A little prior to this I read Murakami and with his novels I am aware that he is writing in Japanese and the writing that I read is translated. The books (I’ve read two of his novels now) have some unusual use of language and I often wonder to what extent this is his writing style, or a Japanese way of presenting writing, or simply the translator having difficulties. I don’t know that I’ll ever know for sure so I don’t pay too much attention.

But as far as I can tell Chang-rae Lee writes in English and “The Surrendered” was not written and then translated. It’s still possible that English was not his first language or that he simply carries with him some some elements of other cultural presentation or phrasing, but some elements of his writing seem odd to me.

One element is his use of commas. Somehow in my development as a writer I’ve become an overuser of commas and often have to suck a number of them out when reviewing, so perhaps I’m overly sensitive to what I perceive to be improper or at least less that ideal use of commas. Chang-rae Lee’s writing sometimes reminds me of my own difficulties with their use. From his book,

It was massive and impressive to his boy’s eyes, built from blocks of granite and with a medieval-style tower, and within its soaring buttressed wooden ceiling above the nave, the supports and walls were clad in a limestone that shone brilliantly in the daytime from the light that streamed in through three high, narrow stained-glass windows over the main entrance.

I’m not sure about the use of the comma near the middle. Here, without it:

 It was massive and impressive to his boy’s eyes, built from blocks of granite and with a medieval-style tower, and within its soaring buttressed wooden ceiling above the nave the supports and walls were clad in a limestone that shone brilliantly in the daytime from the light that streamed in through three high, narrow stained-glass windows over the main entrance.

Another example.

There was a separate small chapel off the nave, devoted to the Annunciation, and Hector was surprised how well he could recall it now, the narrow space like a miniaturized chapel with its smaller altar and cross and off to the side a stature of a remarkably beautiful Irish-faced Mary, who could have been one of his sisters.

The last comma makes me uncomfortable, but if you remove it the related but separate statement about the Mary figure being similar to his sisters is not set off enough.

There was a separate small chapel off the nave, devoted to the Annunciation, and Hector was surprised how well he could recall it now, the narrow space like a miniaturized chapel with its smaller altar and cross and off to the side a stature of a remarkably beautiful Irish-faced Mary who could have been one of his sisters.

Or maybe the two separate sections of sentence could be split right in the middle with a semi-colon? I don’t know what’s ideal here.

There was a separate small chapel off the nave, devoted to the Annunciation, and Hector was surprised how well he could recall it now; the narrow space like a miniaturized chapel with its smaller altar and cross and off to the side a stature of a remarkably beautiful Irish-faced Mary, who could have been one of his sisters.

These are just two examples grabbed from sections of text within the same chapter; other examples similar to these are everywhere within the novel.

Part of the issue arises because he, like many writers, likes to use long sentences and when you try to combine many related but not sequential phrases in one sentence, things can get hairy. As with the sentence that I just wrote. At the same time he contrasts these long sentences with occasional short statements, but there were a few times that I found these short lines unnecessarily abrupt and blunt. They felt less like an important statement being highlighted and more like a speed bump that you feel but didn’t see coming.

A couple other items of note. I was not aware until I completed reading and began doing some internet searches that Chang-rae Lee  is male. For some reason I had the sense that the author was female, though I’m not sure why. Perhaps the perspectives of the female characters seemed more vivid to me than the male characters, or maybe it’s, as my partner says of my own writing, that his writing has a female style. I have a sense of what that means but without really understanding it.

Also, when I researched I expected to find references to D. H. Lawrence because I found the description of the relationships very Lawrencian, but in my limited searching I found no one else making that connection. Perhaps it’s old news and has been discussed in reviews of his earlier works but it seems that his earlier writing has been done in first person and I don’t think that same Lawrencian way of describing relationships would be as common in first person, but here I’m only guessing.

I said that this was not intended as a review of the book, but if you are reading this and thinking about reading it, do so. I particularly admire the depth of the story and the exquisite way in which he juggles story lines from different points in time, presenting them in a sequence that strengthens the effect of the story rather than adhering to any straight-line double time line. One casual reviewer had difficulty with this which made me sad because  Chang-rae Lee has done this so well that if you have trouble with it, well, it’s just sad.

Since mid-December I started getting interested in downloadable audiobooks and then ebooks from my local public library.

