Happy Dr. Suess Day!
Author: shawnproctor
Shawn Proctor is a fiction writer living in the greater Philadelphia area. He graduated from the MFA Program at Rosemont College and the Professional Writing Program at Kutztown University.
His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in the Our Haunted World Anthology, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Storyglossia, Mississippi Crow, The Circle, The StoryTeller, and BlazeInk, and was a finalist in The Delaware Beach Life Writing Contest.
He is currently working on his first novel.
His journalism has appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Main Line Today, Ale Street News, and Victory Brewing Company's Web site, and he published a roleplaying module with Chaosium, Inc.
A Tale of Two Interviews
The thing I love about writing music and book reviews is the chance to learn more about the people who I admire. And sometimes that means I get a chance to talk with them, too.
When comedian/nerd Chris Hardwick released The Nerdist Way, his funny mash-up of a life hacking self help book with a biography, I was on board. I was more than on board. I was in the engine throwing coal into the tinderbox.
Well, after reviewing the book, I was able talk with Chris on the phone. Mostly it was fun to geek out with him. The two resulting interviews will appear on Nerd Caliber and Geekadelphia, but I wanted to share a few outtakes that didn’t get into those stories:
Me: How are you doing today?
Chris Hardwick: Good, good. Just sandwiching in a bunch of …I have something immediately after this call. My days now are just conference call, conference call, conference call, meeting, conference call, meeting, podcast, show.
Me: Looks like from the productivity part of your book that you have a way of managing it somehow.
CH: Um, I guess, yeah. It does all seem to be fitting together. I haven’t killed myself yet.
Me: It’s a Wednesday, right?
CH: (Laughs)
Me: In keeping with your Nerdist podcast tradition, I’m writing up this part of our talk.
CH: Perfect.
The second gets his thoughts on the ruthless slog known as the American commute:
Me: Now some quemments: Your book didn’t talk about traffic, but I’ve seen in the last ten years that a lot of rationale, sensible, kind people turn reckless on the road. What’s the deal? And how can we get to a place when commuting isn’t a kill or be killed proposition?
CH: Teleportation. We have to figure out how to disassemble our molecules and reassemble ourselves at another location instantaneously. Then traffic will no longer be an issue. Until then it’s only going to get worse! I mean the numbers of people are not going down.
Me: But could they just be kinder to other people?
CH: Well, listen, I see driving as a time to get emails and texts done…Oh…I’m kidding. It’s funny because it’s so hard to make jokes in print.
Me: Because you can’t get nuance.
CH: People take what you say at face value.” Wow, how would he say it’s OK to text and email while he’s driving?” “No, it was a joke.” “I don’t know, it’s written there. Looks serious.”
I think people are just more tense. Our minds were really ready for the amount of data that gets thrown at them. The beginning of MTV was the beginning of the short attention span generation. That was 30 years ago. Humanity has had no time to evolve so all of the sudden we went from four channels to hundreds of channels with quick cuts and ads and internet and smart phone everywhere. It’s a lot to deal with. Everyone is overloaded and you take that out on people in traffic. Traffic is like analog message boards. You’re anonymous in traffic, right? You can yell at people. You’ll never see them again. In L.A., sometimes people will shoot you, but other than that, it is pretty safe.
Loving Writing as a Process
Check out my new guest post, which continues my “Behind the Scenes” writing series.
Link of the Week: Foyles Announces Murakami Contest Winner
If you ever want to know what it feels like to be a writer who loses a contest then reads the winning entry…well, I will tell you that it’s a lot of smiling that feels like swallowing bitterness. Anyway, this contest was a cool idea: write a story in the style of Haruki Murakami using a line from his new bookstop novel 1Q84.
The winning entry, which comes from Kavita Jindal, is an excellent story with the kind of restrained yet entrancing voice that Murakami does so well. Losing sucks. But it’s not so bad when you get to read such a wonderful story as a result.
Writers of all levels would do well to see how the story handles telling and showing, using one to set up the other. It also has a subtle strangeness common to great micro fiction.
Well written is well done.
Chris Hardwick Makes My iPod Awesome Possum
I have an interview with Chris Hardwick (The Nerdist podcast and television show) today. Check out my review of his book The Nerdist Way on Culturemob.
Though his podcast features interviews with comedians for the most part there are so many amazing moments sprinkled throughout the shows. Chris and his fellow comedy nerds Matt Mira and Jonah Ray are something that is increasingly rare: funny and earnest.
It’s easier to be detached or winking at the audience. He risks simply saying something honest and caring. The Nerdist — It’s a great thing to jam in your ear holes in the morning.
Guest Blog: Writing What You DON’T Know
If you have a minute, check out my “Behind the Scenes” post on “Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire” about writing beyond what you know. And unless you have been moonlighting as The Most Interesting Man in the World, it’s a problem that will hit sooner rather than the typical way this cliche ends.
Special thanks to YA author Mandy McGinnis for the opportunity!
Unstuck Uses Twitter as a Short Story Medium
Micro fiction has always pushed to tell the biggest stories in least space. 1500 words became 150 words became 25 words. Then six.
When the stories work, they are amazing. For examples, see Amy Hempel, one of the best from the so-called fictional minimalists.Other times, it becomes a code for which the reader needs a cypher.
Unstuck Annual, an independent literary journal, has entered its own experiment in micro fiction, using Twitter as the medium. Twelve Tweets telling one story. For the next five Mondays, the remainder of its “Lovemarks” contest finalists will have their entries tweeted out.
The first, “BIG BRIGHT DREAMS” by Kira Atwood-Youngstrom, came out this morning. Look for the rest. Let me know what you think — below or on Twitter. And remember to vote for your favorite.
