Although I sometimes fantasize about renting one of the empty stalls at the Cross Street Market and working on my novel there, as a kind of performance art with proximity to oysters, fresh Utz chips, sashimi and egg salad, I don’t really like to talk about my “process” too often, unless it’s to mock writers who talk about their process. But today, as most people drift away toward the weekend, I am thinking about my — you’ll pardon the expression — aesthetic.
I have completed 40,000 words of my next novel, close to half. This first part comprises twenty chapters, which alternate between the present-day and a few weeks in the mid-80s. As currently structured, the book begins in the present. But it also could begin in 1984. The present-day section is long (by intent) and meant to mimic the slow, dreamy, underwater feel of certain summer days. The 1984 chapter is disturbing, capped off by an act of violence. Which should come first?
As I’ve been thinking about this today — glass of wine at my side, my concentration pretty wrecked by the necessity to drive through a lot of Baltimore traffic this afternoon — I can’t help thinking about the scene in Mildred Pierce, in which Veda, Mildred’s daughter, auditions for a new piano teacher. Veda plays a Rachmaninoff piece, breaking off with a “petulant chord”:
“‘I always wanted to play it that way.’
‘I’ll tell Mr. Rachmaninoff when I see him,’” says the teacher, Mr. Hannen.
Later, he has her play the piece as she wanted to. “‘And suppose you did play it that way. You’d be in a little trouble, don’t you think?’ He played another chord or two. ‘Where would you go from there?’
Veda played a few more chords, and he carefully played them after her. Then he nodded. ‘Yes, it could have been written that way. I really think Mr. Rachmaninoff’s way is better — I find a slight touch of banality in yours, don’t you?’
‘What’s banality, sir?’
‘I mean it sounds corny. Cheap. It’s got that old Poet and Peasant smell to it. Play it an octave higher and put a couple of trills in it, and it would be Listen to the Mocking Bird almost before you know it.’”
I don’t know the Poet or the Peasant, much less Listen to the Mocking Bird, but I think there’s one way of writing this book that is redolent of Eau de Poet and Peasant, and one that’s not. The trick is to figure out which is which.
Or, as Cole Porter asked, how do we know if it’s the real turtle soup, or merely the mock?
Anyone have any tips for their own personal smell tests?
I always think, “How would I write it?”
Then I immediately do the opposite.
Oh good. I thought I was the only one who did the opposite of you.
Well – on the list of things to avoid, and in addition to poets savoring pleasant smelling turtle soup, I would add gimmicks for gimmicks’ sake.
Like movies where they cut back and forth across a short period of time (say, one week) – leaving the viewer to try and keep up.
Depending on how horribly it would foul up the theme of the book, one thing that’s always interesting (as this very blog continually examines) is how events of 20+ years ago are so different, depending upon whose story it is….
But now I’m off to find some egg salad, chips (Seyferts, here in Fort Wayne), and bananas
Poet and peasant here. Never could bring myself to try turtle soup. With a poem, my smell test is to include it in a reading & see/hear/feel how the audience reacts. Not so easy with a novel! I’m betting that whatever structure you choose will end up being fabulous.
Which is harder? Depressingly, that’s usually the right way.
When I’m working on a documentary, the hardest part for me is choosing which content to cut. I read the transcripts several times, highlighting the most compelling information. Then I star the best quotes, and then I read it again to mark the best of the best quotes with double stars.
These are the clips I think are essential to the piece; the ones we can’t live without. It’s such a relief to reach that stage.
Then I discover we still have much more footage than we can possibly fit within the prescribed length.
Cutting out another 20 to 50 percent seems unthinkable. As painful as cutting… I don’t know what, but something that hurts a lot. As if I’m censoring someone’s most important thoughts.
I know we’ve made the right cuts when the clips that make the final cut just fall into the right order almost effortlessly. Well, not effortlessly, but naturally. As if they belong together.
BTW an example of an excellent novel that starts slowly is _The Friends of Meager Fortune_, by David Adams Richards. The first 70 pages are almost all narration, summarizing the back story.
Richards breaks all the rules, yet it works. From my blog about the book: “This is the story of a logging family and the men who work for them in the harsh, 30-below woods. It is also the story of the townspeople whose opinions shift with the wind of rumors born of boredom, envy, greed, or pride. Richards� incantatory narration is not only appropriate for these simple souls, but also puts the reader at a distance from the story, reminding us that it happened a long time ago (just before and after the Great War) and far away (New Brunswick in the Maritimes), making it over into a legend, something that has been handed down in the oral tradition.”
