Writing Update

First draft of Chapter 1 is finished! It's not terribly long, around 5 pages, and it has a lot left to be done in terms of scene setting and atmosphere, but it's a really solid core that does a much better job of framing some of the major conflicts and introducing the main character.

But most importantly...I like it! And as I'm discovering (re-discovering?) these days, that's the most important thing at this stage.

If anyone would like to read it, I'd be happy to send it to you. Shoot me an email (justin.fike@gmail.com). I'll warn you in advance though, in return I'll ask you to give me back some quick thoughts after you're done reading it.

On to Chapter 2!

Retreat

Its been a few days since my last post. I worked pretty hard through to the end of the week, so on Saturday I took a retreat and came up to the Inn for the weekend. Its been a bit of a trange ride. Fun, stimulating, restful, and sometimes a little scary.

One thing I'm learning about myself is that it's good for me to get completely isolated sometimes. Long stretches of silence are good times to stop, listen to things you don't always hear in your own head, and talk with God about a lot of things.

The flip side of that, is that I'm learning how much I really need to be with and around people. That may sound like a strange thing to be surprised about, but since roughly this time last year I've been amazed at how true that is of me. I'd always thought of myself as a relatively self-sufficient person, emotionally and relationally. This season is continuing to prove that isn't as true as I might have thought. I've had to make a conscious effort not to get online too often or constantly check my email, after only about 36 hours. I find myself looking for things to distract me from my own thoughts.

It's certainly been a productive break though! I've finished a first draft of the new and improved chapter one of my book, and hopefully I'll have more than that done before bed. It's a huge relief to finally feel that I have all the pieces I need for the first several chapters. I very much doubt I'll be doing any more major revisions to the whole story that would require my starting over, so as of now I guess I'm officially "making progress".

I also spent some time working through the "Writing Influences" thought exercise Janelle suggested. It's been helpful to go back and think about some of my favorite books, even about where I was in life when I first encountered them. Mostly, it's been good to take a lot of the vague impressions that contributed to some of my bottlenecks, and work them into a more defined shape.

I'll post more specifically on both of those things later, but I wanted to put up my in-the-moment reactions at the end of the second full day of mostly silence.

On a mostly related side note: this blog has already been proving its value. I'm feeling a little more settled after just writing this short post. I'd definitely recommend it, if anyone has been thinking of starting one but hasn't gotten around to it yet.

Thanks to all of you who have responded to these thoughts in some way, it actually means quite a lot to me.

More to follow...

Rain

There is something very satisfying about working inside by a window while it's raining. I'm settled in the big blue chair that Jonathan and I man-handled downstairs and into my room (it was a very impressive process...).

It's quiet.

I've finally got a clean living space with books on shelves and stuff on the walls. Pretty much everything where I want it to be. It's been a while since I could say that.

Maybe what I love so much about being inside and comfortable when it's raining is that it makes me just a little more aware of the space that I'm in. I hear the steady beat of the water on the glass, and every once and a while I look up and think "I'm glad I'm not outside." Then I smile when I think about all the poor schmoes who have to be somewhere. Maybe I'm just mean.

I think what I'm trying to get at is that rainy weather highlights and intensifies wherever I happen to be at the moment. My physical space and emotional state. Not too long ago, I would have told you that rainy days left me restless and depressed. These day's I've found them very relaxing and enjoyable.

I guess that means I'm settling into a healthier place, as I keep defining my own space in this new season. Learning to be more comfortable with silence, now that I've looked at some of what silence kept bringing to the surface that had been causing me to avoid it.

It's nice being more comfortable in my own skin. My own room. My own plans for the future. Even my own challenges and growth areas to face into.

I could get used to this.

The clock

Public Service Announcement: I did not post that last segment at 5:49am. More like 9:45 or something. I still haven't figured out how to correct the clock for the blog.

Just so everyone knows I'm not a lost cause. You can cancel those plans for the intervention and sit-in.

