Epiphanies at the Michigan Writing Workshop

On September 12th, I went to the Michigan Writing Workshop in Livonia hosted by Chuck Sambuchino. I'm not going to go into the lessons that he taught us from 9:30-5 pm (yes, he talked almost the whole time. He's amazing.) I'm gonna touch more on the aha moments I had, and there were two pretty big ones. All I can say is, thank god I attended.


Aha #1: Agent = Helper, not God of Fortune

To say I was freaking out before this conference is an understatement. I was pitching my novel to agents face to face for the first time ever, and I wasn't feeling too confident.

I've been querying agents off and on since 2013, so you can imagine how many "no's" that equals. I believe in this project fiercely. You would have to tear it out of my cold, dead hands if you wanted me to just toss it. But it's an indistinct genre for an indistinct audience, and it's hella long. I have at least ten revisions saved on my computer. I hired an editor. I changed my query every few agents. I watched my friends get new jobs and move and get married and have kids, all while I obsessed over this thing. I've often wondered if everyone I know pities me, if they scrunch up their noses and whisper, "Oh, bless her heart. Maybe soon she'll grow up and put her energy somewhere more productive." Any aspiring novelist knows EXACTLY what I'm talking about, I'm sure.

So it's easy to mistake the agent as the one who's going to give you validation, who's going to tell you it's all been worth it, that your work is amazing and that you matter as a person. But that's like expecting a labrador to be a panther. It's just not what they are. (I know, that's a terrible metaphor. I'm Sorry.)

Both agents I talked to liked the premise. Both agents were terrified of the length. They gave me honest and helpful feedback, both during the face-to-face sessions and one in a follow-up email, and because of that, I can say that I now have a plan. Like a real, actual PLAN. You may not get an agent at a conference, but you will get feedback, and you will have a more clear idea of what your next move should be. I wish I had known that going into the pitch-- I probably would have slept a little easier the night before.

Aha #2: Don't ask yourself if your first page is "good" or "bad." Ask yourself if it's competitive. 

Without a doubt, the most valuable--and suspenseful--part of the conference was Writers' Got Talent, or as I prefer to call it, American Idol for Writers. Chuck read our first pages, and as soon as the agents would stop reading if it were in their slush pile, they raised their hands. Over the hour and fifteen minutes that this was done, I think only three or four people had their first page read the whole way through. Some people only had two of their sentences read before hands were raised. One person's didn't even make it to that second sentence.

It was brutal.

Here's an exaggerated reenactment:

Chuck: (reading) It was a cold and blustery day when Toby died. I had just buttoned up my red coat from Hollister, and I couldn't stop sneezing.

Agent #1: (raises hand) Yeah, I feel like this prose is a bit off. Instead of telling me that she buttoned the coat, show me that she buttoned the coat. Instead of telling me that she sneezed, let me feel the sneeze. I just didn't feel the sneeze as a reader.

Agent #2: Opening with the weather is just really cliché. We see it done way, way too often.

Agent #3: Why should I care about Toby and the fact that he's dead? Why should I care about this main character? Character development needs to be more apparent in this opening, both for the main character and for the dead, rotting corpse that is Toby.

Okay, it wasn't exactly like that, but at the same time, it was. It was your creative writing workshop worst nightmare.

After about three pages, Chuck had heard too many grumbles, and he stopped to address the audience. I told these guys to be tough on you, he said. They're not doing you any favors by being dishonest. True. We stopped our grumbles. Agents are looking for a reason to say no-- they get tons of queries every day.

I very quickly went from praying they would pick my page to praying that they wouldn't. And then they did. I thought my heart was going to beat up out of my throat. Chuck made it about a paragraph in before hands were raised. The agent who spoke was-- I shit you not-- the first agent I ever queried in 2013. I had never heard back from her. "Everything's just kind of in the main character's head," she said. "I skimmed every paragraph, and it's still like that." She was the only one who said anything. I was like, really universe?!

I was very attached to the way I opened my novel. It foreshadowed stuff that was going to happen at the end, and it also tied into how book two ends and how book three begins. (Of course, explaining that rationale to an agent would be the dead giveaway of an amateur.) So then the battle in my head went like this: "I think the beginning is good. If I change it, that's like saying it's not good, and it's also selling out. So I can't change it."

