On Writing: Have an Impact on the Reader

For a long time I listen to the ocean, a background of some chirping insect, shrill arcs of sound going out against that massive, constant grumble. That is what life is like, singing out against that gray and empty grind, not caring what it sounds like, because singing is the only thing you can do.

I can feel my shoulders relaxing as I type, the guilt of several weeks (over a month, really) of getting little done, not just because of the traveling or the distractions but because I let myself get lazy and forget that what a writer does is write. If you want to call yourself one, that’s what is necessary and while that’s a hard standard to maintain consistently sometimes in the face of a multitude of crises of the mind or body or world or family, it’s one I hold myself to, first and foremost.

A confession: I am not one of those writers who “have to” write, the ones seized with such a fervid muse that they cannot exist without words spilling out of them. I envy them, and sometimes in my heart, get irritated by a smugness that is really an interpretation imposed by my own insecurities.

But I have always defined myself as a writer, even in the days when I wasn’t writing so much and was pouring all that energy into writing for an online game or technical documentation or some combination of the two. So when I don’t do it, it’s not so much that it’s the writing building up. In fact, some days I’m digging the words out, and they’re obdurately clinging to the inside of my skull so I have to wrestle them onto the keyboard. Even now, I want them to flow and they’re halting, the flow coming in fits and spurts while all the time the ocean softly roars, as though it can’t help itself at times, perhaps getting just a little too excited, a little too enthusiastic in its mutterings.

Here’s the thing. When I’m not writing consistently, when I’m not hitting solid word count on at least most of the days of the week, I feel unmoored, adrift, unsure of my center. What good is a writer who isn’t writing?

There’s also an awareness of time creeping up on me. Often I wish I’d done more with those early years “” though who would have known in all that young adult thrashing about? While I don’t want to let guilt consume me, it’s not a bad goad. I believe it was John McPhee that said any motive for writing is valid, even spite and malice.

And it’s a goal that I know is doable, to hit two thousand words “” and more when I’m being motivated, which often coincides with felicities of mind or body. I don’t worry about whether they’re bad or good, all that matters is that they’re words that actually make it from my mind to the page. Right now I’m adding these words into the count, even though I don’t usually count nonfiction, because right now the focus is warming up, priming the pump, getting myself back into that productive groove.

It’s the days when I get no word count, not even a page written in a notebook, that really bug me, so when the words are flowing, there’s a point where all is well, when I can feel myself assembling words to express what I want to say and they’re falling into place quickly, one at a time but in a constant patter, like raindrops falling on the keyboard.

So tonight is swell and good. We’re here for a month, then probably onward to another country to try a few weeks there. I can get into a routine that feels productive and which includes some of the things that help ensure my mood is good and I’m undistracted by feeling unwell, such as good solid walking bouts and not eating junk food and getting enough sleep.

So what will I work on this month?

First and foremost is finishing up the YA novel I’ve been working on, along with several stories, two for anthologies and a couple for the Patreon campaign. While the stories will be fun and I do want to get them finished, the novel is what I want to be spending most of my time doing. I’ll be posting snippets and word counts as I go, keeping myself accountable. Because that’s another thing for a writer — you have to hold yourself accountable, because there’s nothing out there, really, to do it for you.

Good writing to you all. I hope you’ll get some words today as well.

Once you’ve mastered the basics of getting words on a page and moving characters around through situations, there’s some things that (in my experience) the majority of writers need to focus on. Examples are narrative grammar, paragraphing strategies, trimming excess from sentences, and getting inside a character’s head. Here, I’m going to discuss the last of those.

A lot of this is taken from correspondence with my student Hasnain. He’d asked about story structures, particularly Freitag’s Triangle, and we’d discussed where the triangle occurs in Junot Diaz’s story, Fiesta 1980. In looking at his most recent story, I’d said I thought he needed to get inside his main character’s head more.

