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Beginning the book

I’ve got an idea for a book, and I’ve got some drafts of pieces. So what’s next?

Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to structure the book overall. There are a number of pieces that I’m juggling, several historical time periods, and at least several plot lines (my dad’s incarceration, his untimely death, my own job loss and the writing of this book). And a whole bunch of smaller pieces about each “document.” It’s quite a lot to juggle. I’m not exactly sure what story I want to tell, and so much of the writing will be about discovery. I know that I want to begin with an introduction of mine, and then move into physical documents, into virtual documents (like Facebook and blogs). And then end with a memory. It’s not quite a linear approach, but I know that non-linear can really turn people away from a book (‘too difficult to follow”). We’ll see if the book really ends up this way.

So I’ve begun to write a draft of the Introduction, which feels really exciting to me. As I’ve been reading (and rereading, obsessively) Anne Lamott’s wonderful Bird By Bird, it strikes me that her Introduction does some of the work that I’d like my introduction to perform. It establishes trust and intimacy with the reader, and it does so with humor and wit. My book has heavy subjects (wartime history, death, loss), but I don’t want it to be a “downer book.” I do want it to be helpful for people who have gone through similar situations, or who are going through similar situations, but I don’t want it to be A Grief Book. So I want my introduction to establish me as a narrator, but a narrator that will bring people into the story, rather than pushing them away or putting up barriers right away.

I’m also feeling how the Introduction can and should be longer than the blog posts that I write here. I began writing as a poet, really, and longer forms terrify me. So creative nonfiction lets me integrate some of the sensitivity to language and keeps me grounded (at least for now) in a reality. The idea of writing fiction terrifies me, even though I have an idea for a novel already in mind. Maybe I’ll need to start with short stories after this.

Some books that have helped me think about structure, in no particular order:

  • Anne Lamott’s writing advice book/memoir, Bird by Bird (juggling of many pieces, intimate, funny)
  • Diana Abu-Jaber’s novel Birds of Paradise. This lovely novel uses multiple third-person viewpoints, but also surprised me towards the end.
  • Kim Severson’s memoir Spoon Fed. Each chapter here centered on a different “subject”, a woman who inspired or changed the author, but changed it up a bit, because it did not approach each subject the same way. To do so would have felt repetitive, and I’m glad she structured the book this way.
  • Rebecca Skloot’s biography The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. One of the very best nonfiction works I’ve ever read, frankly. Skloot juggles multiple time periods, jumping back from our contemporary present back to the 1940s, 1950s, and so on. She also juggles multiple subjects, including Henrietta Lacks, and her children. And—this is a move that I greatly respect, especially because Skloot is a journalist—she examines her own role in the writing of the book, critically and thoughtfully. Skloot has said, I think, that the novel Fried Green Tomatoes helped her to think about how to structure her book, so perhaps that’s a lesson for me to consider. (Outlining Flagg’s novel might be interesting, just in terms of timing.)

In the meantime, though, I am working on a grant application. Lots of people are applying, I’m sure, so I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high. But it’s useful to work on this application because it’s another step towards writer identity. I’m having to write down my goals as an artist, and to think of my biography as a writer. And those two exercises, alone, are also worthwhile for me to progress towards this degree, another step in the MFA.
Back with another post next week. In the meantime, if you can think of any books that would be interesting for me to read, because of their structure, I’d love the suggestions.

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Reflections on the private MFA, year 1 (part 3.5): the reading list, with commentary

If you’re a writer, a reader, here’s what I’ve been reading for my own private MFA, year 1, with commentary. The books don’t make a lot of sense together, except that the list means that I have read for myself this year more than I have in a long time. And maybe that’s an accomplishment, in itself.

Nonfiction

I think it’s safe to say that I’ve read more nonfiction in this last year than I usually do. Novels are the bread-and-butter of my reading diet, or if you’re me, the rice. Nonfiction was a category I rarely touched, a whole section of the library that I rarely visited until graduate school, where literary theory, ethnic studies, and food studies (and food literature) really entered the menu. It’s still not the first section of the bookstore that I’ll visit, but I no longer avoid it like the plague.

  • The Brief Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks*, Rebecca Skloot. An amazing feat of science writing, journalistic reporting, memoir that travels fluently between several time periods. If you haven’t read it yet, pick it up; you’ll probably be shocked at what you probably didn’t know. It took Skloot something like 10 years to research and write the book, and I can see why. Side literary note: she cited Fannie Flagg’s novel Fried Green Tomatoes as an influence for her own book’s structure.
  • Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. Chip and Dan Heath. I thought I’d be reading this book as a career changer, and in some respects it’s been useful. But I found their lessons highly memorable and applicable in settings from teaching freshman composition to political change and policy creation. Perhaps a bit too business-oriented for me?–but an entertaining and provocative read.
  • One Person/Multiple Careers, Marci Alboher. Another useful read for career changers. Some useful suggestions and inspiring examples, but not as memorable as the Heaths’ book.
  • My Reading Life, Pat Conroy. As a novelist, Conroy has hit some of the same notes far too often for me, but his appreciation of food and his zest for storytelling can draw me back in spite of myself. This memoir is Conroy’s set of love letters to some of his most influential books, and as a fellow lifelong passionate reader it’s fun to see how he approaches each book or author with reverence or nostalgia or hero-worship.
  • The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown. I really love this author’s speeches on TEDtalks. For those who are drawn to her material there–with all due respect, because I really do think her work is valuable–I’d suggest sticking to the talks. Part memoir, part advice–this book felt to me like the PowerPoint slides without as much of the author’s engaging and compelling presence.
  • The Creative Habit, Twyla Tharp. I liked this book more as a memoir than as a writing/creative advice manual, but I think I am not quite her audience. I don’t think I need to be convinced to be creative, or that creativity is valuable and part of everyday life. But, I appreciate her willingness to include so many people and activities as “creative.”
  • On Writing, Stephen King.* This book surprised me in so many good ways. Because I don’t really like the genres that King uses typically (horror, noir), I don’t read his work very often. But this book reminded me that he is a master storyteller, and some of the memoir sections told me about why he writes in the genres that he does. I found myself wanting to keep my library copy; it’s a book that I could see myself returning to over and over again. A great precursor to Victor LaValle’s work (more on that in a minute).
  • The Writing Life, Annie Dillard. A lovely set of meditations on the writing life–not really Dillard’s life, necessarily–but a set of gentle suggestions or mantras about how to approach life as a writer and working artist. One of my favorite moments in the book involves seclusion and fireworks.