Behind the Scenes: Creating Your Palette
Painters would never dream of putting brush to canvas without first mixing their paint, yet writers often begin a draft of a scene with little planning. If they are anything like me, writing is a creative rush, a thrilling ride into the unknown. It’s a little like hang gliding without scouting a landing spot first.
Plenty of times spontaneous writing works. You run down after an idea or fleeting image
and discover the world deepens and plot expands like magic. Of course for every story like Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” there are so many false starts, sputtering middles, and weak endings.
Especially in a novel, where readers expect scenes tie into others and foreshadowing pays off, the chance of failure increases exponentially. Writers who hope to be productive can’t waste fifty pages on a series of failed chapters. You don’t have to get it exactly right the first time, but there is a method to ensure that first draft hits close to the mark.
Define the scene’s purpose: What is the goal of the scene? Who needs to be present, and are there too many or too few people in the scene? (Hint: scenes with only one character present need to have compelling action.) What needs to happen? How does it move the story forward to expand the story’s world?
Location: Where will the scene take place? Is that the best, most dramatic place? I almost never use the first setting that comes to mind. A great location creates mood, conveys emotion, and can give your characters life. It’s critical so come up with something better than what you thought of immediately.
Envision the scene: Create a list of details, including how important items in the scene look, taste, feel, sound, and smell. Whenever the scene feels thin, like it needs more sensory information, refer to this list and use the best, most relevant one.
Point-of-view: Even better, how does each character feel about the place and the details? One may love the place and find the sights and smells enjoyable. Maybe the other doesn’t.
Example: In my novel The Sugarmaker’s Son and short story “Heartwood” several major scenes take place in the family’s sugarhouse, where they boil maple sap to make syrup. Often the scenes were shifted outside of the building or set to different activities in the sugarhouse to create variation. The protagonist Teddy Robinson brings enthusiasm in the earlier scenes, sullen anger in the middle ones, and desperation just before the climax. As his attitude changes, his feelings about the setting changes as well. To begin with a clear idea of what needs to happen and who needs to be present gives that palette of sensory details thousands of variations I could use. Any detail Teddy noticed filtered through his emotion, so does the same detail when experienced by his brother or friends.
Doesn’t this take all of the spontaneity out of writing? Not in my experience. It gives the creative mind endless room to explore … and discover.
My Story to Appear in Philly Fiction Anthology
My short story “Heartwood” will be published in the Philly Fiction anthology in a few weeks. It’s excerpted from my unpublished novel The Sugarmaker’s Son, which is currently on the market.That also means I will be out and about reading in the local area, and you should be out and about meeting up with me.
If you live in or around Philly, please check back here for information about upcoming reading dates. I promise to take a few minutes to chat with anyone who mentions that they follow the blog. Also, I’ll sign any publication (new or old) that features one of my stories.
Writers stay tuned: I’m posting about creating scenes, using painters as inspiration. It’s a newer technique I stumbled upon while finishing my first novel and beginning my second.
Oh, and read my 2012 writing resolutions here.
Where am I Going, Where Have I Been? (Updates and Novel Ideas)
Sorry, been away for too long. Let me explain. No, there’s too much. Let me sum up.
My first novel The Sugarmaker’s Son, in progress for five years, is currently on the market with agents. So far the query letter and partials have been getting reasonably positive responses. Unfortunately, I can’t say anything more at this point. Suffice to say, if a contract is signed or check cut, I’ll announce it here first.
Want a preview of the novel? “Heartwood,” a short story excerpted from the novel will appear in WragInk’s Philly Anthology along with several emerging area writers. Be sure to pick up a copy in January.
While I’m waiting on word about the first I’ve begun working on my second novel. This will be very different than my first book, but not so much a reader wouldn’t make the leap. Anyway, no sequel here. I can say even less about this novel than the first, alas.
Writing Process Progress
I can say that I expect the first draft will take much less time though. When I first tried to write The Sugarmaker’s Son, I was enrolled in a novel workshop at Rosemont College. Never wrote a novel before the class and the best plan I had was to write a novel based on a short story. My synopsis and outline were abandoned fairly early; I finished it through sheer will. Most of the characters I hadn’t defined yet; several of the plot points were vague, not at all connected. I was terrified that I would run out of material and desperately worked to keep the story afloat.
The second draft, on the other hand, was much worse. A lot of tweaks; more questions of plot and characters answered, but the plot went wildly off track. The outline was almost like a different book. I kept a list of plot threads and keep writing to resolve them as the story moved ahead, on intuition. Not a recommended approach. So frustrating to reach a point when you have a lot of writing (like a slab of clay) and not know what to do with it.
For the third draft, I had begun to lose track of what had been written, what was good or bad, what I wanted to keep or ditch. So I took the story down to the framework and created a five-page synopsis (I call it a treatment) of the book, accounting for the pieces from the two drafts I thought worked. More than a third of the story I’d still have to write from scratch. After that was solid, resolving almost all of the questions I had avoided through two drafts, I created an outline of each chapter. By making a very thorough synopsis I had settled the overall story in my mind before starting again, ensuring I didn’t go too far off the path. And when I did, it was because my mind was filling in a new, useful idea.
So far, I’ve finished a synopsis of the second novel and keep refining it. There are a few points I still need to work out, but I’ve avoided beginning the first chapter until I’m happy with the synopsis and the outline. And that has been a struggle: it feels so ready in my mind.
This process, though, will save time and effort. Instead of the fear of writing a novel I felt in the first draft or the frustration of the second, I can see the story and know there area lot of fun chapters ahead. And, as an author, that’s a darn good feeling.
Shawn Proctor 