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Pentimento

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Go back and try againWhen you are reading a book it’s easy to feel the continuity and arch of the story, especially when it flows right along. But what about a writer’s mistakes, the wrong turns taken? Hopefully you don’t see the evidence. You don’t see them because, if the writer and editor have done their jobs, they are no longer in the book. Those false steps were erased. Who was it that said the writer’s tool—a pencil—has two equal ends—the leaded end and the eraser end?

Now I’ve been working on a book for a good number of months. Generally speaking it was going well. Then, perhaps a month and a half ago I decided on a big change, and worked accordingly, so that that change manifested itself everywhere. But after all that was done, I decided I had made a poor decision. That meant going back and eradicating all traces of that choice. It was as if, having painted the house a certain color, cellar to roof, I realized my selection was poor. Even before I repainted, I had to remove the old color—(hopefully) all of it. 

So on one level I lost a month’s worth of forward progress. Yet I have learned, that even this kind of work—and some of it is drudge work—brings the writer into a better understanding of the work in hand. 

There is a perfect art term for this: pentimento. “A sign or trace of an alteration in a literary or artistic work; (spec. in Painting) a visible trace of a mistake or an earlier composition seen through later layers of paint on a canvas.” OED

Every book has such layers.

Starting out

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dark and stormy nightContemporary readers raised on TV, film, and video game narration don’t give the writer much slack in the opening of a novel. The impact of those other forms of storytelling has been enormous. Compare today’s fiction to virtually any Victorian, or even early 20th century fiction, and you will be struck by how different is the pacing of a book’s first pages. I used to joke that my youngest son (now 23), raised with the modern mix of narration, thought the perfect plot was three explosions connected by a chase. 

I believe it was Madeline L’Engle who referred to the first words of a novel as “an opening door.” I’ve also heard those words called “the hook.“ Years ago I read the memoir of a man who (in the 1930s) was a contract writer of a popular book series, when a series numbered fifty volumes. Virtually all plots of the books were pre-formatted, but he still spent a huge amount of time on the opening page. “If I couldn’t hold them on the first page, I’d never hold them.” Then, there’s always “It was a dark and stormy night,” the opening words of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s (1830) novel, Paul Clifford. 

One of my readers wrote to me, “I read your book, True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle.  It was boring at first, but by the second page it got good.” 

Whew!

Fictional logic

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Readers don’t often think about logic when reading fiction, but they know it when it’s not there: “That makes no sense!” Or, “I don’t believe it.” Or, even “But on page thirty, you wrote . . . .“

Fictional logic, by which I mean cause, motivation, and result, needs to be seamless, perhaps invisible, yet that logic is the inner core of the story. It makes a story go from page one to “the end.” Yet, it if it is too obvious, the tale seems predictable, perhaps dull. Too obscure and the reader can’t follow the trail. To make it more complex, I love the notion I have quoted many times, Robert Frost’s dictum, “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.”

What’s a writer to do? He/she must imagine—and set down—the whole complexity of the characters’ world, but in the subtlest way possible.

As in life, all people are complex. Imbedded in that complexity are multiple choices. The complex character thus can logically do any number of things, and the reader will believe.  Is that hard to achieve? Oh my, yes!

Making Connections

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connectionOne of the key factors in writing a novel is memory, which is to say, the ability to remember what you wrote, while remembering where you are going. One of the strengths of the novel is the making of connections, connecting what has happened to what will happen, remembering character traits, or other details that bind the book together, that can give it depth. Consider, for example, the Harry Potter books, which, taken as a whole, and in this context, are a huge achievement. Make no mistake, readers can and will take the author to task if you make a mistake, if the shoe, so to speak, which was put on the right foot, appears on the left. Readers, I believe, love those connections, particularly when you catch them by surprise, yet they grasp what you have done. The seed dropped, so to speak, on page two, which flowers on page two ninety two, smells sweet. Not only do readers love it, writers love it, too.

The chatter about “voice”

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There’s a lot of chatter about “voice” in fiction, which I take to mean the presentation of the narrative, its mixture of tone, character, syntax, and vocabulary. Complex and important, writers can and do spend years perfecting voice though some come to it quickly and naturally. It can be very distinctive, as per Hemingway and Dickens. Perhaps the most influential voice in the English language was the sixteenth century King James translation of the Bible. And we sometimes forget that Shakespeare was a great inventor of words, such as gloomy, critic, bump—and many more. I wonder how Elizabethan audiences responded to such an inventive vocabulary.

Books with distinct voice

I’ve never developed a specific voice for my work. I want the voice of my fiction to be part of the story. The voice of Crispin: The Cross of Lead is utterly different than the voice of City of Orphans or Poppy. In Sophia’s War I worked hard to create an eighteenth century voice, using lots of words used then, but no longer.

When I tell a story, I want the reader to hear, each time, a different voice. And not mine.

The physics of book signing

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autographing booksI’ve done a fair bit of book signing over the years. In fact, I just did one this past weekend. I always enjoy these events, mostly because I get a chance to meet my readers, and chat with them. That said, when you sign books for a long period of time it can be—believe it or not—exhausting. I’ve known more than one writer—popular to be sure—who developed carpal tunnel syndrome from book signings.

At the risk of being absurd, let me suggest the physics of book signing.

First, the pen. It should be a rollerball ink pen. One wants to minimize the friction of pen to paper. The paper in books today, (hardback and paperback) is pretty cheap, rough stuff, and the flow of pen on paper can make an enormous difference. Never use quills.

