June 11, 2008
[I had written about 50 pages, consisting of a half-dozen or so disconnected scenes.]
Seems slightly late in the process to begin the journal, but what the hell?
I am so frustrated.
There are so many things I know. And there are a great many things I feel. But getting ahold of structure is proving daunting. Daunting? It feels impossible. I feel that if I knew the skeleton of the thing I could go nuts throwing flesh on the bones, but it's as if I'm creating the flesh with very little to hang it on.
July 7, 2008
I have struggled deeply with the work since starting my job at ______ . I envisioned 20 hours a week being a cakewalk vis-a-vis my novel pages. But I am not really a fast writer, at least not yet, not usually. When I have all day, I write all day. I love it as full-time work, truly. If I could pour my heart into writing fiction and poetry eight hours a day, every day, and make a living at it, I would be in heaven [I, and millions like me....]
A lot of time got past me with little or no work getting done, and now I am feeling fainthearted. How easy it is to fall into the passive mindset of home! At school, the pressure is always on to perform. Thank god for the grant money and the threat of a) having to pay the money back for lack of producing, and b) looking like an utter slacker and fool to those who have believed in me.
The outline from last month was incredibly helpful, in terms of getting a grasp on where this might all lead. It is possible the muse is lifting the veil just the smallest bit. It's all very foggy and indistinct at this point--oh, so fitting for a novel set in the Pacific Northwest!--but I can almost see that I actually have a skeleton that I can write flesh onto.
Told E. today that I am writing a novel, and she had that polite, pleasant-yet-flaccid reaction that people used to give me when I told them I had applied to Stanford. So different than how my writing colleagues always reacted at school: very positive, very credulous. I can't wait to show them all that this is no pipe dream. This is my life. I am a writer.
July 25, 2008
This morning I am watching Bill Moyers' series for PBS called "Becoming American--The Chinese Experience." Just as when I was laboring over my application to Stanford, I become overwhelmed with a feeling of trying to contain something larger than myself, something that is on fire in the universe, trying to come to life through me. I feel tremendously responsible and seriously inadequate for telling the story of the unimaginable circumstances in the life of Y_; of the desires and large heart of B_; of the sad, untimely death of D_ and the subsequent heartbreak of P_; of R_'s quest to find a place for herself, to be of use in a life of her own. I don't want to shortchange any of these people. I want my readers' hearts to be broken open by this story, to have their curiosity piqued, to have their basic human compassion stirred up. I want people to weep over my book. I want to make this REAL. I feel hardly able to aspire to the task. I need time--lots of it, and I feel pressured by a lack of time. I must find a way to continue to fund my writing time. This story wants to be told.
August 4, 2008
Have passed the 100 page mark, a number that felt so significant. Now feeling tremendous pressure, staring down the barrel at all the story that still has to happen. I know I need to just stay in the room, stay with the scene I'm writing, make notes to myself about ideas for fleshing things out, but don't go off on tangent. And DON'TDON'TDON'T dive down into the first-draft-oh-my-god-I-totally-suck doldrums. The only way to tell the story is to tell the damned story. Period. I have several scenes penciled into the outline, so there is certainly no lack of direction, per se. I am at a spot in the forward story that feels mushy and uncertain. I need to tighten up my reasoning for creating the scene and figure out what everyone's motivation is. It could and should be a fairly pivotal point (though not so much that it is a turning point, quite). However, I am coming up on a turning point before too long. Need to just take it a scene at a time, draw out emotional spots and really work them, work my characters' motivation, not rush a scene because I can see where it ends. We'll have A_ and R_ meeting for the first time. B_ and R_ will make love, BT_ clashes with his father, someone rapes Y_, then D_ gets shot. Act III. I wish like hell I had gotten more done before leaving campus and during the month of June. I really skated. I regret it! I could have possibly completed the draft and really given something more finished to Professor Tallent when I get back to school. Ah well--all I can do is the best I can do. [Follows a list of all the many things I need to accomplish before the 2008 school year begins.]
Damn, all I want to do is write.
September 3, 2008
161 pages. I am actually approaching the climax of the novel . I'm trying to take the counsel of Charles Baxter and not rush toward the action, toward the inevitable. At the same time, I find each word, each action, every thought of every character needing to be absolutely vital, absolutely specific to the story.
Each time I write up to a new scene, some turning point in the plot, I have a sense of emptiness, of mild panic at the vast unknown and the myriad of writing choices that I face as I begin. The first few sentences are always stuttering, awkward, often needing to be jostled, erased. It is like the clumsy first attempt to open a beautifully wrapped package. There is nothing to do but begin. It is only the writing that creates the writing.
I also feel that I owe my characters the dignity of telling their stories well, of being honest, accurate, of filling in the blanks, of giving them voices. I want to do that for my people.
September 8, 2008
[Begins with a long ramble about the getting back to campus, spending $470 on books, how depressed I am about having to take yet another math class.]
Wow, so as to the novel--oh yeah! I'm probably also blue because I haven't written for three days straight. I'm about to launch into the sweet little bridge section I am thinking of as "News from Everywhere." Pulling all sorts of rabbits out of that hat, getting into the heads of at least a dozen minor characters and maybe an animal. My purpose is to show that a huge event takes place when we are all going about our lives, that the ripples of such an event keep moving out from the incident and echoing, that there is a consciousness in the world that supersedes the small violent acts of human beings. And it could be great fun.
[And here follows a radical silence. Although I was able to write a some pages during the first few weeks at school, I eventually had to put the novel almost at full stop. Finally, in Spring 2009, I was in my final quarter at Stanford, taking 28 units. Five of those were a second advanced fiction class that Adam Johnson graciously allowed me to audit. I was able to have the first 40 pages workshopped, and they were very well received.]
To be continued....
When the big day came it was all just a blur. I found out 48 hours prior that I was graduating with distinction. Not only did I not know that, I had to ask someone what it meant. My GPA put me in the top 15% of my class. Who knew?