By the end of Writers' Got Talent, it was starting to dawn on me that thinking about things in the subjective terms of "good" and "bad" is the quickest way to block anything that could lead to your next step. Ask yourself instead if that beginning is competitive. Out of all the books someone sifts through during a rainy day at the book store, what's going to make them stop and focus on yours?

One tip that Chuck gave us was to mosey through the aisle at Barns and Noble and just read the first page of books in our genre. So the other day I ordered myself a pumpkin spice latte and did just that. I noticed a trend.

Most first pages have:

1) A first sentence (or two sentences) that sets the tone, and it's almost ALWAYS related to a character.
2) A brief description of setting-- like, no more than a paragraph.
3) Dialogue

I still like my opening, but maybe it's not competitive. I think it's easy when you're a writer to forget that there are a million other people trying to do exactly what you're doing. I think it's easy to read your favorite books or the classics and think that your stuff is just as good, if not better. We forget how big the writing world is and how much amazing stuff is being done. What worked twenty years ago wouldn't be enough ten years ago, and that wouldn't be enough today. It's fiercely competitive out there, which is challenging for people like me who don't have a competitive bone in their body.

I think the biggest lie we tell each other about artistry is that talent is rare. What's even more damaging is if you hear this repeatedly as a kid-- which I did. It makes you think that you're almost entitled to recognition because you have this thing that no one else has. Well the truth, kiddos, is that while you may have a voice that's unique to you, talent is not rare. Talent is everywhere. And you aren't entitled to anything.

Maybe that idea wouldn't end up on a motivational poster, but the sooner we accept it, the sooner we can actually get something done.

A Final Tip: Stay Until the End

Around 3:30 or 4, I was done. I was exhausted. My body was coming down from the stress of the pitches, and my ego was shot from the comparisons it was making all day-- well at least my writing is better than THAT person's! Ugh, that first page was SO much better than mine, etc. etc.-- but the woman next to me said to stay to the end because that's when the good stuff comes, and I'm glad I listened. With all the technical publishing stuff out of the way, Chuck talked about his own experiences and hit some important points, like staying curious and open as a person--that's how connections happen--and not giving away too much in your writing; mystery is your friend. So if you plan on going to a writer's conference, stay until the end, even if you feel like you're about to melt into a puddle on the floor, because the closing might pick you up a bit.

So now, I turn it to you. How have you felt after leaving a writer's conference? Any ah-ha's? If you've never attended one, what's the worst (or best) writing workshop you've ever been in? When and why do you feel resistant to making changes in your writing? I want to know, so please share!

Playing Therapist

Sometimes, I think I should just change the name of this blog to "weird stuff from my childhood,"

because basically, that's the majority of these posts. I'm coming to terms with this.

I may have mentioned before that me, my cousin Natalie, and my big sister Liz, played a little longer than maybe other kids did. We created alter egos who were single mothers (to our dolls). We were also detectives, authors, and school teachers. The summer before seventh grade, after finding blank clinical assessment notes of my dad's, we decided we were also going to be therapists.

We each typed up our own clinical assessment notes, complete with our alter egos' names at the top. I was Alena Parker (formally Alena Bishop), Ph.D. We asked Dad to print off several copies--I don't remember how many, but Dad was in his office for a really long time while we were in the car, and he was pretty crabby when he came back.

At our next visit, we decided that we needed to see our clients, so we insisted that my mom draw them for us. She spent the entire visit taking orders on how our clients should look and producing them. This made her very crabby, because she really just wanted to talk to my aunts.

We each had our own section of Natalie's room-- our "office"-- where we would put our client's picture in a chair and talk to them, being both the voice of the client and the therapist. We rolled pieces of gum and called them "gum smokes," which we pretended were cigarettes while we counseled. (May I just say I've always found the whole concept of "gum" to be disgusting, and I only participated due to peer pressure.)

Recently, I found some of the pictures and notes from playing Therapist. Here's a few of my favorites, word-for-word as they originally appeared in 1996:

Meet Joyce Richardson.

