Re-vision Surprise

There seems to be a consensus among writers that one surefire way to write an interesting story is to make sure that the writer surprises himself/herself. The idea behind this is that if the writer already knows how the story goes from start to finish, that writer won’t add the same type of energy into it. It will simply be a retelling, and everyone knows that the more times a person retells the same word-for-word story, the duller it sounds. The storyteller loses interest. Everything has already been said and it just becomes a chore.

Of course, few writers know how a story should progress from start to finish, so surprise just happens. Say, like me, the writer usually knows the end and the beginning. Well, that means the middle is just a surprise waiting to happen. In the novel “The Good Thief,” Hannah Tinti had a vision of a scene in the middle of the novel. That means everything leading up to that point and everything that comes after it were a surprise to some extent. That’s how surprising yourself when you write works.

Likewise, most writers will talk about the importance of revision, but not many writers talk about the process of revision. More to the point, how they keep that sense of surprise in the writing. There are a lot of post-MFA student writers out there who get criticized for lifeless and/or boring MFA-style stories. The idea is that the MFA teaches a certain kind of writing that tends to be lifeless and boring. That may well be, but I think the larger issue is that an MFA shows you how to write and better ways and techniques of writing, not how to revise to retain that initial spark that made the writer want to write the story in the first place. This spark, inevitably, will always be that the writer has an idea for a character or a scene or a beginning, and that writer is curious to see where it all goes.

Revision lacks that curiosity. The story is more or less laid out, so when an MFA story gets criticized for being an MFA story, chances are that means it has been over-revised with no sense of surprise. Often, the aspects of my writing that surprise me are the things I fall in love with. That means, I find ways to retain them and this, I think, helps keep some of that surprise in the mix. (Others, of course, might disagree. And if so, I apologize for my MFA stories, but I did just get an MFA.)

I am not a proponent of the “Murder Your Darlings” School of Writing, as my darlings are one of the joys that keep me writing. Take, for example, my revision yesterday of one of the stories in my novel called “Sandwich Earl.” It was one of the stories more peripherally connected and I’d been struggling to make it work with the rest of the book. The entire story itself was a darling whose first person narrator just started talking to me one day and wouldn’t stop until I’d finished his story, and it did connect to the rest of the novel in a very definite, if more remote way. I was tasked to increase the level of that connection, perhaps by changing narrative points of view (one advisee suggested adding the element of “It’s a Wonderful Life” style omniscience), or perhaps by extending the duration of its narrative. I didn’t like either of these ideas. The story felt done when it ended and I just love the voice of the narrator, bright but colloquial.

I had no idea how to fix this problem. It was unplanned when I sat done to work on it and then, I got an idea. I could sandwich “Sandwich” in an omniscient third point of view. This would broaden out the perspective to fit better with the rest of the book but also retain that voice I so enjoyed crafting. Of course, the real surprise came when I started writing that third person scene, in which the reader sees the first person narrator from an outside perspective. It’s all of about five sentences, so it wasn’t a lengthy revision. It didn’t change much of anything to the rest of the story, and yet, I felt like I’d really added depth to the story with the suggested revision, like I’d made that revision work for me. Moreover, I’m fairly sure it happened because I didn’t know what would happen. That, and I allowed myself to consider outside advice about a movie made in the 1940s.

What I’m saying here for other new writers like myself, especially if you come with an MFA background, is this: Don’t plan it all out. Allow the happy accidents even when you feel like the story is “done.” Open yourself up to the possibility that there is more to say, another piece to the puzzle that you didn’t even know existed.

I’m as guilty of thinking my work was beyond reproach as much as the next writer, but listening to new ideas, trying out outside suggestions, pushing  your “finished” story just a little bit farther than you thought it could go. These are the risks that, when taken, just might make your story beyond MFA-style and become your style. Revision isn’t just about cutting pages and chopping sentences and rewriting sentences to reduce syntactical confusion. It’s about being willing to see your story from a new angle.

