PROSE THAT READS LIKE POETRY, John Nordstrom

[jablonsj]

AS II, Module VIII

Nordstrom, John, Prose That Reads Like Poetry

The Art of Writing Book Reports Assignment

Writing a novel is a Sisyphean task, where the finished novel inevitably rolls down the hill and crushes the writer just as he thinks he’s beaten Fate by producing something rather than nothing.

Elizabeth George, Write Away.

George’s two fundamental points about writing, that is, that story is character and that setting is story too strike me as right on and thus reinforce my own theory of writing. In Prose That Reads Like Poetry, character and setting can be both internal and exterior parameters that interact with each other to create a plot. The interior landscape is the inner psychological world of the character and the exterior landscape is the outer world of facticity and symbolic and cultural meanings, but because the exterior world has symbolic and cultural meaning for the characters, the setting is in them as much as it has an existence independent of them.

As Prose That Reads Like Poetry shows, this delineation is not always a neat one. Writers must pay heed to both worlds when telling a story. The blending of the inner and outer worlds into one harmonious whole is the trick of any good novel.

Plot emerges from the intersection of the characters and the setting. Characters move within settings and settings restrict character’s choices and decisions to choose from an array of possibilities. For me culture can be an interesting mixture of both internal and external landscapes. Sometimes setting dictates a character’s action, sometimes the character’s own internal compulsion bends a setting. I take from George that talent, passion, and discipline, are all required to produce a great novel.

George’s point about letting the setting speak its language, its metaphors, its moods, and its feelings, is well taken. Her point, that the setting talks if the writer is patient enough to listen, is of crucial importance to good writing in my opinion.

The only thing I see in disagreement with Author Salon is her statement that not everyone can write a novel, p. 256. Author Salon is more democratic on this issue than George.

Annie Dillard, The Writing Life.

I find little or nothing in Dillard’s book I disagree with. Her point “[it] makes more sense to write one big book—a novel or nonfiction narrative—than to write many stories or essays,” p. 71, captures my sentiments exactly. That is why I chose to write a novel, rather than short stories.

p. 3, Dillard’s mining metaphor moved me. Here is my reconstruction: Writing is like mining, you hit your pick against the wall and see what tumbles down to the floor of the mine shaft. Is it gold or is it coal? Is the mine collapsing around you? Should you make a fast break for the exit, or should you stay and let death take you, and then describe that dark experience for the reader. Or should you move somewhere else in the mine where there are diamonds as big as grapefruits? In my novel, I endeavor to let the subconscious flow. I threw the pick at the wall and then waited to see what tumbles down, sometimes diamonds, sometimes just coal. Then ideally I would keep the diamonds sparkling as champagne bubbles and burn the coal on the page to keep fire tickling my prose.

pp. 72-73, “Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power?” This is indeed one of the reasons I write.

p. 78, speaks to me volubly, “Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.” I declare myself guilty of doing this too often. It is a nasty habit I need to break.

p. 96, “Like any fine artist he controlled the tension of the audience’s longing.” This is what I strive to do in my writing, though I don’t always succeed. I believe this to be true primarily, because I can make the mistake of adding too much backstory when withholding it until a time later in the manuscript is the better course.

pp. 6-7, Good writing is not the work one puts in or the sweat one perspires to get it down on the page. A book is not good simply because you climbed a mountain to retrieve it.

I see nothing in Dillard that contradicts AS writing guidelines. I would say, however, that her implicit emphasis on the writer’s subconscious as the Muse should be viewed as something that complements the AS approach to fiction writing.

John Gardner, Art of Fiction and On Becoming a Novelist

Gardner shares insights on the art of writing that resonate with my deepest soul.

Art of Fiction, p. 15, Gardner’s query does Achilles really love Briseis becomes in my novel the following inquiry: does Joe really love Julia or is she a pawn he takes in a workplace chess game he plays with Queenbee?

I agree with him that p. 21 “life in the university has almost never produces subject matter for really good fiction.” But one of my future novels will be a humorous look a life in graduate school.

p. 24, The success of fools in the university is one of God’s great mysteries.