Current Problem: Dissociative Fuge
History: Joice was born in 1966 to Clair and Robert Richardson. Joice grew up with no toys and no friends. Her parents sent her to a Christian school until she was 13, then said the school was teaching her nothing. Joice's older sister Susan ran away at 15. Robert beat Clair, finally to death, and Joice and her little sister were sent to live with her aunt, Opal Richardson, who sent Joice to a boarding school and killed Joice's little sister, Amy, and five with a bullet. Joice came back to her aunt's house at 16 and found her little sister's dead body in a locked closet. (After a YEAR?) Her aunt was found hung a day later, from suicide. Joice went to live on her own and got a job at a restaurant. Currently works as a secretary.




                                                               Meet Jacklin Rein.

Diagnosis: Manic Depressive
History: Jacklin was born to Ruth and Simon Rein on January 20, 1973. She was the middle child. Her older sister was very self indulgent and put Jacklin down for most of her life by criticizing and making fun of her. Ruth seemed to favor her oldest daughter over Jacklin and her younger sister. She went to UCLA in 1991. She got a degree in art, and sold her art at a local art store. In 1993, Jacklin's older sister committed suicide. Ruth and Simon decided it was Jacklin's fault, and haven't spoken to them since. Jacklin entered a religious group in '94 where they thought there was no god or devil, and when you died you were just gone. (You mean ATHEISM?) Jacklin quit the group in November '95, but still believes in the group's ideas tremendously. Jacklin currently sells her art in the same local store.




Meet Roberta Bremen
Diagnosis: Dependant Personality Disorder
Clinical Symptoms: Dependant on a Cult

History: Roberta Bremen was borin in 1950 to Katherine and Jack Linne. After their death in 1961, Roberta and her three brothers moved in with their grandfather. Roberta became withdrawn. Her grandfather wanted her to be a boy, so he called her Bob. She believes this caused her to become more dependent on her grandfather because of her low self-esteem in not being what her grandfather wanted. When she was 14, she met Allen Bremen and married him at 20. She moved into Allen's trailer. He brought money home from working at a gas station. In 1982, Roberta and Allen had a daughter Meri and in 1989, a daughter Angela. In 1990, Roberta and Allen went to join a religious cult. Now, they'd like to leave but don't know how.
Therapy Modality: Bring up the bad things about the cult to help them realize it's bad for them.
Therapy Goals: To get Allen and Roberta out of the cult.

Let's not forget, I also counseled Roberta's nerdy husband.






I had a few children clients, including Samantha O'Herra who really had no problems, except she was jealous of her baby brother. I even drew a picture that she drew of him.

I made my mom draw Samantha twice, but why? WHO is the real Samantha? This is an enduring mystery.
             

I found some of  Liz's clients and notes as well. Her clients all had similar problems-- their parents didn't give them enough attention, they had bad relationships with their siblings-- not exciting at all… except for Lexy Hill, who is suffering from nightmares and doesn't know why. The notes don't offer clues, but her picture does….

ALIEN ABDUCTION.

I also found this urgent memo that Liz (Gillian's) secretary left her, written by Liz, and this amazing note about Jeff's dog.

He had a dog named Boner that died of old age. Boner.

It sort of makes sense that the girls and I invented this game since we were constantly writing novels-- or at least starting them, writing twenty pages, and then starting another. We were teaching ourselves how to do character backstory without even knowing it. GOD, WHAT CHILD PRODIGIES WE WERE!

Exercise: If you are a writer, create mock Clinical Assessment notes for your characters. Diagnose them with something, write up their history, make a few progress notes, and maybe even draw their picture, or find a picture from a magazine and tack it on to the notes. Keep everything in an actual manila folder for each character. Do this for everyone, even the minor characters. You never know what might come of it! (This is where my helpfulness ends for this entry.)

Surprisingly though, Therapist was NOT my favorite game of ours. At the time, I thought it was the gum smokes. Something about the mintiness gave me headaches (actually, it was the strain from holding them up to my face, which was enough to tighten the muscles in my back, and the pain shot up to my forehead like a headache, but I wouldn't figure this out until I was about fifteen. Scoliosis!) But now, I know it was more.

