Dear Reader,

So a couple of people have been bugging me about not having a web archive that makes previous "Dear Reader" letters available to belated perusing. It's true, they might also be the only two people reading this, but in any case -- Steven, Robin -- I'm going to see what I can do about setting one up. In the meantime, I'll leave last week's in place as a temporary stopgap, so feel free to scroll down and review if desired.

Anyway, even if my innate sense of tidiness is somewhat offended (though strangely unmoved by the pile of laundry on the closet floor) it's not such a bad thing to have last week's letter cluttering up the place, because I'll be carrying on from where I left off. Last week I was talking about new writing goals, which is to say, new things I want to achieve with my fiction; this week I want to complain about...er...discuss what effect that seems to be having on my approach to the actual creation of new fiction. AKA my process.

Process! I'm not sure, when it comes down to it, that I don't like talking about process even better than talking about craft. Maybe because it encompasses so much? Process touches on everything from your basic writing schedule -- how many days/week, how many words/day -- to living the creative life, taking that scary leap of faith and committing to Being a Writer. You don't think so? The difference between the twice-a-year workshopper and the committed 4-hours/day writer is immense, and it's all about process: how you get from point A (ideas in your head) to point B (a finished work of fiction in manuscript form). But enough about other people. Let's talk about me!

My process has always been very linear. Start at the beginning, go on until you reach the end, and then stop. And that's what most of my fiction has looked like too. Although I've always been intrigued by authors who don't confine themselves to the chronological order of events, my admiration has always been of the "boy, I sure could never do something like that" variety. Those people must be so smart, the way they take all those disparate pieces and work them into a coherent whole! I mean, look at Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost, with a shattered structure so exquisitely mirroring a shattered society and the characters' shattered lives. Or take Ursula K. LeGuin's The Dispossessed, one of the finest science fiction novels ever written, that circles the reader forward and backward through time. Brilliant use of structure, and an approach to fiction that does not abandon storytelling, but that embraces it and then goes a step or two beyond.

Well, as you know, I'm ready to attempt that first step beyond. I would like to open up my structures, try some layering of narratives, take a few detours and shortcuts rather than plod earnestly along the straight and narrow path. Fly the butterfly's route rather than the bee's, travel the grasshopper's path rather than the ant's, creep along the oh well never mind. Though there's really nothing like an entomological metaphor to spruce up your day. The point is, or seems to be, that a change in approach means a change in process. How did LeGuin write The Dispossessed anyway? Did she write the two timelines separately and then braid them together? Did she hop back and forth between them? Did she write one and then piece in the other as a second stage? Maybe she even wrote it as one long linear narrative and then took it to pieces in order to turn it back on itself. I wish I knew. Not least because one of the most interesting things about the craft is the when and the how of knowing what shape the novel or story you're writing has to take.

For me, increasingly, it's been a feeling -- not an intellectual idea, but an honest-to-god gut feeling -- that if I'm going to get better then I have to get more complex. I mean, to begin with it was as simple as, gee, if I want a stronger, more multifaceted protagonist, then I'd better start throwing in a few paragraphs of exposition, maybe a flashback or two; maybe I should even play around with multiple or conflicting responses to a single character or event. So it becomes a matter of slipping in some flavorful extras, like poking some garlic slivers under the turkey's skin. (Not a live turkey. A dead turkey. For roasting. Sheesh.)

But something happens when I start thinking of doing the same kind of thing to the narrative as a whole. For one thing, I have to think about the whole narrative. Not just the story, not just the characters and what they do, but the narrative, the piece of fiction that has to be constructed out of words. It's easy to say "I want layers!" But even with a layer cake that raises some questions. Thick layers baked in separate tins? Thin layers sliced from a whole cake? Layers of cake and cookies and pudding and whipped cream? Or what? ('Kay, now I'm hungry. Should have stuck with the bug metaphors.) When you're talking about novels, it's even more complicated. Layers of POV? Would you like that separated by time or space or understanding? Would you prefer many things happening in one scene, or many scenes stacked together regardless of chronology? Do you want to invent a narrator that can step aside to explain things or broaden the perspective, or slip in a bunch of invented texts -- newspaper articles, letters, police reports -- to do the same thing in a very different way? And would you like shaved chocolate or spun sugar on top? Decisions, decisions...

At some point I have to quite playing around with the possibilities and get down to writing. But! That used to mean starting at the beginning and going on until I reached the end. Now, with Magpie Keep anyway, it seems to mean starting with some great images and fooling around with them until I find a beginning place, and writing a few scenes, and then realizing I'm losing my grip on this whole complexity thing and going back to draw some more threads into early scenes so they can be played out in later ones, and then writing some of the later ones to make sure I don't forget or get distracted, and then skipping back because I haven't even introduced some major characters yet, and then, yes, getting distracted by another great image that can come somewhere in the second half... Oy. I can't even keep track of all the files I have going now, or what order they will eventually go in, or which ones are out takes and which ones are keepers. And whose bright idea was this anyway?

So the whole thing is scary, and I have to admit I'm keeping myself going with the blithe assumption that I will, sooner rather than later, get the hang of it, find the groove, hit my stride. (Okay, I'm also keeping myself going with daydreams of the best sellers list, but that's always true for something I haven't finished yet. Every single story I ever wrote has been the one that'll win the World Fantasy Award, at least until I type "the end" and print it out to line the bird cage with.) But it is also terribly interesting, as hard things tend to be. Thinking about the narrative, about what fiction is once you've looked beyond the basics of character, setting, and plot. It turns out there's still quite a lot left to consider.

Hope you're well,

Holly

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