Audiobooks:

Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, Vincent Lam
The Bishop’s Man, Linden MacIntyre
The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown
The Affair, Jack Reacher Series, Book 16, Lee Child
The Echo Maker, Richard Powers
Room, Emma Donogue

Failed to finish audiobook:

Close Range: Wyoming Stories, Annie Proulx

Books:

Divisadero, Michael Ondaatje
The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields
Mostly Happy, Pam Bustin

EBooks:

Amy and Isabelle, Elizabeth Strout
Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout
1Q84, Haruki Murakami

Failed to finish ebooks: (all non-fiction)

Incognito, David Eagleman
The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross

That’s a fair amount of material. Some observations:

• I don’t recommend Lee Childs in audiobook form. I like his Reacher books for quick, light entertainment but I can’t speed-read an audiobook. It seemed to take forever to get through the story.
• Almost a similar reaction to Dan Brown in audiobook form, but because the plot is so complicated it wasn’t quite as difficult. Still, Dan Brown continues to be the shining example of the extreme mixture of intricate plot with totally flat characters.
• Michael Ondaatje is quite ponderous, even when writing scenes in fast paced gambling worlds. I don’t think I need to read any more of his writing. The thickness of the style reminds me of Lawrence Durrell which I read long ago but Ondaatje doesn’t invite me into an interesting bohemian world like Durrell does.
• Richard Powers is also quite thick with his writing style but more approachable for me.
• I’m sure that the audiobook format changes my interaction with the writing, but it was definitely interesting listening to something unusual like Room.
• Ebooks are hard on my neck and shoulders. Because the Kobo and my cell phone are small, slippery and will autorotate the screen I had to hold them constantly and with my thumb in a position ready to turn the page. On the other hand it’s great to have something right there when I’m on the bus or waiting at the doctor’s office.

So twelve complete books in four months, plus some other reading and all the issues of The New Yorker published during that time. That’s a fair amount of reading and might account for the lack of writing. But the lack of writing is due to lack of inspiration and desire rather than lack of time. My hope is that I’m going through a phase of absorbing some writing, mostly good, before the writing focus comes back into play.

* Edit: Oh, I forgot The Hunger Games too, but that only took a day to read.

But what was interesting to me was how the movie writers dealt with the second half of the novel. The second part is the competition itself and much of the time Katniss is alone in the forest. Because the novel remains in limited third person POV that means all that time alone is written from inside Katniss’s head. Presenting this as a movie means that you either introduce a pet for her to talk to constantly or you do voice overs of her thinking or you have a pretty boring section of movie. What the writers did instead was to add a number of scenes outside of limited third person; scenes with Haymitch talking up sponsors, with District 11 rioting, with Gale watching, with the head of the games in discussion with President Snow. Some of these incidents are clearly implied in the novel but are never shown because of the restriction of staying with limited third person. I thought that the choice was a good one.

It’s similar to “Brokeback Mountain”. I saw the movie before reading the short story that it was based on and I knew that the script writers were aware that they needed to add material in order to build a full length movie from a short story. They chose to add background material; events and stories and family members that could take place outside of the mountain to draw the characters more fully.

In both cases it’s not a matter of scenes that were missing from the novels. It’s a matter of specific situations that require or could use more story and how and where does this material come from? Is the story better with those changes? Maybe, maybe not. But what is important is that the movies work as movies with the addition of those materials. And my point is that, as a writer, there are many options and choices to make and here are two examples of two different versions of the same story using different options.

I got my results from the 3DayNovel, which is to say no results; no listing in the winners or top ten. When I finished I thought that I had a chance. I was happy with the results, convinced that I had managed to get a good story line across. But when I went back to the story, during my NaNoWriMo additions, I started to see missing elements. Then after that I tried to paste the sections together and to revise and come up with First Draft 1.1. This pointed out more weaknesses, so by the time the results for the 3DayNovel were due I wasn’t expecting anything. Still, I’ve taken First Draft 1.1 and entered it in Amazon’s contest.

But I do want to get back to writing. I miss the envelopment, the second life, the pushing and prodding of characters and situations. I miss new stories, new people, new curiosities to explore. But I’m just not inspired. Yet.

What I have is around 20,000 words to add to the original 23,000 that I wrote this past Labor Day weekend. One of the interesting things is that I feel as if I’ve written some new subroutines and now I have to figure out how and where these run the compiler to insert them in the original program. These new chunks don’t just slide right in; I didn’t have obvious sections that I missed and I didn’t rewrite any material in this second stage of writing so now the old has to be revised to connect properly with the new. New connecting paragraphs and explanations have to be written and some old writing has to be revised to devise a logical connection to the new material. It’s as if I’m sewing new blocks into a quilt or replacing a kidney, or something like that.

