of the body.Finally I remove each of my organs and arrange them
on a small table near the window.
I do not want to hear their ancient rhythms
when I am trying to tap out my own drumbeat.
Now I sit down at the desk, ready to begin.
I am entirely pure: nothing but a skeleton at a typewriter.
Take the line “as if I had melted to death and my legacy consisted only/of a white shirt, a pair of pants and a pot of cold tea.”
The words “melted to death” bring us from the world of a poet sitting at his desk, to an imaginary world, a world of fantasy and dream.
“I remove my flesh and hang it over a chair.” Now we are in the place of poetry. We are in that multidimensional space where the poet has left his physical surroundings to enter the world of creativity.
This poem is an excellent example of the use of imagination, metaphor and imagery that makes this beloved poem memorable.
From poet and author Mary Mackey:
“A great poem expands beyond the obvious, transcending logic and time, reaching into the lyrical, metaphorical depths of language and binding together the conscious and unconscious. It doesn’t just state an idea. It exists in multilayered realms, unique, ever expanding in the mind of the reader. To create these layers, you need to write a first draft and then enrich it by making sure each line moves in a seamless rhythm and each word has powerful associations. Don’t settle for the first thing that comes out of your head. Revise. Revise. There are probably twenty better words for ‘walk,’ not all of them synonyms. Don’t have your ‘rough beast, its hour come around at last,’ walk towards Bethlehem. Have it ‘slouch.’”
“Writing is not just words on a page,” Tom Parker, Pulitzer Prize nominee for the novel Anna, Ann, Annie and author of Small Business, advises. Parker echoes Gopnik: “Writing is not just assembling a heap of facts.”
At the same time, for many of us, our first drafts are just that. Words on a page. A heap of facts. It is an important part of your writing process and one which we will discuss later in this chapter under the heading “You Wrote It. Now, Revise.”
Writing that important first draft without prejudging, without the “critical voice,” is how we get started. I can say with confidence that not one author ever published a first draft. I’ll bet even Adam Gopnik drafted his stellar piece on writing at least several times as well.
Mary Hayes, author of nine novels—including the Time and Life bestseller Amethyst, her latest novel What She Had to Do, and two political thrillers co-authored with Senator Barbara Boxer—says: “We write to discover who we are.”
I became a writer because there seemed nothing else I could do.
I’d supported myself, since age seventeen, with a string of unrelated jobs (librarian, fashion model, medical tech) in various countries, knowing a little about a lot but expert in nothing, with no degree or qualification. By thirty-three, as a mother of two young children, I decided to get serious and find a career I could be passionate about. By process of elimination, the professions and sciences seemed closed to me (such long, expensive training to be a doctor, lawyer, or astrophysicist, and could I be passionate enough?), and I was too old to launch myself into the arts—except, perhaps, as a writer.
I’d grown up in a bohemian British family of writers and artists, so it was in my genes. I’d always enjoyed telling stories. Writing was cheap; all I needed was paper and a typewriter. So, for three mornings a week, during the two hours when my three-year old was at nursery school and the baby took a nap, I’d ruthlessly churn out at least 2,500 words, butt glued to my seat, no interruptions allowed. I told all my friends about my book so they’d ask how it was going and I’d be forced to finish it out of pride.
It wasn’t published (although it would be later), but I didn’t give up. I couldn’t; by then I’d developed such a strong work habit I’d be restless and anxious if I wasn’t at my desk between 10 a.m. and noon.
So, I tried again, and after twenty-two letters of thanks but not for us, somebody actually made an offer for my second novel. It was a small paperback house, the money wasn’t great, but I was on my way and I’ve never stopped. I don’t believe I can now.
While getting down your first draft, don’t fret about whether you are creating a great piece of writing. The first draft is the time to dive into your theses, your character development, your plot. It’s in your subsequent drafts that you fine-tune.
Tom Parker again: “First you build the house. Then you screw down the boards.”
Many authors express surprise (and delight) at how their characters instruct them; tell the writer how to write their lines. Many writers report that their characters dictate their words and actions.
Being open to all kinds of surprises when you sit down to write is part of being a winning writer. You might have the plot down cold, but a twist might unfold as you are writing—go for it.
It is exactly this element of surprise that will delight your reader. As Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author of Walking Light, Stephen Dunn, writes: “If the writer is not surprised by the ending of a poem, they haven’t done their job.”
In Walking Light, Dunn’s collection of essays on writing, he addresses the importance of surprise, especially when writing on political topics:
“To complain, protest, register outrage, are familiar impulses in most of our lives. And what occurs in our lives inevitably is reflected in poetry. Yet Robert Frost wrote that ‘grievances are a form of impatience,’ and went on to say that he didn’t like them in poetry…. Yeats told us that quarrels with others produce rhetoric.”
Later, in the chapter on “Complaint, Complicity, Outrage, and Composition,” Dunn targets exactly what causes rhetorical or dogmatic poems to fall flat. After analyzing several successful and unsuccessful poems in the vein of “complaint,” Dunn writes: “In any of these poems we could speculate on the varieties of inspiration which spurred them, though, I think, it’s safe to say that the linguistic discoveries in the act of composition were at least as inspiring as the events or attitudes which preceded them.”
To rephrase, Dunn is teaching that you can write a successful poem of complaint or outrage if you allow it to unfold, as any other good writing does. If you allow the poem to lead you, to surprise you. “Locate a poem’s first real discovery, and often you will find its motor, if not its ignition key.”
Writing stories and novels is a different process, yet the basic elements are similar. In all forms of creative writing, “something has to change.”
In a novel, it is your protagonist’s change that keeps your reader turning the pages. The “big reveal” is the element of your story that you might subtly hint at for the first section. What skeleton does your character hide in his closet?
Another key element to keep your story moving is timing. The minute your book opens, the clock is ticking. As we will read later, Tinkers, a first novel that won the Pulitzer Prize, is all about clocks ticking!
Narration: Who’s Talking?
Crafting
