Category: blog

Kelley,

Robin

Thanks, I hope so too (big grin). And I hope you still mean it after you read this (another grin), because I’m about to do a 180 on you in some ways. Try not to throw anything….

This is an interesting conversation, and the timing is a bit spooky, since in the last months (even since July, when we last talked about this), how I think about writing has changed — maybe partly because of this conversation, who knows? So first, let me clarify a little more what I meant, if I can, and then talk about what’s new.

In all the times I have written novels and short stories, I’ve been present, but almost (in the best writing) as if standing to one side. Or maybe it’s more like trying to stand very, very still while a river runs out of me, the rush of story that can be so easily derailed if I’m not both relaxed and utterly focused. Like aikido, if you’ve ever practiced that art.

When I talk about getting out of my own way, it’s not that my personality disappears and some other writing force takes over. It is, in fact, all me. Perhaps “personality” is the wrong word. Perhaps what I mean is that those parts of me that are culturally constructed (or culturally constrained) need to be put away as much as possible.

I can’t write beyond my own limitations (as a writer and a person) unless I find a way to put those limitations off in the corner, preferably with a muzzle. If the characters in a story do or say things that I wouldn’t, feel things that I don’t (or, more to the point, things that I do feel but don’t want people to know about), I have to go there anyway, as honestly and completely as I can. I have to understand and embrace those things, make them imaginatively possible for me so I can make them accessible to the reader. No matter how unsettling it is for me.

I trained as an actor, and for a while I thought that’s what I’d do with my life. For me, writing is very much like acting. And so it occurs to me that my last answer to you wasn’t complete and wasn’t honest. Because it is all me there on the page, in some way that is not “Kelley Eskridge is Jackal Segura,” but rather “When you put these particular elements — situation, background, feelings, relationships, fears, hopes, et cetera — into the mind and soul and deep dark places of Kelley Eskridge, Jackal is the character that comes out.”

And that process makes those “fictional” experiences psychologically and emotionally real for me in ways that do reveal me, or change me, as a person and a writer. They do.

But that’s not the point of writing, and it can’t be the goal. If that process becomes too conscious, then result is self-indulgent and boring. So part of getting out of my own way is just letting the process happen without getting too bound up in it at the time, without stopping to think about what I’m exploring or revealing or changing. I may on some level choose to write a particular story so that I can have particular fictional experiences, but I’d better not know too much about that while I’m doing it — or it becomes all about me and the story suffers.

And to answer your question — Am I ever surprised by what I’ve written? — sometimes, yes, I really am. And sometimes I’m not surprised by what I’ve written, just surprised that I actually wrote it. That I actually went there. It’s not that my work is so brave in an absolute sense, but in fact I have explored things in fiction that I would never easily talk about in a group of strangers. And most of those things will never be noticed, because they aren’t outrageous enough to stick out as “yikes, look at that!”. They won’t attract anyone’s attention. They’re only outrageous, dangerous, naked if you’re me.

So, why the different answer now? Well, I’ve recently finished my first screenplay (“finish” is a relative term in that things can be rewritten pretty much until they’re on the screen…). It’s so far been a fascinating, intense experience, an E-ticket (for those of you who remember the old Disney theme park system of admission). It has, in fact, been like putting writing and acting and the solitary creative fall-down-the-hole process and all my collaborative skills into a blender. I am so happy.

And it has so far been a thousand times more fun than writing novels. Because it’s a screenplay — human behavior directly expressed through dialogue and action, without the veil of prose styling and metaphor and authorial musing — the fictional experiences have been equally direct. And it turns out I love that a lot. It’s exhilarating.

I’ve learned a ton, and have much more to learn. I have the great fortune to work with an executive producer who is smart, communicates well, and is in love with story. I have more joy from the work, and am more productive, than at any other time in my writing life. And I see myself naked on the page and in the process in ways that I’ve never imagined.

So there you go. Either I’ve really answered your question this time, or you’re ready to pour your beer over my head (laughing). Let me know which.

Cheers.

Ho Kelley! Have thrown back a few from the stool here and thought I might try to respond. Cheers baby!

