Local Theater

Saturday night I attended a local performance of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men at the Beowolfe Alley Theater in downtown Tucson. I was reminded of Steinbeck's comment that writing should uplift the human heart. His play gives voice to the worst and the best of humanity in difficult economic and cultural conditions. http://www.steinbeck.org/MainFrame.html The local actors were superb.

Steinbeck wrote Of Mice and Men as a play-novelette (a form in which the play can be read like a novel, and the novel can be read as a play). He was not happy with it. That at least gives a novice writer like me a sense of hope.

With my own writing I often get lost in the writing. I start with a clear idea. As I go into the writing the whole idea becomes muddy as I go into it. Characters don't behave. They go off and do their own thing. Point at hand: last summer I drafted a novel about climate change in the Southwest. It was plot driven right from the start because I did not know much about character development. I had no less than twenty characters and the whole book was something like "and then this happened."

Now I am engaged in the arduous task of redrafting the story-in fact, just about throwing the first draft to the wind and starting over.

It's scarry because I wade into the story and then sink in a guagmire of writing starts and stops, bad writing altogether, and it feels like I have lost the purpose of writing it in the first place. Being an impatient kind of person, I am willing to only go so far into the agony of creation.

When does a writer know what is a false start? When should one start over, when file it away for posterity? Supposedly writers possess an intuitive sense, but I have never been intuitive about anything. I am one of those people that has to "go there" then try to make sense of it and hopefully understand where to go from there.

I look to my mentor, Margaret Atwood: Many of the things I've written have begun, and indeed have continued, against my better judgment. Okay, at least I am in good company.

Susan

On the Isle of Saucy Romance Writers

Last month I discovered a whole world unknown to me in the island of romance writers, a tropical place with white sands, lime green and hot pink libations and steaming bedrooms. The man in your bed might also be a vampire, descended from a Greek god and the woman whispering in your ear may hold a dark secret.

This professional group of writers (https://www.rwanational.org/eweb/StartPage.aspx) is very serious about their craft. Genres include chicklit, paranormal (time travel), historical romance, speculative fiction and some science fiction. I learned how to structure my first novel using a story board: inciting events for the heroine and hero, turning points that build suspence and keep readers reading, the black moment when the heroine or hero come to some realization and then the quick resolution. It is a kind of contract with the reader of romance novels. Readers in these subgenres expect certain things to happen.

My first novel is not a romance novel. However, I believe there is much to be learned from this group of writers. At a recent workshop with the local chapter, the group used my heroine and hero to explore how the two personalities should interact. A book they used is one I have read but forgotten about: The Complete Writer's Guide to Heroes and Heroines by Cowden, LaFever, and Viders. Sixteen archetypes are explored. After describing male and female archetypes, the authors then show how these personality types engage with each other.

At this point in the rewriting of my first novel, I need to decide whether to throw out the first draft and start over using a more structured plot sequence, or allow the book to be what it is: a series of scenes along a 100 year time line with characters who may or may not interact but who each represent a sector of Tucson's population that grapples or flees from the crisis caused by global warming and climate change.

One thing for sure, if I keep stalling, it will become a historical novel!

Susan