For one thing, unlike playing with dolls or playing teacher and writing on the blackboard, there was literally nothing to interact with. I was just sitting in a chair talking at a picture. It helped that Natalie and Liz were sitting in their own chairs talking at their own pictures, but still.

Exercise: Create a name, voice, and persona for a different person. Create a name, voice, and persona for how you imagine you would be as a therapist. Speak out loud a conversation between these two people, not forgetting to change your voice. See how long it takes you to lose your mind.

Also, I think something about it was just depressing. It's one thing to write about a character who lived through a terrible childhood or who can't escape a cult, but embodying that person in real-time is another thing entirely.

Fast forward to around 2008-2009ish. Liz, now a grown-up, is getting her Master's in social work for real, and as a part of her homework, she has to do mock-therapy exercises with volunteers. When she asked me to pretend to be a drug addict, I was like, "that sounds like fun!" However, as twenty minutes became forty-five and so on, I was surprised at how down it was getting me. I started almost feeling like it was real, just the way the question and response was going. I was like, "oh my god, I lost custody of my children and I'm working at Family Dollar because I can't stop my meth habit. Life is hopeless!" The whole thing was just weird and kind of awful. I'm guessing this is what I had been doing to myself as a twelve-year-old playing Therapist.

Exercise: Imagine your life going a totally different way. What if instead of doing this to combat your anxiety, you did that? What if you made one too many bad decisions and now you're in drug counseling and have lost almost everything? Speak all of this out loud with no irony. Don't even change your voice. See how long it takes before you find yourself outside on the ground, rolling around in the cold mud, just to feel something again.

I have no idea how to end this entry, because I'm not completely sure what the point of it is, but let me try: *Cue Full House Music.* It's interesting the intrigue and excitement we place on things that we don't understand, especially as children. Dissociative Fugues might be really compelling for an hour on Dateline, but if you were working with this person one-on-one, or worse yet, if you were this person, there would be nothing exciting about it at all, just a lot of pain, struggle, and hopefully after a while, some kind of healing. But there's nothing wrong with curiosity, especially in the hard stuff, the weird stuff, and the complicated stuff, because that's where the stories are. Just stay away from the gum smokes, because they will make your scoliosis way worse than it already is.

Now I turn it over to you: When you were a kid, did you ever play Therapist? Did you ever think something was intriguing and then grow up and realize that it was actually really depressing? Did you ever make your parents do ridiculous things so you could play, like I did to mine? Have you thanked your parents lately for this? Do you like to draw?

I leave you with the one client that I tried to sketch myself, Susan Luci. Peace out.

Writing Stories: Part One

I often feel that because I’m not yet published, I’m not allowed to talk about the creative writing process or really give advice outside of work, even though I'm a writing teacher by profession, and I write pretty much constantly-- I don't even sleep, eat, or waste time! (Not true.) This blog entry COULD be about the underlying pathology of all the things I feel I'm not "allowed" to do or be, but I'll save that someday for therapy. Instead, I'll share a few little things I've learned along the way, 'cus I've really been jonesing to!

A lot of people may say that media rots your brain, but it totally depends on what you're watching. I've noticed that sometimes the lessons that have helped my writing the most haven't actually come from books, but from movies and television and documentaries and even the news. Don't worry, I'm not going to tell you that writers don't really have to read-- that's RIDICULOUS-- but influences don't have to be exclusively literary. Story telling is story telling, and characters are characters after all.

I finished a novel last year after working on it for about three years, and one of the most frustrating things was character development. This surprised me, since I appreciate character-driven stories over any other kind. It was humbling to realize that just because I was passionate about something didn't mean I was good at it. DUH. (Someone needs to share that brilliant epihphany with many American Idol hopefuls.) The thing with characters is that if they are too much like you, they either come off as blank slates on the page, or you feel like you're writing a diary. It's also hard to make multiple characters have their own distinct personalities that aren't stereotypes or exaggerations of people who you really know.