Suggested reads that come from unique POVS (i.e. new angles) that I’ve been reading lately: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks (not the best writing style wise but some interesting true-story psychological accounts nonetheless) and God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens (insightful view on how religion negatively affects our culture and our lives). I’m also a chapter or two into Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine, the first in the lengthy saga of the Kashpaws and the Lamartines. So far, I’m loving it. Interestingly enough, it is a book told in a combination of first and third POVs.

Preparing to Knit: the Simple Steps to Take Before You Ever Cast On

The Beloved Baby Bonnet is just about at its end. All that’s left is the blocking and the drawstring. The blocking is supposed to come first, but I’ve been putting it off because I need to have a place set up for it to dry properly, not an easy task in my apartment. The drawstring, I’m actively avoiding because I don’t quite understand what the pattern is saying in regard to its existence as an attached piece on the hat.

(Bonnet modeled by angry Red Wings Octopus Pillow Pet)

This is what I get for not pre-reading the finishing paragraph. I did not read this paragraph for two reasons.

1.      I’m not a fan of finishing.

2.     It usually has no real bearing on how the pattern itself is knit so why preread? (Answer: To make sure it’s understandable, so you don’t spend a month knitting a hat only to get stumped with the finishing.)

This brings up two key but often overlooked aspects of knitting that don’t get talked about enough: prepping and finishing. Finishing, I’ll address in the next knitting blog, so stay tuned.

Prepping

By this, I mean finding all the required materials (or appropriate substitutes), swatching, and pre-reading the pattern. These are the types of things that really help avoid your knitting biting you in the butt later. I’m not good with the swatching usually. I don’t have a washing machine or dryer at my disposal that a. works 100% of the time and b. doesn’t require inserting a quarter. This means I have never washed a swatch. Not ever. I’m also fairly cheap and don’t want to buy extra yarn unless I have to. Instead, I’ll knit a swatch, unravel it after measurement, and reknit it as the start of the project. This is terrible, terrible practice and I’m lucky I have yet to end up with a sweater than would clothe only a small boat or a mouse, depending on the direction of mathematical error. What you should do: Knit the swatch, wash the swatch, and keep swatching until you get gage. Period. Will I ever do this? All I can say is maybe one day I too will own a washing machine. (I’ll ignore that I could easily have at least hand washed my swatches, because that wouldn’t give me my needed excuse.)

Finding all the materials ahead of time and pre-reading the pattern is something I’m usually very good about, baby bonnet incident aside. I have a feeling this has more to do with my hatred of the act of casting on more than it does my dedication to preparedness. Much as I love knitting, I despise casting on and this might partially explain how I manage to avoid accumulating five hundred half-finished projects due to startitis. Lord knows there’s enough patterns I plan to knit eventually.

Gathering the materials is easy enough as long as you do it. When the pattern says to have two half-inch buttons, you should have those half inch buttons before you cast on and you should have them in one location with all the other required materials for the project at hand. If you don’t have any half-inch buttons, you should go buy some and put them in that same said location (probably a bag dedicated to the project at hand) before you start knitting. That way, you don’t get all done, get ready to finish things up, and realize you’ll have to wait a week before you have the free time to run out to the store to buy buttons. And inevitably, the store will have no half-inch buttons and you’ll have to wait another two weeks for the buttons you purchase online to arrive in the mail. This waiting will not help anyone, least of all the project, especially if you have a babyshower deadline in three days.

As for pre-reading the pattern, the importance of this cannot be overstated. Not all patterns are created equal. Not all patterns are even necessarily legible as a pattern. The only way to know you have a good one is to read it, start to finish. You get the added benefit of learning if the pattern requires learning a technique you don’t know. Even better if you know you never want to learn it, because then you know to pick another pattern before heartache has been inflicted upon you and/or your knitting. What I like to do is take the pattern, which is often written in a longer format that might be necessary to explain techniques and stitches, and rewrite it in a spiral-bound notebook. Once you know the spiel, though, you don’t need to carry six pages of techniques around, so it condenses things to a more manageable size. What’s more, it is contained in a convenient carrying case that will protect it and provide it some excess weight so it doesn’t blow off your lap on a windy day at the park. Usually, with my own form of notation, I can cull a six page pattern down to two pages. If I get tripped up, there’s no rule that says I can’t go back and look at the original pattern, but most of the time, it’s not necessary.