The height of the signing table. It should not be table height, but typing table height, about 27 inches from the ground, so that the angle of the arm is down, never up.

The chair in which the author sits. The best is an adjustable one, (with a back rest!) so (see above) the arm angle is down. Stools are awful!

The name of the person you are signing to. These days you can never assume the spelling of someone’s name. Amy. Amee. Amie. Amé. And so forth. And if you ask a child his/her name they often (particularly if young) spell it out letter by letter in a very measured fashion, with an occasional glance at their guardian to check if it’s right. A bit of paper with the person’s name printed is a vast help. It also means you get the name right away and therefore can chat with the person.

The inscription. “To whom would you would you like me to inscribe the book?” I asked. “To the East Maplethrope Our Gracious Mother of God Middle School Fourth Grade Reading Group and their Beloved Teacher Mrs. Edna Nerobnicky.” I kid you not.

The photo op. With the ubiquitous cell phone—with camera—“Can I have a picture with you?” is a very common request. Here, a volunteer IT person standing by your side is a great advantage. But, if that volunteer stands too close, your reader, often out of shyness, talks to the volunteer, not the author. They need to be close, but not too close.

Finally, if you are doing an evening reading, let the kids come first, adults second.

To write is to write.

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Be quietOver my years as a writer I’ve learned not to talk about the work when I am in the process of creating a story. The more I talk about the story, the less it is on paper, so to speak. When I talk about what I am writing, it seems to lock up the free flow of invention. It stifles intuition. It’s as if I become committed to the idea of the story, rather than to the story itself. The worst thing I can do is intellectually define the story. My job is to make the story come alive in my writing, not in my talking. To talk about the story implies that what I say is in the story. For example, if I say my story is about an intelligent person who makes a foolish decision, it doesn’t mean I have written that. I’ve only talked it. That’s why when someone asks me what I am writing, I duck away. Indeed, the more someone tells me what they are going to write, the more certain I am that it will never be written. To write is to write. The talk can come later.

“Why do your books change style so often?”

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ice cream coneTory from Greeley, CO, writes: “Why do your books change style so often?”

My usual response to this often-asked question is, “do you only like one flavor of ice cream?”

My changes of style occur in part because it’s much more fun to write in different ways. Simply put, it’s challenging to write different kinds of books. Repetition can be boring.

The more interesting answer is to quote Flaubert—the French novelist—who said, “Style is a way of seeing.”

In other words, the way a book is written is part of the book itself. Style is, if you will, a silent character in the book, the character who allows the plot, the characters, and the ideas in the book to be expressed in different ways. Is the language terse? It is poetic? Does the action unfold slowly, quickly? Is the story tense? Languid? Or is it a mix of these things?

For each book I write, I try to decide how the story is to be told. Indeed, each time, I need to think who is telling the story. In short, the story teller is always part of the story.

If only I had known

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Sometimes, when you publish an historical novel, readers send in corrections (I had the wrong gear shift sequence in the Model T Ford, in The Secret School). Sometimes you get additional  information. Here is such a one for Sophia’s War. As I wrote my correspondent, “Oh! If only I had known about this particular soldier’s name and that the cannon still existed!!!!!” Maybe in the second edition.

Peterson markerThis hard-to-find marker, with a plaque that reads “The Grave of John J. Peterson, Revolutionary War, Westchester Militia (1746 – 1850)” is the grave of a little-known African American soldier, who played a small but crucial role in a pivotal event of the war. On September 21, 1780, Peterson, along with Moses Sherwood, brought a cannon from Fort Lafayette at Verplanck’s Point to Croton Point. There they fired on the British frigate Vulture which was waiting to pick up Major John André, who at the time was plotting with American General Benedict Arnold for the surrender of West Point. The Vulture abandoned its river position, forcing the spy André to move overland on horseback. He was captured in Tarrytown a few days later carrying plans of West Point. André was hanged in the tiny Rockland County hamlet of Tappan on October 2, 1780. Today, the cannon used by the patriots sits in front of the Peekskill Museum. Sherwood is buried in Ossining’s Sparta Cemetery 

A heap of manure

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Fossil fernYears and years ago, when I was in college—and already determined to be a writer—I had a number of vital mentors. ( If you are a young writer and you have a mentor who takes you seriously, you have a very great gift.)  In any case, one of my mentors was a singer by the name of Lee Hays, the baritone for the popular singing group The Weavers. He was also a writer. A family friend who lived in the neighborhood, he took an interest in me and my writing. One day I came back from college and (unabashedly) handed him a pile of my writing and asked him to critique it. He requested that I come back in a week. Which I did.

“Well, Lee,” I said, “what do you think?” 

“Well Avi,” he rumbled in his wonderful, deep Arkansas accent, “It takes a heap of manure to make a flower grow.”

I have never forgotten that remark, not just because it was wonderful, funny, and apt, but because it also has never ceased to be true. What the writer writes, for the most part, is bad. Poor. Inept.

Good writing is all about rewriting. The hardest part of writing for me, is not the act of creation, per se, it is that I know what I am writing is bad stuff. But you have to have the bad to get to the good. 

Stuck to my writing computer is a small fossil fern. I know it took millions and millions of years to create. That’s a lot of manure. But  . . .  it’s very beautiful now. It’s there because I am trying to write something that will be good. In time . . .