Hitting the Same Note
Hi, friends.
I don’t know if it’s the cabin fever of February or a feeling born from lack of control, but writers have been an angsty bunch on the socials this week. Did I know so many people had such hot opinions about word count? I did not. I don’t really want to think about something as mundane as that when I am reading, and I certainly don’t want to think about it as I write (says the girl with a novel that mysteriously expands every time she tries to whittle it down to the size the market says it must be). It’s not a discussion that I think serves anyone in the abstract. But…
Story.
This week’s story is Track by Nicole Flattery winner of the White Review Story Prize.
Craft tidbits.
I finished reading two books this week (one a novel and one CNF) and they both suffered from the same problem - they kept hitting the same note again and again. This was especially true of the middles. I’m not sure if this was a subconscious way to make the endings bigger. One had a particularly nice ending, though it was compressed and came quickly, which made the middle all the more frustrating. Both of them were on the shorter side and I wondered if the problem of word count came into play. (We must stretch this story to meet an arbitrary mark.) Both had very compelling stories, both put out by small(ish) presses, one that I admire a great deal. Both of these books had won awards. They weren’t terrible books and yet I was a frustrated reader because both of them could have been really great. The kind of book you can’t stop talking about, the kind of book you want to put in the hands of everyone you know. Isn’t that the kind of books we want to read? (And dare I say it, want to write?)
Flattery’s story is not unusual. It is in fact a tale as old as time. Girl meets boy. They aren’t as compatible as they wish. Eventually, the relationship fizzles out. And yet the language here, the unexpected details, the actions of the characters keep it fresh. We see this from the opening paragraph:
My boyfriend, the comedian, took pleasure in telling me about rejection – how it came about, how to cope with dignity, how it had dangerous, possibly cancerous elements. He said if I pinched just above my waistband, where the unfamiliar portions of fat resided, that’s what rejection felt like. He claimed the link between cancer and repeated failure was irrefutable. He had a lot of unusual ideas. ‘Feel that,’ he said, grasping at my hips and thighs, ‘that’s the texture of rejection right there.’
Along with all the hot takes on twitter this week, there was great advice. T Kira Madden, reading applications and submissions, reminds us of the importance of the opening page:
Demand attention in your voice / language right away; don’t wait for the story to “pick up later;” a reader, likely, won’t get there.
Demand attention.
Flattery does. We are pulled in right away with this odd theory about rejection.
There are some weeks that I already have a story in mind for the newsletter. But there are others when I click through 10 or 15 stories, searching for one. Truthfully, I don’t read much past the first paragraph.
It’s a question we must ask ourselves: what makes you pick up one book from all of the others on the shelf? What makes you run to tell someone they’ve got to read this book, story, essay, poem?
For me, it is language. A character I’ve not met before. A setting I don’t know.
I wish we could stay in the soft bubble of the writing itself and not worry about how much competition there is or market or arbitrary numbers like word count. But at some point, we have to consider where our work belongs if we want to get it out into the world. And friends, that world is crowded.
Let me say it again. Demand attention. We must separate ourselves from the pack.
How then do we separate our tales about relationships, about family, about death?
How do we keep from hitting the same note - whether that be a note of our own or a note that every other writer makes when they speak of loss?
One way we do this is through language.
Apart from acting I had my occasional job which was layering make-up on collapsing faces. I’d been improving faces for years, presenting my own as aspiration. I turned up to houses wielding my toolkit, scraped off undesirable features and pencilled in better ones.
Another is through defamiliarization. Don’t let everything in the story add up in expected ways. The narrator’s mother gives her this advice in the story:
When my mother finalised the divorce from my father all she said was, ‘Never give people what they want.’
The narrator takes it to heart. Here she compares their relationship to an unknown:
I loved my boyfriend. Our back and forth reminded me of black-and-white films I hadn’t seen.
When things are comfortable for the couple at home, Flattery doesn’t let them stay there. She takes them out of their comfort zone and makes them talk to people. They do things we don’t expect. The narrator gets up and leaves in the middle of her haircut and we’re not given a reason why nor are we treated to a description of the mess her hair must be. Only that it’s unusual. And no one criticized it.
The narrator begins to leave terrible reviews about her boyfriend on comment message boards. She leaves them under his mother’s name. It’s an awful thing to do. But it’s ridiculous. It makes us laugh when we ought not.
At the drugstore, the narrator tells checkout lady about the laugh track and confesses that he’s sleeping with other women. And then she offers:
You could be one of those women if you liked? I mean if that’s something you wanted to do – sleep with someone famous and tell your friends about it?’
Flattery is able to make us see that her characters are stuck without making the reader feel the same. She puts them in different situations and makes them uncomfortable and trusts her reader to get it.
Sparks.
The narrator of Track says: My hometown was a strange place dressed up like a normal place. Use this as your writing prompt. Get into that strangeness and how it affects the characters.
Or. Consider Valentine’s day and the problems one might face if they were dating more than one person.
Revision. Time to take a look at our scenes and see if they are hitting the same note. For each one identify: Setting, Characterization, Obstacle, and Action. How often does a scene exist only to show the same characterization or obstacle for your character? What about action? If two scenes are showing the same thing, it’s time to let one go.
Other tidbits.
Some of you may be headed to AWP in March. Last year was the first year for SmolFair and it’s happening again this year. Brian Evanson will be the keynote March 18th and there are several panels and readings that might be of interest to you.
Barrelhouse is looking for Craft Proposals for their virtual conference April 23.
Are you working on an innovative CNF project? Graywolf is open for their nonfiction prize until Feb. 28th. Looks like project does not have to be completed.
There are a bunch of lit mags closing at the end of February: Copper Nickel, Gulf Stream, Gulf Coast, Blue Mesa, Rumpus, Normal School. Most of them are open for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Send them some of your beauties.
Okay Scribblers. I hope you have a super writing day. Pencils up. Let’s go~
Marsha