All great writing is an imitation of great writing, but for the originality of the writer’s own style of writing.

One of the most important lessons I take from Gardner is to humanize the antagonists. They might be evil, but they are also human, unless you are doing supernatural fantasy. Don’t make Steinbeck’s mistake in Grapes of Wrath by disregarding the human elements in the ranchers who employed the Okies. In Prose That Reads Like Poetry, Queenbee’s backstory is a compelling one, that is, of religious-right-type paternal abuse and persecution for enjoying lesbian sex with a teenage girlfriend, and also of not getting hired as a lawyer by straight males out of law school.

The true artist [...] gets his sense of worth and honor from his conviction that art is powerful--” I hope to say something about love in the modern era.

“...[N]othing is harder for the developing writer than overcoming his anxiety that he is fooling himself and cheating or embarrassing his family and friends.” I felt at times I might be embarrassing my own mother given the protagonist’s psychoanalytic complex involving his mother, but it is precisely what the story demands at that point.

“We move through a course on Dostoevsky or Poe as we move through a mildly good cocktail party...Art...is less like a cocktail party than a tank of sharks.” My sentiments exactly. Life is both beautiful and ugly and the artist must be able to deal with all of life, not just a pretty slice of it.

One of the most important lessons I draw from Gardner is that the novel must be a sustained fictive dream. I tried to write Prose That Reads Like Poetry as one large fictive dream that has enough grounding in the possible to float its fictional reality.

On Becoming a Novelist, pp. 3-5. Verbal sensitivity is a gift every writer should cherish if they have it. p. 6, Story should govern words. My fault: I sometimes have too much verbal sensitivity and therefore I must hold myself back like a “compulsive punster at a funeral.” p. 6, I need to find a body of editors who love me, both for my strengths as well as my weaknesses.

Gardner’s point about “profluence” rung the bell in my head. The writer needs to keep things moving forward, p. 9, so that the reader has a reason to turn the page.

Writers must learn their “bad habits” as well as their good ones, p. 15.

Writers must “catch on” to language and the artistry of describing a scene.

“You’re on your own, buddy,” pp. 18-19, as every writer must do it himself.

I find his discussion of the writer’s “eye,” pp. 20-21, to be an essential point. The writer’s eye must be pure and unspoiled by other filters. TV (television) interferes with telling a story because the writer cannot distinguish between his eye and the TV’s filter placed over his eye. Cut the TV out of your own eye and see with your own writer’s eye. You can’t imitate, but must write with your own pair of writer’s eyes.

Self-understanding is a key to good writing. Each writer should have his own idiosyncrasies which define his or her style. The ability credibly to enter the minds of different characters is crucially valuable to a writer. A writer must be fascinated as well as interested in his own characters. A writer must supply concrete details as well as intriguing abstractions. He should have naturally story trained intelligence.

A writer is like a child who cannot convince his parents he’s right, because he lacks the power to do so. Good novelists want to write true novels, rather than false ones. Good fiction sets off a vivid and continuous dream in the reader’s eye. Innocence lost, but the writer must regain that innocence in his writing, because we as readers are all babies who want to read about the things that move us, but are ashamed publicly to admit they in fact do.

That we are all babies at some fundamental level is a universal truth all writers must know. Good writing should showcase the intelligence and wizardry of the story teller. The writer must tell a story and a good one. pp. 44-45. A writer must be able to see how things get done in a novel, like an architect studies a building. A story with a stupid idea is a stupid story no matter how well executed.

I disagree with Gardner on one point. He emphasizes character over setting, p. 52. I think like George that setting can be a character too. Cormac McCarthy illustrates my point in Blood Meridian, but then again I think McCarthy does too little introspection in BM.

Writers are struck by lightning, p. 61. I agree. This is what jumpstarted my novel Prose That Reads Like Poetry. I was struck by the power of love and wanted to share it with the world.

Demonic compulsiveness. p. 62. My willingness to put the long hours in to reach my goal is like the devil who never sleeps.

