Frozen in Bensonhurst

[mallorys_camera]

Continuing in my baaaaaaaad mood.

It’s kind of my secret, like a heroin addiction or an obsession with Japanese schoolgirl panties or something, because there’s no reason for me to be in a baaaaaaaaad mood, so I don’t discuss it with anyone, and I try not to take it out on anybody.

Been stuck on a scene between June and her brother for three days now. They’re sitting on the porch. Brother hands her a packet of all the feverish love letters Henry Miller has written her over the course of her four-day absence. Henry and June have just met. Henry is besotted. June is... intrigued.

Brother and sister talk.

What do they say?

Who cares what they say?

Why is this scene even here?

Well, the scene is here: (A) Because it’s connective tissue. (B) Because it’s a good place for more info dump and character exposition. And (C) Because I have to establish a bond between these two characters since at the very end of the book, June abandons New York City and goes off to live with the brother in Phoenix, Arizona, and dies there under a blazing blue sky where the sun never casts any shadow.

I've spent a large part of two days now looking at the scene, pushing around its commas. Inserting dialogue. Taking dialogue out. Muttering to myself.

###

Several years ago, Mag – who ghostwrote one of my favorite police procedurals and produced half a dozen worthy novels under his own name – told me that I definitely had what it took to write an entertaining and commercially successful novel. It was just a matter of buckling down to do the actual work. I had the style thing down.

Lucius was always telling me the same thing. He had one piece of additional advice: “You know, you write much better in the first person than you do in the third. If I were you, I’d write all my rough drafts in the first person. It’s easy enough to convert them into third person in subsequent drafts.”

These words are my little magical talismans. You can do it, Patrizia, if you think you can! You are the veritable Little Engine That Could of the Literary Subverse!

###

Writing is hard. Sometimes the words flow; just as often, they don’t.

Perseverance furthers.

Choo-choo! Choo-oo-oo-oo-oo!

###

I got so frustrated this morning that I decided to download a trial version of a writing software called Scrivener, which facilitates outlining and note-taking, and makes it much easier to look at graphic references. With my first two novels, I kept two documents – the actual novel itself and a kind of log that kept track of the changes I would need to incorporate in subsequent drafts. Thus if Egbert suddenly appears in Chapter 5 as the Heroine’s One True Love, I would write, Foreshadow Egbert in the log but I wouldn’t curb momentum or waste time backtracking to plant those references in the current draft. Scrivener automates that process, which in and of itself is probably worth the $40 price of the shareware.

So, maybe what I’ll do for the rest of the day is just hammer out the outline. Probably a useful exercise since after 1934, the historical June drops off the grid, but we still have 45 years of her life to go in a biographical novel.

What I’d really like Scrivener to do, however, is to write the fucking dialogue between June and her brother for me so that they can get up off that dilapidated stoop in Bensonhurst, circa 1923, and go do something else.

Comments

[millysdaughter.livejournal.com]

LOL
I am so much better at dialog than plotting...

[old-cutter-john.livejournal.com]

"[I]nfo dump," gave me a horrible flashback to Isaac Asimov, and his habit of filling in backstory by having his characters recite it at each other. But of course you always write better than that. And still, Asimov, in one of his stories (Reason, if I recall correctly), presented one of the clearest and most convincing arguments ever, for religious tolerance. It's become the cornerstone of my way of looking at other people's belief systems. Dreadful writing though.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Dialogue is not my strong point. :-)

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Ha! Asimov. Yeah.

The Foundation Trilogy was such a favorite of mine growing up that I actually majored in economics when I got to UC Berkeley because it was the closest thing I could find to psychohistory! :-)

But, yeah. Asimov. Not an inspiring prose stylist. :-)

[fuzzilla.livejournal.com]

Do you know anything about the brother's character? Would he be protective? Encouraging? Discouraging? Indifferent? "Who is this nut with all the letters?" "I'll keep this secret from mom and dad, but you better take care of it"?

Or is not knowing much about the brother a big part of the frustration?

[thistle-verse.livejournal.com]

I have Scrivener-- I bought it years and years ago-- and I write in it but I've yet to make it really work for me like people say it can. I mean, I love the binder effect, how you can see all your "chapters" or segments on the side, etc, but I clearly don't know how to do the things you're talking about. I should really sit down with a tutorial.

You're a much better writer than I am and no doubt no more about what your dialogue needs to do, but just as a reader I love slightly dysfunctional dialogue between siblings. I don't know what their relationship is in terms of nuance and what they would or wouldn't say to each other, but those subtle little digs that only siblings can make, that are somehow both vicious and terribly intimate and only come from someone who loves you.

I'm an only child, so maybe that's why it fascinates me so.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Good questions. Yes. Obviously, I have to flesh out the brother character in my mind to some degree. Even though he's a minor character.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Scrivener needs an AI function!!!!! :-)

I only downloaded Scrivener today. I watched the first Help video. The Notes function seems like it might be really useful for me since I typically revise my stuff a lot. I don't want to stop in the middle of a first draft to incorporate the revisions, 'cause then I'll never finish the first draft. Infinite regression! :-)

[immemor.livejournal.com]

Let me help! Let me help! [Bounces around like a puppy.] What do we know of June’s brother? Is he encouraging or not. Was he enlightened or was he more likely telling her to hold an aspirin between her knees? Do we know what was written in Henry’s letters to her? Because, those letters could be gold. I assume he was being romantic and wooing and not behaving like potty-mouth Miller. It might be a good scene to emphasize or reemphasize her attachment to Judaism, thus also setting up her attraction to her Hasidic boyfriend.

[immemor.livejournal.com]

The very last class I took in college was on science fiction as literature. When it came time to read Asimov, the class nearly rebelled because of the low quality of his writing.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Clearly you need to move to the Hudson Valley, to that vacant house right down the street from me, so that whenever I'm stuck, I can run right over and we can role-play together, do improv exercises until I get that goddamn dialogue right!

Younger brother. Wants to leave home and join the army. Wants to change his name. Knows the general, misty outlines of June's dissolute lifestyle but would be horrified by the specifics. June used to stand up for him when their mother was acting particularly wacky and crazy, so he's loyal.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Well. Asimov was a chemist, not a lover. :-)

But true that his actual writing style was abysmal. Which is weird because he worked right alongside Heinlein and L. Sprague de Camp who were both capable stylists.

[immemor.livejournal.com]

The professor kept begging us to “read him for his ideas.” But Asimov just couldn’t compete with H.G. Wells and Walter M. Miller Jr.

I feel that way about J.R.R. (the whole thing is a metaphor for environmental destruction caused by industrialization) Tolkien and C.S. (the lion is Jesus) Lewis. How did these guys sit in the same room without throwing books at each other’s heads? Such professionalism!

[immemor.livejournal.com]

Oh, this is exactly what I need to do! At long last to fulfill my dream of becoming a wandering satirist!

And if you're really really stuck, there's always the phone option - although, I know you hate phones.

This gives me a picture of someone who is more into June's opportunities than she is. He would, perhaps, be envious of her having this man who wants to run off with her (are they running off to Paris yet?) He would not understand any hesitation on her part since his main desire in life is to runaway and reinvent himself. So I see a conversation between two people who are connecting while, at the same time, not connecting. He "kind of" understands her... but June sees the gaps in their communication. On Beauty by Zadie Smith has plenty of examples of this kind of (occasionally awkward) conversations.