Another take on Vonnegut's Seventh Rule

I was thrilled to be asked to guest post on www.fictionmatters.com:

I'm intrigued by the concept of Vonnegut’s Seventh Rule, which essentially is to write for one person rather than the whole world. I’ve never really considered writing for the whole world; instead, I find myself writing for my main character. After all, if I don’t tell his story, no one else will. And if I can tell the story to his satisfaction, I’m certain to end up happy with it as well.

(Side note: I’m rather enjoying the fact that Vonnegut would’ve hated that semicolon in the preceding paragraph.)

I think one’s instinctive audience is deeply intertwined with one’s creative process. Every (good) story I’ve written has started because a protagonist popped into my mind, in a sort of reverse-Athena-birthing, whispering urgently that they must tell me about this thing. Or I’ll get a sudden image of this person - who’s never occurred to me before - in the middle of an intriguing action, and realize I must know what happened next. Or maybe I do know what happened next, and before too, and realize that for his sake and mine, I must tell his story, now now now.

There are some great advantages to this approach, in my opinion. My protagonists become close friends of mine, because I take their stories seriously, and they know I’m listening. Writing for them helps me with characterization quite a lot, because they’re driving the story so much that all I have to do is pay attention, and a thousand tiny details come forth with relatively little effort.

It also helps me with developing other characters. Since the secondary characters are all there because they’re a part of the protagonist’s life, I tend to see them from the protag’s point of view. How they respond to the main character, and how he responds to them, helps me understand both people better. The drawback, not surprisingly, is that this can make my secondary characters a bit flat at times. But hey, that’s why we have revision, right? I’m a big believer in getting the first draft down on paper and worrying about making it great on the next go-round or twenty.

Another thing I love about this approach is that the inspiration is all wrapped up with it. Whatever inner emotion makes this character so urgent, so insistent that I tell their story, tends to be one of the main themes. Even better, since that passion is innately contained within their personality, I typically don’t have to put a lot of conscious thought into the character’s motivation. It seems natural that the protagonist’s motivation and the story’s overall themes are linked in a necessary - indeed, inextricable - way. Granted, I may not fully understand that motivation or the themes until I’m knee-deep in the story, but I just keep trusting my main character and in time, all is revealed.

Focusing on telling this specific character’s story to his satisfaction helps me to hone in on the plot, too, even if I can’t see all the way to the end when I first start jotting down the scenes and images that occur to me. If I start to get lost, or bogged down, I can turn to the protagonist and say, “Sorry, what were we talking about? I got a little distracted.” In a very real sense, the protagonist is like a guide leading me along an unfamiliar trail through the forest. It doesn’t feel like I’m making up his story; I’m listening to it, asking questions, and writing as fast as I can.

the marvelous world

(we now interrupt the story revision in progress to bring you the following poem...)

the marvelous world

stay beside me, love, for all my days and nights
hold my hands in yours, sing to me adventures
of heroes and true love and the marvelous world;
look in my eyes and tell me in wordless joy.

hold my hands in yours, sing to me adventures;
walk by my side and make me laugh to tears.
look in my eyes and tell me in wordless joy
of the infinite sky, the vast ocean dreaming.

walk by my side and make me laugh to tears;
when the storms come, I shelter in your arms.
the infinite sky, the vast ocean dreaming -
how they roil and rage, shine and sing.

when the storms come, I shelter in your arms.
we are safe in each other, fire and air in sacred flame;
how they roil and rage, shine and sing -
how the ancient earth envies our life together.

we are safe in each other, fire and air, sacred flame;
we are constant and changing, we are beauty and art.
how the ancient earth envies our life together;
the old stories are true, but never so true as now.

we are constant and changing, we are beauty and art,
heroes and true love and the marvelous world:
the old stories are true, but never so true as now.
stay beside me, love, for all my days and nights.


...And now, a little context.

There is an absolutely amazing and wonderful woman named Kate - well, I am sure there are a lot of amazing and wonderful Kates, but this one is superlatively so and has been one of my dearest friends for lo, these many years.

Three years ago, Kate read a poem I wrote at my wedding - called, perhaps unsurprisingly, true love. And now, at the end of June, Kate will marry an excellent guy named Andrew (I don't know him as well, but he seems fully worthy to be her life partner, and I can give no man higher praise than that).

To my great honor, Kate has asked me to read a poem at her wedding, preferably one that I wrote. She did give me the option to read something someone else wrote, but I love her very much and wanted to do something original as a gift to them.

So there I was, faced with the task of writing a non-cheesy poem about love, something that would deserve to be read at the wedding of one of my best friends. After about 83,000 attempts, I finally drafted the poem above. I've put it through a few revisions by now, but I have until June 27th to make it perfect, or as close to perfect as I can get it.