The Importance of Story

"Think about it: we read fiction not just to see ourselves, but to imagine ourselves as we might be. When we recognize ourselves in the characters of a novel, we are gratified. We identify with them. But that is just the beginning. If self recognition was all we wanted from fiction, we would be satisfied with letters, journals, and statistical surveys of the population at large. But we are not satisfied with those things.

We crave stories, particularly the intensely intimate form of story called the novel. That is because the novel, uniquely among art forms, presents powerful points of view, strong conflicts and a helping of human life that affirms a higher truth. Characters in breakout fiction may seem realistic, even average, but they are bigger than their circumstances. They do not just suffer, but strive. They do not practice patience, but act. They do not merely survive, they endure."

Donald Maass - Writing the Breakout Novel


That is a selection from a book by one of the most influential literary voices in my life these days. Donald Maass is a literary agent (as well as an author himself) in New York, and the book I quoted from is his exploration of what separates the "good writing" from the stories you can't seem to put down at 3am when you've got a final exam the next morning. Its a interesting, fun read if you feel up for something a little different.

The perspective that he argues in the passage above, and throughout the book, is that stories matter. Not just matter, that they are essential. It's something I've been thinking about a lot.

Stories are the most common way we humans share important things with one another. If you want someone to know you better, you tell them about your past. If you want to convince someone about an important idea, you don't just explain it to them, you illustrate it with some examples. With stories.

I know this may seem like a simple thought, but I can't tell you how significant it's been for me lately. I look back to the earliest moments of recorded history, and I see language and art and music all being developed to better allow people to share the stories of their lives and hearts with each other. In a way, stories are the building block of relationships. Without exception, the people I am closest to are the ones I've shared the most stories with, and I can identify a whole list of authors who I feel I know better than people I've seen and spoken to consistently for months.

The stories we hear tell us a little bit about ourselves, and give us a safe place to explore what we see. But the stories we tell give others a window into who we are as well.

Coming to understand and name the importance of story has been encouraging in two ways.

First, it gives me a great deal of hope and excitement for the future. Values that have been lost or forgotten can be reborn in stories. Cultural difference that seem impossible to overcome can start to become understandable, even familiar, when we begin to see them in stories. And the best part is, that for the first time in centuries, we are witnessing the emergence of a new storytelling medium. Already, the internet is transforming and expanding the way we tell each other stories. Just look at youtube, or this blog for that matter. I'm looking forward to seeing the internet flourish as a storytelling medium in new and even more unique ways. Hopefully I can be a part of shaping that.

But apart from the medium, recognizing the transformative power of stories is encouraging in a larger sense. It's often easy for me to get discouraged when I look around America's cultural landscape these days. Fast, easy, disposable...you name it.

But here's the thing: we're rediscovering stories! Good ones even =). Think about it. In the '90s two of the most popular shows on tv were Friends and Seinfeld, two different takes on the "show about nothing" concept. What's popular now? Lost. Heroes. 24. A long list of really interesting stories, each of them inviting us to ask "what if that were me? What would I do there? Could I make that kind of sacrifice?" and on and on.

Believe me, I'm not at all saying that somehow Heroes is the salvation of America, wonderful as it is. What I'm saying is that modern culture's growing appetite for complex, often values based stories is a really encouraging trend. It inspires me to write even more than ever.

So, heard any good stories lately?

Progress!

Short update: I'm making progress!

The perspective shift that I blogged about a few days ago seems to have really sparked some breakthroughs. I had a really good scripting session yesterday. The best part of it was seeing the various drafts, pieces, snippets, and planned but unwritten sections of my halting start on the first few chapters suddenly converge together into a really strong beginning. I finally feel like I have what I need to just buckle down and write it.

So I guess I'll go do that...

Lol, I'll try to write about something other than, y'know...writing, for the next post. It's what I've been spending most of my time on, but definitely not the only thing I've been thinking about. Stay tuned.