It’s also reinforced to me the fact that I’m cheap with words. It can be very difficult for me to write or to say a lot of words if I don’t have a reason to do so. As a result I only came up with 20,000 words over two-three weeks, and, with only one exception so far, I’ve found a place to work the new material into the story. In other words it’s hard for me come up with words, and then they have come through such a difficult filter in order to escape me that it’s hard not to use them when they’re out. Kinda like appreciating the little gems that you produce when you’re constipated?

So, right now I’m doing a little writing, most of it in the form of stitching material together into a coherent whole.

But after spending two weeks since then trying to add scenes to my original 23,000 word 3DayNovel I became aware that most of the new material added new characters, something that I had a slight inclination to try to avoid at first because I felt that I had enough characters for the length of the story. I tried to add scenes using the existing characters but found that difficult to do because I was also trying to avoid writing the scenes that I had already identified as missing and needed; I was trying to focus on fresh material only and it was difficult to do so without adding characters.

Is there any point in having the MC have dinner with his friend again? If they go somewhere, do something, does that add anything to the story? These are some of the things that I tried, but came up with dead ends in most of the time.

Then I looked at pushing one of the secondary characters, taking the POV and seeing some of his story. The next two most important characters have to remain mysteries so any POV done from their perspective would have to be deliberately obtuse, and that might be difficult given their secrets; they have huge secrets that they’re hiding with almost everything they say or do. (But then there’s great conflict hiding there! ) And given that it’s a short novel, shifting of POV can’t be treated casually. It’s not ‘War and Peace’ where it makes total sense to spend some time seeing the world from Pierre’s eyes, from Natasha’s eyes, even from Petra’s eyes.

So I may do some POV shifting to tell more sidestory or backstory. But the important thing that I realized is that:

• My MC is boring when he’s not doing something that he’s good at

He’s also not awful at anything, so I can’t show him screwing things up, which also might be entertaining. But trying to generate more scenes with him by adding scenes that do not have anything to do with the mystery that he will solve is really difficult, which is why I added characters as I tried to spin out more material. Imagine Jack Reacher going for a walk to kill time and not meeting thugs or Kinsey Milhone sitting in a movie theater for no plot reason. I did manage to show more about his history, his personality, and a lot about other perspectives and attitudes about the story that he’s researching so these additional characters add something to the story.

But this is where it ties back to the second charater’s POV for this particular story that I’m working on. There is a huge chunk of material that’s key to solving the mystery that the second character digs up and dumps on the lap of the MC. On one hand this is like material supplied by Garcia to the rest of the BAU in ‘Criminal Minds’ and you don’t want to sit there and watch her trying to hack into systems and then querying databases and then cross referencing her materials, but that’s where the a large part of the information to solve the mystery comes from. The result is that there’s a lot ‘telling’ rather than ‘showing’, or in this case ‘discovering’ this material, which is a fundamental fiction writer’s error.

How do you write about research and turn it into an activity? Especially when it’s all done from a wheelchair?

I started off following the rules. I did the same as I did in Years One and Two; coming up with an idea during last couple of days of October. By Day Nine I gave up. The idea for the structure for the novel was good but very difficult to do. I was way behind in the word count and it was taking a lot of time and effort, and rather than allow myself to spin out crap I decided I should shift and write something simpler, something easier to work with. So on Day Nine I started a new novel. By Day Seventeen or so I had 30+ pages, eleven characters, and still no plot and I started wondering what the point of doing NaNoWriMo is for me.

1. The challenge which forces me to write is probably the most beneficial part.
2. Finishing a novel is not so valuable; I’ve completed drafts of three novels now so to do one more doesn’t matter much.
3. Writing lots and throttling my inner editor is somewhat useful.

But managing my inner editor and writing when the story and characters are disposable and not very interesting seems a waste of my writing time.

So on Day Nineteen I changed again. I figured if I’m going to spin out words it’s much better for me to do so with something that has potential value, unlike the new story that I started on Day Nine. So now I’ve returned to my 3DayNovel story, the one that ended with 23,500 words. That novel is very short, has a lot of potential as a story, and I’m kinda lost as to how to inflate it into the complete story that it needs to be. I’m forcing myself to write new scenes, telling myself that some of these are throwaways, starting and aborting various ideas, probing some new aspects. I’m trying, as much as possible, to *not* write the scenes that I’ve already identified as missing; I’m trying to generate new stuff. My goal is to generate 2,000 words per day for the rest of November.

