I was working, gung-ho, on the novel, week after week, doing no other kind of writing. And now, I'm at a dead stand-still. I have no idea where to go next. Writer's block to the extreme. But the problem isn't really about transmitting thoughts from my brain to the paper. It's about decisions. I can't write anything until I make some decisions about what will happen and when. I don't want to slow down though--I'm on a goal to finish the first draft by the end of July!
I once said that writing other things, such as articles, was something I did to help handle writer's block. Well, funny, it actually is helping. If in no other respect than in keeping me from idleness during the block!
Many months ago (maybe Nov/Dec?) an editor assigned me an article on pregnancy loss, due mid-July. A while back, I said I was done freelancing for now, to focus on the novel, except for one assigned piece. Well, this is that piece, a piece I've been wanting to write for two years. One of the reasons I started writing articles was because I felt passionately that miscarriage in particular is not covered well. But after 2 years of getting nowhere as far as convincing an editor to let me write on the topic, I finally get the assignment...and I don't really have the passion to write it anymore. In recent weeks, I've been seeing July as a guillotine--it's the month of my novel deadline as well as this article. Well, I don't want those 2 to compete. I decided I should just write the article and get it done early, so I can then really focus on the novel. I decided to start working on the article the first week of May.
Funny things happen though. I hit this intense writer's block for my novel on Monday, so I charged into preparing the article, a week early, and without really planning it, I'm further along than I'd ever intended. I'm in the interview process, not the writing process yet. But it's very good--I like being productive and not wasting time entirely--writer's block or no! And another good thing is, though I didn't feel any great push to do it, the passion to cover the topic is coming back as I work on it. There are times I really just don't want to revisit that, a dark memory in my own life. I know it's not an article I can write by phoning it in; it's going to require some emotional involvement and I think that's why I was balking at it. I'm past that experience, or so I think, with 2 healthy, living children, and I no longer need to write about it for my own therapeutic reasons. But I do still think it needs attention; therefore, I'm glad I'm coming around, warming to the assignment again.
So here's to writer's block on my novel that actually made me PREFER to write on an emotionally tough topic for a magazine. Writing an assignment always go better if my attitude towards it is positive.
Other articles I've written:
Choose Your Best Birth Options
When Miscarriage Means Labor
Fire Retardants Found in Babies' Umbilical Cord Blood Associated with Developmental Delays
Vulvodynia: Is The Pain Just in Your Head?
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Making People Like Your Antagonist
I gave a great writer friend some chapters to read a few months ago. She said something that struck me as surprising then, but that makes total sense to me now. She said she wanted everything to be written from the point of view of Curt, one of the male leads; she wasn't really interested in what Maizy thought. (I had the point of view about 50/50.) That surprised me because when I began the germ of this story, it was Maizy who I identified with--it was her story in the first place. My sympathy lay with her. So how had I let her become someone a reader didn't want to know more from--someone who was static, uninteresting and, really, trying the reader's patience in her obstinacy to change?
My story doesn't have a classic villain. Maizy is not a villain. But I do have protagonists and antagonists. And really, Maizy is an antagonist to all my other 3 lead characters, to varying degrees, and at different times. My story is about a real family, albeit maybe a pretty dysfunctional one. Maizy is an antagonist so often in their lives that somehow I think I've lost how to paint her in any positive light, to make anyone like her. How did that happen, when I first found her as my sympathetic character, and Curt, in my mind, was kind of an idiot, irresponsible, someone who came and messed everything up? Well, now that I think about it, I knew I had my work cut out for me in making him likable. I didn't want the reader to hate him. I wanted to show that he could redeem himself. Well, I guess I've done such a good job at elevating him, to make him likable, that the process by which I did that had put Maizy in a less likable light. Curt has sort become the hero of the story I've written so far. I find myself with 2 challenges: how to make his son Asher rise to that level as well and how to make Maizy someone we like.
I read in a magazine article recently about not making your villains one-dimensional. There needs to be something that makes us identify with them, something that makes us see them as human and understand, on some level, his/her motivations.
SO that's my task for Maizy. I need to get into her mind more, I guess, and let us find ourselves identifying with her fear or her paranoia that leads her to do the things she does. We may not agree with her choices, but we should identify with her fears.
But I'm finding it really hard to write her. I've been writing a section of her life I never intended to write. I was going to have the only revelation of Asher's childhood come through his memories of the past, and then, it'd be up to the reader to decide how much we put stock in his memory. But now by having to write a number of years from her and Curt's point of view changes the reader's perception considerably. I find myself grappling with the questions of how to make her--is she really abusive, borderline abusive, or is Asher just so sensitive that he just perceives her in ways that makes him feel she is? I find I don't like choosing. I liked it better left to the reader to interpret how much try trust Asher's memory. But whatever I do, I have to strike a very difficult balance--Ash has to have survived something tough enough to have caused the effects in his personality that we see evidenced in him as an adult. And yet, whatever that is, I don't want it to make us hate Maizy so strongly that we no longer care about her point of view or her. Wow. How do I get myself into thee messes. Why did I have to pick such a formidable challenge for my first novel???
