Category: Author Chats

Author Chats: Stephen King

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Motivation

So I read this lengthy interview of Stephen King, and I can’t decide if it made me like him more, or like him less. I suppose it just made him more real to me, since all I’ve read of his is his nonfiction about writing (which is stupendous).

I think it’s a worthwhile read, but it is hard to sum up, since the interview spanned a few years. Here are some topics to think about and reflect upon after reading the interview.

Getting Ideas

King often takes experiences and observations, then asks  “What if ____” over and over again, until a story sprouts. He refuses to focus on the next idea while his current work is in progress:

“I mean, I’ve always got a couple of ideas for future stories whenever I’m working on something. But you can’t think about what you’re going to do next. You’re like a married guy who’s trying not to look at women in the street.”

Movie Adaptations

King positively hates Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining.

Where to Write

“It’s nice to have a desk, a comfortable chair so you’re not shifting around all the time, and enough light. Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world. The more closed in you are, the more you’re forced back on your own imagination. I mean, if I were near a window, I’d be OK for a while, but then I’d be checking out the girls on the street and who’s getting in and out of the cars and, you know, just the little street-side stories that are going on all the time: what’s this one up to, what’s that one selling?”

Writing Every Possible Day

PARIS REVIEW—Did you write this morning?

KING—I did. I wrote four pages. That’s what it’s come to. I used to write two thousand words a day and sometimes even more. But now it’s just a paltry thousand words a day.

Using a Computer versus Longhand

PARIS REVIEW—You use a computer?

KING—Yes, but I’ve occasionally gone back to longhand—with Dreamcatcher and with Bag of Bones—because I wanted to see what would happen. It changed some things. Most of all, it made me slow down because it takes a long time. Every time I started to write something, some guy up here, some lazybones is saying, Aw, do we have to do that? I’ve still got a little bit of that scholar’s bump on my finger from doing all that longhand. But it made the rewriting process a lot more felicitous. It seemed to me that my first draft was more polished, just because it wasn’t possible to go so fast. You can only drive your hand along at a certain speed. It felt like the difference between, say, rolling along in a powered scooter and actually hiking the countryside.

Finishing the First Draft

PARIS REVIEW—What do you do once you finish a first draft?

KING—It’s good to give the thing at least six weeks to sit and breathe. […] When you return to a novel after that amount of time, it seems almost as if a different person wrote it. You’re not quite as wedded to it. You find all sorts of horrible errors, but you also find passages that make you say, [that’s] good!

Your Editor’s Suggestions

“I don’t think it’s me, I don’t think it’s a best-seller thing, I think it’s a writer thing, and it goes across the board—it never changes—but my first thought was, She can’t tell me that. She doesn’t know. She’s not a writer. She doesn’t understand my genius! And then I say, Well, try it. And I say that especially loud.”

Popular Fiction and Literary Fiction

“The keepers of the idea of serious literature have a short list of authors who are going to be allowed inside, and too often that list is drawn from people who know people, who go to certain schools, who come up through certain channels of literature. And that’s a very bad idea—it’s constraining for the growth of literature.”

Naming

King has been criticized for his use of brand names in literature. Excedrin, for example. Pepsi. I haven’t read King’s fiction, but I have read fiction that does this poorly. I think it’s good to be specific.

“Do you see generic shampoo, generic aspirin? When you go to the store and you get a six-pack, does it just say beer? When you go down and you open your garage door, what’s parked in there? A car? Just a car?”

At the same time, overuse of brand names can feel like a commercial. Be specific, but don’t let it come across as product placement. Your peer editors and beta readers can point this out to you if you think it’s going to be an issue.

If you’re curious to read commercial fiction that reads like the author’s been flipping through the home shopping network, try Heat Wave, the novel commissioned by ABC and written by a ghost writer posing as the fictional crime writer Richard Castle.

—

So that’s all for Stephen King for now. I hope you caught the little bit about e-readers thrown in there (the interview came from 2001-2006). It amused me, anyway.

If you have a Facebook account, be sure to become a fan of my page, where I post more frequently. It’s much easier to repost something interesting than to actually blog about it. That said, I do have some queued up blogs for the next few weeks, so hopefully we’ll start getting back on track with content over here on WordPress. And then I’ll have my baby and probably disappear again for a few weeks.

Author Chats: Julian Barnes

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Motivation

I took Ethan Rutherford’s advice and started reading interviews and posts on The Paris Review. One of the interviews I came across was conducted in 2000 and featured author Julian Barnes. Barnes has won the Man Booker Prize once, been shortlisted for the same award several times, and has been awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature. In the 1980s, he wrote crime fiction under the name Dan Kavanagh. One great thing about The Paris Review is that they show images of the authors’ marked-up manuscripts. Below is an image (lovingly taken from the website) of his 2000 novel Love, etc.

You can read the interview in its entirety on The Paris Review here or by clicking on the manuscript page above.

