mhnicholas

Algonkian Novel Writer's Retreat September 2023--Hoping this is the right place to post this.

[I don't know if this section serves as prologue or as the actual opening.] What I am trying to do here is provide the inciting incident that sends Oliver on a journey from Binghamton NY to Florida to find herself and her "tribe." But, everything is subject to change]

     “Hi, Tammy, how are you today?”

      “Hi, Professor Clifford. Dr. Stockton will be with you in a second.” Before I could even ask Tammy about her kids or get a heads up about the mood of my dean, Tom stuck his head out of his office.

       “Come on in Oliver.” In my six years at Binghamton College, a private liberal arts school existing in the shadow of SUNY Binghamton, I hadn’t spent too much time in this office. For the office of a department head and a professor of English, you had to admire its orderliness. No books stacked on any free horizontal surface; no papers piled up on desk corners or windowsills.

     I took a seat on a chair in front of Tom’s desk, and Tom pulled his chair right up to the edge of his desk. I straightened myself, crossed my legs, and with my hands on my knees, waited for Tom to give me the good news. Should I have worn a skirt and heels rather than…..?

     “….. no easy way to say to this. I am sorry to report that you were not granted tenure. You should receive a letter tomorrow.”

     “I? What? What did you say?”

      “Oliver. You didn’t get tenure. I’m really, really sorry. I intervened as much as I could. But the committee and the dean of liberal arts would not be moved.”

      “I don’t understand. I don’t…..”

       “Oliver. You will get the letter….”

       “You must have a copy of the letter, Tom. What does it say? What did they say?”

       “I really shouldn’t refer to the letter. I really…”

        By now, I was leaning forward in my chair, legs uncrossed and palms pressing into my knees, and Tom was leaning back, his palms pushing against the edge of the desk.

        “Jesus, Tom. It’s the least you can do. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you are telling me this. I mean I know I’m not some celebrity scholar, but I thought I did my work. I thought I did what I was supposed to do. What happened Tom?”

        “Okay. Okay. Your teaching evaluations were great. Your service to the college was satisfactory. Your research. The committee considered that weak.”

        “Weak? I had two articles published, and I’m working on a third. I…

       “Oliver. Those were good articles, but the committee thought you needed to do more, to have more. Like a book. And they didn’t think that was going to happen. You know the college is going in a different direction. Less emphasis on teaching. More emphasis on research. At least for those on the tenure track. You seemed a bit stalled on your project regarding the contemporary novel.”

            “Oh my god.” I stood up and started to pace in front of Tom’s desk. “What am I going to do? What am I going to tell my parents? My friends?” On the frantic scale, I was heading for a ten. Tom must have sensed this because he came from around his desk and blocked my movements.

            “I wish I could help you work through some of this now. But I have another appointment in a few minutes. You have another year to work here. In the meantime, get your CV out there to other schools. You can even use me as a reference,” Tom said as he walked to his office door and opened it.

            As I walked out, my English colleague Cameron Henderson was sitting on the waiting area couch, all coiffed and pressed in her navy pencil skirt. She was Tom’s next appointment, hired the same year I was. She was going to find out about tenure too. In the seconds between walking by the couch and out the door, I processed through an English event at [….]Bar in the fall like a sped-up PowerPoint slide show.

            Slide 1:Tom standing next to Cameron. Holding up a glass of sparkling white in one hand and a hardback cover of a book in the other

            Slide 2: An enlarged image of Cameron’s book: [something on Virginia Woolf]

            Slide 3: Cameron looking in Tom’s direction. Holding her own glass and smoothing out her Calvin Klein ready wear pant suit her parents sent her from Nordstrom’s.

            Slide 4: Me. Huddling behind the small crowd of attendees with Stan Sanders, a close-to-retiring professor. “Good for her,” he said to himself as he downed a shot of Jack Daniels in one gulp.

            “Hi Oliver.” With Cameron’s greeting, the slide show in my head snapped closed.

            “Cameron.” I kept my head down as I passed her, hoping to get through the office doors before she figured out that I was on the brink of breaking down. I had to get to my car.

            “Will we see you on Friday at …..?”

            “Probably not.” I said trying to swallow a scream that was moving from my gut to my throat as if I’d just been hit by a car or seen Stan naked.

            On my way out the door, I heard Tom inviting Cameron into his office. That’s when I knew. She was going to get tenure.

 

Marcy H. Nicholas

Pre-Event Responses-Writer’s Retreat September 2023

July 30, 2023

1.      Story Statement

 

After being denied tenure, Oliver must find a way to create a new life outside of academia and beyond the Northeast by discovering a new home, new friends, a new love interest, and new experiences.

