Writing For Revenge

My teacher calls it bravery, I call it stupidity. There comes a time in writing where it’s very hard to create something from nothing. Often in art, whether it’s from someone very famous, or a first timer, friends of authors/artists will see some traits of themselves in characters or having a situation they recognise as something very similar to their reality. Whether they take this lightly or not I realized today in Non-Fiction class that there is a very fine line to creativeness in writing when it comes to defamation of a character.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is why can’t authors just be particularly more careful with people’s feelings in both fiction and non-fiction? Sometimes all it takes is a change of hair style, change of what they do for a living, even background information that is just completely unnecessary to the piece. Perhaps, as my teacher pointed out, it stems from authors writing for revenge, a type of stab at people they’ve hated in the past, and getting it off their chest in writing, the only way they can truly express themselves. But what about the people you care for that you write about? Sometimes I find it hard to insert the truth in there, so afraid that it hurts too much. Writers might find it so difficult, that its often hard not too, if you feel that passionate about the piece. But in some examples I’ve seen in writing, there has got to be a time when enough is really enough.

I’ve had similar problems in my writing in both my fiction pieces and my non fiction pieces. There are three examples off the top of my head and how I have dealt with them so far:

The first is from last year when I wrote a joint piece on how my Dad felt in an uncomfortable situation and linked that to how I felt when I was bullied in year 11. If I ever published these two pieces, SOMEONE would have recognised who they were, and not because I said it was my Dad, but because of the way I portrayed him, the way I explained his looks, demeanour and even some of the things he is likely to say in that situation. Likewise with the girls who bullied my group. If one of them were to read it, although I took a stab at their looks, personality and the way they held themselves as people there is no doubt that they would recognise themselves purely because of the quotations and the fact that they were in the situation themselves. I guess this was my form of writing for revenge, but I don’t think it would have helped if I ended up publishing it. This was for my assignment and only seen by two other students and my teacher (so, no emotional connection to me or the people mentioned) and the reason why I didn’t publish it was not because I wasn’t brave, but because I was smart. I knew it would get back to those girls if I ever did publish it, and because I painted them in a cruel light, from it being in my perspective, I would have gotten into trouble for writing what I perceived was truth. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to, but I’m no Helen Garner, I can’t reveal my life and other peoples in such a way to offend, no matter what they did to me in the first place.

The second case is writing my fiction novel. Now, to fully explain myself, the Mother character is everything opposite in what a Mother should be. She’s unloving, cruel, cynical etc. However, I do know that it’s very hard to create something from nothing. So from all the times I’ve been upset with my own Mum, even when the situation was completely different, I was able to describe how the Mother feels in the story and how her daughter feels. The way she would stand and hold herself, the accusing facial expressions and finally the body language that dismisses the daughter in such a way that the Mother was framed as a completely difficult person to live with.
To stress even more, my Mum is not like this at all. She is my female hero and I love her. But as I read back on some of the paragraphs involving the Mother I couldn’t help but wonder, would people see traits of my Mums behaviour in the character? Or worse, would my Mum see it herself? When the only example of a Mother figure is my own biological Mother, how can I explain this woman if I only have a single view of one?

The third example is another Non-Fiction piece that I wrote this year which I am trying to get published. The person I am writing about is from Geelong and I’m capturing how she feels at her age living there and I compare that to how she lives in Melbourne. In no way did I expect her to view herself as ‘whiny’ and ‘immature’. Of course, it was never my intention to frame her in that light at all and in fact I was complimenting her, but I did find it difficult to let this thought go. Although everyone else who read and critiqued it didn’t think she was framed in that way, the fact that SOMEONE interpreted the wrong meaning made me want to change the whole thing; because someone is enough, and worse than no one. She still very much wants me to publish it, admits she was just being protective of herself, and was only questioning whether people could see it that way and not necessarily what she thinks, but it makes you wonder, how careful you have to be with words. One word can skew the meaning in a completely different light even when you don’t intentionally make it so.

It is definitely a challenge to think about when writing.