A television show that I think is brilliant at characterization is The Office. The first three seasons are basically perfect, and that was largely because the writers were masters at doing so much in a small amount of space. The episodes are only about 23 minutes long, and there's a lot of characters, so every moment has to count. The talking heads are almost like their own version of flash fiction. (Is that going too far?) Literally every time--and I mean EVERY TIME I am struggling with my characters--I think of this specific moment from The Office: 

This short talking head of Kelly Kapor’s tells you everything about that character, everything, everything, and not a scrap less. I often ask myself, how many things can a character moment do at once? Can we see what the person cares about and how much depth they have and how they see the world? Is my character moment the “dead sister” Kelly Kapor talking head? If not, I best find a way to make it so.

It's sobering to finish an entire novel draft and write "who is she" by a line with your main character.

Also sobering to discover you've made your teenage main character repeatedly sound like a preschooler.

Another thing: if you push aside characterization and instead rely too much on some pre-concieved plot idea, your work will suffer. This seems obvious enough, but I really didn't fully realize how much until I watched the last season of Dexter. Oh boy. Where to even begin.

For years, Dexter, a drama about a nice serial killer trying to juggle his “hobby” and a normal life, was one of my favorites. It explored identity, family, and the construction of reality in ways that I had never seen before. Dexter took the command “make something new” and ran with it, so as a storyteller, I held the show in VERY high esteem... and then the final season happened. I’m not going to get into all the problems with season eight because we’ll be here all night, but basically, none of the major character arcs really made sense, and one of the biggest problems was with Dexter’s love interest, Hannah.

Hannah loved Dexter, and (spoiler alert!) her love made him want to stop killing. I bought none of this, and neither did the majority of the audience. Partially, this was because Hannah the character was just very ill-defined. First, she was a girl with a dark history, looking out for herself, then she was an abused wife, and then she was a potentially great mommy to Dexter’s son (which was “proven” when she took him to the hospital after he was attacked by a treadmill). Hannah was also very attractive and never criticized Dexter, ever. But isn’t that every sociopath’s dream? Wouldn’t a woman like that just make Dexter stay the same, or actually get WORSE? I mean, maybe if she had a peg leg or challenged him in some way or beat him at his own game, but no. She was more like a male fantasy than an actual person, and seriously, did the writers really think their female viewers would enjoy watching that? Okay, I’m getting off track… but basically, the characterization was a huge problem, and that problem flooded the scenes.

(Harrison=0, Treadmill= 1) 

While watching the final two seasons of Dexter, I was struck by the difference in how engaged I was during the Dexter/Hannah scenes and the scenes with Dexter and his sister-by-adoption, Deb. Deb & Dexter’s relationship is probably one of the most complicated, fascinating relationships I’ve ever seen on television. Their identities were completely symbiotic and dependent on the other’s perception of them. They never saw eye to eye or completely connected, not even in the end (which sucked), but at the same time, they were the center of each other’s world. There was a lot of anger, desperation, protectiveness, affection, and even semi-incestuous feels, so their scenes were eyes-glued-to-the-television worthy. Not a second was wasted, and the scenes always cut about two minutes before you wanted them to.

The Dexter/Hannah scenes, by contrast, were scenes that I found myself dreading, and near the end of the final season, I had diagnosed why. Almost all of these scenes involved:  A) repeating or narrating stuff that already happened B) excessive length C) prettiness D) no conflict, unless they were discussing Deb. E) dramatic pauses. I remember feeling particularly exasperated during one never-ending scene where Hannah and Dexter were driving in the car at sunset. I sighed loudly and yelled at the television, “I don’t care how pretty or how long you’re making this! I feel NOTHING!”

LIGHTBULB MOMENT.

I literally ran* to my computer and took a look at the long-ass novel that I was trying to find an agent for. I knew what my problem was (well, at least the biggest one).

The novel I've been working on is speculative fiction, so it involves a series of “what if” scenarios: what if the universe really does repeat itself? What if we have doubles on another Earth? What if that Earth has proof of life after death? There’s a lot going on here, so the novel topped off at about 170K words. A few agents were like, “this is too long,” and I was like, “I know, but what's a girl to do? It is what it is.”

Well, that response was faulty. In truth, there was a big problem with my editing strategy. Whenever I felt like a scene wasn’t working, I almost always attributed it to pacing. I needed to make this scene longer, I thought. I needed to make the reader see it more. I needed to add more beats, more heavy sighs. If I could just be IN it longer, it would have the desired impact. In other words, the novel was FULL of Dexter/Hannah sunset driving scenes, scenes that I was pretending worked, even though deep down, I knew that I felt mostly nothing.

