I’ve been working on a novel for about a year and a half now. I’m going to risk feeling like I’ve jinxed myself and say it’s going well – I’ve rallied all the basic structure skills I learned in my Fiction classes to build an outline, used exercises I was introduced to in Story Workout to develop my characters and setting, and diligently followed all the practices I learned in Writing the Novel to push through a first draft. There’s still plenty of work to go, but overall, I was feeling pretty proud of myself…until a few weeks ago, when I opened my laptop to set to work revising, only to find myself sniffing the air and saying “what’s that smell?”
It was an old, musty smell, the kind normally only found in a wad of clothes at the back of the closet - you know, that t-shirt and socks that got shoved back there during a whirlwind “cleaning,” and then lived in the dark corner behind an old bridesmaid’s dress and crusty boots for months (or worse, until moving day)? And it was a distracting smell, intent on preventing any further work on my draft. As long as it was tickling my nostrils, I was sure, I wouldn’t be able to manage any real rewrites or changes. If I was going to move forward, I was going to need to locate and scrub the weird smell away.
So what was this mysterious stench? Anyone who has read Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird is familiar with the concept of stinky first drafts, but this was a new odor, something I hadn’t smelled before. I worried my plot had begun to decompose in the middle of the night, or that my setting was decaying, but no, those still appeared normal and odor-free. I even briefly blamed a particularly troublesome character, a bad apple I thought might have poisoned the whole bunch into rotting away, but the answer turned out to be simpler than any of those things.
My novel was just getting a little moldy.
Literary mildew is a very real problem. It happens when your writing (whatever form it’s in) sits in the dark with you too long, never seeing the light of day. You see, I’d forgotten the drastic importance of taking my work into the daylight, letting it get some air and be heard by other writers like me. I thought that because I wasn’t ready to workshop, the story must still be something private, something that should be kept confined to my brain and hard drive until I could say it was finished.
Fortunately, StoryStudio offered an event to help me scrub off the literary mold and give my novel a chance to spend some time outside of my own mind. The first ever StoryStudio Members’ Potluck Reading took place on Monday, March 22nd, and I’m proud to say I took the opportunity to read a chapter and introduce my growing novel to other StoryStudio writers. I showed up nervous, practically staining the copy of my chapter with my sweaty palms, but a few minutes in the SSC living room, chatting with the other readers, and I’d forgotten why I was worried. The chairs were comfy, the snacks were plentiful, there was a creative buzz in the air, and most importantly, the small group was full of supportive smiles and open minds. To bring my book out into the open and connect with other SSC Members to help them do the same was quite a rush – and it more than scrubbed away the mildew that was hindering me!
If you’re a StoryStudio member and you’ve got some writing you think might need airing out (stinky or otherwise!), I strongly recommend stopping by the next Members’ Potluck to shake off some of that dust and mold! (Keep an eye on the website for details about the date of the next reading.) Or, if you aren’t ready to share your work quite yet, feel free to swing by and just listen – you’re in for an evening of good snacks, good company, and best of all, good writing, courtesy of your fellow SSC members!
StoryStudio student Jenene Ravesloot has just published her first books of poetry. “Loot: Stolen Memories & Tales Out of School” features dream-like memories of childhood, poignant observations, and a layering of images that immerse readers into the work.
Jenene has been working with StoryStudio instructor Paige Warren on many of the poems in the collection; Paige describes Jenene’s work as “at once familiar and foreign.”
“Loot” is available to buy through the Book Cellar in Lincoln Square. Here’s one of the poems to whet your curiosity:
1
It suits you
to be arbitrary
to paint the day
with inky fingers
make a blank
of things.
2
Has the moon
taught you Mandarin?
Now you speak in
lacquered tones
fold the night around you
like a Coromandel screen.
3
Your eyes are wild cranes.
Your arms reach out
and feather
hesitate and fly
silently you glide
into sky.
Told through emails, newspaper excerpts, family genealogies, and traditional narration, Cris Mazza’s latest book, “Waterbaby,” follows Tam Burgess, an epileptic woman and former swimmer who heads to Maine to help her sister with a family genealogy project. While there, she becomes entranced with the fate of an ancestor, Mary Catherine, daughter of a lighthouse keeper, and the identity of the town ghost said to haunt the shore.
“Waterbaby” explores the ways we construct histories – from personal histories to larger histories – and how this aids in forming identity, for better or worse. By the end of the novel, Tam has a different relationship with many of the characters in the book – her brother, with whom she was intensely competitive, her ancestors, and her self.
Mazza fills the novel with information about lighthouse keeping and the role of women in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. These historical facts, however, are blended into the narrative in such a way that particularly intrigued me – as someone working on a novel set in the past and loosely based on family history, I learned from the way Mazza’s uses histories to speak back to and intertwine with the present action of the story.
The novel’s use of some unconventional forms of narrative also makes it a pleasure to read. Through emails, we see the way families speak passed each other, never piecing together the full story or interpreting the story to fit their own reality. The excerpts from old newspaper articles, books, and genealogies show that history is constantly being written and re-written, some facts included, some left behind, and some transformed to hold new meaning.
This week, we have TWO StoryStudio peeps featured in the Huffington Post.
First, SSC teacher Ranjit Souri is interviewed about his 52 Open Mics project: Weekly Date With Mic for “Siblings of Doctors” Comic
and then, SSC student Adrienne C’s review of Paul Aster’s book Pitch Black is published.
Way to go, Ranjit & Adrienne!
Although everyone’s probably seen “The Dark Knight” (it did gross a record-breaking $155 million its first weekend), I’ll be careful not to write any spoilers or give away any major plot points.
To me, The Dark Knight was really a movie about the Joker – Batman, while important, seemed more like a secondary character. Perhaps that’s because of Health Ledger’s scene-stealing performance (there’s talk about giving him a posthumous Oscar nomination). But I do think the Joker is the more intriguingly drawn character, a character whose philosophy of chaos drives the entire film.
The writers of The Dark Knight accomplished so much – they compel us with a character we know very little about. We never know the Joker’s motivations because he lacks motivations. We never know anything about his origin, and the stories we do get about his past (i.e. his facial scars) are contradictory. His face paint, too, unsettles – we never know why he wears it, but are constantly reminded of its presence as it runs, smears, and fades mid-scene.
In writing, we are always told to give our characters motivation. Why do they do the things they do? Where do they come from? What is their past and their history? The Joker contradicts all this, and yet still compels us, still draws us in. Perhaps he is so intriguing because he violates these expectations.
Next Page
