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I
have a confession to make. I've never read any writing how-to book
from beginning to end. Years ago, I started Susie Bright's How toWrite a Dirty Story, but abandoned it about half way through,
partly because I found the author's tone patronizing and partly
because the smell of ink from that very early POD volume was giving
me a terrible headache. The other classic writing texts that are
supposed to be on every author's bookshelf – Stephen King and the
rest – I've never even opened. I don't own a copy of the Chicago
Manual of Style or Strunk and
White, either, though my paperback Roget's Thesaurus is
definitely the worse for wear.
Sometimes
I feel rather creepy about my basic disinterest in studying the nuts
and bolts of the writing craft. I recognized the validity of the
concepts and the terminology – the narrative arc and the character
arc, the “Coming to Death” moment. I know that the writing
process should involve internal queries about what the character
wants, where a story is going and how it should flower. These are the
sort of things I think about when I'm critiquing someone else's work.
When I'm writing my own stuff, though, nothing could be further from
my mind. Intellectual analysis has little to do with the process. I
write from instinct.
At
this point you're probably snorting with disgust at my presumption.
“She thinks she's got so much talent she doesn't need to study the
masters,” you might be thinking. Or, “Right, she was born
knowing about characterization and conflict, suspense and catharsis.
A regular Mozart of the written word.”
Honestly,
I don't think that at all. I do believe I'm moderately skilled at the
craft aspects of writing, but that's not due to some fabulous genetic
endowment. Rather, it's the product of more than half a century's
experience, reading and writing – plus a certain amount of early
education.
My
life was filled with words from its very first months. Before I could
talk (hard to believe such a time ever existed!), my parents read to
me, both fiction and poetry. All through my childhood, my father
concocted fantastic tales of ghosts and monsters and wrote delightful
doggerel that he set to music. He and my mom taught me to read at
four years old, and almost immediately I began creating my own
stories. I was writing poems by the time I was seven. Nobody ever
showed me how. I guess I must have been emulating what I'd read and
heard. It just seemed a the natural thing to do.
Reading
was my absolute favorite occupation throughout my childhood. My mom
had to force me to put my book aside and go out to play. I continued
to write all through elementary school, high school, college and
graduate school. And of course, I continued to read.
I
adored the literature classes I took. There, we undertook the sort of
analyses that the how-to books talk about, dissecting tales ancient
and modern to see what made them tick. Although I majored in science,
I tried to balance my schedule with at least one humanities course
each term. I still recall the intellectual thrill I derived from the
Shakespeare seminar in which I participated as a freshmen, the high I
got from Russian literature in translation course in my junior year.
I
still adore a lively discussion about a great book. A few years ago I
spent more than an hour Skyping with my brother (who lives half a
world away) about Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus. We
specifically set up the call for that purpose, and I enjoyed every
minute.
So
even though I've never deliberately studied the art of narrative, at
least as applied to my own writing, I seem to have acquired a
significant amount of knowledge by osmosis.
When
I sit down to write, I don't consciously identify the “MacGuffin”
that drives my story, even though it must be there somewhere. I may
or may not know at the outset when and where my characters will
experience that moment of total despair, when all seems impossible.
If I don't know, I simply trust that I'll recognize the crisis when I
get there. The story unrolls in my mind, a journey along a road
where some parts may be foggier than others, but with a structure
that seems to shape itself around the premise, the setting and the
characters, without much deliberate effort on my part.
I
do spend a significant amount of mental and emotional effort on the
prose itself, trying to capture the elusive nuances of experience in
words. I'm also focused on the big ideas that underlie the action,
trying to birth the sort of startling, original tale that transfixes
me with admiration when I am the reader.
That's
what I find most difficult about writing. All the craft in the world
won't make up for a ho-hum concept. All too frequently, I have the
uncomfortable sensation that the story I'm working on has been
written a hundred times before – sometimes even by me. I listen to
some of my fellow authors complain about their so-called lack of
talent, even as they produces tales so wild, terrible and beautiful
that they bring tears to my eyes, and I try not to be envious.
That's
something no craft book can teach.
Still,
discouraged as I sometimes am, I don't stop writing. Through the
combination of nature and nurture, I've absorbed the so-called rules
of story structure. They're part of me now. I probably couldn't
prevent myself from following them, any more than the Canada geese
could abort their annual flight south.