So Day Twenty Four of NaNoWriMo 2011 looks like this so far for me:

1. 9537 words, original NaNoWriMo
2. 20042 words of crap for a plot-less meandering
3. 8300 words so far after four days of spinning new material with old characters

With seven days left in the month I can almost double the word count of the original 3DayNovel, and hopefully still have the obvious missing scenes to write. If I can do that, I’ll consider NaNoWriMo 2011 a success. I dunno if I’ll try to claim the winner banner though, since I’m not following the rules exactly.

I reread the story two days ago for the first time since the Tuesday after the competition closed but in the meantime I have spent time thinking about where the words are missing. Yesterday I had the image of building a fence and I think this process makes a useful analogy. I imagine a stone fence, like in the English countryside, running over damp green rolling hills.  The outline is like the first placement of stones to mark targets. The targets are selected for even spacing but connected in a line, row, or however it is imagined that the completed fence should travel. Then with your first writing (rushed, in the case of a 3 Day Novel or NaNoWriMo project) you try to hit the targets and to build them up and fill them out.

Having done that writing, my job now is to re-evaluate the posts of the fence, to see if they connect with each other properly, and more importantly to see where it’s misdesigned, where there are still holes where the sheep or goats might wander through. Maybe I need a whole new secondary fence, one that runs parallel with the original, with posts that fill the gaps of the original. Maybe I zigged left where I should have zigged right, or maybe there’s a huge gap that I didn’t notice where I need to add four more post/targets, or spots where two posts are much too close together and I need to space them out better.

The two central story lines are:

• Explicit goal or holy grail: in this case it’s money for a breast augmentation operation, which in turn she believes will enable her to marry rich, and,
• Growth of the protagonist.

Both of these stories are common fare; at this point we could be talking about Jane Austen’s Emma as much as Bad Teacher. But take a look at all the other story lines and threads that are taking place:

• Love triangle; her misplaced interest in one teacher, his interest in another female teacher.
• Jealousy; the other female character becomes Diaz’s rival and prime antagonist.
• Possible true love; a second male teacher who sees her more closely for who she really is and who she is becoming.
• The reformation of the protagonist as a teacher. This is presented as an incidental change that happens as the protagonist chases the explicit goal of money (contest for highest student marks), but of course it plays a crucial part in the growth of the protagonist.
• Drugs, which are part of the “bad teacher” personality but which has it’s own thread in the story.
• Food and drink, which appear a number of times and are part of the “bad teacher” personality, from rejected gifts from students to a poisoned a apple (the “bad” protagonist as the evil witch and the “good” antagonist as Snow White) and poisoned wine.
• The dumpy single teacher friend story, which allows the shallow romantic skills and attitudes of the protagonist to be exposed, and for the protagonist’s growth in this area by the end of the movie to be reflected.

If, as a writer, one takes the basic story elements and then considers all these smaller story lines one can see how the secondary threads expose the primary characters, allow them to interact, and how these stories reappear for strength and continuity and development, and how the threads relate to each other and weave the fabric of the story into a coherent whole. This is not a random hodge-podge of scenes designed to take the pulchritudinous Cameron Diaz and retell an essence of the Emma story.

I’ve skimmed some reviews on various movie review sites and I find it interesting to note some of the positive reviews for Diaz, bad reviews for the story, reviews that see other things like sad representations of the public school system. I guess that, as a writer, I see plot structure.

But romance also seems to me to be a form of emotional masturbation. Action movies satisfy the adrenaline-seeking hormone-driven young male in a similar manner than romances satisfy the fairy-tale connection-seeking female (excuse the gender stereotypes). When the girl, lying on her front on her bed, ankles crossed in the air above, when she closes her book, smiles dreamily and sighs, hasn’t she just achieved a similar result as her brother on his X-box playing Call of Duty? And aren’t they both doing the same as the college student in the dorm bathroom with his copy of Penthouse magazine? They’re all experiencing satisfaction/enjoyment/pleasure with something that simulates a real life situation, even though that situation is one that they may or may not want to experience in reality. Aren’t these all a version of masturbation?

This probably not a new idea, but it’s a new thought to me. Self-satisfaction, whether physical or emotional or some combination of both. Start with some outside source to stimulate the reaction, stir in some individual element of desire, need or curiosity. Add in imagination as a leavening agent and you’re on your way. Just shake, bake, cook.