Writing Real Life Fiction

Two things to make a story both interesting and realistic: write about what you are interested in and write about what you know.

I’ve written about ten stories over the past two years and they all suck and then my wife gave me the advice above.  So, what interests me?

• Robots
• Tattoos
• Music
• Books
• Political Theory
• Satire
• Corrupt Media
• Ignorant Americans
• Corrupt Corporate Power Structures
• Religious Fanatics
• Dystopias

The above list makes it harder for me to deny that my writing (I am currently working on writing my first novel, a dystopian book that is about a father and daughter running from religious fanatics) will become typecast to the genre field of Science Fiction.  For a long time I struggled with this idea, in fact, I still do.

I have this romantic notion that there is a David Foster Wallace or Michael Chabon, or even if I dare, a Don DeLillo in me waiting to burst forth from my cocoon and put something to paper that is riveting and awesome.  A piece of writing that will take people by surprise and spark a flurry of excellent critiques from The New Yorker.  My writings will appear in The Paris Review and literary critics notable books of the year lists.  I will then get offers to teach creative writing classes at off beat liberal arts colleges around the country that offer me a small town/big community feel (see, Wonder Boys).  I will win the National Book Award and start to spend my time with Chabon, Cunningham, Boyle, etc.

Only then I realize that to write lit fiction is to give a part of me (and my family) up because I do have my share of familial drama that I could tap into to write about what I know.  Only here’s the catch (and because I have started and stopped so many different blogs this year I can’t remember when I first said it anymore) fiction is a media market just like television and movies.  What is marketable about familial drama?  I mean fuck, everyone has family tension, and there are millions of potential writers out there who want to write about how their fucked up relationship with their parents made them suck at committing to another human being.  Is that all I got?  Really? Yes, I am being a bit glib about the state of lit fiction but a new writer doesn’t have a lot of options right now, especially if what they have to offer is what is already being written, and let’s face it, being written by better by bigger names who will sell the book.

So I am left with my first list of things that are interesting to me, things I am passionate about, things that I would not be chagrined at having my real name attached to.  So I am going to continue what I am calling the Sci-Fi Project.  The story is really simple:  father abandons his three year old daughter for selfish reasons.  The country goes to shit and she has a runaway from home complex that is itching and finds her real father years later only by sheer happenstance.  The sci-fi comes in because it is set in the future where the US is quietly overthrown by religious fanatics who institute (unbeknown to the vast majority of Americans) a theocracy and one of their pet peeves – tattoos – are outlawed.  Outrageously impossible?  Maybe, but so are FTL drives, warp speed, light speed, etc. at this point.

I have always felt that dystopian lit has never been about what is possible, or even probable, it is a tale about what our attitudes are at the time the author is writing it.  The ban on tattoos idea came for two reasons: 1) I love tattoos and am slowly covering my body with them and 2) when I went to a Christian private school my 5^th grade teacher spent some time bad mouthing tattoos and pulled out support from the Bible to back up her diatribe against the art.

Then the election protests started to happen in Iran and it got me thinking, what happened if no one showed up to the protests and a usurpation of civil liberties and the thin line between the Church and the State became nonexistent?  How might the religious zealots pull that off in our country?  One easy step might be to keep the major media distracted; the “independent” media can be made out to be filled with cooks who believe 9/11 was an inside job, etc.

So with my ideas and focus looking toward the improbable if not impossible future I sit down and write.  At times I wonder if this is how Bradbury developed Fahrenheit 451 and it makes me feel warm and bubbly inside.

Here I Am

Between last night and during my lunch break this afternoon I have somehow managed to write the beginnings of a story that is part Ray Bradbury, part Philip Pullman, and part me. I thought it was going to be a short story, but I’m starting to retool the idea as I progress with the plot.

It is a rather simple story of a father and his daughter with the backdrop of a powerful State that is ruled by a theocracy and tattoos and books happen to be illegal!

Even in draft form I’m really enthusiastic about the dark tones of the backstory.

I Have Thoughts Too

There are a lot of things I want to write but lately feel lazy about getting down to it.  I finished Ruiz Zafon’s newest, The Angel’s Game, need to post a review (teaser: The Shadow of the Wind utilized The Divine Comedy and The Odyssey, then The Angel’s Game had fun with Faust).  I have about three different stories going on in my head, two short stories and the other my abandoned middle readers Sci-Fi project (the one where I was going to crank out a working manuscript by the end of May ’09).

I’m feeling pretty good about the middle readers Sci-Fi project still, even though I think I’m going to have to go back and retool some ideas.  The real culprit is just laziness and excuses.  Lorelei still goes to sleep between 9:30 and 10:30 every night, plenty of time to write from 10:30 into the morning.  I’m training my body to go on four to five hours of sleep (life with a toddler will do that) so that I can still get to the gym around 5:15 in the morning.

The powers that be in academia have released the world’s oldest Bible, written around the 4th century CE.  The good news: Mark apparently decided not to incorporate Jesus’ return from the dead, waiting for the classic American evangelical spin on that one (probably an attack on academia).

I’m starting to think that I’m simply not a short story writer but a novel writer, which sucks in some respects because I think that if I could master the short story I could generate some income by getting published.  However I’m struggling with this form so we will see.

Thoughts on the Ruiz Zafón Reading

On Wednesday, June 24, author Carlos Ruiz Zafón came to Portland to give a Q&A at the Baghdad Theater.  It was amazing.  I had purchased a copy of The Shadow of the Wind over a year ago but only recently read it in anticipation of this reading (I purchased tickets over a month in advance).  It took me two days to complete it (and I even still went to work and managed to be a decently involved father to my toddler).  I was stoked that he was coming to town and was highly interested in what he had to say.

It was indeed a Q&A, not a Q&A followed by a reading of his newest work, The Angel’s Game, so I was a bit disappointed on that note.  Zafón is a disciplined writer (as much as one can be who writes fiction).  He starts off each work with an outline and tries to stay to the general parameters he started with in the outline as he writes.  He doesn’t believe in multiple drafts, but continues to rework the same draft over and over until he submits it for publication.

He is bilingual in Spanish and English, lived in the U.S. for many years (worked as a Hollywood screenwriter for a time) but writes all of his fiction in Spanish.  He was asked about this and his reply is that one should write in the language that they first learned.  He is passionate about books, music, iPods, and dragons.  He is a wonderful storyteller and amused us with anecdotes.  He said he will not allow The Shadow of the Wind to be made into a movie (at least while he is alive).

My ticket also bought me an autographed edition of The Angel’s Game (pre-signed unfortunately).  I brought a couple of friends along with me, one of whom teaches Spanish and the Powell’s staff wouldn’t let her trade her English translation for the Spanish one (for shame Powell’s).

I’ve already started to rip into The Angel’s Game, and with my wife and daughter in Southern Oregon this week visiting her family I have a lot of time on my hands, I’m hoping to finish three novels while they are gone!