I followed all these steps (except for the swatching) right after I received my mother bear patterns in the mail. I purchased the knit-in-the-round and the seamless crochet versions, though I will accustom myself to the process first with the knit pattern. I gathered my yarn, a sweet ducky yellow acrylic of indeterminate origin that I inherited from my grandmother-in-law. I found the needles. I contemplated what would work best for embroidering the eyes and made sure I still had enough of it left. I double checked that I still have seventy zillion tapestry needles (most of which were also inherited). Then, I rewrote the two-page pattern onto one page of my notebook and spent some time contemplating some of the odd finishing techniques (what exactly is entailed in “pinching” ears into existence? Not much by the look of the many youtube tutorials available). As of today, I have finished ten rows of my first mother bear.  This first one I’m doing all in one color, but it will be a happy yellow so I don’t think the recipient will mind.

To finish up some old business, we finally got all our wedding pics a few weeks ago and here is an at-the-event shot of the veil:

The Magical Fruit in a Bag

This bag of dry beans has been in the cupboard from a good two years. I kept meaning to make something bean-filled using from-scratch beans, where you soak them overnight and no BPA is introduced into the system. Then, we got busy and stopped creating weekly meal plans. When you have to soak the food for eight hours before using it to make dinner, it sort of requires a plan. The beans were forgotten until my husband discovered them while reorganizing the kitchen.

The time was long past to create an uncanned bean dish. Enter this soup:

Bag of Miscellaneous Bean Soup

1 bag misc beans

3 chopped potatoes

3 chopped celery stalks

4 chopped carrots

7 cups water

5 tsp better-than bouillion (vegetable)

3 bay leaves

Onion and garlic powder to taste

Pinch cayenne pepper

1.      Soak the beans overnight in water, rinse and drain.

2.     Throw everything into a pot and let it simmer until the veggies are tender.

Add cheese if desired for a pseudo potato-cheese soup taste.

This was a simple recipe. One we should have made a long time ago, but every time I thought about making bean soup from dried beans, it was too late to soak the beans. This type of meal has to be planned ahead of time, but it’s worth the time and effort. Just good simple tastes for a tasty meal. We immediately purchased more bags of beans. Hopefully, we use them in a short time-frame that the last bag.

Novel-In-Progress Update

When I heard what I needed to do to make my book commercially viable, I admit, I felt overwhelmed. I’ve been grappling with the big job of it, and it just seemed insurmountable. There’s only one thing to do to make something outstanding huge seem manageable: turn it into a series of small jobs. Oddly enough, it’s not that different of a concept than the one used by recovering alcoholics or smokers trying to kick the habit. It’s a “one day at a time” sort of motto. You can say to yourself, “I can’t do this huge thing. It’s too huge and important and I think I’ll just go curl in a ball and weep instead.” Or you can say to yourself, “I can’t do this huge thing all at once, but I can do this series of small things that lead to the big goal.”

For a writer, it amounts to something like: I can write three pages by the end of this day. Or I can write 1000 words by the end of this day. Or I can finish this scene by the end of this day.

 It really does work, because if you do that each day, by the end of the week, you have 21 pages or 7ooo words or seven scenes. The farther you get along the small trail of manageable goals, the more manageable the insurmountable goal becomes. I think that’s where I am now. My last writing-related blog found me with a start to one of two completely new stories, four already existing stories in need of revision with no real plan for how that revision would take place, and a complete chapter reorganization needed to make the chapters seem more unified as a book.

That’s a huge job.

