I finally finished the story on which I was working. Yeah! I can breathe relief, and go back to grading papers. I started it last summer, put it away for an entire academic year, only to pick it back up this summer. The revision was brutal. It’s my least favorite part! But I’m done. Finished. (I think). I recognize that a story is never, truly finished (until, perhaps, it’s published, but even then it can always be improved somehow, someway).

So now I’m sending it out to a few places, hoping to finally get a break.

Regardless, I’m happy with it. I feel like I’ve just given birth: exhausted, in pain, but exhilarated and thrilled.

I can now devote some time to this other story, one whose idea was conceived last summer (it was a busy, creative summer!). This is a longer piece, though I’m hesitant to say I’m embarking on a novel. It’s too scary a thought right now. I have my memoir to think about, to add to. But this story just doesn’t let go of me. Wherever I turn, it’s there. The characters haunt me, asking me when I’m going to write them down. I have scribbled notes, written character sketches, and drafted a scene which I’m thinking of carving into a short story. I can tackle this one part at a time.

Maybe I’ll go back to reading John Dufresne’s  Is Life Like This? A Guide to Writing Your First Novel in Six Months. There’s no way I’ll be able to write the entire thing in six months (I do have a day job and a family that compete for my time), but, maybe it’ll help me get started.

It scares the shit out of me, though. A novel. Maybe if I approach it like I did my Master’s thesis. Once section at a time. Maybe then it won’t seem so daunting.

Or, maybe I’ll go back to working on my memoir. I was about a third in before I stopped to focus on shorter pieces. Maybe.

 

Last summer, during my Postcard Memoirs course  from UCLA’s Writers Extension online program, I was given a heap of helpful and useful links. One of those, in particular, I’ve found myself coming back to over and over again, and it’s not even for non-fiction!

The article, if you want to read it all, is “Ten Rules for Writing Fiction,” and it’s a compilation of several authors’ do’s and don’ts for writing fiction. Some of these rules (actually, many of them) can also be applied to some areas of nonfiction, especially memoir (short or long).

The following are among my favorites.

Elmore Leonard — “Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But “said” is far less intrusive than “grumbled”, “gasped”, “cautioned”, “lied”. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with “she asseverated” and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary.”

“Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose”. This rule doesn’t require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use “suddenly” tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.”

“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”

Diana Athill — “Read it aloud to yourself because that’s the only way to be sure the rhythms of the sentences are OK (prose rhythms are too complex and subtle to be thought out – they can be got right only by ear).”

Margaret Atwood — “Hold the reader’s attention. (This is likely to work better if you can hold your own.) But you don’t know who the reader is, so it’s like shooting fish with a slingshot in the dark. What fascinates A will bore the pants off B.”

“You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there’s no free lunch. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you’re on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.”

“Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.”

Roddy Doyle — “Do keep a thesaurus, but in the shed at the back of the garden or behind the fridge, somewhere that demands travel or effort. Chances are the words that come into your head will do fine, eg “horse”, “ran”, “said”.”

Helen Dunmore — “Finish the day’s writing when you still want to continue.”

Geoff Dyer — “Keep a diary. The biggest regret of my writing life is that I have never kept a journal or a diary.”

“Do it every day. Make a habit of putting your observations into words and gradually this will become instinct. This is the most important rule of all and, naturally, I don’t follow it.”

Anne Enright — “The way to write a book is to actually write a book. A pen is useful, typing is also good. Keep putting words on the page.”

Jonathan Franzen — “Fiction that isn’t an author’s personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn’t worth writing for anything but money.”

Esther Freud — “Find your best time of the day for writing and write. Don’t let anything else interfere. Afterwards it won’t matter to you that the kitchen is a mess.”

“Don’t wait for inspiration. Discipline is the key.”

Neil Gainman — “Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”

PD James — “Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft. The greater your vocabulary the more effective your writing. We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.”

“Don’t just plan to write – write. It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.”

“Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell.”

