Writing as Thinking

A good friend of mine, Derek, emailed me this post and it’s reminded me of how useful it can be to write in order to work out how you think/feel about something. The article, by Frank Chimero, discusses how shorter means of writing, things like Twitter, are not the best means of addressing more involved subject matter. And I have to say, I agree wholeheartedly.

The article got me thinking about the ways in which I think about things, and I discovered that I actually need to write things out in order to come to grips with them. Take, for instance, my recent posts here about my characters and their motivations. Writing a novel and creating a believable setting, set-up and the corresponding characters is a long, awkward and rewarding process. But these things need extended consideration if they’re ever to amount to anything worthwhile. And so, in writing these blog posts I am actually thinking about the novel. Which is really nice because before I blogged about it, much of my thinking involved lying down in my bed with my eyes closed – and that’s still a valid and productive way of imagining a novel, but seeing words appear on a screen offers a different perspective. Writing down my thoughts also forces me to sustain my thoughts for more than a moment or two.

In the spirit of thinking by writing, I am now going to go and consider what Heather loves about being watched. I’ll let you know how I get on.

A rough draft of the opening?

As I was sitting at my tutoring job, sans students, I had an Internet-free hour, and tried to apply myself to the stalker issue yet again. This time, however, instead of writing out thoughts and ideas, I just wrote and I think I may have – potentially – a rough draft of the opening. We’ll see, but I thought I would share as it’ll give a better idea of how I want Heather’s motivation for hiring a stalker to work.

It’s rough and unpolished, but I feel like it’s progress.

Heather Poole is the sort of woman who thinks that if no one hears the proverbial tree fall in the forest, then it didn’t ever exist, let alone fall. No, Heather Poole is an advertiser’s wet dream: she believes, with a zeal almost biblical in proportion, that the brands one chooses to identify with form the whole truth and nothing but the truth about one’s personality. The Holy Trinity for her is Fame, Money and the envy of everyone she meets. Heather is no shrinking violet, no, her American upbringing gave her a deep and intimate devotion to the Can-Do attitude, and Heather Poole will fake it until she makes it.

On the 7th of February, Heather Poole hired the ultimate in status symbols. On the 7th of February, Heather Poole hired herself a stalker.

Jason is the new black. He is what every celebrity needs in order to be considered a proper celeb. He is the ultimate accessory. He is her personal stalker. Someone who is paid to notice you and sing your praises. It’s not that Heather fades into the background, but the gaze she seeks is uncommon. She wants to be both subject and object. She wants to be seen as a commodity and an expensive and rare one at that. Heather wants to cultivate an aura around herself that compels people to watch her, in the same way that she cannot pass a reflective surface without inspecting her own reflection. That’s the gaze she wants.

She is not only enamored of her reflection, she seeks to continuously improve it – remove the wrinkles, creases and nasiolabel folds. Her reflection is constant feedback, a report card of failures: sagging neck skin, dull complexion, an unflattering heel height. Noticing the ways in which her looks aren’t living up to her expectations is one of the ways she keeps up with the Jones’s.

Quirks

Jason, the man Heather has hired to stalk her, made his first appearance on my screen today. I’m certain it was more exciting for me at this point than him, but never mind, he made his entrance. And after he arrived at the premiere of Heather’s TV show, I realized I hadn’t given him any quirks.

I don’t mean that I want him to be quirky, but rather that he needs some ticks, some habits that are his and his alone. I need to find the shorthand for his character, little ticks, or quirks, that give the reader something solid – something, I suppose, to judge him by. I mean something like ‘Jason was a Mac man.’ A preference for a particular computer won’t, in this case, give away anything significant about his character, but that’s the sort of thing I’m trying to figure out.

What sort of physical ticks, verbal habits, or quirks of personality would a man who has previously been an underwear model, and who is now a hired stalker, have? He aspires to have a career as a television presenter, and has signed up to stalk Heather only because he thinks it’ll offer excellent opportunities for networking. So he could be the sort of guy who has a fantastically organized set of business cards. Maybe he has an app for that? Or possibly a spreadsheet which, to me, would signify a level of obsession that would be more appropriate to Heather. But I don’t think he’s that clever. Jason is pretty. He’s a bit more useful than your average Bond Girl but not by much.

He will mimic Heather’s behaviour, in fact, he’s just done that. And it didn’t work well. Though gorgeous, he still can’t get away with flirting the way Heather can. He just called the Production Coordinator sweetheart and she very nearly bit his pretty head off.

Ooh, what if Jason has something terrible happen to his eyes? A blind stalker! That’s maybe a bit cute.

Henri Bergson, a French philosopher, wrote a book called Laughter An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. In the bit where he discusses the comic in general, he mentions exaggeration in regard to caricature:

For exaggeration to be comic, it must not appear as an aim, but rather as a means that the artist is using in order to make manifest to our eyes the distortions which he sees in embryo.

I want the novel to be comic, and for the characters themselves to grow from the type of distortions that Bergson mentions. Those tiny little ticks that make us all unique tend reveal more than we realize.

Heather's backstory

I’ve been thinking about where Heather came from, and what made her the way she is.

