Off Balance and Full of Surprises

The forecast really wasn’t so bad. The mountain pass had slush in places, but was mostly clear, and no snow was forecast until we would be safely across. That prediction held true until we reached the other side. The east slopes of the Cascade Range caught us by surprise. On two smaller passes, snow was falling heavily. The wind swept in with vengeance reducing visibility to a few feet. We kept creeping forward on that snow and ice coated pavement. My inclination, if I had been driving, was to stop on the side of the road, sob for a while, and wait for spring. But I wasn’t driving. We kept going. Pulling off the road, turning, changing direction, were all hazards. Sometimes there are no stopping places.

Perhaps some of you think you know where this post is going. But I’m not going to quote El Doctrow’s famous line “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” Instead I’m taking a different direction. I’m thinking about the unpredictability of life. And how we’re caught off guard. In the last two weeks, one author friend became a grandpa for the first time, another had a parent die and a third is dealing with an adult child’s romantic break up. Good news and bad, playing havoc with our writing schedules.

As writers we know the engine that drives tension is that balance between hope and fear we create for the readers. It’s also the balance in which we live our lives. More often than not, we’re tipping to one side or the other. Off balance. Trying to find tracks to follow in the snow. We’re pulled out of our stories. Our characters slip down ravines and we have to haul them back. I used to wait for balance to be restored, for the winds to stop and visibility to increase. In the last few years, I’ve discovered that may not happen predictably. I’ve become more of a stop, drop and roll kind of writer, squeezing in moments on the page between life’s surprises. And it’s made me wonder if this isn’t our natural state of being, off balance. And our task is to get that tension on the page.

And while I finished this post, look what arrived at my door!

Paperback Peculiars!

The Subtext of Details

At the edge of the meadow is a fence. It has been standing a long time, so long that every post leans, often at a different angle. Between the posts barbed wire stretches and in a few places sags. When you get close enough, you can see remnants: a strand of hair, frayed string, a small piece of red cloth caught in the barbs. The details of what has passed by or what the wind has blown in held in place for us to examine.

 I have been thinking about the subtext of details. How the small things our characters pay attention to and point out to the reader can say more than the keenest dialogue. They happen below the text.

According to Wikipedia “Subtext is content underneath the spoken dialogue. Under dialogue, there can be conflict, anger, competition, pride, showing off, or other implicit ideas and emotions. Subtext is the unspoken thoughts and motives of characters—what they really think and believe.”

But subtext is also carefully selected details that make the particular universal. They focus as subtext because they are seen through our characters eyes and without the advantage of dialogue let us in on their thoughts.

Ralph Fletcher in What a Writer Needs offers wise advice. “Don’t write about senility or a man losing his ability to take care of himself. Write about lost belt loops.” How we can choose just the right detail to show what our character thinks and believes at that point in time without the character telling us? 

In the wonderful and bleak Winter’s Bone, Ree Dolly thinks about the last time she saw her father. “Walnuts were thumping to the ground in the night like stalking footsteps of some large thing that never quite came into view…”  Suppose two co- workers are arguing, a snarky "he said/ she said" kind of fight, and all the while he keeps glancing at the ticket stubs on her desk, the ones she saved from her big weekend date. 

If you could imagine the details of your scene caught in those barbs, what would they be? What would the things your character notices be shouting or whispering to the reader?

Literary DNA

In Greek mythology a chimera is an animal that is part lion and part goat. Myth has other hybrids too, think of centaurs, both horse and man share the same DNA. Well, it appears that once again myth is a sign post to a larger truth. 

An article in last year’s Scientific American (I know, I know, I’m behind on my reading) explains how cells from a fetus can cross from the placenta into the mother.  And those cells remain in the mother, becoming part of her DNA, for the rest of her life. Apparently this is true even for babies who die before birth. The mother still carries part of them. 

So what does this have to do with writing, you ask? I’ve been thinking about our literary DNA and the way we carry the many parts of past inside us. Everyone does.  But for writers, their pasts become part of their literary DNA expressed in the themes and voice of their works.

Hopefully writers don't write about the same event over and over. It’s usually much more subtle. Events leave fingerprints.  And those fingerprints are left on the stories we write. Think about themes: redemption, abandonment, the fragility of hope, how to save a life. While characters and events change  in each story, familiar themes run through them like DNA.  Why? Because they are drawn from the same deep well. 

Here’s an interesting fact about fetal cells found in the mother. They can be healing. They can actively fight off disease. I write to tell a story, but also to explore and wrestle with questions that I don’t have answers for. I tackle those questions over and over. And in the writing I have glimpses of truth, and I make connections and, at the best times, it is healing.

Dating a Book

It’s been a very long time, maybe a millennium, since I went on a first date. That’s the way it is with married folks. But I can remember that time in my life. The getting to know you questions, listening with your whole body, really paying attention, noticing the details. And friends always had commentary. They had strong opinions about who was and was not worthy and why. Sometimes it was really smart to listen to friends, other times I wondered. Get a group of friends together and see how a strong opinion, whether based in fact or not, can influence the whole group. Soon everyone is agreeing each other because we like to belong, to be part of something. We like people to agree with us. 

I was thinking about dating when I was looking at some book recommendations from friends on a well known reader site. And I began to wonder if the same group think phenomenon was true for books too. And then I came across a post by Laura Fredericks on the site Writer Unboxed.

“…authors can pay for reviews, readers can gang up on an author, and it’s been shown that up to a third of reviews are fake. Like also tends to beget like in the book review space. If there a lot of five star reviews, then the five star reviews keep rolling in. Insert a few one star reviews, and the ball rolls in the other direction. Mob mentality is no way to choose a book.”

Our thinking appeared to be in sync. I have a few trusted friends I listen to when selecting a new book to read. We have the same tastes much of the time, but not always. There are tried and true authors I go back to again and again, like a soft well-worn shirt. But many of my favorite books have been discovered quite by accident when browsing in a bookstore or even on line when I’ve been able to take the time to listen to the voice. As a reader, I can’t always articulate what magic draws me into a story. It’s not just genre, some fantasy I love and some, well not so much. I can’t look for a character type.  I’m not always wooed by the same kind of voice.In fact, one of the most gratifying reads is when I am captivated by a book I never suspected I might fall for. And as for that pretty cover, it may catch my eye, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be taking it home.

A great example for me was the book, I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith. The cover wasn’t appealing to me. I hadn’t heard any gossip about it, hadn’t read the reviews, didn't even recognize the author. Then I read a page and found Cassandra Mortman sitting in the kitchen sink.

And when the magic is right....I like to think that there is a dialog that happens between reader and book. At a particular time a book is speaking just to me. I am its intended audience in this place and time. And time stands still.

As a reader, how do you choose your books?