 It seemed too huge as I started out, so I made a list of every day between the current date and the last possible day I would be willing to wait to send the completed novel in to my agent, which in my mind is the end of October but before the mayhem of Halloween (Oct. 29). For each weekday between that first day and the beginning of September, I committed to writing one new page of material. For each weekend of the same time frame, I committed to writing a minimum of two, with a complete date of Ang. 24 and Sept. 3 for each of the two stories, during which any unwritten pages would have to be finished. It worked. I then had a date in mind for when to get the chapters in the hands of readers and when to have plans in place for chapter revisions and novel reorganization.

The results so far are positive. As of today (Sept 12), I have two new story drafts complete that have been read by a peer (and are in the hands of a second who has not had the chance to read them yet) and revision plans are in place. The novel chapters have been reorganized, with a new novel M.S. Word draft saved that reflect the shifts in position of all affected chapters. More than that, I have strict revision tasks in place for each of the existing chapters that required tweaking. If all keeps up at this pace, I may well finish my goal well before the end of October deadline. I’m not ashamed to admit that I am proud of my work ethic.

The rest of the list of novel completion mini-goals feels like a cake-walk compared to what I’ve already finished. Pretty much, it’s down to focused revision. That feels manageable to me, and when that’s done, I’ll have a book in my agent’s hands. Can’t beat that.

While working on the novel, which will be largely third person centric, which a few exceptions, I’ve had to stick with reading material written in a 3^rd POV to stay on track. I started with Revolutionary Road, mostly because I’ve been meaning to read it for quite some time. In fact, I’ve avoided watching the movie because I wanted to read the book first. Then, I allowed myself a sci-fi fantasy fix with Ursula Le Guin’s Malafrena, which seems to be an alternate history/period piece genre blender with a lot of pro-democracy political heft to it. I also am a story away from finishing Jill McCorkle’s Going Away Shoes story collection. All three shaped up to be just the ticket inspiration-wise, fabulous reads all. Go and grab yourself a copy of each and read them this minute, if you haven’t already. Support your local bookstore if you’re able.

On a side note, my apologies for letting new installments of the blog lag a little the past few weeks. Obviously, my writing efforts were otherwise occupied. Hopefully, I can get back on track now with my outside-world commitments and post with more frequency in the coming months.

...and World Peace

The baby bonnet I'm knitting progresses slowly. I've had to frog rows on different occasions because of idiotic errors for which I can blame no one but myself. I do partially blame it on the weather and a lingering chest cold I can't seem to shake. I also had the interesting experience of giving a great hayfevery sneeze one morning last week, and when I went to lift my head back to its upright position so that I might continue readying myself of work, alas, my neck protested with immense pain. Yes, I managed to severely strain the muscles in the right side of my neck with a single sneeze.

One doctor's visit and two prescriptions (for muscle relaxers and horse-tranquilizer-sized Ibuprofen) later, my neck still made it too difficult to attempt knitting. I got some writing done but looking down at lace-knitting was just beyond me and took a few days out of my knitting schedule.

Despite this setback, I finished the back of the beloved baby bonnet from the latest edition of Jane Austen Knits and have 17 rows done out of 54 on the main portion. This bonnet has a trick to it that made me feel quite clever while knitting it. The brim of the bonnet, which appears to be a picot edge, is actually the other edge of a provisional cast on, folded over and joined with the working yarn 12 rows down. This leaves the row in the middle of the cast on and 12 rows down, done in an over-other-stitch eyelet pattern, exposed at the top. The eyelets create the picot affect.

Provisional Cast On: 

Extra stitches get cast on to a piece of scrap yarn while the rest get cast on to the needle

The lace pattern is easy enough to memorize and so long as you keep a row counter handy and pay attention to your stitches, you can get away with skipping stitch marker use. I really dislike stitch markers, though I suppose this may be because I've never used the right kind. I've been using the little knitting time I've managed to acquire watching episodes of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple on Netflix. There's just something amusing about stitching up a bonnet while watching an old biddy solve crime by visiting the lys (local yarn shop for the fiber-uninitiated) in the area.