Al Kennedy — “Have humility. Older/more experienced/more convincing writers may offer rules and varieties of advice. Consider what they say. However, don’t automatically give them charge of your brain, or anything else – they might be bitter, twisted, burned-out, manipulative, or just not very like you.”

“Have more humility. Remember you don’t know the limits of your own abilities. Successful or not, if you keep pushing beyond yourself, you will enrich your own life – and maybe even please a few strangers.”

“Remember you love writing. It wouldn’t be worth it if you didn’t. If the love fades, do what you need to and get it back.”

 

As one who writes memoir and personal essay, memory is at the front of my creative needs. When I’ve taught the memoir in my composition courses, I tell my students that memoir is true insofar as memory permits. And this is because memory is fragmented. When we remember, we do so it bits and pieces, in starts and stalls. We might not remember the entire scene as a movie developing from start to finish. We remember enough of that scene to piece it together and to know what happened.

I find myself now, marveling at how deceiving memory can be. I’m revising a short story I wrote, hoping to send it out to a few places. It’s the story of a mother who was exiled to the States after witnessing a murder during the drug war days of Medellin and who is now trying to go back and find the kids she left behind.

I thought I had the dates all down. The last time I went to Colombia was in 1992… I think. I was always convinced it was 1992, but now that I’m dissecting dates, I wonder if it was ’91 or ’93. I (think I) was thirteen. Anyway, the last time I went to Colombia I was in Manizales and kissed a boy who had been my pen pal since ’89 when I met him at my aunt’s music school – La Rafael Pombo. It wasn’t my first kiss, but it was my first kiss with a boy I liked (my first was on a dare). After that trip, it was no longer safe to go. Family came and visited, but we never went back. I’d hear my father talking about car bombs, about an explosion in Unicentro, about my cousin getting hurt (but thankfully not seriously). In my mind, the worst of the worst with the drug wars happened in the mid-to-late 1990’s.

Now that I’m writing my story, I had these dates preset by my memory. I had to check my facts, though, and would you imagine my surprise when I realized the heydays of the Medellin Cartel were in the late 80’s and Pablo Escobar, that much-hated and much-revered drug lord (depending on whom you asked) was killed in December of 1993? Right around that last time I was in Colombia. Such is memory, I guess.

Now on to changing some specifics in my story to match the facts.

In the lull between semesters, as I scurry to get the grades in for one semester and the courses set up for the next, I find myself wanting to wedge between responsibility and whim. After all, what’s paying the bills is my teaching, not my writing.

But in that lull (a word which, really, is ironic as it’s applied to that space in time between semesters that’s neither here nor there), as it often happens when I’m overwhelmed or ecstatic or sorrowful or angry, I am consumed with the need to write. Any emotion that courses through me becomes a flame igniting the desire and need to put into words said emotions – either in the form of characters in a story, a personal essay, a poem, or just some scribbles somewhere.

I’ve often contemplated what a “writer’s life” means. Does it mean, as the romanticized version leads us to believe, that one must sequester oneself from the world, live in misery and abuse, contemplate suicide, and skirt the borders of sanity? Does it mean that a wife and mother with a day job can’t live the writer’s life? Absolutely not! A writer’s life means the dedication and commitment to keep pursuing that passion of words that brings about a flurry of emotions to oneself and one’s readers. It means carving out some time of one’s busy schedule (and we all know our schedules are busy) to read and write and learn. Because a writer’s life is one of constant sacrifice and discovery.

I’m leading a writer’s life by writing every day as much as I can. By giving life to characters and stories, either made up or real, and by discovering and rediscovering who I am in relation to those characters of my past and present. I’m navigating through this uncertain territory of writing and publication, redefining who I am, and learning that there’s more than one way of having a writer’s life. Though some aspects of a writer’s life might be ideal (as in weeks or months of solitude to only write), the ideal is what we make of it. I take the minutes and hours I can get – in between naps, a night’s stay at grandma’s, a day out with daddy, some hours at Starbucks – and make a writer’s life out of it.