I wanted to highlight one particular passage from the interview in which Barnes talks about the writing process

BARNES—I think you should like the process [of writing]. I would imagine that a great pianist would enjoy practicing because, after you’ve technically mastered the instrument, practicing is about testing interpretation and nuance and everything else. Of course, the satisfaction, the pleasure of writing varies; the pleasure of the first draft is quite different from that of revision.

Paris Review—The first draft is fraught with difficulty. It’s like giving birth, very painful, but after that taking care of and playing with the baby is full of joy.

BARNES—Ah! But sometimes it isn’t a baby, it’s something hideous and malformed; it doesn’t look like a baby at all. I tend to write quickly when I’m on the first draft, and then just revise and revise.

PR—So you rewrite a lot?

BARNES—All the time. That’s when the real work begins. The pleasure of the first draft lies in deceiving yourself that it is quite close to the real thing. The pleasure of the subsequent drafts lies partly in realizing that you haven’t been gulled by the first draft. Also in realizing that quite substantial things can be changed, changed even quite late in the day, that the book can always be improved. Even after it’s published, for that matter. This is partly why I’m against word processors, because they tend to make things look finished sooner than they are. I believe in a certain amount of physical labor; novel-writing should feel like a version—however distant—of traditional work.

PR—So you write by hand?

BARNES—I wrote Love, etc. by hand. But normally I type on an IBM 196c, then hand correct again and again until it’s virtually illegible, then clean type it, then hand correct again and again. And so on.

PR—When do you let go? What makes you feel it is ready?

BARNES—When I find that the changes I’m making are dis-improving my text as much as improving it. Then I know it’s time to wave good-bye.

PR—What do you use your computer for, then?

BARNES—I use it for e-mail and shopping.

—”Julian Barnes, The Art of Fiction No. 165.” The Paris Review No. 157 (Winter 2000)

I much appreciate what Barnes says about the process of writing—that it should be enjoyable, because you are practicing and improving with every word. I like that he makes it very clear that the first draft is not the final product, but that you can still derive pleasure from the first draft. (I’m working on that skill.) And I like that he actually keeps on improving his drafts until he isn’t improving them anymore—it’s always difficult to know when to step back and say something is finished.

What did you think of the interview? To read more wisdom from successful writers (e.g. not me), click here for a list of Author Chats.

Author Chats: Ethan Rutherford

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This is my first Author Chats post! I debated about which category I should file these under, and settled on Motivation Monday. Future Author Chats will be available on the Author Chats page!Motivation

Note: This post includes affiliate links. If you purchase from these links, you are supporting Write Lara Write! (I’d get about a penny per purchase.)

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of hearing Ethan Rutherford share one of the short stories about to be published in his book The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories.

He read “Camp Winnesaka,” a desperate camp counselor’s tale of how they lost so many campers one fateful year, while attempting to get spirits (and enrollment) up. It was a terribly amusing dark comedy, and once Rutherford mentioned that many of his stories involve ships blowing up, I decided exactly what I’d be getting my husband for his birthday this year.

Since I didn’t actually conduct an interview with Rutherford, I just listened to the reading and then briefly chatted with him about writing, reading, and being an at-home parent, I’m just going to list my notes below in a semi-coherent matter. Note that these are not direct quotes, they are paraphrases. I am no court stenographer.

On Reading

Read like a maniac and read all sorts of writers.

Recommended reading:

On Writing

Just get the draft out. You don’t know what the story is about until it’s written.

And just try to tell a good story—don’t set out to write some big, deep message.

Write about things that make you uncomfortable.

To students of writing: You ease up on yourself as you get older. It’s easier to write when you aren’t panicking all the time.

About plot and character: Ask yourself, “What kind of person would do X, Y, Z?”

On his process: Rutherford writes in the same place, at the same desk, listening to the same music playlist, to get him ready to write. He also reads up to the point where he stopped before.

On Motivation

Make a list of what gets you creative. (Mine? Reading good literature, especially poetry. Watching movies that inspire me to create new worlds. Listening to my “creative inspiration” playlists. Experiencing life, being human and being around other humans.)

Every writer’s motivation and inspiration ebb and flow in a cycle. Once you go through the cycle a few times, you’ll begin to recognize where you’re at on the cycle, and you’ll know how to get back on top of things. (I like to think of them as “rainy seasons” and “dry seasons”.)

On Being an At-Home Parent / Writer

(I didn’t take notes during our chat, but we came up with the same conclusion:) Once your kid is mobile, good luck.

Motivation

That’s all I’ve got! I’m filing this under “Motivation Mondays” also, since I’m a bit late in posting, and this fits in both categories. Take some time and find out if there are readings or book signings or author talks in your local area. It’s always a great inspiration to me to hear other people read their own stories and talk about the writing process, because each writer is so different. And don’t forget to fill your heads with different writers by constantly reading new voices. If you can’t make time to read, you certainly can’t have time to write.

Letters from Anne Lamott

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Motivation

No, I have not written correspondance with Anne Lamott, and I don’t have copies of any of her epistles. I do, however, have a copy of Bird by Bird, which I reread cover to cover today.

Two things that resonated with me particularly during this read had to do with letters, namely the first five of the alphabet.