You can therefore see, dear reader, why your feedback is much needed and appreciated.

A word on the form - this type of poem is called a pantoum. As you may already know, pantoums are a type of poetry that originated in Malaysia. There is little structure besides the pattern of repetition of the lines - no set number of syllables or stanzas, no rhyme scheme, no scansion. It's one of my favorite forms of poetry; the repeating pattern creates this great tension, then the pattern of the last stanza provides a fantastic catharsis.

A word to the wise - should you wish to attempt your first pantoum, may I suggest you drive it with verbs. At least, that's the only way I can ever figure out how to make 'em work.

Anyway, please let me know what you think. Much obliged!

Okay, mad props to @FictionMatters...

We now interrupt this story for random homage to tweeps & Vonnegut...

So I joined Twitter not too long ago. I'm loving the interaction with other writers, getting to read other folks' blogs, discussing craft & technique etc etc. It's wonderful - a lot like real-life writing workshops, except that you actually get to choose whose writing you read. :)

Anyway, one of my Twitter feeds is @FictionMatters, who deserves some mad props for two things. First, he used Star Wars to analyze successful development of a villain's character, and anyone who can use Star Wars to explain, well, anything is pretty much awesome in my book.

Second, he recently blogged a separate post on each of Vonnegut's 6 rules of writing. Let it be known that I am a HUGE Vonnegut fan. I adore the man. In fact, I started this entire blog because I was so upset when he died, and I needed a place to vent. And in addition to a wonderfully creative and unique perspective, Vonnegut was a damn good writer. So his rules - which I had seen before, sometime in my halcyon days of youth, and then promptly forgotten - are quite useful.

So, not to steal from Fiction Matters, but for my writing friends that aren't on Twitter (join! now!), here is the list. Talk about perfect timing - I plan to use these, especially #4, to help me with my revisions to 'Mississippi'. You can read a discussion of each rule at http://www.fictionmatters.com/.

Kurt Vonnegut's Rules of Writing:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

Do I dare? and do I dare?

Oh, my. It's April 30th already? Interesting. Suddenly my intentions to revise 'Mississippi' in May seem a little more, well, I'll be kind to myself and say foolhardy, than they did in March.

Here's one of the problems, which just occurred to me: it's a hell of a lot nicer in May than it is in November, when I originally wrote it. And it's light out for a lot longer. I actually really enjoyed getting up early and writing, with the morning's lightening dark for company. When it's light out & I have lots of time before work, I always feel guilty for being the world's laziest gardener.

But you know, I think I can do it. The early dawns will help me get out of bed sooner, possibly. And I'll have a really good excuse for not gardening, so I won't have to feel so guilty. I think I'm going to take the plunge.

As before, I'll post my work on here as I go.

I feel like I'm on a rollercoaster nearly inched up to the top of the first hill...

Woo hoo!!!

Sometimes it's the simplest words that say it best, n'est-ce pas? :)

I'm super-stoked - I've got a freelance gig with a new magazine! It's called Alegria Living, and it's beautifully produced. Plus, my assignment is really cool; I get to tour a wolf sanctuary! Should be pretty awesome. I'm a little nervous, but also have always wanted to get up close to a real wolf, without having the whole instant-bloody-death thing involved. So this seems like a good opportunity.

I'm hoping the article will go well and they'll give me more assignments in the future. In the meantime, I'm just psyched that they liked my work enough to give me this one.

block this

Rrrrgh. I have the energy & time to write, but little to no actual creativity flowing. So frustrating. I've halfheartedly edited the start of a story, but to no avail. I've got a folder full of poetry with excellent criticism written all over it, but when I think about actually breaking into a poem, really taking it apart & putting it back together, I feel like I'm beating my head against an invisible wall.

I keep thinking about revising "Mississippi". I'm still planning to tackle it in May, but I'd sort of like to get some work done on the poetry - the ones trapped behind an invisible wall - and submit some of them to various places before I get back into the book.

I get so tired of my brain sometimes.

(snow inspired) or, my life in parentheses

So, yes, I realize the last several posts on here have followed this theme of snow. I am somewhat obsessed with snow, I admit it. And consequently am quite happy to have a snowy afternoon, the house to myself, a good beer (Boulder's Mojo Rising) and the time to write.

Ah, Nature, she is a fickle muse (a la the Tick: "Gravity, she is a harsh mistress"), much less dependable than music. When a story's influenced by a song, I can just play the song or create a whole playlist that supports that mood, like I did with 'Mississippi'. When it's location, I can travel to there (or I can't, and just don't work on that piece for a while). But when a story's weather-inspired, nature torments me in the worst way sometimes.