2.      Antagonist Force

At this point, I would characterize my novel as nascent. I haven’t thought about an antagonist yet. At the beginning of the novel the Dean of Liberal Arts serves as one force of antagonism as he tells Oliver that she has been denied tenure. In addition, Oliver has problems with another character Cameron, a privileged academic who does get tenure the same year that Oliver does not. I don’t know if Cameron could continue to intersect with Oliver or not. Why would she? Oliver is certainly divided between wanting to “return” to the life she knew in some form (at another school) or to lean into this new life in Florida. Ultimately, the novel is about one woman finding a new “tribe” of people around whom she can build a life. So the antagonist would have to be someone who is trying to mess that up in some way or who wants to convince her that she’s not equipped to do this or who is encouraging her to leave this new life. I don’t think that could be her parents or someone in Florida. Maybe it could be a long-term friend from her hometown; maybe it could be a guy she went to grad school with who always had a crush on her and now is trying to reconnect with her and convince her to be with him and become an adjunct.

I just finished reader Allison Larkin's novel, and for that novel, Larkin has a series of protagonists who can upend the protagonist's  life in many different ways. Again my novel is still in the beginning stages so I have a lot to think about.

3.      Breakout Titles

These titles are terrible. 

Finding Home

Leaving, Arriving, Staying

Three Months in Del Ray Beach (Or Whatever Beach in Florida I decide to set the novel

4.      Comparables

Lily King’s Writers and Lovers because it’s about a woman around the age of my character who is struggling with her identity and career while in the midst of grief about her mother. King writes in first person so it’s a good model of first-person POV. My character is grieving about a loss as well.

I read After the Parade by Lori Ostlund a long time ago. She uses the journey archetype in the novel, which is what I am doing and what so many works of literature do. My character’s journey is not the organizational strategy of the novel, but in the tradition of the journey archetype, my character does meet characters that she must learn from once she gets to Florida

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich.  I love this novel because even though Erdrich writes in third person, readers are still in the head and heart of the main character. Erdrich doesn’t interject these expository passages to “inform” her readers.  The story is not that comparable to mine, but the novel is a good model of third-person point of view.

The People We Keep by Allison Larkin. I just discovered this book that has some of the same themes that I will be working with.

Did You Ever Have a Family?  Bill Clegg

5.      Hook Line with Conflict and Core Wound

After being denied tenure, a thirty-five-year-old Oliver must deal with the shame she feels about this failure and confront her own inadequacies before she can accept and embrace her new life, friends, and love in Florida.

6.       A. Sketch of the conditions for the inner conflict of the protagonist. 

Oliver’s inner conflict has to do with her feelings of shame and inadequacy after she is denied tenure. She thinks she must find another job, which will give her the credibility she is longing for. She begins to experience life outside of the walls of academia and is enjoying it, but her inner conflict keeps her from fully committing to the life that has been evolving around her in Florida and from fully accepting that she deserves love and friendship.

One possible scenario. She spends the weekend with Michael her new love interest, but on Monday morning she gets an email from a university wanting to set up a video interview. She completely blows off Michael. Or maybe the antagonist, this former graduate school colleague, invites her up for a supposed job interview, and once she makes the trip, he was only asking her so he could convince her to move in with him and teach as an adjunct.

 

 Sketch of hypothetical scenario for the "secondary conflict" involving the social environment. 

A good question. I’m not sure if I have a good answer to this. Maybe she experiences the conservatism of Florida or the tension between transplants—the whole population boom in Florida in some way and wonders if she can fit in Florida.  Maybe she goes to a book reading, asks a question, and gets embarrassed about something.

                                                                                     

7.      Sketch of Setting

 

The prologue begins in Binghamton, New York at a small liberal arts college (fabricated). Then a year later, Oliver the protagonist, leaves Binghamton, thinking that she is going to drive the four hours to her parents’ house in Pennsylvania, move in with them, until she finds another job. However at the exit for York,  she makes a split-second decision to keep driving to Florida, specifically to Del Ray Beach, (?) where Stan Sanders, a retired colleague lives. Oliver lands in a beach motel for a couple of nights and then ends up rooming with Stan for a while. In a very rough draft of this novel that I wrote a few years ago, I noticed that I was playing around with that tension between the uptight and dark and gloomy Northeast and the more open and sunnier Florida. The main character must “come out” in a sense from that dark and gloom of the northeast and of her life to embrace the sunny and new life that she can have in Florida.

I may have her take a side trip before she would get to York to the school where she received her PhD because one of her former professors invites her to do so. She thinks he's going to help her get a job; he wants something else: he thinks she would be the perfect academic wife. Intelligent but not too ambitious.) She gets the hell out of there, drive toward York and then  skips her parents' place.

