Friday May 2nd, 2008

Becoming a Writer II (panel discussion)

Panelists: Adam Leith Gollner, Alice Kuipers, Yu Shi, Andrea MacPherson

This panel consisted mainly of novelists, with the exception of Adam Leith Gollner, who writes non-fiction. His first book is The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession. Alice Kuipers just published her first novel, Life on the Refrigerator Door, which tells the story of a mother and daughter through Post-It notes left on the fridge. Yu Shi is a writer and translator living in Shanghai, and has published five works of fiction, including one blog-to-book. Andrea MacPherson writes poetry and fiction. Her two novels so far are When She Was Electric and Beyond the Blue.

Panelists shared their own tips for writing, both practical and motivational. Adam Leith Gollner finds early morning the best time for writing. He quoted Harold Bloom, another early riser: “4am is neither yesterday nor today” and spoke of the liminal nature of writing fitting well with liminal times like this, or liminal spaces such as the subway. Writers exist in the in-between.

Andrea MacPherson has just finished a novel on mill workers, and spoke about when to stop researching and start writing. She asked, “where can fiction take over?” She had to learn to let characters do what they want, and not to shoehorn interesting bits of research into the story if they didn’t fit. Having attempted historical fiction myself, the balance of research and story is an abiding interest for me. I loved her final wording: “reality is a framework to hang the canvas on,” which emphasizes how much creative work needs to be done beyond writing down the facts.

Picking up on the theme of work, Alice Kuipers derided the fantasy of easy writing. She spoke of finished manuscripts sitting in drawers, and piles of rejection letters. She was also the most openly encouraging of the panelists, asking participants about their own work and urging writers to find their own personal method. If you’re stuck with a story, she said, try and figure out why it’s not working. Instead of asking what is missing (which is what I would think of first), she asks, “What do you have too much of? Action? Dialogue? Interiority? Description?”

Adam Leith Gollner referred to difficulties of structure, describing the process as akin to making your way through an overgrown forest; sometimes a path opens up, but most often you’re blindly hacking your own route out. He also recommended Margaret Atwood’s book on writing, Negotiating with the Dead. He introduced me to the fantastic concept of the vomit draft - that first draft when you just let everything spill out, as messy and disgusting as you like. This is also the method recommended by NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month): get the first draft on paper without fussing.

I think that’s good advice.