So my new goal became this: the next time something felt off, I could write more at first to figure out where the interesting stuff was between the characters, but then I had to subtract. I had to shave at least a page from each chapter. If I changed a scene of dialogue, it had to be shorter or at least as long as the original scene. My mantra was “richer, not longer.” When I was tempted to ignore a bad scene, I just thought about how angry I was at the Dexter writers for inflicting those Dexter/Hannah scenes upon me, and terrified of making their same mistakes, I worked harder. Every scene needed to be Deb/Dexter (metaphorically speaking), and no scene could ever be Dexter/Hannah.

Did the novel not only get shorter, but better after this epiphany? YES. So much. Oh my god. So, Dexter, thanks for sucking in the end, I guess.

I do have a cautionary tale about learning from television and movies though, and it has to do with how writers SEE scenes in their heads. We’ve all read those books where we feel like we are physically there because the descriptions are so intense (HARRY POTTER), but usually, the images we make up ourselves are more in the back-brain as opposed to the front-brain where an image might sit from television or film. I just made up phrases, and as I type this, I’m not sure if what I’m saying is
completely true, but let me just give you an example of where I'm going.

I love you, little Kevin.

Nick and Nite started airing The Wonder Years reruns when I was in junior high, and I became pretty obsessed. Recently, I watched some episodes on Netflix, and I was kind of taken with the realization that this show was the genesis of so much that I find myself doing in my stories today, like my focus on coming-of-age, the domestic, and friendships. It also made me obsessed with the idea of growing up next door to someone and then falling in love with them. Anyway, a while back, I was working on this scene in my novel that involved a school play. Oz, one of the main characters, is watching his neighbor and best friend on stage, Faylin (who he—you guessed it—falls in love with). Oz is the light guy up in the rafters, shining the light on Faylin. I wrote a line, something about how he felt like he was “holding her up with the light.” The scene came kinda naturally, you know? I could just see it.

Well, a great deal of time went by, and I wrote more chapters, and then suddenly, one night, completely out of nowhere, I was like, “Oh my god, I literally plagiarized that entire scene from The Wonder Years.” Until that moment, consciously, I had completely forgotten about the episode where Winnie was in the school’s production of Our Town and Kevin did the lights—which was nuts, but not the problem—the problem was that I was nearly positive that the line about holding her up with the light was from the show. I could hear Daniel Stern’s voice-over and everything.

Thespian Winnie Cooper, on stage

I don’t know why I suddenly remembered this episode (I probably watched it last when I was fifteen), but thank god, because who wants to accidently plagiarize? I was horrified and took out the line, which was a good move anyway, because it actually didn’t make any sense. Ever since, I’ve worried that the reason a scene just pops in my brain is because I  HAVE already seen it.  So… how do we avoid this? I don't even know. I'd say let’s ask ourselves if something feels a little too familiar while we’re editing, yeah? Especially if parts of it are sorta like the shows and films that have been in our brains for most of our lives.

Just because we learn something doesn’t mean we immediately master it, but the first step to fixing a problem is giving it a name. I’m still working on making scenes precise and rich and making my characters complicated, three-dimensional people, and I guess it’s okay if I work on that forever until I die, because it’s my favorite thing to do. But being published before I die, I mean, that would be nice.

And these are only the drafts I've PRINTED! This is enough work to be at Barns & Noble, right? I can stop here? NO?!

So now I turn it over to you: if you write, what non-literary sources have influenced you or helped you become better? Even if you don't write, have you ever learned a lot from something precisely BECAUSE it sucked? Do you want me to keep talking about everything that was wrong with the 8th season of Dexter? Because I can. Isn't it depressing how Kevin and Winnie didn't end up together in the end and married other people? Sound off!

* “Ran” means I was like, “hmm, this is familiar. I feel uncomfortable. I’ll think about why tomorrow.” Then I went to bed. I woke up the next day and went to work and it was all kind of swimming in my head still. I casually sat down at my computer later that night after my shower and took a look at my writing.