The Joys of Snow and Insomnia

Well, this is the third day we've not been able to leave the house and after hours of shoveling snow, I found myself for the first time in months dealing with a bought of insomnia. Did I lie in bed, tossing and turning? Did I spend hours

staring at the minutes on the clocking droning silently? Well, yes I did for awhile actually. Then somewhere between toss and turn I found myself daydreaming (yes at night) about what I'm writing at the moment. I allowed my mind the right to tick along when it could have been sleeping and in those restless hours lying prostrate, I worked out most of the immediate obstacles to my imagination. The joy of fiction writing is that there are no problems than cannot be ironed out by applying and expanding one's imagination. The limits of your imagination are the only real limits there are; this is probably one of the reasons I enjoy writing so very much.

By 3 am I had worked out just about everything I had been struggling with in the last week. Then came the choice: allow my mind to drift off to sleep or commit the cardinal sin of recovering insomniacs and get out of bed. Well folks, I'm a sinner. I slid out of bed, careful not to disturb my snoring husband (who seemed to be having his own sleep issues last night from the discussions he was having with himself) and made my way down the darkened hall to my moonlit office. It was wonderful to see the results of the nearly three foot dump of snow we'd received yesterday. By the late afternoon the clouds disappeared revealing a wonderfully orange sunset, but at this early hour of the morning the big bright moon overhead left a light over the woods around our home like something akin to a fairy land. So I sat in the darkness, lit only by my computer, looking out over the magic below and felt even wider awake, but somehow more at ease and in sharper focus.

Bleary eyes cleaned away, I was ready to sit down and spill the last several hours of hard thinking out on the electronic page. And I did. In the next hour I had written ten full and thick pages (nothing polished or beautiful, but complete).

I returned to bed happy and satisfied as if I'd just finished Thanksgiving dinner and slept like a baby until 9 this morning. Murdoch's character Moy has a period of time every morning (she calls it her white time), where after dressing she lies on her bed for half an hour and stares at the ceiling preparing for the day. I have a feeling that this was probably Murdoch's habit as well (though we will probably never know). I think hours spent simply planning and thinking about things are the most important habit a writer can get into, besides writing obviously. The more I've planned the fuller and thicker the pages are, the more confident I am that I am doing the right things for the progression of my characters and the story. When writing works it is the best feeling in the world, but when it doesn't it is a misery. Those miserable times for me come from the fear of not knowing where I'm going. Maybe insomnia is just a part of being a well planned writer. J.A.

Murdoch & Harpers

Yesterday was a solid start, not great, but solid. I've been reading a book on writing by an ex-Green Beret called The Novel Writer's Tool Kit. He suggests that one of the main secrets of successful writers is constant reading and analysis of other novels. Though I'm not only interested in novel writing, it is something I'm working on so I say great! I love reading and I've spent the last decade lost in critical analysis, so here we go.

Today, I'm reading two wondrous tomes of literature: Iris Murdoch's The Green Knight and Harper's Magazine. Laymen may wonder why I hold Harper's in such esteem, well to put it bluntly, they are one of the few remaining American magazines that regularly pay for works of fiction. So their Reading section is one of the places I'm going to send my work (someday). I say aim high or don't bother bringing your gun to town, so it's important to size up the competition. Harper's won't be the only place I'll try, of course, but they're one of the big names that some regular people actually read.

My other favorite that I'm dishing about today, is Iris Murdoch:

Like me, Murdoch spent the greater part of her formative years at Oxford and met her husband there, as did I (Sylvia Plath did the same at Cambridge, but that's a story for another day). So, on New Year's Day I started reading The Green Knight for the first time and I'm blown away by the twists and turns in plot. More than anything, Murdoch demonstrates an amazing ability to juggle an unbelievably expansive cast of characters, popping them in and out of scenes with a mastery and complete understanding that I personally find impossible. At present (the point where my bookmark is currently seated), she has brought forth twelve main characters (including a collie), who all have interwoven backstories and complicated mannerisms. This does not even include all the minor characters that I am sure will be coming to the fore soon.

What I find most impressive is that none of these terribly complex individuals would be distinct without the use of impressions from the other characters. In short, it is not clear who the main character is or even which of the characters is the intended protagonist (for they are all so faulty that I don't really want to delve too far into any of them). Normally, this would make me want to stop reading, for surely there should always be at least one character that you side with, but the interactions are all so wonderfully interesting that I'm afraid I find it hard to put down.

In Tool Kit, Mayer writes that there is always one scene or image that was the origin of a story and as a writer you should try to track that key moment of inspiration down. I can only assume that Murdoch's first image was either of two boys playing a game affectionately referred to as 'Dogs' or of a small ugly man trying to beat a lovely looking man to death with a baseball bat. Either way, the story that evolves from these two incidents (both of which are only related either in passing or flash back) is heartbreaking and confusing, but entirely compelling. I take away from it a need to find a purpose for my writing; a message that is unexpected by the reader. Murdoch shows that it is not simply plot or characters that drive a story, but a skillful combination of the two. Otherwise, you are left with a shell of a novel and let's face it no one wants to read fluff all the time.

On another note, I finished 1,500 words today and have almost moved on to the editing phase of a short story I started over Christmas in England. I'm at a crossroads, however, in that too much of the story is taken from real life and I'm not sure the characterizations will be favorably received.

So what do you think? Should I do the smart thing and mask my characters a bit better or should I stick by the original idea? Maybe a bit of both? As always tips, feedback and suggestions are very welcome. J.A.