Stepping Off the Boat

How do you determine what to withhold in your writing? When you have something to say it may be difficult to exercise restraint, though things unsaid can have as much value as what you choose to expose. How does your work change in revision? Do you find yourself adding more or do you approach your manuscript with a scythe?

It’s said that Torah, the Five Books of Moses, was written in black fire on white fire. The Hebrew words and the spaces that surround them were written (some believe implied) by God. It’s up to the reader to study the black words and white spaces in order to determine what God expects of His children on Earth. Rabbis, scholars, and laymen have pored over those scrolls for thousands of years, arguing interpretation and intent, spirituality and action. Passages are firmly explained, refuted by the next generation, discussed once again. Conclusions are never forgone.

The Bible is written with enormous gaps. We must imagine some passages and conversations because they aren’t in there. When God told Noah to build an ark and collect animals from all over the world, we have no idea what Noah said or thought. That part isn’t in the book, and it’s left to readers to visualize. Did he argue he was too old to build a boat, or try to beg off because of a fear of lions?

Centuries of commentary have drawn many conclusions but each new reader must determine for himself what happened within those empty spaces. Reading Torah promotes a healthy discourse about the gaps between the words. An engaged reader fills in the intentional blanks to glean details, purpose, value, and direction. The Torah reader fully immerses herself, gradually extrapolating meaning and context to apply to one’s own life. As God expects.

Kind of hard to best the Master.

When I completed my first novel, The Inlaid Table, it came in about 180,000 words. That was after culling lengthy descriptive (read boring) passages, entire chapters, and all the meaningless words (very, thing, some, nice, that, really – clutter without clarity.) I slashed the two chapters about the table’s secret journey to America during the Cold War, another about the main character’s vacillation over the trip to Poland, and the five chapters from the lost doll’s point of view. They’d all been reviewed and revised many times, and contained evocative descriptions and suspense. A few early readers loved them, but their contributions to the story were negligible. They added word count and some clever insights but not critical narrative. I cut down the book to 140,000 words by removing redundancies of all ilk (words, action, dialogue, characters) and anything that caused my attention to wane. If it didn’t tantalize the writer, what was it going to do to my poor reader? When it came down to so what, who cares? that’s when I knew I had to cut.

I also cut sections where I feel the reader can fill in with information sufficient to let the story move forward. Even if the reader fills with a scene that isn’t exactly what I envisioned, I’ll remove a section that feels like filler, or that drags the action into a dark closet.

Come read my books with an active mind. I’ll write but you must contribute as well – there are blanks. You have faith in me to craft a compelling story and I trust you to bring your intelligence to the pages. Like a puzzle with missing pieces, you’ll have to fill in the gaps. I’ll take the biggest risk by jumping into space by writing. You’ll connect by stepping off the boat as you read, paddling to stay afloat. Because I can’t do it all.

It’s the wonder of story that a writer’s solitary endeavor gets completed in the public forum. The act of writing is lonely work. I sit with pen and pad of paper or a computer on my lap and I write. Scratch scratch, tap tap.  If God can leave spaces in the labyrinth of Torah through which I must wander to determine meaning, I trust you to do the same with my meager offering.

I write The End, and hope I’ve described enough to compel you to get to those final two words. I hope to soon launch my books into the public forum. It’s noisy out there, lots of people reading and posting reviews, chatting in book clubs, and sharing opinions. Come read with me. Come write with me.

 

Painting of Noah’s Ark, 11^th century, artist unknown, courtesy Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 

 

The Road Best Traveled

A book is not a concrete highway going straight to purgatory. Plenty of people are trying to get there fast but who needs to be reminded? It’s not a rambling road with divergent tracks in multiple planes going nowhere. Well, maybe scatterfall stories are that chaotic, but I haven’t written one of those since I was six. Eventually we want the story to end, well or ill, but first to travel in spellbinding fashion.

A book is more a path in some order of forward movement across stepping stones of events. How I lay those stones is endemic to my tale and my writing style. How you traverse the stones is influenced by your willingness to step where the path is tricky or unpersuasive. Did I convince you that you’re safe and the stones are worth crossing? A lot of metaphor here, yet reading a book is as much a leap of faith as writing one is, and there is no bigger metaphor for life than that. (Perhaps, you say, and you might be right.)

I can’t write every single detail and neither would you want to read them, no matter that you as reader may still have questions at the very last word. Knowing when to stop, when I’ve said everything germane, when the plot has run its course, and the characters have learned everything or nothing is my decision as a writer. Readers begin their opportunity to interact the moment my book is in print. (That’s another story!)

This may sound like an authoritarian mandate but it’s really more a question I’m asking myself. My newest work in progress is based loosely on stories my parents told me about their childhoods. In order to protect their dignity and privacy, in order to protect myself from angry relatives, all names in the book have been changed.

As I began to write I had immediate questions. Like, whoa there, the dates don’t align, how could that be true? Or, hey dad, can you provide a few more details so the story has more gravitas? Or, mom, are you telling me this actually happened? Really? Do either of you know of a few juicy incidents that might make someone stop in their tracks and sob – or scream – or run? Because that’s the stuff stories are made of and I could use a little help here. Everyone just got quiet. Hmm – secrets?

In my case I’m at an impasse. My father has passed and my mother has advanced Alzheimer’s, so there are no answers forthcoming from the folks who told me the original stories. Perhaps held back those most controversial or unflattering – read interesting moments. Cousins know a few details but not enough to fill the gaps.

So I’m doing what writers do – making stuff up. Emerging from the inchoate racket in my head is a story of a different sort than what I’d originally intended. Not memoir, not creative non-fiction, barely recognizable as lives related to my family, the story is entirely fabricated. And that’s OK. A good yarn is what I wanted to tell.  Gather around the fire, and let me begin. Once there was a young boy and a young girl who…

We’ve all stood there at the fork in the road, wondering if a unicorn waits at the end of one path, a treasure chest at the other. We’ve all wondered what if? What if I’d taken the other road, would my life be better? If I’d asked more questions of the right people when they could be answered, would I know enough to write a better story, a more exciting one? If I had never tried to base this story on any semblance of my parents’ lives but chosen to create entirely fictional characters?

The unknown is all I have. It’s all any writer has. It doesn’t really matter which road I take. It matters the adventures I invent, the people who confront and resolve their crises, what truths I expose along the way, and how riveting a story I write.

So here I go, right foot first, left foot next, each leading until it is the one that follows. You, dear reader, will have to fill in some of the blanks along the way (Hey, writer, you missed the butterfly with seven wings) but I certainly hope to lure you down a merry, magnificent, mysterious path. We’ll only know if it was the best choice when you come to the end and declare what a fabulous journey onto the unknown path it was.

Or don’t. Because the other one might have been just as good or even better – had I written it instead.

(Thank you, Robert Frost, for the reminder.)

 

 

Painting Road Leading to the Lake by Paul Cezanne