Hasnain asked: You mentioned today that going into the narrator’s head is a good thing since it helps the reader seat more firmly with the narrator. However, here’s where I am a bit confused. I read somewhere that what people think and feel should be shown in a sensory way through their actions and interactions with others. If I go into the narrator’s head, wouldn’t I be telling? In my story, this would be if the narrator thinks about how he wants to put Sal’s love to the test.

My reply:

Let’s go back to Fiesta. Here’s some places where I think we’re particularly inside the narrator’s head and seeing his thoughts.

• We were all dressed by then, which was a smart move on our part. If Papi had walked in and caught us lounging around in our underwear, he would have kicked our asses something serious.
• Rafa gave me the look and I gave it back to him; we both knew Papi had been with that Puerto Rican woman he was seeing and wanted to wash off the evidence quick.
• Not that me or Rafa loved baseball; we just liked playing with the local kids, thrashing them at anything they were doing. By the sounds of the shouting, we both knew the game was close, either of us could have made a difference.
• But even that little bit of recognition made me feel better.
• This was how all our trips began, the words that followed me every time I left the house.

Here’s a few passages where I’ve used that technique (note that it’s also an unreliable narrator – being inside the head of an unreliable narrator is a tricky strategy but awesome when effective):

• Nude, I revel in my flesh, dancing in the hallway to feel the body’s sway and bend. Curved shadows slide like knives over the crossworded tiles on the floor, perfect black and white squares. If there were a mirror I could see myself.
• I don’t know where he lives in my body. Surely what feels like him winding, wormlike, many-footed and long-antennaed through the hallways of my lungs, the chambers of my heart, the slick sluiceway of my intestines “” surely the sensation is him using his telekinetic palps to engage my nervous system. I think he must be curled, encysted, an ovoid somewhere between my shoulder blades, a lump below my left rib, a third ovary glimmering deep in my belly.
• I walk in the park. Where did all these robots come from? What do they want? They look like the people that built them, and they walk along the sidewalk, scuffed and marred by their heavy footsteps. They pretend. That’s the only thing that saves me, the only thing that lets me walk among them pretending to be something that is pretending to be me.

Present tense works very well for this, I’ve found. Here, as another example, is an extended passage from the novel I’m grappling with:

You can even go so far as to mark thoughts as thoughts, usually by italicizing them.

Here’s a couple of passages from Jeff VanderMeer’s Finch, where we hear Finch’s thoughts:

• Am I dead? he thought sometimes, walking down that green carpet he remembered from a different city, a different time. Am I a ghost?
• Six in the afternoon. Time to leave. He packed Heretic’s list in a satchel and holstered his miserable gun. Watched Blakely and Gustat put on spore gas masks “just in case.” Just in case of what? Just in case there’s one fungus in the whole damn city you haven’t been exposed to yet?

Stephen King is a master of this. Here’s a lovely, complicated bit of it in Salem’s Lot. It’s a three part structure: A) a description of what he’s thinking about, followed by b) bits of the Catholic prayer for the dead repeating itself in his head and then c) a reference to the words of a profane ritual conducted earlier in the book. They’re designated with tokens of punctuation, such as italics and parentheses. 123, 123, 123, and so on, deliberate as any dance step:

The Catholic prayer for the dead began to run through his mind, the way things like that will for no good reason. He had heard Callahan saying it while he was eating his dinner down by the brook. That, and the father’s helpless screaming.
Let us pray for our brother to our Lord Jesus Christ, who said…
(O my father, favor me now.)
He paused and looked blankly down into the grave. It was deep, very deep. The shadows of coming night had already pooled into it, like something viscid and alive. It was still deep. He would never be able to fill it by dark. Never.
I am the resurrection and the life. The man who believes in me will live even though he die…
(Lord of flies, favor me now.)
Yes, the eyes were open. That’s why he felt watched. Carl hadn’t used enough gum on them and they had flown up just like window shades and the Glick kid was staring at him. Something ought to be done about it.
…and every living person who puts his faith in me will never suffer eternal death…
(Now I bring you spoiled meat and reeking flesh.)

What do you think? How many of these devices have you used?

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