Robin

Hi Robin,

You’ve been very patient, thanks. I’ve been eyebrows-deep in a project for the last six weeks or so, but have been circling back to your question and chewing on it during that time. I think I understand it better, but I’m not sure that I can answer in a way that’s any more satisfying for you (grin). Let’s see how this one goes.

You’ve asked a writing question (how deep to go and what to show) and a writer question (what do I reveal to myself about myself), so…. writing first. It’s hard to talk about this, because so much of it is instinct (by which I really mean, practice and expertise so deeply integrated at this point that I no longer know how to talk about it as decision-making process). But I’ll take a whack at it.

It occurs to me that it’s in large part a function of the challenges of writing from a single, deep point of view. Solitaire is Jackal’s story, so as a writer I’ve tried to go deep with her, and then show in other characters whatever she needs to see in order to interact with them. In that example with Mist: we’ve already had a previous interaction (brandy and orange juice is disgusting), and we’ve been privy to some of Jackal’s opinions of Mist — she’s a fashionista, someone Jackal feels unconsciously superior to, someone she regards as fundamentally shallow, etc. And so in the interchange, Jackal is surprised by not only what Mist says, but how deeply she seems to feel about it. And since it’s Jackal’s story, we only get to know or see what Jackal wants (or is forced to) know or see. Jackal isn’t focused, in that moment, in wondering why Mist is who she is: she’s focused on herself, her own insecurity and embarrassment.

Would it help to understand Donatella’s psychological history to better understand its impact on Jackal? I guess my response is, helpful for whom? (That’s a real question, not me being snarky). In that moment, Jackal doesn’t need it — again, she’s focused on herself, trying to cope with the experience. Later, the reader gets the information that Donatella’s always been competitive in this way, and also the memory of the rescue on the cliffs. But Jackal doesn’t spend a lot of time dissecting her mother’s psychology. Jackal’s an impatient soul, more into doing than reflecting, which is how she gets herself into trouble sometimes.

I think that writing in this way (from a single, deep point of view) is a lot like the physical transmission of television: all the black on a TV image is not black pixels being beamed to my TV set, it’s the absence of any data at all that my brain interprets as black. If I’m doing my job as a writer, the reader will fill in the blank spots for herself because that’s what Jackal is doing.

Other points of view are more flexible. One of the things I love about Stephen King’s work is his facility in wandering in and out of everyone’s heads, primary and secondary characters, and combining their real-time thoughts with memory, behavior, observation and feeling to paint a complex picture in a few simple strokes. He’s fantastic at creating character.

As for the writer question, well…. No. I don’t feel naked on the page with myself. And I’m guessing this is not the answer you expect (I won’t presume to guess what answer you want), because it’s pretty much a cultural given that writers do expose themselves in their work, so it makes sense that it would start “at home,” so to speak.

But no, that’s not how I feel. When I write, it’s not about me, and I mean that in lots of ways. I do not write “about Kelley” in fiction — that’s what the virtual pub is for. I learn a lot more about my own psychology and process in the act of writing these pints than I do in the act of writing fiction. Fiction is not self-analysis. It’s story. It’s the joy of walking through the door in my head and finding myself in another place with people that I grow to understand and to love. And I am both there and not there during that experience — I’m there, in the story, sometimes in their heads and sometimes as an observer, but it doesn’t matter that I’m Kelley Eskridge, it doesn’t matter who I am in the daily waking world or why I behave the way I do. I’m not there to reveal myself to me or anyone else, and if I do experience a self-revelation, it will damn sure derail the writing. All that matters is that the writer is there with space in her heart and mind and soul for all manner of human behavior and feeling and action and relationship. The writer is the doorway. The writer is the physical transmission process for this TV of the mind. And Kelley had better get out of the writer’s way if anything true is to be written. Because it’s not my truth but the truth of the story that is important. Something doesn’t have to be true for Kelley in order for it to be true for the character — the writer’s job is to make space for everyone.

