Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Kicking the Modernist Habit is Killing Me

I've been wondering lately if, while writing every book I've written before my work-in-progress, I've been sort of hiding behind certain writerly tricks. What I mean is that in all of my novels so far I've put in a lot of things that were essentially jokes and games and commentary on other books and the like. You know, Shakespeare references, sly bits about the nature of fiction, allusions to classic novels and ancient myths, etc. Then there were formal games where I played with the structure of the narrative itself, sometimes as a way to comment on the story or themes but often just as an end to itself, as a way to do something different with the narrative.

My latest project, which is coming along slowly and painfully, has none of that. It's pretty bare bones, actually. There is very little in the way of double-meaning, there's nothing of the author being clever in a "we know this is a work of fiction so let's see what we can get away with" sort of way. There's just me and the characters and their actions and reactions. It's sort of naked, this narrative. I'm not doing anything with the story except telling it in the most direct way I can. Certainly I'm trying to make my prose beautiful and effective and startling, and certainly I'm trying to avoid every cliche that rears its ugly head, but I'm not working with the form of the narrative, the idea of how to tell a story.

As I say, it's been slow and painful. I'm not claiming that my metafictional or postmodern or High Modernist games have been a crutch, not at all. But I think that there's been some sort of shift in what I'm doing. For a few years I have been, I think, working with the Novel Itself as an artform, and now I'm just working with the Story Itself. I claim neither perspective as superior. Certainly I love the works of Nabokov and Kafka and Borges and Auster and Joyce and Woolf and Grass and a host of other writers who can't leave the narrative-as-object alone. Certainly I made no conscious decision to turn my back on my beloved Modernism. It just seems that this particular story will be best told in a straighforward way, and that's what I'm trying to do and it is, I find, not comfortable. I'm not even conscious while writing the damned thing that I'm doing anything different; it's just working out that way. Really, I can't quite say what's going on. A great deal of discomfort, that I know.

What's ironic is that I think I chose to write this one because it looked like it was going to be a lot easier to write than the book I had planned to write. That one has a sort of looping-back, nesting and sliced-up chronology that almost tells the story in reverse but doesn't, quite. I remember thinking I didn't have the energy for that but now I'm just being beaten down by this current damned story which is fairly clear. I look forward to finishing this one and starting on the one with the funky-ass shape (that's a technical term). I don't have any conclusions; I just have some observations, and maybe what I'm observing is not what I think I'm observing.

Anyway, this book I'm writing seems like it's radically different from anything I've written before, and that radical difference seems to be that it's more traditional than anything I've done before, and that seems to be harder to do that what I've done before, which makes you think, if you're me.

18 comments:

  1. It's all indicative of your growth as a writer and artist, and your intellectual curiosity that seems to crave all things new and diverse.

    Or not. I'm just guessing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sometimes I think I'm just too easily bored so I have to do something difficult and new with each book or the basic process of writing words onto paper will annoy me. Or not. I'm just guessing, too. I pretend to be in control of the process but while I can tell you what I'm doing, I usually can't really say why I do it. All of which is annoying at some level. Anyway, I don't know if it's growth or just thrashing around sideways or backwards.

    Say, Rick, didn't you write a Christmas book? Isn't this the Christmas season?

    ReplyDelete
  3. If it's scaring you a bit, making you uncomfortable, then it's probably growth.

    Just my 2 cents. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sometimes I think that it's growth, and sometimes I remember that broken bones hurt, too. Not all pain = gain. Especially since I have a lifelong habit of doing difficult things just to do them. None of it means the book is going to be any good!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Scott, having read three of your books now--three, right? Yes, three. Well, okay, 2.8--I find that each of your books is pretty radically different. One can definitely find the common threads in all of them, but they each strike me as a new approach.

    From what you describe, I feel like your most recent project probably comes closest to the type of writing I'm trying to do. I constantly feel like my efforts are spent on trying to find that direct line between my feelings and the words. I often wonder if I prefer to write that way or if it's just how I write.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Also, while you are thinking through all this, I have decided that Cyberlama's villain will ride a bicycle.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Davin: That's it, really. I'm trying to write the way I imagine you write, though I broke down and made myself an outline of sorts. I am attempting a transparency of prose that I've never used before, and a type of directness that is also new for me. So damn you, Davin Malasarn! I'd be done with this first draft by now if it wasn't for your influence!

    ReplyDelete
  8. A bicyle is good. I like it.

    My new book has no antagonist. I believe that's a first.

    ReplyDelete
  9. That's the point, though! We're all supposed to influence each other and learn things only to discard them afterwards. The Literary Lab is like a reef crowded with corals that are all constantly releasing their literary gametes into the water in thick white clouds!

    ReplyDelete
  10. I find that I think of the novel as object much more often because of you. I never know how that affects my actual writing, but I think the fact that it surfaces so often must be doing something to me.

    ReplyDelete
  11. That's true. If Michelle hadn't written MONARCH, I wouldn't have been brave enough to write a detective novel.

    My next novel will be about a Thai-American research scientist who's trying in his spare time to write a children's book about magical puppies. It will be written in the form of a free verse poem, with lots of color and nature imagery.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Well, I don't know if my ideas about narrative unity are any good; they might just confuse the issue and get in the way of telling the story. I'm willing to abandon my most closely-held beliefs at the drop of a hat whenever some new shiny idea pops into my head. Which is why my book on writing will be called MAGPIE.

    ReplyDelete
  13. And I have started The Adventures of Twitter Bailey! Her mother is blind but can still read. Her father can't read, but he can still write.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I like it! Write it in sentences of 124 characters or fewer!

    ReplyDelete
  15. Last night I had the idea to do something with Shakespeare's "Hamlet." That might be fun.

    ReplyDelete
  16. My last novel was like that. The one before that was a metafiction but the last was, in structure at least, a mystery novel and if you'd asked me if I would ever think about writing a mystery novel I would have laughed in your face. Okay there's not much of a mystery and there are more questions than answers at the end--I never said it was a conventional mystery--but that's still what it is and, yes, it was hard. I've just finished editing the next novel to be published and it is riddled with all sorts of clever stuff whereas the mystery feels bare. It's appropriate to the material but I'm not comfortable with it yet and probably won't be for some time to come. I’ve just left a comment elsewhere talking about the “difficult” second novel. Yes, my second novel was difficult. So was the third, the fourth and the fifth. Every book is hard in its own way though. And I’m dreading getting started on the sixth because it’ll be its own Everest.

    ReplyDelete
  17. But you're always working on something that's way different than before. ;)

    I think it's important to keep doing new things, and if this is challenging you, all the better! I'm pretty straight-forward in storytelling, myself. I do l like to mess around with structure sometimes like I did in MONARCH and the three POVs and nested story of the jungle. Or maybe it was a side story. Or something. Who knows. It worked.

    And that's the point - that it works for what you're working on. Every story is different for me - even my novellas that go hand in hand. They all take something different from me, each one challenging in its own ways.

    And Davin, I love this reef. :)

    And Scott, you wrote a detective novel because of MONARCH? Really? That deserves a post, right? :)

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.