Alice Adams’ ABDCE

In her chapter on Plot, Lamott reference’s Alice Adam’s formula for writing short stories. It goes like this:

  1. Action—This is how you start, how you get the reader reading.
  2. Backstory—This is how you set up for that action, after the fact, when the reader is already hooked and curious about your characters.
  3. Development—This is when you develop the characters based on their personalities and what’s at stake. If you know your characters, the plot will flow naturally.
  4. Climax—Everything comes together for the characters during the climax. Lamott says the climax needs to include a killing, a healing, or a domination. These could be literal or metaphorical. Either way, the characters are not the same after the climax.
  5. Ending—After the climax, the ending needs to make sense. “What is our sense of who these people are now, what are they left with, what happened, and what did it mean?” (page 62)

Plotters and Pantsers

There are two basic types of writers: the plotter and the pantser. I’ll use extremes to illustrate my point, and hopefully you’ll find yourself somewhere in the middle.

The extreme plotter plans before writing and risks writing something plot-driven rather than character-driven (I talk about that here). These are the people that write 28 trashy novels per year and somehow end up on the best-seller list. Their films generate a buzz and sell a lot of popcorn, but end up in the discount DVD bin five months after release. The extreme pantser writes by the seat of his or her pants, letting the story develop naturally and organically, and risks having an artfully written convolution that is unpublishable. These are the people who write fine literature that nobody particularly understands. Their movies are discussed primarily in film classes.

Sometimes you plan out a 4-foot-by-4-foot garden plot. You plant the seeds in even little rows, pushing them inches down into the Ph-balanced soil. But then you have a number of cold days, or not enough rain, and the spinach wilts and the corn grows and casts an eternal shadow over the unsuspecting peonies. Before you know it, the tomatoes are creating their own political party of radicals, hatching a plan to overthrow the oligarchy that is your authorship. Then you have to wonder if your garden needs a serious thrashing, if you should just plow it up and turn the whole thing into a compost pile, or if you should start a new, nonfiction book entitled “1001 Uses for Tomatoes.”

Sometimes you wander, barefooted, into a patch of wildflowers and lie gazing up at the clouds and enjoying the smells and sounds of the rustling, absorbing them into memory. You come back, day after day, while the Earth spins around and the seasons change, observing and absorbing, until you have a collection of lovely vignettes. But your editor just doesn’t see a story there. So you go back to your wildflower patch with a shovel, find a spot with a nice view, and you dig yourself a grave there and bury yourself up to your waist in dirt, and call a friend to come finish the job for you, because you can’t cover yourself completely without leaving some arm waving around pathetically.

Whether you are a plotter or a pantser, whether you’ve got a messy draft or are in the middle of a draft with no foreseeable future, you might want to consider a plot treatment.

Plot Treatment

A plot treatment addresses what happens and why. It tells you “who the people [are] and what the story [is],” (page 91).

Here’s how Lamott did it:

“I sat down every day and wrote five hundred to a thousand words describing what was going on in each chapter. I discussed who the characters were turning out to be, where they’d been, what they were up to, and why. [And] I figured out, over and over, point A, where the chapter began, and point B, where it ended, and what needed to happen to get my people from A to B. And then how the B of the last chapter would lead organically into point A of the next chapter. The book moved along like the alphabet, like a vivid and continuous dream.” (92-3)

Sound familiar? It’s a lot like Suzanne Johnson’s Relationship Arcs. Try my twist of a plot treatment with my Chapter Outlining Like a Pantser technique.

Don’t be afraid to plot. Plotting helps make your story a story. It gives you that beginning, middle, and end. Without it, you might have some nice images, but so does the Alzheimer’s patient down at Happy Acres. They might be real, truthful, and beautiful, but if you don’t link together the cat with three legs, your great aunt’s penchance for covering furniture with doilies, and the lingering smell of buttercream frosting together in a logical order, no one is going to have any idea what you are talking about, or why those things are important.

 

I’m a plotter, and I have an outline, but that plan has grown from my knowledge of my characters. They still surprise me from time to time, so if my outline changes, it changes. I don’t change my characters to fit the story, I change the story to fit them, but I have a pretty good idea of what decisions they’ll make for themselves based on their character.

I’ve spent half a decade with my characters, virtually taking them out to eat. Gareth and I always get cheeseburgers or waffles at indecent hours, constantly wiping our mouths of the ketchup or blueberry syrup as we talk about movies. Isolde and I get frozen ice cream topped generously with fruit and white chocolate or coconut, unless we are having a self-conscious day, when we’ll chat over salads between sips of lemon water. Robin is less predictable, wanting salmon one day and Wisconsin cheese baked macaroni another. I gaze at the menu in indecision while he talks about his latest wedding gig.

If you know your characters, the story will develop while they develop. If you don’t know your characters, take them out for coffee and let them order whatever they want. Listen to their story, and then go home and write it down.

I recommend borrowing Bird by Bird from the library, at least. If you are a habitual highlighter or underliner like myself, however, you can buy the book on Amazon here: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life