(After reading the page about writing groups, I realized I committed the first error of starting a novel: the first chapter starts in--you guessed it--a car. Looking forward to the discussion.)

Marcy H. Nicholas

Pre-Event Responses

July 30, 2023

1.      Story Statement

After being denied tenure, Oliver must find a way to create a new life outside of academia and beyond the Northeast by discovering a new home, new friends, a new love interest, and new experiences.

2.      Antagonist Force

At this point, I would characterize my novel as nascent. I haven’t thought about an antagonist yet. At the beginning of the novel the Dean of Liberal Arts serves as one force of antagonism as he tells Oliver that she has been denied tenure. In addition, Oliver has problems with another character Cameron, a privileged academic who does get tenure the same year that Oliver does not. I don’t know if Cameron could continue to intersect with Oliver or not. Why would she? Oliver is certainly divided between wanting to “return” to the life she knew in some form (at another school) or to lean into this new life in Florida. Ultimately, the novel is about one woman finding a new “tribe” of people around whom she can build a life. So the antagonist would have to be someone who is trying to mess that up in some way or who wants to convince her that she’s not equipped to do this or who is encouraging her to leave this new life. I don’t think that could be her parents or someone in Florida. Maybe it could be a long-term friend from her hometown; maybe it could be a guy she went to grad school with who always had a crush on her and now is trying to reconnect with her and convince her to be with him and become an adjunct.

3.      Breakout Titles

Finding Home

Leaving, Arriving, Staying

Three Months in Del Ray Beach (Or Whatever Beach in Florida I decide to set the novel

4.      Comparables

Lily King’s Writers and Lovers because it’s about a woman around the age of my character who is struggling with her identity and career while in the midst of grief about her mother. King writes in first person so it’s a good model of first-person POV. My character is grieving about a loss as well.

I read After the Parade by Lori Ostlund a long time ago. She uses the journey archetype in the novel, which is what I am doing and what so many works of literature do. My character’s journey is not the organizational strategy of the novel, but in the tradition of the journey archetype, my character does meet characters that she must learn from once she gets to Florida

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich.  I love this novel because even though Erdrich writes in third person, readers are still in the head and heart of the main character. Erdrich doesn’t interject these expository passages to “inform” her readers.  The story is not that comparable to mine, but the novel is a good model of third-person point of view.

5.      Hook Line with Conflict and Core Wound

After being denied tenure, a thirty-five-year-old Oliver must deal with the shame she feels about this failure and confront her own inadequacies before she can accept and embrace her new life, friends, and love in Florida.

6.       A. Sketch of the conditions for the inner conflict of the protagonist. 

Oliver’s inner conflict has to do with her feelings of shame and inadequacy after she is denied tenure. She thinks she must find another job, which will give her the credibility she is longing for. She begins to experience life outside of the walls of academia and is enjoying it, but her inner conflict keeps her from fully committing to the life that has been evolving around her in Florida and from fully accepting that she deserves love and friendship.

One possible scenario. She spends the weekend with Michael her new love interest, but on Monday morning she gets an email from a university wanting to set up a video interview. She completely blows off Michael. Or maybe the antagonist, this former graduate school colleague, invites her up for a supposed job interview, and once she makes the trip, he was only asking her so he could convince her to move in with him and teach as an adjunct.

 Sketch of hypothetical scenario for the "secondary conflict" involving the social environment. 

A good question. I’m not sure if I have a good answer to this. Maybe she experiences the conservatism of Florida or the tension between transplants—the whole population boom in Florida in some way and wonders if she can fit in Florida.  Maybe she goes to a book reading, asks a question, and gets embarrassed about something.                                                                                   

7.      Sketch of Setting 

The prologue begins in Binghamton, New York at a small liberal arts college (fabricated). Then a year later, Oliver the protagonist, leaves Binghamton, thinking that she is going to drive the four hours to her parents’ house in Pennsylvania, move in with them, until she finds another job. However at the exit for York,  she makes a split-second decision to keep driving to Florida, specifically to Del Ray Beach, (?) where Stan Sanders, a retired colleague lives. Oliver lands in a beach motel for a couple of nights and then ends up rooming with Stan for a while. In a very rough draft of this novel that I wrote a few years ago, I noticed that I was playing around with that tension between the uptight and dark and gloomy Northeast and the more open and sunnier Florida. The main character must “come out” in a sense from that dark and gloom of the northeast and of her life to embrace the sunny and new life that she can have in Florida. I should also add that the novel will cover about three months: June through August.

Just to add: What a great execise! Loved doing this as it revealed for me the gaps I have in my thinking.