I started thinking about her history in a different way after I read an article in the New Yorker, Hollywood Shadows. The article is about a Hollywood therapist who sees primarily creatives, or people who work in the creative industries. The therapist, Barry Michels, describes a method he uses to help people overcome their fears. He talks about the Jungian idea of The Shadow, and one bit in particular struck me as a way to get inside Heather’s head. Michels talks about a woman’s attempt to get her child into a fancy pre-school, and what he did to help her. He asked her to visualize all the awful feelings she had about herself and create a person from them. The woman went on to describe her past self, when she was a fat, pimply, trailer-trash highschool girl. How well this works as a therapy is up for discussion, but it gave me an idea.

I’ve always thought of Heather as without problems, in a way. What I mean is that I have only imagined her with the problems I’ve given her that pertain to the story I’m writing. Which is obviously rather foolish. Because why would she only have problems now, and for the duration of the novel?

Getting inside Heather’s head is a real struggle for me, because she and I are very different people. I hadn’t found the thing that she and I have in common, but maybe now I have.

I imagine Heather to have been unpopular in school, but not so unpopular as to have been bullied. She was the girl you didn’t notice, ever. She was a wallflower. Plain, not ugly, but not pretty. Average. Completely average. Never did anything exceptional in her life, yet all she desired – then and now – is to be noticed. What she really wants is for people to be jealous of her, of her life. She wants to have what she couldn’t have in highschool. She wants to be the Homecoming Queen, the Girl Most Likely To Succeed. She wants people to know her name, and admire everything about her.

I think Heather’s highschool self will also give me a way into her psyche, and a place where it’s easier for me to create… if not sympathy, than recognition. Ultimately, I’d like the reader to wonder how similar s/he is to Heather. I want her desperate need to be important, loved, admired, and lusted after to resonate with the reader.

Women

Today, as it’s International Women’s Day I thought I’d take a moment and consider the consequences of having my female protagonist hire a stalker.

This has been the first time I’ve ever really considered a character’s gender, and I find I’m only thinking about it because of what it might be taken to imply. What I mean is, I suppose, what responsibility do I, as author, have when creating a character such as Heather? She’s only one person, so can’t be taken to stand for all women everywhere. But am I doing a disservice to women by having her hire a stalker? Am I making a mockery of stalking victims?

Okay, so what kind of responsibility do authors have when creating characters who are intended to be unlikeable? Ultimately, I think it’s the author’s responsibility to create characters that are interesting. And that’s where it ends for me. I look to books for many things: entertainment, insight, inspiration, new ideas, and sometimes answers, but I don’t how the author responsible for providing all these things, or indeed, providing them in ways that I agree with. There are plenty of characters I’ve encountered that I don’t like. Chip in The Corrections, Chanu inBrick Lane and most of the characters in Haunted. And I don’t hold those authors accountable for writing characters whose actions I disagree with, or just plain irritate me.

But, to be a woman and write a female character seems to often beg questions regarding womanhood. So, I don’t intend for Heather to stand as an example of all women in the Western world. I do hope readers will look at her and recognize something in her behaviour, because I think we’re all becoming more and more self-involved. And I also hope readers will love to hate her.

My intention in having her hire a stalker is to mock our ever-expanding quest for constant attention and praise. I also wanted to include some ideas about the value we, as a society, place on work and how we decide what defines the notion of work.

A mini breakthrough!

Today’s efforts have produced something nearer to what I was trying to achieve, vis-a-vis Heather’s decision to hire a stalker.

I’ve been trying to work out how the other characters will find out, her husband in particular. Initially, I’d thought that she could come home drunk in a rage about something her husband Robin has not done, and then announce in a melodramatic way that she’s hired a stalker. But that hasn’t been working. I don’t know if it’s just too easy or what, but something about it doesn’t feel right. Heather hasn’t yet earned her stalker.

This novel is also causing me to think more about being a woman and all the various things involved in that, in life and thematically. I was really worried initially to have a woman hiring a stalker because of anything that might be inferred from it. Stalking is an awful crime, truly frightening, and I don’t want to take it lightly. On the other hand, I do want to satirize our modern obsession with fame and ideas of celebrity, so I thought that hiring a stalker would be something like a logical progression, for a fame-obsessed, attention-seeking narcissist at least.

I also wanted to include some thoughts on how women aren’t often ‘seen’ in our society. Think about all the stuff your mother has done for you and you’ll understand what I mean. Women do a lot and it’s not often acknowledged.

So I’m trying to balance these ideas of womanhood and recognition and fame into one character. Also, it should be funny.

Anyhow, I managed to work out how Robin is going to find out what Heather has done. Here’s a little taste:

(Heather and Robin are arguing at a high-profile event where Heather is quite drunk and has just been seen hanging off a very handsome younger man, named Jason. Heather has just explained to Robin that Jason is her hired stalker.)

‘You put everything before me, Robin, and I had to do something to get your attention.’
‘You’ve got it now, so fire him.’
‘No. I like him. He stays. He makes me feel special.’
‘I’m your husband, isn’t that my job?’
‘Consider this a performance review. You’re underperforming.’

I started, and then I had to stop

Oh, I did a foolish thing.