Fiction

As always, so many good books, so little time. I don’t think this list is complete, but it’s a good sampling of what I read this year (except for the books that I like to reread). Sometimes I become too ambitious and order a whole slew of books at once from the library and can’t read them all in time. I’ll tell you this, though: my 50-page rule still holds. (If the author doesn’t have me by page 50, I will usually not finish the book. See the first sentence of this paragraph.)

  • Honoring Juanita, Hans Ostrom. My good friend and colleague wrote this historical novel, cheap ventolin online based on events in the Sierra Nevada. Sometimes it’s hard to shake the author’s presence from fiction when you know the author, but Mary Bluestone’s voice is engaging and the novel’s exploration of the aftermath of historical figures made me think quite a bit.
  • The Atlas of Love, Laurie Frankel. Another colleague wrote this lovely book about “atypical” forms of family, friendships, and love. Readers who have gone to graduate school in the humanities will especially appreciate this warmhearted book and its engaging narrator, Janey.
  • Big Machine, Victor LaValle. One of the craziest books I’ve read in a while, but I want so many more people to read it. Both page-turning and experimental: a huge accomplishment in itself. Stephen King (horror) crossed with Ralph Ellison (modernist experiments with race) and Haruki Murakami (magical realism) and James Weldon Johnson (deep knowledge of racial politics). And set partly in the Bay Area, home of my homes. I kept thinking, “No, you can’t do that! or go there”–and he kept doing it. Go read it, please, so we can talk about it together.
  • Great House, Nicole Krauss. Krauss has gorgeous prose. I found myself writing down bits of wisdom from the book, short lines and quotations. But I never quite felt that this novel came together as I felt it should. Four narrators/narratives, all centered around a single object: a writer’s desk (think The Red Violin in novel form).
  • Pictures of You, Caroline Leavitt. After I became pregnant with my first daughter, it was hard to read anything where bad things happened to children. (Exponentially so now that both of my daughters are here.) Thus, Leavitt’s novel was an emotional test for me: can I read a novel where bad things happen to children, and the bad thing is the death of a parent? Yes, I can, but not without difficulty. More about this in a later post.
  • Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay. Outing myself as a fantasy/historical fantasy reader, since junior high school. I don’t read very much of it anymore but Kay, I think, is one of the very best. He rarely sacrifices character development for plot, when so many in this genre seem to do the reverse. This novel’s set in China, around the time of the Tang dynasty, involving an impossible and terribly consequential gift.
  • Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, Danielle Evans. I had to take this book back to the library because I wasn’t quite in the mood for it (read: it made me sad), but I admired Evans’s craft. I’d like to revisit the collection someday.
  • A Thread Of Sky, Deanna Fei. Some important (and highly readable) work here if you are interested in transnational relationships between Asia and America and immigrants. Five main characters, all with large and looming issues, made this novel at times overly ambitious, but it provides an important crash course in a number of Asian American issues.
  • Take Me Home, Brian Leung. I was excited to read Leung’s historical novel set in Wyoming in the 19th century, about  Chinese immigrants and the Rock Springs massacre. Not many have ventured into historical fictional territory (ha) with this incident, if any. I am hoping my scholarly friends in Asian American Studies and American Literature will pick this one up.
  • Skippy Dies, Paul Murray. Amazing prose, well-drawn characters, hilarious at points–and yet, as with a number of postmodern pyrotechnics, the ending did not satisfy me.
  • The Calligrapher’s Daughter, Eugenia Kim. A staggering feat of feminist historical fiction, especially given Kim’s audience and what we would probably (not) know about twentieth-century Korean history and the Japanese occupation. I was awed. I loved the narrator and the narrator’s mother, and I wanted to know what would happen to them both.
  • A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith. This book is a classic, I know, but I did not read it until this year. It was startlingly honest about maternal love, about tenement poverty, about adultery and about female adolescence. You probably wouldn’t get away with publishing this book as a “coming of age” Young Adult novel today, and yet in so many ways that’s exactly what it is, the prototype for the female bildungsroman all the way up to The House on Mango Street and beyond. I am still thinking through this book’s honesty.

I had a number of “books I like to reread,” but I’ll save that for another post, another time.  I am working on Abraham Verghese’s novel Cutting for Stone, and I just picked up The Tragedy of Arthur. Have a good weekend. I hope you’re able to enjoy some reading time.