Despite the entertainment inherent in my current project, I'm developing a heavy dose of startitis I have thus far managed to hold at bay. Apparently, I am not alone in this. My favorite podcaster, Hoxton Handmade, explained the link between approaching cold weather and the need for knitters to "knit all the things" in her latest installment of Electric Sheep. I've discovered a number of pretty stellar podcasts in the last few months, the Sheep and Hoxton as well as Knit 1 Geek 2, 2 Knit Lit Chicks, and the Cogknitive Podcast. I've also listened to an episode of Craft Lit, which blends fiber discussion with audiobooks of classic literature. The particular episode I partook of reacquainted me with the first few chapters of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

Through 2 Knit Lit Chicks and Dr Gemma of the Cogknitive Podcast, I learned of the thing that has me so itching to cast on before bonnet completion: the Mother Bear Project. Mother Bear is a lovely woman who read an article about the hardships of children affected by AIDS in Africa (most of them orphans) and decided to show those kids a bit of love. To do this, she repurposed a teddy bear pattern from World War II. She started a charity that donates these knitted bears to children in need. For five dollars, you can purchase a mother bear pattern in knit or crochet, flat or in the round. The pattern also comes with a name tag on which the knitter (or crocheter) should write her name. The tag then gets attached to the finished bear, so the child who receives it will know it was made by someone who cares. It doesn't seem like a lot but there are stories of kids who risk being swept away in a flash flood rather than leave their mother bear behind. Often, the bear will become this kid's only possession. More than that, they see it as proof that they are loved by someone somewhere in the world. Heartbreaking, no?

I learned that the mother bear pattern also exists in a book called Knitting for Peace, so I checked it out of the library, just to make sure it was a pattern I wanted to undertake. Sometimes, as much as I love the outcome of a pattern, I just don't want to tackle it. This pattern looks easy to follow though, so I'm going to be sending in my five bucks (proceeds benefit the charity). I might send a ten and get the crochet pattern too. It's for a good cause. Obviously, I want to make a mother bear, like last week, but more than that, this book is full of patterns and charities that will distribute items if you knit them up for the less fortunate: lap blankets for seniors, security blankets for children suffering trauma, chemo caps for cancer patients, tiny knitted apparel for preemies. There's even a charity that collects small blankets for animal shelters. (Apparently, an animal is more likely to be adopted if it has a blanket in its cage. No one knows why.)

I too want to knit all the things. I love the idea of my hobby contributing to the comfort of the people who need it most. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm totally selfish in my startitis over here. I still have merino waiting to become an ice skating cape and several skeins of sock yarn that have yet to become socks. All in good time, I say, but first, I need to finish this baby bonnet and then make a mother bear 

Pot Pie But Tiny

Macy's had a useless kitchen appliances clearance a few months back, and on the tables of stuff were several of what looked like little pot-pie makers. My now mother-in-law, seeing my excitement, decided that I should get one for the wedding. In fact, little pot-pie makers are exactly what they were. Tiny tiny pot pie makers. One maker can make up to four pies at once, just make the dough, cut it out, and add a dollop of your favorite filling.

Well, I took that pie maker home and in the hubhub, there it sat off to the side on my kitchen floor, still in its box. That just wouldn't do, so when I finally found the time (and a temperature low enough that made cooking in the kitchen comfortable), I made up a batch of chickpea stew, sans the dumplings. The stew went straight into pyrex and got shoved into the fridge for later pie-making use.

TIny Pot Pies a la Useless Kitchen Appliance Pie Maker

For the crust, I used the family recipe, that involves combining flour, water, and Crisco, among other things, in a (washed and empty) sealed ice cream tub and shaking them into a ball. The idea behind the recipe is fairly brilliant. However, the concept does not extend so well to square-shaped containers. I know this well now, because I had no ice cream tubs handy. The only big, lidded tub we had was a rectangular prism. The binding agents in the mix cling to the corners and the whole thing just never balled. I had to open it up and mix by hand, but it never really recovered. I had to finagle that dough into shape and then doctor it when it kept cracking.

Consequently, if you want a pie maker of your very own, it recommends just buying some pre-made crust and to heck with it. I admit to feeling temptation for this method of pie crust creation.

