PAULA WHYMAN

From Graham Greene's novel, The End of the Affair:

So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends.

Greene's narrator complains that he's having trouble with his book, in spite of writing 500 words per day (just as the author reportedly did), because he's preoccupied with thoughts that go "deeper than the book"--his unconscious is at work on a different obsession.

Certainly many of us have experienced this--that the day can be filled with mundane tasks having little to do with writing, which would seem to take one away from a focus on the work, and yet because those ordinary activities require little creative energy, they can serve as indifferent fuel to the unconscious. So your mind continues to work independently, crafting solutions to your creative problems at the same time you take out the trash. That is, I suppose, as long as you don't become obsessed with the deeper meanings to be found in the things you throw away.

Now that a fast and furious storm has left me with two trees sitting on the power lines in my front yard, as well as a broken driveway, I'm counting on my subconscious to continue working on my novel, while my conscious mind is taking estimates from the tree people... I must admit that I would welcome Greene's list of superficial distractions over sitting on hold with the insurance company any day.

According to the Authors Guild Bulletin, Plato rewrote the first sentence of The Republic 50 times.

Here's the first sentence of The Republic, as published:

I went down to the Piraeus yesterday with Glaucon, son of Ariston, to pray to the goddess; and, at the same time, I wanted to observe how they would put on the festival, since they were now holding it for the first time.

Now don't tell me that doesn't draw you in. I couldn't help wondering what that opening looked like 50 rewrites ago.

I know, I know. This is probably a ridiculous example of what I'm getting at. Someone is certainly going to explain the meaning of this passage and provide all the reasons why this is actually a perfect opening for the book. It telegraphs meaning, and it hints at things to come. But it's a long way from there, stylistically at least, to "Call me Ishmael." Let's just admit that right now.

Anyway, this got me thinking about openings, not just first sentences, but opening pages. If you're like me, you rewrite the opening of your story or your book at least 50 times, until it is absolutely the best dang thing you've ever written.

And then you toss it.

Because odds are, if it needed that much work, it was wrong wrong wrong from the start, and you need to go somewhere else with it entirely. Meaning Brand New approach. Not just different words.

But how and when do you make this determination? I mentioned Richard Peabody's approach before--he routinely cuts the first 3-5 pages of work he's critiquing for others, and he's usually right. Because one part of knowing how to begin the story is knowing that before you find what it's about, you're likely to put too much down on the page. Especially if you're less experienced, but even sometimes if you're not...You're going to be tempted to take the reader for a walk down the street, past the cracks in the sidewalk, the sprinklers that come on even when it's raining, the ugly Airstream in the neighbor's driveway, the misshapen hedge of Japanese holly, all before you get to the house where the important conflict will occur between the mother whose letters have revealed a secret life and her daughter who based her whole life on what she thought she knew about her mother. Most of that early stuff turns out to be wallpaper. Wallpaper that should be stripped to find what's underneath. Otherwise, someone better get pushed into the holly hedge and escape in the Airstream before too long. It can be very tempting to look at those early pages with a sort of love bred from familiarity, to keep going over them and over them, in case it's really just the words that are not quite right.

But no, it's not the words, it's the whole thing. If it takes that much going over, it's time to start over, in my opinion.

I like the way the novelist Benjamin Percy describes the revision process in a recent issue of Poets & Writers:

"So much of revision...is about coming to terms with that word: gone. Letting things go."

He goes on to describe what happens in terms that remind me of early medicine in the days of leeches: "...the professional writer mercilessly lops off limbs, rips out innards like party streamers, drains away gallons of blood, and then calls down the lightning to bring the body back to life."

And as everyone knows, when the body is brought to life again, it's irrevocably changed.

Carolyn Parkhurst is back from a whirlwind tour to promote her new novel, The Nobodies Album, which Liesl Schillinger reviewed glowingly in the NYT this past Sunday. Carolyn has condensed her on-the-road experiences into this list of hilarious book tour wisdom. Highly recommend.

A sampling:

Stay in character. When you call home, have your kids ask you a few questions about narrative voice.

In-flight writing exercise: Choose an item from the SkyMall catalog and try to imagine a character who might actually use it.

While you're on the road, you're functioning as an Ambassador of Literature. This means you can pretty much park anywhere.

(On my way to the DMV now to get one of those Ambassador of Literature hang-tags for my car...)

From the press release:

The American Independent Writing Prizes for 2010 were awarded at the June 12 annual conference in Washington, DC, to Mary Collins, Heather Lynne Davis, Herta Feely, Peter Galuszka and Paula Whyman. The annual competition is open to all AIW members and recognizes outstanding freelance work.

Whyman won the short fiction prize for "Statute of Limitations” [March/April 2009, Bethesda Magazine], which skillfully explores the “tension between surrendering to self-interest and taking responsibility for the life [people] have created,” the judges said.

More specifically, this story is about bad parenting, bad drugs, and bad sex. And I'm grateful to Bethesda Magazine's fiction editor, Susan Coll, and publisher, Steve Hull, not only for publishing fiction in the magazine in the first place, but also for taking a risk with the magazine's content. Bethesda Magazine may very well be the only regional glossy that puts short fiction in every issue.

I'm chatting with award-winning artist Tim Guthrie, over at Stephen Elliot's website, The Rumpus.net, as part of the new Mini-Interview Project. Check it out!

Tim does such a range of work, from subersive political installations to traditional Old Master style paintings, I could do ten interviews with him and not scratch the surface. I've mentioned his work before here.