The article that raised this issue and made me really think about what I was putting into my writing is called Thinly Disguised by Caroline Baum from The Age Newspaper. Full article here:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/19/1058035185380.html

Thoughtfully yours,

Jinx xx

So Good, You'll Want to Vomit!

Last Thursday, was not like any other inspiring day at uni with my fiction teacher. That day was the THREE HOUR NOVELLA CHALLENGE! Now, if you didn’t read my last blog where I mentioned the before picture to how I was feeling, the link is here (http://book-unfinished.blogspot.com/2010/05/dont-kill-your-mice.html)

So now I write for you the reflection of the experience before, during and after the contest.

This story starts off the Wednesday night when I realized after being perfectly comfortable writing 4000-5000 words in three hours on my novel in the other characters point of view that as I started doing character profiles, I thought to myself
“Hang on, this character can’t do this! They just can’t be a main it’s not right!” I thought it would be pointless to write for three hours on something I didn’t think was achievable, nor worth my time. And plus, considering we couldn’t take time in the three hours to really think about the writing, I figured I should just start from scratch.

Cue the next day.

So I arrived at uni a little annoyed at myself for leaving it go this late and so I really worked hard in the allocated 10 minutes to really plan everything out, instead of wondering how I’m ever going to get through it with such a sugar high (seriously, large amount of candy!)

So, I wrote…

Sometimes, when I’m under stress and I have to write something, my mind goes into a sort of creative spasm. I like my brain for this and I guess it just goes to show that someday I could be a real writer because as I sat down and stared at my laptop I had two lovely words pop into my head

Setting
Country

And bam! That’s all it took. I finally realized I start off with setting. So long as I have the general setting I am able to write a story. It was kind of a nice feeling to find my voice, especially when I didn’t expect it.

When I finally got my setting, I started to question some things to help me gain understanding of the story I was slowly conjuring. What do you see when you think of the country? What does it smell like? How do you feel? And this is when I got words like dry grass, old fashioned small houses surrounded by nothing, cows mooing, fire and smoke.

And here emerged a character. Here are my notes written in the 10 minutes:
1. Loves: the country
2. Her school
3. Her friends. 3
4. Her mums fresh pavlova for breakfast
5. Her blue dress with the brown belt she wore to the summer dance by the lake
6. The fire her dad makes every night, even in summer so they can cook marshmallows. Oozing white and pink balls or delicious balls of joy
7. Sunday at mass
8. Painting
9. Writing
10. The Nothing

Mind you, it’s not the most grammatically correct but isn’t that the point of note taking? I find it hilarious to read back and think
“What was I thinking, delicious balls of joy? YUCK!” But once I got down what the character loved it was enough to really start to think about conflict. Something that disrupts her in the usual routine she seems to have:

1. Hates the river that circles around her house
2. The swinging rope by the river
3. Boys, especially her dead brother
4. Trees that she cant climb
5. Snakes

Also, kind of liked it when I became a bit brutal in the last few minutes of getting this down
“Hates boys…especially her dead brother…” hmmm that was random!

Cue the writing process!

It was draining, and my back ached. I kept finding excuses for taking my hands off the keyboard by grabbing another lolly even though I wasn’t even hungry. I hated my character at the start because her language was so simple and she seemed really stupid. I saw a lot of mistakes and it took all my might not to go back and edit. I crawled and bashed at the keyboard words I didn’t even know made sense in the sentence. I imagined the little man inside my head going nuts and throwing all the English knowledge I had in my brain into the giant recycle bin. I forgot how to spell the at one point, and wrote ushered instead of meaning to dismiss the person. My brain became mushy I felt I could make a dint in my head if I poked it. And suddenly I felt so tired! Like I’d run a million miles.

And then I wrote the last few words down and finished my piece, relieved I did it. It’s not perfect, and it sure doesn’t read well, but the story is there and with a big structural edit, I should be able to come out at the end with some gold! Because I do very much like the story; it’s deliciously mysterious!

Here is one piece of the gold so far which is the opening line to my piece:

The river runs all around the house, as if it’s taunting me and encircling me into the nothing…

I have to say I am quite happy with the outcome of the first line in the first draft. I thought that was a pretty good beginning, yes?