It sounds like your slow-paced sections are very appropriate for a humid Baltimore summer. Now if the rain would just let up . . .
“Or, as Cole Porter asked, how do we know if it’s the real turtle soup, or merely the mock?”
I know that you are working from your memory (duh!), but it’s “the good turtle soup”. Good scans better than real, I think. Best recording of it that I know is on “Sinatra and Swinging Brass”. Perfection.
And isn’t the music teacher referring to the Poets and Peasants Overture? I can’t believe that you know the name of the music teacher in “Mildred Pierce”. Very impressive. I have seen the movie many times, but I would never have know that. I love me some Eve Arden in that movie and anywhere else.
does anyone happen to know the movie where the daughter makes it big, treats the mother like crap, and then ends with her running after the casket? i have been trying to find this for twenty years. it was ‘old’ twenty years ago. sorry to threadjack, but this seems like a group who may be able to end my quest.
thx-
k
laura-
do you have a prologue? when is it set, if so? how much quantum leaping?
i might like the ’84 part first, punctuated by hte [yay!] violence,and then the transition in to the more gauzy contemporary period.
//k
karen,
You may mean “Imitation of Life” in either the Claudette Colbert or Lana Turner version?
that could very well be it, marjorie. i’ll have to see it to know. i only remember two scenes, and that one with the casket has never left me.
hello, netflix queue…
thanks so much! even if it isn;t it [i rather think it is, unless you know of another similar one], it sounds good to watch regardless.
i have been looking for this literally for more than 20 years.
//karen
karen,
I am often a wealth of useless knowledge! See my comment about the turtle soup above. Some day (when LL posts a connected topic) I will tell you how I didn’t get to apply for a spot as a contestant on “Jeopardy”, the best use of my brain storage.
“”Which is harder?” It’s an excellent question under any circumstances, but especially when it comes from a writer I admire more than I can say.
Just last night, I was asked about outlining. I admitted that I had used an outline once and that I found it did, in fact, make it easier and that I didn’t feel it compromised the quality of the piece. (The Girl in the Green Raincoat.) Yet I’m not using an outline this year because I have a feeling that ease could come with a huge cost, that I would adhere to a faulty plan because it would be so much harder to break down an outlined work when something goes wrong, that I would be too attached to the plan.
Harder, it is.
Whichever way it’s written, it will be exactly as it should be.
There are merits to writing it both ways.
Writing the earlier part first might make it tantalizing for the reader to figure out how it relates to the present day and what happens now.
laura,
i do remember the author’s note about poetic licence. it left me with a bit of agrodolce–the agro because i would have liked to have known that certain things were true, and the dolce because i was glad that they were not, so that no one could try to follow a recipe and disrupt the wonderful tradition.
what you said has actually been very helpful for my own cause. thanks muchly.
in other news, the DCPL does not have a single copy of IN BIG TROUBLE in the entire system [i do not count the one audio copy]. weird. i put in a request for it and the shorts collection coming next month. we’ll see. IBT is the only novel i’ve missed.
//k
marjorie, i have never believed that any knowledge is useless. it just may not have found its home yet.
laura, you have surprised me. i would have thought thee an outliner. i can see why you broke ranks and did one for TGITGR, because of size/deadline issues probably.
even if i were not an outliner, i don’t think it would be negotiable for what i am working on right now–way too many people and historical things to keep on the right timeline, even if the rest of it is fiction. so i am wondering about IN A STRANGE CITY, arguably my fave, and how you felt about interspersing those ‘true facts’ and whether or not you were concerned about poe scholars or others jumping on anything that might not fit in with their theories. i know this is not really in the context of TMP, but i have been wanting to ask you for some time. if this has already been asked and answered elsewhere, i will be happy to be guided to an outside link.
many thanks,
karen
Karen,
There is so much disagreement among Poe scholars that I felt very free to invent my little legend. I knew those truly expert in all things Poe would spot my inventions and I believed that others should be forewarned that it was fiction and therefore not reliable as research.
At the same time, I deliberately fudged the visit of the Poe Toaster and I am candid about that in the author’s note. I did not want to write a blueprint for someone who might disrupt the annual visit, so I placed Tess and Crow in a place where it’s not actually possible to see Poe’s grave. Since my night there (2000), the area has changed a great deal because of construction, so the book is even less useful to those who might want to interfere with the annual visit.