Anachronisms: Sorting out technology in fiction

As I close in on publication of my first novel, I sent it to a trusted friend for a final proofreading. She found a few things but even more importantly, she brought up the issue of technology and a time-setting for the book.  I wrote this book in 2008-2009 about three people in their late 30s/early 40s. It was set in 2006 and includes the technology I myself was using then, not necessarily the technology others might be using.

In the book, I have the following:

• Characters using email
• Characters using answering machines
• Characters using cell phones and land lines
• Characters passing along information on a slip of paper (a phone number) [instead of telling someone to look it up on the web]
• Characters looking up information on the web
• Characters leaving each other notes on a door or a car
• Characters writing love letters to each other through snail mail
• No characters are texting
• An artist sending images on a CD to a gallery
• Same artist has a web site
• Main character has a CD collection

Jan argued that I need to rethink all of these things or set the time back 8-10 years. It poses an interesting dilemma. Which of these are anachronisms? Which of these are characters' idiosyncracies? (I know both young and older people who collect vinyl records). So I will go in and look at all these places.

Something to consider as we write. 

Winding up your effort

Last weekend I took a vacation with my family over to Eastern Oregon and while they watched football in the afternoons, I did a final edit on my first novel. I wrote this book in 2008-2009 and haven't really looked at it since. I pitched it to some agents at a conference in 2010 with no luck, and the agent who signed me up for my second novel last summer wasn't really interested in this first book either. So I set it aside. But now I've decided to self-publish it. I'd like to get it out into the world. What's more, I'd like to have it complete instead of on hold.

It was interesting to read it again. It is so familiar to me; I created these characters and their stories after all. And yet I'd forgotten some things. I also could very plainly see how much better a writer I've become in the last three years and for several moments I was tempted to do some major revisions. But the truth is, this story doesn't interest me all that much now. I'm glad I wrote it. I think it's a very good romance. And an unusual one as it's told from the man's point of view. But I am done with it and have already moved on. Sort of like running into an old boyfriend. You still have affection for him but you don't want to spend much time with him.

So for better or worse, I'm done with it. The manuscript has now moved on to a final proofreader. I've asked her to note anything egregious but other than that I'm complete.

An experience of creative grace

This past Tuesday, I went to my painting studio in the morning. I'd been fighting a cold and didn't have much energy but I had left a painting unfinished on Sunday morning and I didn't want to lose the ideas that I had for it. The building was quiet--most of the other artists who use this cooperative warren of studio spaces come later in the day. I put on my headphones and went happily to work finishing a big floral piece.

But this only took about 40 minutes and I felt at loose ends. I didn't want to start another big piece because I didn't have the energy for it and yet I didn't want to leave yet. My eye landed on some photos I'd taken off the web, and I was in such a who-cares-what-happens place that I got out some pencils and chalks and old paper and sat down to see what would happen.

The photos are of split-rail fences and came off the website of two guys who build such fences in North Carolina. Over the last couple of years, I've had several photos of split-rail fences, some of the photos quite artistic, but none of them were what I had in mind and I couldn't seem to assemble those images into the picture that I have wanted.

In 2009, I finished my first novel. In the opening chapter, the main character, Jake, is watching his friend Paul and a group of students weave yards of colored silk into a split-rail fence in rural Virginia. I wanted some version of that fence, that meadow, those woods on my cover and I wanted to create that myself. I had found a couple of possibilities and done maybe a dozen small drawings but nothing worked.

And as I sat there on Tuesday, the first version I drew was awful. That isn't modesty talking. It was awful. But I didn't care and the composition had something going for it, so I turned the paper over and changed to some different chalks and it began to work in an amazing and effortless way. I suddenly "knew" how to make the fence look like the fence. I don't know where the knowing came from. It just seemed to drop into my body.

I also knew I needed to do it again and on black paper this time. I had only a black backing for a pad of already used paper and I tore that off and sat down and in about 10 minutes, I had the cover art for my book. It was a breath-taking experience of creative grace.

Reducing anxiety in your creative life

Listening to a podcast by Eric Maisel this morning, I was struck by a statement he made that the act of choosing almost always provokes anxiety. His example was choosing a bagel over oatmeal and all of our mental ideas about which is healthier, more fattening, etc. I resonated both with the example and the idea of choosing as anxiety-provoker and I thought about how much anxiety there is around choosing to write or do other creative endeavors.

