer wrestles with. I still remember when Catie scratched out “Fiction Workshop” in the header of one of my stories and wrote (lovingly), “LIIIIES!!”

We are told to write what we know, and then told that what really happened is too boring, or unresolved. Dialogue should be lifelike, not peppered with the yeahs and ums and whats that we really hear. But so much fiction doesn’t “ring true.” And so much non-fiction (at least lately) has been exposed as fabrication.

Where is the line? Does it matter (to readers)? Isn’t it all just marketing anyway?

I don’t have any answers. Just my own struggles.

I was badly in need of a miracle. I was twenty‑seven years old and had not yet become what I had wanted to be since the age five: a writer. True, I wrote every evening, long exhaustive entries in my journal, to compensate for boring days. I had stayed for three years in my cushy government job — helping the British plan their holidays in the United States — though I had intended to stay one year. I had begun countless stories and novels but there was something “off” about all of them. Either they had the ring of self‑consciousness about them, or they started too slowly and petered out before I ever got to the interesting material that had inspired me in the first place, or they were so close to the current problems of my own life that I couldn’t gain the proper distance and perspective.

Andy pointed out that “proper distance and perspective” may be what I’m lacking with The Good Daughters, and what’s causing me to struggle so much with the revision. [sigh] I think he’s probably right. So I’m going back to the drawing board, which is somewhat disheartening because I’ve invested so much time, effort, and heart into what I’ve already written, but also somewhat exciting, because I know I can do better.

.

These last two are not writing-related, but I liked them.

“The best means of learning to know oneself is seeking to understand others.”

“Yes, that’s it,” he said, in his cool, professional voice. But I saw the blood come into his face; the blush of exultation; he knew he had freed me. Even if it meant freeing me from him.

Eat Drink Man Woman is a GREAT movie!!

Very Asian, very cute, very real, very unexpected endings.

I should keep it in mind for The Good Daughters revision… Aiya, that stupid revision is going to kill me.

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.

In gearing up for the long journey I’ll be taking with The Good Daughters, I have been reading up on agents, how to find them, what they do, etc. Apparently many literary agents blog. I find this strange, for some reason, but I suppose they are people just like anyone else. That’s the rumor, anyhow.

The three main ones I’m starting with are Jonathan Lyons, Nathan Bransford, and Miss Snark (recently retired from blogging, but all her archives are up). All three feature great info, great writing, and great humor — all things I need!

Of course, being overly opinionated, I felt compelled to leave a few comments here and there. Now I’m just hoping I didn’t piss off Jonathan Lyons with my explanation of why I reply to form rejections asking for more info, which is one of his pet peeves. (Reason: sheer hope!) He responded… firmly, but he didn’t block any of my additional comments. I’ll take that as a sign of no hard feelings.

I also won’t ever ask him for more info if he sends me a canned rejection.

(As expected, Andy “yelled” at me for not being more strategic — or just plain thoughtful — in my communication with a potential agent.)

After several days of scrolling so much that my index finger moves in my sleep and my contacts are drier than a camel’s butt, I have to say: I LOVE THIS!

I think getting geeked out by reading about the publishing industry is a pretty serious sign of delusion. And isn’t delusion a requirement for being a good writer? I’m on the right track!

One of my “finds” today was this poorly formatted, long interview with Dave Eggers (author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius — that’s the title, not a compliment). The interviewer is annoyingly pretentious, and the interviewee is overly defensive (though I too would have reacted poorly to the smarmy questions) but in spite of it all, I’m glad I read it, mostly for the addendum (so if you want to skip to the end, feel free).

Oh, and to understand the title of this post, just read this (short) post from Jonathan Lyons’ blog.

I FINISHED ANOTHER SHORT STORY!! YAAAAHHH!!!

Now I have to revise.

-_-

–

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.)

Continue reading →

Every day is a chance to make your dreams come true.

The thought occurred to me the other day, and I believe it. So I should be practicing it.

I did send pages 1-50 of The Good Daughters to Wilkes University’s James Jones First Novel Fellowship (contest). We’ll see how that goes…

In the meantime, I’m going to see if I can start pushing myself to stay up later writing. It’s probably going to be a painful adjustment, but at this point, it seems necessary.

Yesterday at 11:20 pm, I accomplished my most important goal for 2007: I finished the first draft of my first novel, The Good Daughters.

It’s an amazing feeling to have finished even the first draft!

Now my goals for 2008 are to revise The Good Daughters and send it out for publishing, and to write the first draft of a second novel.

The work of a writer is never done, I suppose. (Not until they stop being a writer, anyway.)

But I don’t mind. :)