Choreography: How to Save a Scene from Too Much Interiority

In her second novel Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie achieves an ideal to which I aspire: a smart, literary, highly readable love story full of cultural references, history, and vivid, textured characters––just the kind of novel I love to read and want to write. I was particularly impressed with Adichie’s technique in moving her characters around in space, as I have trouble with this. Choreography!!! I scold myself, scrawling the word in red ink in the margins of my drafts. More importantly, because of the way she weaves her character’s growing comprehension into the action of the scene using a skillful interplay of description, movement, dialogue, and interiority, we are riveted to both the inner world and the outer world of our protagonist, Olanna.

How to Think About Writing Prompts

I use several kinds of prompts. Most often, I use an entire poem. I see poems as secular prayer, a way of borrowing a bit of genius when I myself feel depleted. Reading a poem, or hearing it, puts me in a literary mind, a new state. I think of it as kindling; a little bit of torched wood tossed onto my log. Or the way, at a peace vigil, we hold candles and pass the flame to our neighbor.

How to Get Through Horrifying Process of Literary Agent Submissions

I have reached a critical point in the list of orderly steps in the long march to publication which I have been given by others and have dutifully written down. They are/were as follows:

1.     Write the shitty first draft
2.     Read it and make less shitty
3.     Send it to Kind & Wise Mentory Editor Who Has Read James Joyce
4.     Laugh and cry as you read her Kind & Wise suggestions; take 99% of them. Redraft.
5.     Send new draft to 28-Year-Old Editor Who Doesn’t Remember President Nixon But Is Much Smarter Than I
6.     Enjoy life with no novel to think about and write songs and poems while 28 y-o reads and edits draft.
7.     Receive edits from 28-y-o and cry for a month. Decide you are not a novelist. Pick yourself up off the carpet and have a Zoom call with her in which she tells you she had a very hard time editing your novel because it was practically perfect.
8.     Wonder if you are crazy.
9.     Take 69% of her suggestions and finish the draft.
10.  Write a synopsis which is harder than writing the novel
11.  Write the query letter which is harder than writing the synopsis
12.  Make a list of agents you’d love to work with by finding names in the acknowledgements pages of your favorite novels. Cross off the dead ones.

On Point of View

Practically the first thing you need to decide when writing fiction is “who is telling this story?” Historically, we novelists have had many options. When novel-writing in English began in…

On Revision

with a little help from Barbara Abercrombie and Henry David Thoreau. Revision is writing, but it’s a different kind of writing from the jagged, ebullient flow of first draft. When…

Autobiography in Five Sentences

It’s Day 2 of my January Retreat here in Little Blue. Every morning, I give a short prompt best done long-hand. Today’s was inspired by Melissa Febos, a brilliant writer…

Thoughts After Listening to a Podcast Interview of Tricia Hersey

Raising a child in America is an act of violenceEverything from the crashing together of the two cells(To say nothing of the act that caused that unionWhether it involved a…

Firstborn

This is poem #28 out of my 30 poems, and I would so so so so appreciate it if you would support the amazing organization and community at Center for New Americans. Why? Because they are a non-profit adult education center that provides the under-served immigrant, refugee and migrant communities of Massachusetts’ Pioneer Valley with education and resources to learn English, become involved community members and obtain tools necessary to maintain economic independence and stability. Because love your neighbor as yourself. Because we are all neighbors. Please support my efforts by contributing to this wonderful organization via my pledge page.

Spelunking

See the world through your new pair of glasses: 
Only what is visible 
Through this rectangle.
This is your subject. 
Now, you may travel the world
To gain a new perspective
Or you can stay home, practice spelunking.
And when your child comes to you and announces
Their path is not your path…