Storytelling

I've decided that a lot of this blog is going to be devoted to my continued adventure in the field of writing, since that's where I'm devoting a lot of my thoughts and my energy these days. I thought my first post on the subject should be about a realization that I've had recently: I'm actually a fairly mediocre fiction writer.

Before you get concerned that this is just going to be one giant digital pity party, understand that this realization is actually an incredibly hopeful and liberating one, which will probably take a little explaining to make sense of. By "writing", I specifically mean the technical aspect of the craft. The details and principles of creating powerful, moving, and refined prose. It's something that I am still largely a novice at. I've learned an awful lot about it, especially within the last few months, but every time I've sat down and tried to actually wrap some words around the scenes and characters that seem so vivid in my mind, I'm made keenly aware of how far short the result falls. It's been getting the point where I've found it difficult to make any progress at all over the last month.

But here's the encouraging part of it: the craft of writing can be learned, just like the technical aspects of a lot of other art forms. What I have always had confidence in, however, has been my passion, almost a compulsion, for telling good stories. I'll get into how important and significant I think stories are in another post, but weaving a compelling story is something that has always come rather naturally to me. I'm not saying it doesn't take a lot of work, but I always seem to be dreaming about the themes, characters, plot points, setting (etc, etc,) that combine to make a meaningful story. So while I'm aware that I have a lot to learn about the practice and technique of writing, I'm also coming to believe that the creative, intuitive part of the process -- the storytelling -- is much harder to learn to do well through effort alone.

Janelle shared some really helpful observations about my writing with me over the last week. One of the most important of them was that the weakest parts of what I write are the ones that feel as though I was trying to live up to a specific standard of what "good writing" looks like...which is exactly what I spend a lot of my time doing.

One of the (very few) downsides to having read an awful lot of really good books -- and having gone back to some of my favorites with an eye towards discovering what made them so compelling -- is that I've developed a strong personal sense of what "good writing" looks like. In that "I'm not sure I could describe it, but I'll know it when I see it" kind of way.

Which of course, means that everything I wrote could never match up. Surprise, surprise. Because while a lot of the elements of what made my favorite books so excellent were truly universal techniques and aspects of craft, an equal number were just the stylistic strengths of that particular author. Their voice, as it's often described.

I still haven't fully uncovered my voice in my writing yet, but I'm starting to find it in unexpected places. This one little shift in my perspective has single-handedly restored the sense of fun, adventure, and discovery that drew me to writing in the first place. A sense I had definitely lost after spending so much time trying to produce "good writing".

So it's an adventure again! I'll keep working on refining my command of the craft of writing, with an even clearer sense of purpose than before. But in the mean time, I'm not going to keep judging everything I create according to a standard I'll never be able to reach.

I'm just going to tell a story.

On Silence

It's been very quiet lately. I think that's the most unexpectedly difficult part about being single again. I had become so used to having someone I cared about, and who cared about me, to talk to every day. The last two weeks I've been strongly feeling the absence of that, and I'm a little surprised at how difficult it has been.

My family has been amazing and supportive, especially janelle, but the problem with me is that I'm only mostly an extrovert (at least I'm not mostly dead, right?). I'm finding myself wanting space from mom and dad, wanting to talk with people and laugh and hang out. I caught myself thinking last night, "I guess everyone always wants whatever they can't have."

Which was immediately followed by my violently wishing that my arms worked in reverse, so that I could slap myself more effectively.

You see I've never had much patience for that particular sentiment, and here I had caught myself wallowing in it. Life is wild. It will always catch you off guard. But one thing I'm completely certain about is that there are two ways of looking at the places we find ourselves.

-- "This could be better if only I had x"

or

-- "Here I am. What is beautiful here? What can I learn? What will I take with me from this place?"

So, the silence and loneliness is still strange and different for me, but here I am. I suspect there is something beautiful hiding under it all, and I'm going to try and find it. Wish me luck.