 Frederick Barthelme, my favourite novelist and short-story writer, put together a checklist
of things for writers to learn and remember that has guided all my
creative work. It's simply brilliant, and extremely funny. My
favourites from the list, which I've written about on the blog several
times:
- Mean less. That is, don't mean so much. Make up a story,
screw around with it, paste junk on it, needle the characters, make
them say queer stuff, go bad places, insert new people at inopportune
moments, do some drive-bys. Make it up, please.
-
We can't care about sand mutants; if you do, or think you do, kill yourself.
- Coherence is a big part of the game. Make sure the story is
coherent, that the scenes flow each from the last, that the reader has
the clearest sense at all times of what is going on. Obscurity is not subtlety; intentional obscurity is pinheaded and unkind.
- If you write a sentence that isn't poignant, touching, funny,
intriguing, inviting, etc., take it out before you finish the work.
Don't just leave it there. Don't let anyone see it. To repeat, there is no place for rubbish & slop in the highly
modern world of today's fiction. Every sentence must pay, must somehow
thrill. Every one.
- Apropos the big issues, note that parents don't sit around getting
heartbroken about abortion, they get heartbroken because they killed
the baby. Or, because the baby was born with fins for hands. It's the particular.
- No characters named Brooke or Amber.
- Don't let it make too
much sense. Doing odd stuff is good, especially like when you make
characters do it in the story, like when stuff is happening to them and
they just do this unexpected, even inappropriate stuff, and then
somehow it makes a little sense.
- Don't let too many paragraphs go by
without sensory information, something that can be felt, smelt,
touched, tasted.
- Don't reject interesting stuff (things for characters
to say and do, things to see, places to be, etc.) because the stuff
doesn't conform to your idea. Change your idea to wrap it around the
stuff.
- Also, when doing the above, notice the things you notice in
your own "real" life -- like what's at the horizon, how the sun is in the
sky, what kind of light's going on, the way the street, ground, grass,
dirt looks, your interest in bushes, what's happening at the edges of
things -- buildings and signs and cars, the sounds of stuff going on
around the scene -- who's that wheezing? what's that rattle? are those
leaves preparing to rustle? Etc.
In case you haven't yet discovered his work, here's a lovely passage from Barthelme's book Elroy Nights, that I think resonates with a lot of us aging baby-boomers,
As I drove across the bridge, I
thought how we'd started as young people insisting on living the way we
wanted, and how we'd gradually retreated from that, from doing what we
wanted. Things change. What you want becomes something you can't
imagine having wanted, and instead you have this,
suddenly and startlingly not at all what you sought. One day you find
yourself walking around in Ralph Lauren shorts and Cole Haan loafers
and no socks. You think, How did this happen? It isn't a terrible spot,
and you don't feel bad about being there, being the person you are in
the place you are, with the wife or husband you have, the
step-daughter, the friends and acquaintances, the house and tools and
toys, the job, but there is no turning back. You have a Daytimer full
of things to do. You have a Palm PDA and names and addresses and
contacts, and there is no way back. Even if there were a way back, you
couldn't get there from here, and you probably wouldn't go if you
could. The effort required isn't the kind of effort you can make
anymore. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