Another challenge is figuring how I can sustain the tension of their relationship through all the years of their marriage. Maizy can't be a one-note Nellie. I can't have the entire sucess or failure of their marriage rest on one thing about her. I realize too that Curt has to be culpable too. I show him as such a hero in the first number of years, but he also can't be staticly heroic.
I really have to show Maizy's strengths as well as Curt's flaws.
I don't know how I'm going to do it yet--this is my blog to write through the problem. I guess I have to try to reveal more of her emotions in those early days, show some of her pain so we see she's scarred. I guess I need to throw in some stuff from her childhood. Flashbacks, maybe, but short ones. Just snippets. And how she's feeling right after Jared's death. I've just not really dealt with that. I wrote that part of the novel when my idea of the novel was quite different. I need to go back, now or in draft 2, and beef it up, get into Maizy's head, intimately. I think I did a good job of letting the reader see her vulnerability and fear after Asher is conceived and she's scared for her future. I need to reread that and go back and infuse that kind of stuff into earlier parts of the novel.
Online articles I've written:
Choose Your Best Birth Options
High Fructose Corn Syrup: Thirteen Reasons to Avoid It
Green Tea Anti-Oxidants: How Do They Actually Fight Cancer?
My story doesn't have a classic villain. Maizy is not a villain. But I do have protagonists and antagonists. And really, Maizy is an antagonist to all my other 3 lead characters, to varying degrees, and at different times. My story is about a real family, albeit maybe a pretty dysfunctional one. Maizy is an antagonist so often in their lives that somehow I think I've lost how to paint her in any positive light, to make anyone like her. How did that happen, when I first found her as my sympathetic character, and Curt, in my mind, was kind of an idiot, irresponsible, someone who came and messed everything up? Well, now that I think about it, I knew I had my work cut out for me in making him likable. I didn't want the reader to hate him. I wanted to show that he could redeem himself. Well, I guess I've done such a good job at elevating him, to make him likable, that the process by which I did that had put Maizy in a less likable light. Curt has sort become the hero of the story I've written so far. I find myself with 2 challenges: how to make his son Asher rise to that level as well and how to make Maizy someone we like.
I read in a magazine article recently about not making your villains one-dimensional. There needs to be something that makes us identify with them, something that makes us see them as human and understand, on some level, his/her motivations.
SO that's my task for Maizy. I need to get into her mind more, I guess, and let us find ourselves identifying with her fear or her paranoia that leads her to do the things she does. We may not agree with her choices, but we should identify with her fears.
But I'm finding it really hard to write her. I've been writing a section of her life I never intended to write. I was going to have the only revelation of Asher's childhood come through his memories of the past, and then, it'd be up to the reader to decide how much we put stock in his memory. But now by having to write a number of years from her and Curt's point of view changes the reader's perception considerably. I find myself grappling with the questions of how to make her--is she really abusive, borderline abusive, or is Asher just so sensitive that he just perceives her in ways that makes him feel she is? I find I don't like choosing. I liked it better left to the reader to interpret how much try trust Asher's memory. But whatever I do, I have to strike a very difficult balance--Ash has to have survived something tough enough to have caused the effects in his personality that we see evidenced in him as an adult. And yet, whatever that is, I don't want it to make us hate Maizy so strongly that we no longer care about her point of view or her. Wow. How do I get myself into thee messes. Why did I have to pick such a formidable challenge for my first novel???
Another challenge is figuring how I can sustain the tension of their relationship through all the years of their marriage. Maizy can't be a one-note Nellie. I can't have the entire sucess or failure of their marriage rest on one thing about her. I realize too that Curt has to be culpable too. I show him as such a hero in the first number of years, but he also can't be staticly heroic.
I really have to show Maizy's strengths as well as Curt's flaws.
I don't know how I'm going to do it yet--this is my blog to write through the problem. I guess I have to try to reveal more of her emotions in those early days, show some of her pain so we see she's scarred. I guess I need to throw in some stuff from her childhood. Flashbacks, maybe, but short ones. Just snippets. And how she's feeling right after Jared's death. I've just not really dealt with that. I wrote that part of the novel when my idea of the novel was quite different. I need to go back, now or in draft 2, and beef it up, get into Maizy's head, intimately. I think I did a good job of letting the reader see her vulnerability and fear after Asher is conceived and she's scared for her future. I need to reread that and go back and infuse that kind of stuff into earlier parts of the novel.
Online articles I've written:
Choose Your Best Birth Options
High Fructose Corn Syrup: Thirteen Reasons to Avoid It
Green Tea Anti-Oxidants: How Do They Actually Fight Cancer?
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