My rule, my firm, tested, and helpful rule of not starting the actual fun bit, the writing, until I have an outline that works.

I know the outline is done and I’m ready to begin when I can ramble on and on to friends, family, pets, strangers in the pub about the plot. When it just flows forth and I know all the twists and turns. And I also need to be able to read the thing without asking myself any questions.

There will, of course, always be questions that remain unanswered – sometimes there are questions where the only answer I have is gist-like. Most questions will require firm and solid answers.

So, at the weekend, there I am, sitting in bed, heating pad cranked to burn, parakeet at my side, and I looked at my outline (all 30 pages of it, which should have set off alarm bells) and thought to myself, ‘Self, now is the time. You are ready. Begin.’ And I did. I skipped out on doing anything in the way of a description of setting, just went right to the dialogue. Which made me wonder: why don’t I include writing out dialogue as part of my outlining process? I love writing it, my work is usually very dialogue-heavy. But I feel that, in order to get the outline done (which I really hate and is a constant struggle) that I have to deprive myself the pleasure of dialogue.

I started doing the dialogue and man, I had the two kids, Winnie and Harvey, yammering away and it was funny (at least in spots. That also should’ve been a heads-up to me. If the banter is only funny half the time, I’m not ready to be writing it). So, yeah, I’ve got the characters chattering away and I think maybe I’ve been too hard on myself in the past. Maybe I don’t need as much of an outline as I thought I did. In fact, maybe I don’t need an outline at all.

When I start thinking crazy things like that, I know it’s time to go back to the outline. You know when you sit down to eat dinner, and all you can think about is the cake you’ll get if you finish your veggies? For me, to start writing before the outline is done and tested and good is like eating only cake for dinner. Bad idea.

I got about 20 pages in and then got stuck and all these big questions started popping up. Why would Robin stay with Heather who is plainly awful? Will the reader want to read a novel that features a woman who is so horrible?

Anyhow… what I did in the end is to go back to pen and notebook and work on my outline. It’s not nearly as fun (it’s not fun at all, it’s the hardest part for me) but there are fun bits to it, making up terribly things to happen to a woman who just totally deserves it… well, that’s great fun.

Off to finish ruining Heather’s life!

Frustrations abound

So, I’ve been staring at my outline (third version) and I feel like there are problems, but it’s tricky to spot them. Today’s biggest issue is one I’ve often struggled with, which is hard to summarize neatly. Basically, I aspire to write a novel that’s full of things academics and critics might want to discuss, you know, Big Ideas. So for ‘Heather’ I’m thinking about how to illustrate her narcissism, and how that effects the other people in her life. But I get bogged down thinking about things like, well if she’s a narcissist then shouldn’t her bits in the book be told in first person? Even though the other bits will be in third? And I really want to demonstrate how I think that we’re all becoming more narcissistic in our habits (with all out exciting shiny devices that keep us constantly plugged into one another), but writing a book where the characters all just tap away at their screens doesn’t appeal. And then there’s the whole hiring a stalker thing. I’ve decided it’s not a sexual thing, but then, what is it? Is it even necessary? Does she need to hire a stalker, is that the best way of demonstrating how narcissistic she is? It seems pretty good to me, but I’m not sure if where I’m going is the best direction. How can a woman who is quite often in the public eye believe she’s not getting enough attention? And then, conversely, if she’s not in the public eye then I struggle to work out how, exactly and in what ways, I can show that she’s a narcissist.

Of course, all I really want to do is settle these issues so I can write. This beginning bit of novel writing is the most frustrating of all. All there is for it is more thinking, more considering and no writing. If I start writing now, I know from past experience that I can write a novel-length piece of work, but the editing will be treacherous.

What's the story here then?

Hello and welcome to my blog. My plan is to write this alongside the novel I’m working on, and to discuss whatever issues said novel might bring up.

I’m a big believer in making an outline before I start writing, mostly because I have done it the other way in the past and it didn’t work and the editing process was unbearable. Of course, each time I think I’ve finished an outline, I put it to one side and when I come back to it, it’s full of holes and problems.

It all started when I was reading this book called ‘The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes It Hard To Be Happy’ by Michael Foley. Over the past year, I’ve become increasing interested in happiness. So, I’m reading this book, and there’s tons of lines and paragraphs that I’ve highlighted, but then I come upon this one line where he mentions, briefly, that it is possible for one to hire a stalker. And I thought that was the funniest/maddest/most brilliant thing ever. Hire a stalker.

So I decided I would write a book about a woman who hires a stalker. Her name is Heather.

(Aside: Heather, in her first incarnation, was the imaginary girlfriend I invented for my boyfriend at the time. She was much more suited – or so I thought – to him than I was. She’s changed now, though, and I don’t think they make a good couple anymore. Anyhow…)

So, yeah, Heather. My plan for this blog is to think/write about how the work is going, progressing, and what issues I encounter each day. I suppose this blog will function as my ‘report card’ for myself. I don’t intend to start handing myself a gold star, but rather reflect on the day’s work. Some days there will be a lot of work produced, other days there may be rather a lot more work deleted. Either way, I shall keep you posted.