We put a lot into that fridge. Milk, cheese, fruits, veggies, ice cream, pot pie, leftovers, etc. And of course we took quite a bit out again too. Some of the stuff, we forgot about, and over time it grew moldy, became inedible. Every now and then we would purge the fridge of these horrors, then re-stock it with fresh new goodies.

One day, for no apparent reason, the ice/water dispenser decided to stop dispensing. We Googled for help, and even paid $15 to chat live with a serviceman, who instructed us on how to take the dispenser out of the door, fiddle with the wires, etc. Nothing worked. So we shrugged our shoulders and bought a purifying water pitcher to use instead. Life went on.

Fast forward 1 year.

Last week, a small windstorm knocked out power in our neighborhood. When the power was restored a few hours later, we went around to reset all the clocks. As I walked into the kitchen to set the microwave and oven, I noticed two strange little lights on our refrigerator door. The ice/water dispenser had come back to life!

In case you hadn’t figured it out by now, this is not only a true story, it’s a metaphor. As writers, we fill up our manuscript with words and ideas. Sometimes they get old and moldy before we can put them to use. Sometimes they keep for years. And sometimes part of the manuscript just stops working. You can hire someone to try and repair it, or jiggle the wires and hope for the best. Or you can accept that it’s broken and walk away. Find an alternative. Maybe work on a different manuscript altogether. Then one day, when you least expect it, maybe a light will come on, and your original manuscript will start working again.

I started my first novel, The Good Daughters, 6 years ago. I put it aside 2 years ago, when I realized that in spite of the great characters, themes, and prose that it contained, the story wasn’t working. The plot was broken. Then a couple weeks ago, a light came on in my head. Without consciously trying to, I had figured out the perfect plot to dispense my story. The Good Daughters works again.

My guess is that this metaphor applies to a lot more in life than just writing. To be clear, it’s not about “magic” solutions to your problems, or waiting for things to happen for you. It’s about not trying to force something to work before it’s ready. Because maybe it’s really you that isn’t ready. Maybe your brain is trying to figure something out but you’re getting in the way. Or maybe your mind just needs a little time and a little space, a little spark or a little storm, to jolt it back on the right track.

Or maybe I’m just overextending the metaphor because I’m so shocked by my dispenser’s miraculous revival…

Either way, would you like some ice? I can get it for you from my fridge.

Now, I didn’t subject Andrew to an interview like I did Todd, but the Q&A on Crossing‘s Amazon page is what got me interested in his book. I highly recommend checking that out.

Verdict? Crossing took me by surprise. I wanted to read it because of my Chinese heritage, and because of how the Virginia Tech incident affected me, but somehow I wasn’t expecting the book’s emotional depth. Furthermore, the mystery element made it a very compelling read, and certain passages struck me with their literary beauty. Like any book, Crossing won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I certainly enjoyed it.

Of course, I had to laugh when Andrew mentioned (in the Q&A) how most immigrant books feature “clichéd scenes of family meals, flowery mother-daughter relationships, and cathartic returns to the motherland.” Because that’s sort of the book The Good Daughters was. (TGD = my first ever completed novel, currently shelved but slated to be rewritten.) Well, okay, TGD’s mother-daughter relationship wasn’t flowery, and no one went back to the motherland, but it did feature more “typical” or expected elements. (Hence why it needs to be rewritten.)

So in addition to enjoying Crossing as a story, I also appreciated how Andrew stepped away from a lot of the stereotypes. (But not all of them. And hey, some exist for a reason.) Andrew used Chinese culture to enhance Xing’s character, not to define him. Xing could have been a loner for any reason; he just happened to be Chinese.

Similarly, actress-writer-director Fay Ann Lee created Falling for Grace, a Chinese-American rom-com. Yes, that’s right: a Chinese-American romantic comedy. Hollywood liked the story but wanted Lee to change the main character to a white or Hispanic woman. Lee refused and put the movie out independently. It’s not 100% polished like the slick things we usually see on-screen, but it’s got a lot of raw truth in it, particularly in the scenes about Grace and her family. In fact, my favorite part (sorry, this is a teeny bit of a spoiler) is when Grace gives her brother some money for culinary school:

Ming: I’ll pay you back, I promise!
Grace: Just cook for me for the rest of my life.
Ming: … I’d rather pay you back.

Did that have to take place between Asian siblings? Of course not. But throughout the movie, their heritage is reflected in their interactions with each other and with their parents, and it makes those relationships feel rich, and real.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love (love LOVE) Amy Tan, and a lot of the more “typical” Asian American fiction that’s out there. (LOVE.) But I think it’s great that some writers and artists are exploring their heritage in other ways. We need to represent the whole spectrum of experiences, you know?

Andrew Xia Fukuda and Fay Ann Lee are doing that, and when I rewrite The Good Daughters, I plan to as well.

• Green Pasture Christian Bookstore – The Good Daughters (link gone)
• Intelligent Investor Club – The Good Daughters (link gone)

I’m neither a good Christian nor a good investor, so I’m not sure what to think…

Anyway, there’s just about a week left until I find out the fate of my novel The Good Daughters in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest. If you haven’t gotten a chance to read, rate, and review it yet, I’d love for you to check it out before the 15th. After that, it will probably be taken off Amazon. Unless of course it makes it to the Semifinals (top 100 entries), but that’s highly unlikely.

(That’s not modesty, haha, that’s insider knowledge. The excerpt is WAY more polished than the rest of what I submitted. But I’m working on getting the rest up to par…)

For those who have already helped me rack up my ridiculous number of positive reviews, thank you so much!!

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?

(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.

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.

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.

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 long, poorly formatted 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.

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.)

Actually, I DID start The Good Daughters in first person, but that’s because I was originally only going to tell it from Madeline’s point of view. Then as I got into Grace’s story, I found her more and more interesting, more and more important, and I decided she needed to tell her story too. And then Ma swooped in and demanded her say too (as mothers are wont to do) and suddenly there I was with three, THREE, key viewpoints. NOW WHAT?

(Also, at that point I still thought first person was a cop-out. FOOOOL!)

Naturally I switched to third person.

And now, now that I’ve written all 300+ pages of the novel, now that I’ve spent years typing and thinking and procrastinating and then finally typing some more — NOW I’m pretty sure that the only way I can tell this very emotional, “domestic,” not-action-driven story is by letting each of these women tell her own story in her own voice.

Irony. Bite me.

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.