The story contains too many scenes, too many moments. p. 64. I believe this is my greatest fault. I like writing so much I write too much. I must become over time a better artist of measure and a master of suspense.

Cold manuscripts reveal faults, p. 65. Distance from a manuscript can give insights into its faults. I found that leaving a manuscript alone for a few months actually improved the text.

The aspiring novelist must have the stamina, patience and the single-mindedness of a draft horse.

A good teacher gets his students published. Every writer needs people who believe in him, give him a shoulder to cry on, and value what he values, but also can give him critical guidance that motivates rather than discourages, p. 109. I still need to find this support system.

The fictive dream is the hardest to start. The first chapter of Prose That Reads Like Poetry was the hardest to write.

Writing a novel is like heading out to open sea in a boat without a compass, but only the stars that the writer must have faith in to guide him from the beginning to the end.

Never quit. Never, never.

Donald Maass, Writing the Breakout Novel.

Maass articulates a system of ideas congruent with those set forth in Neff’s system. His advice to debut novelists is on all fours with the Algonkian program.

Inner conflict, yes always, even if the hero or heroine is unaware of it. In Prose That Reads Like Poetry, the hero wants to find a love, but also needs revenge, and the two desire lines compete for dominance within the psyche of the hero. Thus, protagonist Joe in my novel wants love but also needs war.

The protagonist needs to have larger than life qualities. Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird. In Prose That Reads Like Poetry, when the rest of the world grubs for money-money-money obsessively, Joe wants to write a Taj Mahal of poetry for a beloved he hasn’t yet met. After he meets her she inspires the poetry he always thought all along he had in him. After she betrays him for status and career, he never abandons Julia at work and then he writes several poems that convince her that he loves her and he is her soul mate.

Good writing handles plot turns and surprises naturally like a good seamstress makes a dress.

Defining the personal stakes for the protagonist sets up a longing in the reader that the protagonist achieve these goals. For Joe Cincinnatuski, it’s becoming a writer, finding love, and getting revenge. There is no necessary confluence among these goals, however.

An ultimate stakes moment is critical to any great novel. Does Joe quit the poisoned mushroom law library setting after his return to Northern Virginia from Massachusetts or does he stay and fight to win back his love?

Maass teaches that you need a protagonist able to take account of himself at any point in the novel. True, but there is often a level of reality operating within a character to which his own conscious mind has no access. Thus Joe in Prose That Reads Like Poetry reflects on certain things, but never realizes that he wants revenge on Queenbee just that much more than he loves Julia. Or does he love Julia more than wanting revenge on Queenbee?

Self-observations by protagonists make the novel interesting. 100% agreed. That’s why my novel has this feature.

Yes, the point about minors is well taken. In Prose That Reads Like Poetry the minors illuminate the theme of the novel and are foils for the protagonist.

Antagonists got to be nasty and evil, but also human. Humanize them. Even Darth Vader in Star Wars was humanized. I humanize both Queenbee and Gyges in Prose That Reads Like Poetry.

Plot layers: Joe’s conflict with Queenbee and Joe’s love for Julia are embedded in one another as they are two sides to his character.

Time in Prose That Reads Like Poetry is a “little infinity” of love and revenge, to use John Green’s formulation in The Fault in Our Stars.

Inner change. Over the course of the novel, does Joe become a whole human being willing to risk it all for love or does he hold back and play the workplace chess game because he loves to

Maass begs the debut novelist to please, please give the reader a reason to identify with the hero or heroine. All successful novels give the reader a strong reason to identify with the hero. I try to do this with Joe Cincinnatuski in Prose That Reads Like Poetry, to the extent I make him alienated from his own profession, without a woman, up against it financially, and failing as a writer, to the point of wanting to take his own life.

Along with Maass, I believe hinting at heroism in the opening lines is a necessity for good writing. The protagonist in Prose That Reads is good at chess and used to write poetry as a teenager, but importantly believes in true love.

I think his point that every protagonist must be multi-dimensional is the foundation of every great novel. I agree with Maass because real life characters are indeed multidimensional, so Joe Cincinnatuski has complex inner conflict as does Julia, his love interest.