When we think about sitting down to write, to choose to do that, anxiety gets provoked in many of us. Is this the best use of my time? Is it a frivolous use of my time? What if I don't produce anything good? What if I don't have any ideas? Something potentially quite pleasurable becomes a source of tremendous discomfort.

This anxiety gets eliminated if you write every day. If you have a commitment to sit down and write something, there is no choosing, hence no anxiety. There may still be judgement about what you write, but there isn't any anxiety about doing it. You just do it.

So consider whether a solid commitment and practice of writing or other creative endeavor might reduce anxiety for you.

books that stay with you

For the last week, I've been spending my early morning writing time on a new project while my novel chills so I can get some distance from it before I start a rewrite/edit. I've had an idea in my mind for a good while on a couple of nonfiction books: one on sugar addiction and one on creativity. But I've not had a good idea for how to begin.

I was sitting at my computer last Sunday, just thinking about this, and I remembered a book I read sometime in my early 20s. It was a book of ruminations by John Fowles. I had been a Fowles fan for some time, reading The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Collection, Daniel Martin, and bought this smaller volume because I so liked his style. It was called The Aristos, and it was a series of short entries, thoughts, ideas, about the meaning of life. I don't remember any particular ideas although I remember resonating with many of the entries. What came back to me last week was this format.

Rather than having to have well-thought-out essays or an outline, I could just start with some ideas, a couple of paragraphs in length and then move on. It seemed a very appropriate and intriguing way to get my thoughts moving. And so all this past week, I've been doing that. I'm not writing quickly, one or two entries a day, but I'm started. And that's the main thing. My thanks to John Fowles.

Letting your manuscript chill!

Today or tomorrow I will draft the last scene of the novel I am currently working on. I wrote for almost two hours this morning, then stopped to go to the gym. I could take the time to finish it today or I could wait until my early morning writing tomorrow to do it. I will probably do the latter. There is something wonderfully sacred about writing first thing in the morning and since much of this novel has been written in that sacred time, it seems fitting to draft those last couple of pages then.

Once that scene is completed and I've created a few bits of transition that I know need doing, I will put the manuscript away for at least a couple of weeks and let it chill--maybe until the end of the month. There are times in the process where I need to let things cook: scenes that are problematic, characters I don't know how to develop, too many possibilities for the next part of the plot. I spend time thinking about them, writing about them, doodling about them. I walk and consider, I shower and consider. I let them cook.

But when the draft is complete, I need cool distance, I need space between me and the narrative arc, me and the details of the characters. I need to not think about it for a while so that I can come back with fresh eyes and find what needs to be added and what needs to be pared away. So in my writing refrigerator, I'm making room for this new dish to chill for a while.

selling your book, not your story

I had a great time Friday and Saturday at the Willamette Writers Conference where I volunteered in the free services area. I was part of the Practice-Your-Pitch team and I also did Manuscript ER. People would come in and sit down and we'd spend 15-20 minutes going over the pitch they were going to give to an agent in hopes that the agent would like it and represent them.

I pitched the last two years in a row, the first year unsuccessfully, the second year I got my agent. So I was able to share my experience in a very direct way. Most of the pitches that came to me were a recitation of the story, a synopsis in effect. They often included a lot of extraneous details, a lot of back story, a lot of history. These writers were in essence trying to sell their story. But agents are wanting to represent books that will sell and sell big and the story is only a part of that.

Here's an example. Helen came with a story of the second wave of Oregon pioneers and she launched into a recitation of the story and why the characters moved west and what their problems were. After we talked a bit about what made her book special, she came up with some ideas that would improve her pitch: The book is about commuter marriages in the 1890s (men who work in the city and their wives who are alone on the farm, a day's train ride away); it's about women who have no choices (a child every year for 9 years, the closest female to help in an emergency a half-mile walk away). The husband has an affair with a woman in town. The book has two points of view, two sympathetic characters, the husband and the wife.

Agents are wanting to know what's new about your book, what's distinctive, what's fresh, what's original. I sent Helen off to rewrite her pitch to include some of these intrigues and innovations. I hope she lets me know what happens!