This probably sounds like I think that “I” am not “the writer,” but that’s not what I mean. The relationship between art and craft and artist is pretty complex. Craft is learned behavior that has to become instinctive, integrated, in order for the art to emerge and the artist to function. The writer has to both know, and not know, what she is doing in the moment of creation — be both hyperaware and deliberately not looking. The writer must control and surrender, simultaneously. It’s like riding a bicycle with no hands, something I enjoyed immensely as a child, which is surprising considering that I was in almost every other way physically risk-aversive. Writing, like those bicycle moments, is a rush that only happens (in my experience) after a lot of bloody hard work and a fair amount of falling on one’s ass. It cannot be done if the writer is busy looking at whether or not she herself is on the page in any way. If I am looking for the truth of myself in the work, I am missing the point. It’s not about me. The writer doesn’t give a shit about me — whether I’m tired or grumpy or wrestling with Big Identity Issues. The writer want to write. I’m finally learning that I am happiest when I get out of my own damn way and thereby help the writer, the opener of deep doorways, do our work.

And that’s the best that I know how to describe it right now. It seems like a clumsy description, and maybe it doesn’t make sense, but it’s the most naked I can get about it.

Let me know what you think.

hey, you sound WAY too busy….how is the new novel coming along, or is it bad to ask? me, I think the winter has been very long and we will all feel less stressed when the sun starts shining a bit more. Well I will anyway.

amanda

Pretty busy, for sure, although everyone is, right? It’s a busy world. We’re ‘supposed’ to be busy, it’s a cultural value (a silly one, but I sure have internalized it). But the sun is shining now, and you’re right, it does help.

As for the new novel, well…. I sent my editor about 20,000 words and an outline, and she thinks the story needs to be focused slightly differently before she’s ready to start showing it around within HarperCollins. She has some good ideas that will make the book stronger, so I’m thinking about them, and about a screenplay, and about a short story collection that I’m interested in putting together (with some new work as well as what’s already been published).

I think the writing in my new book is my best so far, and I think the story will be compelling if I can ever get there. But, as with Solitaire, I find that beginnings are an issue for me. I didn’t know any other way with Solitaire than to trace out the circumstances and events and choices that bring Jackal to the top of the Needle — and yet there are plenty of readers who think the story doesn’t really kick into gear until then.

I have competing instincts as a storyteller. I want to start with a bang and tell a story that’s exciting and compelling and large, full of choice and consequence. And I also want to tell the story that’s real for the characters, that shows where they’ve come from and builds the foundation for those big choices. But if that story is to be truthful (psychologically, emotionally), then it is of necessity a slower story, a story built on smaller details, more daily incidents (as we’ve already talked about with regard to the journals). The stories of real people are stories of accretion; we’re like coral that builds its shape slowly.

I know that one problem with the current novel, for all its beautiful prose and psychological truth, is that it’s just too damn slow. And I’m probably going to have to throw away at least 10,000-12,000 of those words, and go back, and start over again. And just trust that I’ve improved enough as a writer to embed the smaller story within the larger story, rather than spelling it all out for the reader.

So, I am having to step back and let things work themselves out in my writer’s brain at their own rate. I write slowly anyway, and this makes it even slower, and that frustrates me beyond belief, sometimes to the point that I don’t feel like a ‘real’ writer anymore. (That usually passes, smile). But what I learned writing Solitaire is that it takes as long as it takes. If I had rushed Solitaire, it would be a lesser book. If I rush this one, ditto. I know that impatience is not my friend, and I ignore the voice inside that tells me I am failing because I am not meeting the one-book-a-year expectations of the ‘busy’ world.

While the new book is mulching, I am working on Something Completely Different — I’m putting together a new business venture. I’m not ready to talk about just yet, but will share the details soon, and will say that I think Jackal would approve (waggles eyebrows in the annoying way of people who have a secret they think is really cool).

I hope the sun is shining wherever you are, and your stress is out walking with its shoes off and grass in between its toes.

I’ve just read “And Salome Danced“. Beautifully written story and I thank you for that.

Robin

Hi, Robin. I’m glad you enjoyed the story.

Conveying the particular moment is half the essence of good fiction, in my opinion. So if you’re finding it a challenge, well, join the club (grin). The other half is knowing what moments to convey: in other words, what sequence of moments will best tell the story. But that’s a different discussion: you’ve asked about the process of making the moments truthful, which is a large enough question to be going on with.

