"Whitman was a master at imagining himself in other skins. I am large, he said. I contain multitudes. He could see himself as a soldier, a slave, a mother giving birth, a blade of grass. That didn't come as easily for me--I'd always felt stuck in my own body, my own point of view--but with these roller skates, I got a little glimpse into the largeness he knew so well."
That's a mind-bending bit from Self Storage, the new novel from the Bellwether Prize winning writer, Gayle Brandeis. You would never guess that this quietly powerful novel was born in a single month.
Brandeis drafted Self Storage as part of the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a massive Internet writing exercise. As she explains today, sometimes these writing experiences can yield a published product.
Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a serialized set of weekly interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing...
Jason Boog:
This novel was born during NaNoWriMo. Can you describe your ultimately successful process of going from an empty notebook to a novel draft in 30-days? How did you turn that messy draft into the beautiful product that we read?
Gayle Brandeis:
I tried to follow Natalie Goldberg's sage advice—"keep your hand moving." Continue reading...
When you have 30 days to write 50,000 words, you definitely have to keep your hand moving to keep the story moving.
It's like entering a swiftly flowing river—you just keep rushing forward, almost blindly, on the current. No time to worry whether what you're writing is any good. No time for second-guessing. Just one big messy creative gush.
After those 30 days, it was important for me to take a bit of a breather, to slow down, to let the story settle. When I looked at it again after gaining some distance, it was easier to find the dead moments that needed to be slashed, the sketchy moments that needed to be fleshed out, the holes that needed to be filled.
Getting feedback from readers I trust always helps, too.
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» "One Big Messy Creative Gush" : How To Turn a NaNoWriMo Project Into a Real Live Novel from ThePublishingSpot
"Whitman was a master at imagining himself in other skins. I am large, he said. I contain multitudes. He could see himself as a soldier, a slave, a mother giving birth, a blade of grass. That didn't come as easily... [Read More]
Tracked on: January 24, 2007 8:46 AM | Permalink to Trackback