rebeccakuder

My characters are slackers.

The outline of my novel-in-progress is now fully scrawled in 24 notebook pages.  The next job is to type it up, massage it into a sort of stage manager’s “bible” which was a technique I used with The Watery Girl. This process seemed to help.  Character motivations, scene breakdown, major “props” or icons that I needed to follow through the novel, for continuity.  But now what?  I still have to figure out how this story ends.

Writers often talk about how their characters take over, dictate, and decide what happens next.

So where are my people?  Asleep, at the bar?  It’s sunny out, did they call in sick today?

Slackers.

rebeccakuder

Ed Hammell was right

“It’s a land of many paths
There ain’t only one right way
And I will keep on rocking that
Until my dying day–
It’s a land of many paths
There ain’t only one right way
And I will keep on rocking that
Until my dying day…”

–Hammell on Trial, “Gonna Be a Meeting”

rebeccakuder

On making a mess


I saw this photo of Obama’s speech and was inspired.

The following is from Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day, pages 33-34:

“How does one really begin to write? William G. Perry Jr. has described the process succinctly: ‘First you have to make a mess, then you clean it up.’ If you think about the implications of this statement, you quickly realize that how you write is up for grabs: no more neat outlines with Roman numerals to follow, no elegant topic sentences for each paragraph, maybe not even any clear sense of where you’re going.”

I use that idea when I teach writing courses. I believe it applies any type of writing. Once people accept the premise, it frees the writer to do what is needed. To write something.

Clearly Obama knows this. I’m glad to know that someone still uses a pen. And that the person “running the country” cares about what he says enough to make a mess.

rebeccakuder

On not being a poet

Writers of all forms say they feel not simply drawn, but called to write.  But when I was in grad school, I noticed something about the poets.  Many seemed more mystically attached to what they did than the writers of prose.  Those poets were not pretentious, but watching them, I got the feeling there was something purer, maybe gnostic, about the practice of poetry.  Could poetry be a more athletic practice than prose, if only in the necessary distillation and economy of words?  (I don’t mean to make too many generalizations about forms and writers: there are certain novelists who are or might as well be poets, or whose prose feels like poetry.  I love reading a novel that feels like it was written by a poet.)

I’ve written poetry most of my life, but I always feel timid taking my poetry seriously.  When it comes to poetry, I know I am a hobbyist.  Not a real poet, but someone who visits the land of poetry on vacations, wearing garish clothing and the wrong shoes, talking too loud, and taking snapshots of the pretty sites.  With a straight face, I can call myself a writer, but not a poet.

I need to work some light into that dark corner.  I need to read and write more poetry.

rebeccakuder

Writing really bad stuff

If you want to write, you have to write some really bad stuff first. You have to sit down, get out paper or computer and put one word in front of the other, like walking, and if you’re lucky, it can be as unthinking, un-thought about, as walking…for stepping is something most adults who can walk rarely examine.

Gets you from one place to another.

While you’re getting from one place to another, the awful part is to be thinking, “This is all crap; I can’t believe how bad this is,” but that’s part of how to make things.

The stuff has to exist in its crap-like state before you can make it better.

I read once that Joy Williams rarely revises her work; it just comes out brilliantly. Lucky her! The rest of us just have to write lots of crap. I guess it’s good to be writing at all, even if it’s crap.

You have to keep knocking on that dark door…

rebeccakuder

To go skating on your name

158439I had a very interesting piece of news today that I can’t share yet, but will post here when I can. In looking for the proper celebratory music, Tom Waits’ Alice gleamed from the shelf, perfect. On it went.

(It will come as no surprise to you that I love that album.)

So many of these songs transport me to a sweet, innocent, clangy, maybe steampunky time, somewhere not quite here, but close. The title song tickles the edge of myself: letters, words, and meaning combining into a circling cut, through something frozen:

It’s dreamy weather we’re on
You wave your crooked wand
Along an icy pond
With a frozen moon
A murder of silhouette crows I saw
And the tears on my face
And the skates on the pond
They spell Alice

I’ll disappear in your name
But you must wait for me
Somewhere across the sea
There’s a wreck of a ship
Your hair is like meadow grass
On the tide
And the raindrops on my window
And the ice in my drink
Baby, all that I can think of
Is Alice

Arithmetic, Arithmetock
I turn the hands back on the clock
How does the ocean rock the boat
How did the razor find my throat
The only strings that hold me here
Are tangled up around the pier

And so a secret kiss
Brings madness with the bliss
And I will think of this
When I’m dead in my grave
Set me adrift and I’m lost over there
And I must be insane
To go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice
Of Alice

And so a secret kiss
Brings madness with the bliss
And I will think of this
When I’m dead in my grave
Set me adrift and I’m lost over there
And I must be insane
To go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice
Of Alice

That end bit, “And I must be insane/To go skating on your name/And by tracing it twice/I fell through the ice/Of Alice,” eluded me for a long time. Finally I realized that “the ice of Alice” meant the letters of the word…

But what’s really on my mind is “Kommienezuepadt.” Watch this weird little video of on youtube: “Kommienezuspadt.”

(Pretend German)
Kommienezuspadt
Kommienezuspadt
Kommienezuspadt
Kommienezuspadt

Sei punktlich
Sei punktlich
Sei punktlich

Kommienezuspadt
Kommienezuspadt
Kommienezuspadt
Kommienezuspadt
And we can’t be late
And we can’t be late

(Pretend German)
And we can’t be late
Kommiene, Kommiene
Kommienezuspadt
Kommienezuspadt
Kommienezuspadt

(Pretend German)
And we can’t be late
And we can’t be late
And we can’t be late
And we can’t be late
Kommienezuspadt
Kommienezuspadt

Sei punktlich
Sei punktlich
Sei punktlich

Kommienezuspadt
Kommienezuspadt

Ha, ha, ha, ha
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha
Ha, ha, ha, ha
Kommienezuspadt

(Pretend German)
And we can’t be late
And we can’t be late
And we can’t be late
Sei punktlich
Sei punktlich
Kommienezuspadt
Kommiene, kommiene, kommiene, kommiene
Kommienezuspadt

Soon as I can, I’ll say more.