I am so proud I completed the task I set for myself which was basically to finish it. I didn’t even realize how much I wrote until I clicked the recount on word and found myself staring at a whopping 4,800. That is massive to me at this stage in my writing so I was very happy; and even happier when I WON THE NOVELLA CHALLENGE!

This was my prize:

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster and three fun size Mars Bars (only fun when you get three!) Not bad, eh? I can’t wait to sink my teeth into this book. My teacher thought it was a good prize because it’s one of her favourites so she thought it would be nice to pass it on to someone else. I also can’t wait to read it because as she passed it to me her exact words were
“It was so good I wanted to vomit!”


Proudly yours,

Jinx xx

Don't Kill Your Mice!

Someone once told me, that writing classes are a waste of time. If you really need to learn how to write, then you can’t be a good writer. To write, you must be good at it and work until its right, because there is no set way you can teach this.

To an extent, I believed in a small part of that opinion for a long time. I used to take it on as truth, that’s the way it was and writing classes were like a ‘hope’ course. Someone who really wants to write, but just can’t do it. I wrote stories about these people for years until I realized how depressing and utterly untrue that statement really is.

Being in a writing course is not being told how to write, nor is it to be told what to do with your writing. For me, the best advice they have given me is to find your voice. What makes you tick, and we shall help you along the way to really polish that voice into something worth reading. That is not to say that people who haven’t done a writing course cannot write as well. But maybe because we have these courses, for a lot people, such as myself, they need the hope, they need the instruction to find themselves, because humans are so fragile and at times we just can’t walk it alone.

My fiction teacher today was giving us good writing advice from all these different writers in order to help us be inspired to complete the challenge she set for us in two weeks. But, more on that later…

There were loads of things to write on, and every writer seemed to have their own way of creating a story. Which I think was really nice to hear. But the point she was really trying to make, is what kinds of authors resonate with you. What words and ways of writing do you relate to?

These authors resonated with me:

EM Forster – “’The King died, and then the Queen died’ is the story. ‘The King died, and then the Queen died, of grief’ is the plot.”

Eva Sallis – “Its very hard to imitate someone elses style well…I have this theory that everyone has a layer of crap that they have to write through before they get to the good stuff…just write, just let it rip…the only way you’ll ever find your voice.”

Anne Michaels – write with poetry of language to explore themes

Robin Hemley – “I’ve found I can be intrigued with characters without necessarily liking them…but I must feel sympathy for the character…” and “don’t kill your mice…in plainer language you might say they torture these poor mice…if I had allowed the mice to die…that would have become the story…overwhelmed the character and certainly any care the reader might have for them…I wanted to be liked…’I’m glad the mice didn’t die. If they had you would have lost me as a reader. Never kill the mice.”

Anne Lamott – ABDCE (Action, Background, Development, Climax, Ending)

Allegra Goodman – “there is nothing better than listening to your characters regale you…they are all fictional characters, yet in writing they are real” let them tell the story. Be amused by them, let them come alive.

These people intrigued me because they made me think about the story I was writing and all the times I’ve had trouble with some parts that just don’t feel like they’re working, seemed so small and insignificant when I really thought about what the experts believed. Especially Robin Hemley, who told me not to kill my mice! I realized after reading his article Sympathy for the Devil: What to Do About Difficult Characters I was going to kill my mice in my own story, which is why it was failing. I had to leave my mice in the story…what the mice are…well that’s my little secret!
It really inspires you to write when you realize that authors who have their works published have sat in your exact position wondering the same thing. I hope later in my career when I’m middle aged and have written a few stories/articles that I can write my own writing story. That someone will want to know how I got through the bad days, the writers block and pick up a few pieces to put towards their puzzle.

Something to look forward to

On another note, the challenge my fiction teacher set us. Are you ready?

THE THREE HOUR NOVELLA CONTEST!

The mission? To write a 4000-5000 word narrative in 3 hours!

Wish me luck; I am craving some good chain-me-to-the-chair-writing! I am, truly! I’ve never done anything like it before!

I just need to locate my delicious bowl mug. This is going to take a large cup of tea…

Promising not to kill her mice, and always yours,

Jinx xx