Once again I'm editing my snow-inspired story, and I think I keep getting distracted at the same place every time I go through it. It happened again today (well, I do have Braveheart on the TV, which is pretty damn distracting). But not before I noticed that (hey, is that Stephen Fry?) Right! Back to the blogging thing. Um, yes - got distracted, but not before I noticed that the story's rather disjointed over the course of a couple chapters. The problem is, since I keep consistently flaking out during that part of the story, I'm having a hard time fixing it. D'oh!

Evidently I'm in quite the parenthetical mood (you might expect me to ask if you noticed, but I give you more credit for intelligence than that).

Hmm... it stopped snowing. I could deal with fixing the difficult-to-fix thing another day. Tempting. (Plus, I'm kinda hungry.)

Here, have a poem:

what to do

what to do when the words won’t come?
I could tie my tongue around a tree and
climb it. I could tear out my eyes
replace them with prisms
refract – reflect –
a new point of view.
All the noises blend into harmony at one
point.
Can’t pin it on a map, no signs mark this road
so I hope to trip over it, flip a page
glance up at just this instant
see it hesitate, flash out of view –
not even a color, just a sense of color light refracted,
gone. I stand breathless struck & ringing

hibernation

Exhausted; haven't been sleeping well lately. Tough to get a good night's sleep when you dream about work all night. But I'm not (for once) getting on here to bitch. I just keep having the first couple lines from this poem run through my head. Considering that it's springtime and supposed to snow later, it seemed like a fitting one to post.

...Okay, so I started this yesterday, and then didn't have the poem available to post. Here 'tis. I'm still tired & it's supposed to snow again tomorrow, so the relevance remains...


hibernation

tired, so tired, and this does not end here.
no, it never ends here. rows of small lead
weights attached themselves to my bones.
now they sway and clink whenever I move;
I walk as if under water. as if air were a force
I must reckon with. as if it drips and flows,
the task of inhale and exhale too much.

summer ebbs; I place myself in the quiet river
every day, offer myself to the water
asking for a baptism. like a frog I want
to shed my skin, emerge wholly new,
thrilled with wearing myself inside out.
I want to wrest myself from my skin, replace
my eyes, shed my hands and useless tongue.
let me hibernate, bury myself in the mud,
winter quietly; emerge rested, glad-eyed.

now deep in this waking dream, air sealed
within me, my mind draws pictures of spring
against my eyelids. I don’t want to get tangled,
caught half-born, eyes blinking, blinded.
the earth stirs around me, gathers herself, preparing;
she breathes in: my eyes open, I break from myself
I am free: alive: I can breathe –

Ava revisited

I've had this little idea percolating in my brain for a few weeks now, and just last night I decided it was time to graduate it to a medium-sized idea. Or possibly more. Yes, I think it's getting to be about time to edit my novel.

(If you're new to this blog, I wrote a book - on here - in November as part of the NaNoWriMo.) I think May would be a good month for the editing project. April is a whole day shorter, and I really wouldn't be able to work on it until April 5th. It's hard to give up five days on a project of this size.

I don't know why I feel so strongly about blitzing through the editing of this in a month. Of course, it won't exactly be blitzing - at least, not at the level at which I wrote the damn thing. 62,000 words in a month; sheer insanity. I really found the concrete (and unforgiving) timeframe to be a big help when I was writing the story originally, so I guess I'm just hoping I can force myself to be super-focused and productive again.

There will probably be a lot of cringing going on as I reread it. I just posted it raw, almost zero editing, chapter by chapter. I'm sure there's some terrible writing in there. Equally sure, however, that there's some pretty decent writing somewhere in there too... If you want to check out the raw version, here's chapter 1.

dream, dream, dream

Holy stress, Batman. We're less than a week away from our biggest annual event at work, and I keep expecting to wake up and find my hair turned silver overnight.

It's days like this - especially grey, windy, lightly snowy mornings like today's - when I dream intensely of not having to work. Wake up, ensconce myself on the couch with a blanket, my soda, some breakfast, and the laptop, and spend the entire morning writing. What I wouldn't give to just have time in the day to focus for hours on my craft. That is my ultimate fantasy.

Instead, I write in my head as I drive to and from work. I write in my head while I'm at work, too, when things aren't too hectic. Unfortunately, right now they're rather too hectic. In fact, what am I doing blogging?! Okay, okay, we all need the occasional break, just to stay sane if for nothing else. Maybe I'll take another five minutes and write a haiku, just to feel like my creative life isn't totally demolished by the harsh vagaries of reality. (Who, me? Melodramatic?! Scoff.)

(early) spring haiku

clouds cover the sky
budding trees pause and shiver
the wind howls cruel threats