Anyway, the pie maker comes with cutters to cut your dough to just the right size circle. Then the filling goes in and you close the maker until the pies are done. That's it. And you have pie. Each one only has about a five inch diameter but hey, easy pie is easy pie.

With the extra pie dough, I made a piggy roll. I'm not sure if this is a real thing or something my grandmother made up at some point. Either way, it's a family tradition that all dough already rolled but not baked in a pie should be turned into a piggy roll.

Piggy Roll

1. Put all the dough scraps into a new ball of dough and roll it out thin.

2. Slather the top in butter, spread sugar across the whole of it, and sprinkle cinnamon over that.

3. Roll it up into a long tube.

4. Pop it in the oven at 350 until starts to brown at the edges.

5. Cut it up and eat, but do yourself a favor and let it cool first.

It makes a simple but tasty dessert.

That Moment Where Things Come Together

Novel writing is not an easy business. In fact, for most writers, myself included, most of it isn't even a fun business. It's something to contemplate, power through, and struggle over. Every word becomes an act of second-guessing. Should it be "contemplate" or "ruminate on"? Is this character blonde or brunette? Sometimes, it takes everything you have to keep going.

I'm made it no secret that I've been having a hard time with this writing thing post MFA graduation. I felt deflated. My time to write got so condensed down that I started pretending it didn't exist at all and watching reruns of TV shows on Netflix instead. I got really into my knitting, focused on that, because I'll be darned if I was making any progress on this whole writing thing. A small voice inside my brain started suggesting that perhaps I chose the wrong calling. Maybe I was meant to be a knitwear designer or a piano bar singer or a stay-at-home mom.

I'd wager that this second-guessing is part of the process of becoming a Writer rather than just being a person who writes.

The big problem for me is that I tend to write a lot of my stuff subconsciously. I'll sit in the car staring blankly out the window and it will look much like I'm zonked and dreaming. That's when I'm writing. I'm writing in the kitchen when I make dinner. I'm writing when I clean. I'm writing when I walk down the street. I'm writing when I'm sitting in my office chair, tapping my pencil to the beat of "Semi-Charmed Life." Still, the writing I do in my head doesn't always translate well to the page at first. I have to sit on an idea for months sometimes before I get the beginning right, and I can't keep going until I have somewhere to start.

A few days ago, though, something happened. I found that place to start for one of my new story-chapters. I've been thinking about the main character, a woman older than me going through something I can't begin to fully understand. I've been writing scenes of her in my frontal lobe… or wherever the words go before I write them down, but I haven't been able to get at the core of her. Not until that day. I wrote a first sentence on that spiral-bound, lined paper and I just knew instinctively that it was the right first sentence,  that this was the sentence that would take me on to everything that comes after this first sentence.

Then I wrote a second sentence and a third. I could hear dialogue in my head. It all started coming together, and in this moment, maybe 30 seconds long, maybe less, I felt it, that joy, that exhilaration, the thing I feel that makes me sure once every month or so (if I'm lucky) that I was meant to write and write often.

What was the key to this beginning place? It's always hard to pinpoint inspiration and impossible to recreate it when you're alone with a blank page and you just need to write something. I knew bits and pieces of her, this elusive main character, but the thing that finally clicked it all into place for me was in that first sentence, and she didn't become real until she spoke to her son. This is a woman whose son calls her first. Not dad, not best friend, not girlfriend, but mom. When the crap hits the fan, he calls her. That bond, I didn't quite see it before, but that's what I'll need to write the rest of the story. That's the one thing that will take me through to the end. I also have an end point, one paragraph I scrabbled through that is giving me a direction. Now all I have to do is fill in the middle.

I haven't made extensive progress word-count wise (a couple pages as of yet), but I've been taking note. I've been reading the right things. I've been quiet. I have a beginning and I have a place to end. Lately, I've been feeling like a Writer, and it's days like these that keep me sustained through all the not-fun that I know is coming to get this story from thought to final draft.