Writing Fiction, part two.

So, this is essentially a continuation of the last post, but I decided to divide it into two, since a)I had to go to dance and thus stop writing and b)that post was far too long already for any sane human being to read all of this in one sitting (I know I certainly wouldn't...not that I'm entirely sane).

Well, as I hinted in the last post, I am making another attempt at novel-writing. And I have discovered the reason that it never worked out the first time. I am not a particularly gifted novelist. I come up with exciting ideas, yes, and I can sit down and write 500 words worth of dense description at the wave of a hand. But that's just the problem. My kernel sized ideas somehow never develop into full grown plots, much less any semblance of action. Stories require forward motion, not constant exercise. Their hikes, not hours on the treadmill. Because that's just what we want them to be.

You see, my same nostalgia for the notions of my younger days makes me want to write the kind of books that I would want to read. And as a youngster, I had no stomach for Tolkein much less Ivanhoe. I have acquired a taste for adult memoirs littered with multiple multi-syllabic words and almost insufferable mulling over personal sense of purpose (Hunger of Memory, Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead. Both excellent books by authors with an overdeveloped sense of self-awareness). So its maybe not surprising that this is the form most of my fiction takes; except that the pensive protagonist is often around my age, and imbued with much of my voice, worries, and tendency to spend pages and pages describing something that can be of interest only to themselves. Namely, themselves.

In short, I have become a pretentious writer. Maybe because novel-writing feels like flexing a muscle to me, as opposed to the easy-as-breathing composition of poetry or the brain exercise of essay-writing. And muscle flexing can hardle be done without a certain amount of self-consciousness. Richard Rodriguez, who authored the above-mentioned Hunger of Memory, is one of my idols as far as writing goes. Do I want to write like him? Yes. Do I want to be like him? Not in the slightest. And for obvious reasons; Rodriguez has built a career on describing his sense of isolation as an educated, English-speaking Hispanic in America, and the pain of his stolen identity. Hardly an idol. But now I am straying into far murkier waters, where the identity of the author and the authored becomes inextricably intertwined. And I don't really want to go there.

Sooo...fiction. Right. Well, I don't know. Maybe I wasn't meant to write it. But then why am a showered by a constant stream of inspiration, random ideas for stories that get my heart pumping? All of the books I loved as a child surely began with such inspiration, but then did not fall into the bog of development. Rather, the author raced ahead, still full of fire about the idea, and not taking time to look in the mirror, observe stylistic machinations, and plot the underlying meaning and hidden message behind every little sentence. That, in fact is the very reason I do not want to be an English major. Because over-analysis--even self-analysis--can be a shot in the foot for a sprinting story. It can bring down the most robust idea. In her book Writing Magic, Gail Carson Levine (one of the very writers who wrote the books which I so admired) says something like "you will write passages so beautiful you will want to tattoo them on your forehead." But in the end, you will need to rely on the sparse quick flowing details of action to carry your story. So cut the crap.

Of course, in NaNoWriMo, the point is to write as many words of possible. So for now, I'll go ahead and describe all the scenery down to the very last detail. No one reading it will pay attention anyway.