Truthful prose, to me, combines physical and emotional/psychological truth. Our culture, our background and our experience affects what we believe about the world, and influences what we notice as we move through our everyday lives. Here’s an example of this that interests me. Another example is that people from groups that experience cultural discrimination or oppression will notice different things about an event or an interaction than mainstream folks.

And what we notice about a situation affects how we respond to it. In fiction it’s important to make these correlations visible to the reader, because that’s how we learn about the characters. For example, it makes no sense to a reader if Billy Joe says, “I like your shirt” to Bobby Sue, and Bobby Sue hits Billy Joe with a baseball bat — unless we already know something about their relationship, or Bobby Sue’s anguished past, or we see Bobby Sue noticing that Billy Joe has a knife behind his back. Whatever. The important thing is that the particular moments — the sensory details, the internal dialogue, the rhythms of speech or movement — somehow support our understanding of the character and her actions.

One small example of this from Solitaire is in the first section of the book, when Jackal and Mist and Turtle are standing in line at the omniport and Mist tells Jackal that it’s hard to always have to be nice to her, to always have to support her. It’s significant, to me, that Jackal has to have this pointed out to her, and also significant that she is embarrassed by it. Without “explaining” the character to the reader, I’m (hopefully) giving you access into a corner of the psychology of the assumption of privilege, and the test of character that occurs when it is pointed out that we enjoy privilege at the expense of people we care about.

I think that good fiction is an accretion of small moments like this. I think one mistake that writers make is to rush these things, or to assume that it’s enough to “explain” a character’s actions at the time they are happening. But it’s not enough.

I think there are two kinds of these moments: things the characters notice, and things the writer wants the reader to notice. Sometimes they combine, sometimes they don’t.

I do think it takes awareness to write these moments, but not just self-awareness. I think it takes awareness of others, the commonalities and the differences between us.

In most cultures, and in most of our hearts, we use difference to separate ourselves from others. But I think that for writers, difference needs to become a path to connection. I will step into a core of strangeness in a character that in ‘real’ life would send me off the bus at the next stop, you know? And in order to do that, I have to imagine, and then I have to experience the world in another skin.

To write a sentence that makes someone forget to breathe because they have just seen some aspect of their secret self in my words, I have to spend a lot of my time figuring out why I behave the way I do, and then I have to figure out why others behave the way they do. And the trap here (that writers, including me, fall into all the time), is assuming that I am somehow the reference point against which behavior ought to be measured — that people who don’t behave like me should be expressed as deviating from the norm. This leads to preachy writing and cardboard characters, people who would only “be normal” (i.e. “like me”) if they were smarter or kinder or whatever. (I’ve talked about this in context of white writers describing the skin color of non-white characters.) This passes for character development in a lot of writing, but I don’t think this is enough either.

When I was studying American Sign Language and Deaf culture, I learned a concept of “Deaf center,” which means that if I really want to understand the language I have to understand where it comes from: I have to do my best to understand Deaf experience not in terms of my hearing background, but in its own terms. I have to take myself out of the center of the universe, and become a witness of the experience that is happening to other people at the center of their universe.

One thing that really helped me with this was a lesson I learned from my mom when I was very young, and my parents were active in the civil rights movement in Florida. She told me that when African-American people described their experience, I should always start by assuming their experience was true for them. It took me until adulthood to understand that what she was saying was not “everyone tells the truth.” What she was saying is that everyone tells their truth, and it might not be mine. I remember being at prep school and telling upper class white students that our phones had routinely been tapped when I was growing up, and they didn’t believe me, because it had never happened to them or anyone they knew. And rather than admit the world was different for me than it was for them, they asserted that I had a “wrong” perception of the world.

This makes for frustrating experience, but potentially interesting writing. When characters conflict, worlds are colliding.

I do think that fiction can reveal much about the writer, including some things that might make the writer feel vulnerable or exposed. The thing is, most readers never know what those things are. Many of the moments or perceptions or behaviors or attitudes that characters express in my stories are not mine at all, or at least not as written. No one but me (and often Nicola) knows at what moments in my fiction I am deliberately showing my self, opening my world to the view of the reader. That’s fine with me. Fiction isn’t memoir, even when it’s true.

I’d be interested to know what you and others here in the virtual pub think about all this (from a writing or reading perspective). And if I haven’t answered your question, please let me know.