by Daney

I’ve never encountered a fiction writer I considered excellent at both the novel and short story forms. Peter Taylor’s short stories are excellent, his novels not so much. Anyone who knows me is tired of my effusions about Faulkner’s novels but have you ever heard me rave about any of his short stories?

Here’s another example: I recently checked out Roxana Robinson’s “Asking for Love” from the library by mistake (I rarely read short stories). It was the last thing on my shelf so I plowed into it. The stories are exquisite!

So now I’m reading “This is My Daughter” and it’s drudgery. Is it just me?

by Daney

Okay, I’ll admit it–my last post was sort of a scam. I started talking about the publishing market, then sent you to a column about different kinds of learning.

This one http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2010/07/buckle-up.html really is about the market for books. It’s comforting (sorta) and is written by someone I respect. Honest.

by Daney

Recently while home with a bug I reread a manuscript fragment of the second book in my series about desegregation in the south. I was very pleased with parts of it. The rest indicated LOTS of work to be done.

Several days later I woke up thinkingt about the Mississippi State Soverignty Commission. Yes, dear reader, there was such a thing and it was quite as nasty as the name implies. It comprised the top officers of the state, from the governor on down, and was wholly dedicated to preserving the “soverignty” of the state–in other words, preventing the federal government from enforcing Brown vs. Board of Education.

Anyone who knows anything about the history of the Magnolia State is probably not surprised to hear this. What surprised me was its emergence from my subconscious. I was totally unaware of it during the period when it existed (1956-1977) and somewhere between disconcerted and outraged when I learned about it via NPR in 2001 when the records were finally open to the public. I remember thinking, “I’ll have to look into that someday.”

I suppose that day has come. It strikes me that the research for this book may be quite a journey. I’m looking forward to it!

by Daney

Yesterday I read a fascinating article (see link below)http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/print/news/2010/03/26/stepto, an interview with Yale professor Robert Burns Stepto. The entire article is worth reading but what still resonates with me is his distinction between “story writers” and “writing storytellers.”

The distinbction has to do with voice, he explains. “A ’story writer’ may well create an eccentric, idiosyncratic voice (a high modernist voice, perhaps), possibly with its own distinct singular syntax and grammar, and consider that creation to be in itself an act of art.

“A ‘writing storyteller’ can hardly surmount the fact that he or she is writing, but seeks nonetheless a voice that is at once singular and shared in much the way a storyteller’s voice (and story) may be singular and yet shared with storylisteners. To hope that readers will become, to a degree, storylisteners, is to seek the kind of communal relationship found, for example, between preachers and congregations, musicians and audiences in certain performance venues, and between storytellers and storylisteners.

“The writing storyteller approximates the performative aesthetic of the ‘folk’ event, I believe, in an effort not to be removed or alienated from certain readerships by the act of writing.”

That rings so true to me! It both explains why I respond so viscerally to certain books and characters (think Sabine and Ruth again) and authenticates the kind of writer I want to be. No more agonizing about why I can’t be more “original” or avant gard. I’m going to settle happily for being a writing storyteller.

Which do you prefer?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one

from The Guardian Several writers were asked to list rules for writing fiction. Of course the primary ones are read and write, but some of the tips are LOL funny.

by Daney

We all love those days when the words just flow from our finger tips and, when we reread a passage we’re amazed by how good it is. Have you ever thought, “Did I really write that?”

If writing were always like that everyone would want to do it. In my experience the dog days are much more common. You know, those times when every word has to be torn loose, when you’d rather do the ironing than sit at your desk.

What do you do to get yourself out of the doldrums?

by Daney

Patricia Cohen had an article in the Times last week about William Faulkner. That’s as good as it gets for me. I’ve been a Faulknerphyle since my undergrad days at Ole Miss and I went on to write my MA thesis about Caddy Compson. His portrait hangs in my office. What can I say?

Patricia Cohen wrote the article on which I based my pitch letter for Every City or House.

The article is about Faulkner’s fascination with a friend’s old plantation ledgers. Scholars unearthed them and found a treasure trove of plots and character names. The son of Faulkner’s friend, speaking by telephone from his home in Atlanta, remembered hearing Faulkner rant as he read Leak’s pro-slavery and pro-Confederacy views: ‘Faulkner became very angry. He would curse the man and take notes and curse the man and take more notes.’”

Just think—if Faulkner had not found those ledgers, some of our greatest literature might never have been written.

I have a friend who once got an idea for a novel while mowing her pasture. One of mine came from the apartment buildings built in midtown Memphis during World War II.

What inspires you?

by Daney

One of my mornings this week began with a visit to the dermatologist. All of my suspicious spots were above the waist so I was issued a “cape” rather than a “gown.” Dressed in a sleeveless, shapeless paper garment when the doctor and his assistant entered the room, I informed them that I wouldn’t give them a nickel for a whole case of the things. The doctor smiled. The assistant replied, “You’re right. They have no architectural integrity at all.”

Instantly she became a character to me. Throughout the time my flesh was being frozen, hacked and cauterized I was in another world, imagining the background of my delightful character, dreaming up other dialogue and conjuring the situations in which she might find herself.

I wonder how non-story tellers transport themselves from unpleasant situations.

by Daney

Nature or nuture? Some of both, I suspect. Certainly I have learned a great deal from writer friends and conferences, and four books on the subject are important to me. Listed in the order I read them, they are On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner, Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings, How Fiction Works by James Wood and Ann Patchett’s Truth & Beauty. The last one is not so much about writing as a reminder that even someone who makes her craft look easy struggled to get started.

I would love to hear others’ views on this subject.

by Daney

Why do we write? The usual answer is, “Because we have to. It’s like being in labor.”

That’s true but isn’t really a reason. Why do we have to? Why is the need to write like labor pains?

Perhaps there are as many reasons as there are writers (there are more of us than readers one of my writer friends suspects). Some of us are driven by a character who assumes more power in our lives than our closest friends. Some are haunted by compelling stories that we have encountered or that simply appeared in our heads one day. Some perhaps feel we have something to say.

My compulsion is a crazy mishmash of all of the above. I grew up hearing that I had to write the story of my name though that never appealed. I was praised in elementary school for my way with words. Big deal. It didn’t make the other kids seek me out.

I took it up in college as an affectation and produced some truly awful stories. I tried it again in my thirties with similar results and was assured by a writing teacher that I was a disgrace to the profession. That did it for a good, long time.

Then, quite by accident, I came across a Nadine Gordimer novel on an airport news stand (what are the chances of that??) and could not stop reading until I had devoured them all. Of course she won the Nobel Prize! She laid out the history of apartheid and its demise so that its folly could be grasped by anyone. I wish I could do that for the American South, I thought.

So I tried again, and again, amassing hundreds of pages and five sort-of novels. I kept writing. Or, I should say, overwriting.

One weekend I read At the River I Stand and wanted to crawl inside its pages. Next I learned of, and even came to know some of the women who changed Memphis during that period. Thus began the 10-year gestation of Every City or House. My daughter died and grief gave it new dimensions.

What next? I am about halfway through the second novel in my Gordimer-inspired series and still employed in the job of my dreams. I’ve been whining about its frustrations lately, telling myself that I’m not doing what I truly want to do, finding life similar to labor pains. That will stop but an improved attitude doesn’t really answer the question.

I started this blog with the hazy thought that it could attract a community of reader-writers and that is still my hope. I have neglected it recently. That, too, will stop. Then we’ll see.