The Literary Salon...

[dr_mabeuse]

Today's quote comes from best-selling writer James Michener, who said:

"I'm not a very good writer. But I'm a hell of a good RE-writer."

Comments? Discussion?

Remember, you don't get any tea or sherry here at the Salon unless you participate. No skulking.

 

[sr71plt]

When Michener was hitting his stride, his "local color vignette" research was done by a bunch of research assistants (I worked on Centennial and Cheaspeake). He'd put these together like a jigsaw puzzle and write a rough overarching storyline incorporating them. He rewrote several times, polishing it and making the connections stronger.

His quote actually means that he wrote in a unique way. A collection of local lore and vignettes were at the base of everything. The overarching storyline came later and was forged (by Michener himself) to accommodate existing material. Even before "Michener by committee" he was using the same technique. His first, The Fires of Spring, which is loosely autobiographical (early life), was layed out on top of local lore around Doylestown, PA, and over into Delaware. His Tales of the South Pacific, upon which the musical South Pacific was based, was, in fact, a collection of connected tales--short stories that he wrote based on local lore and then pounded together into a "rewritten" novel.

 

[3113]

Remember, you don't get any tea or sherry here at the Salon unless you participate. No skulking.

Pass the sherry, please!

Well, Shakepeare, didn't write many of his plays--arguably not any outside of "The Tempest." He re-wrote them. Like Romeo and Juliet which was already written down and written up. There were other acting troops putting on that story as a play; Shakespeare's re-write of it was simply the best one.

And consider Truman Capote, who gained fame--as well as infamy--because he wrote up what he saw and heard and what was happening almost like a reporter. He exemplifies this, I think, in taking stories that existed--real world and real time--and re-writing them into masterpieces of literary fiction/non-fiction. Which creates the question: is any writer a "writer" creating something out of nothing? If we all do write "what we know"...are we all just re-writers?

 

[sr71plt]

is any writer a "writer" creating something out of nothing?

Probably not. Past connections is what resonates with readers. I think what is happening is recreating--creating something new out of past connections.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

When Michener was hitting his stride, his "local color vignette" research was done by a bunch of research assistants (I worked on Centennial and Cheaspeake). He'd put these together like a jigsaw puzzle and write a rough overarching storyline incorporating them. He rewrote several times, polishing it and making the connections stronger.

His quote actually means that he wrote in a unique way. A collection of local lore and vignettes were at the base of everything. The overarching storyline came later and was forged (by Michener himself) to accommodate existing material. Even before "Michener by committee" he was using the same technique. His first, The Fires of Spring, which is loosely autobiographical (early life), was layed out on top of local lore around Doylestown, PA, and over into Delaware. His Tales of the South Pacific, upon which the musical South Pacific was based, was, in fact, a collection of connected tales--short stories that he wrote based on local lore and then pounded together into a "rewritten" novel.

I really had no idea Michener worked that way. So what you're saying is that basically his books weren't created as much as they were collated, a bunch of anecdotes and vignettes held together with a story laid on top. That's a pretty slick way of operating, and maybe a little underhanded if you ask me - having a staff collect material for you while you lounge back at the pool with a julep...

What I thought he was talking about was the importance of being able to turn a lame and crappy first draft into a decent piece of writing through the power of re-writing. I've been thinking about the process of rewriting a lot lately, ever since I discovered that for me, rewriting, editing, and revising are more fun, more creative, and more critical to a story's success than coming up with an original first draft.

This has to do with 3113's point too, that maybe the content of the story isn't as important as the way the author tells it: the attitude he or she takes toward it, the angle or context, the descriptions, the characters. These are all things that are often developed (and sometimes only discovered) in a rewrite, as scenes and characters are fleshed out and details are added. Speaking for myself, I often don't even really know what a story I've written is about until I start to rewrite it. Then I'll find that what i thought was just some toss-off about a coach fucking some gymnast, say, is actually about his resentment toward her, or maybe about her sexual manipulation of him.

Jack Kerouac made a whole career out of writing "Spontaneous Bop Prosody," writing books and poetry just as the words came out and never changing a thing. He wanted his writing to be the literary equivalent of a jazz musician's improvised solo, free, pure, spontaneous. I had a huge crush on Kerouac when I was growing up (it seems to be a thing with male writers of a certain age) and tried mightily to write like that, but I never could.

I wasn't entirely shocked then, when some years ago a bunch of his original drafts were released and all showed extensive editing, revising, and rewriting, all done by him to make his stuff seem more "spontaneous."

That taught me that all good writers revise, even if they swear they don't. And if they don't, then they certainly should.

 

[sr71plt]

I really had no idea Michener worked that way. So what you're saying is that basically his books weren't created as much as they were collated, a bunch of anecdotes and vignettes held together with a story laid on top. That's a pretty slick way of operating, and maybe a little underhanded if you ask me - having a staff collect material for you while you lounge back at the pool with a julep...

I can pick out phrases in Centennial and Chesapeake (inside the local lore vignettes) that were my wording, but I can't say that he wouldn't have used the same wording himself. He was actually quite a good writer and very clever with his construction of an overarching story to bring it all together. It wasn't really a "writing by committee" like the John Jakes novels were. He didn't ask for or accept ideas about what the overarching storyline would be. The assistants did come back in on his "rewrites," though, because he could get verbose and bogged down. He had no concept of how many words he'd already put into the novel and whether that was commercially unwieldy. He insisted on sending a manuscript containing what ended up as both Alaska and Journey to the publisher, for instance, and it was sent back to divide as his "team" kept saying it should be.

There was no argument against him being the best writer in the room, but he didn't do his own basic research (at least after the initial books), and I do think he was thinking of compiling and rewriting (recasting from a different perspective) the local lore that was already there in the "world journey" books he wrote. The Novel was a book he wrote all on his own in later life, not using the local vignette approach. But I didn't think that was a very good book. (His The Source is near the top of my all-time favorites).

He was quite the curmudgeon. You didn't offer a lot of ideas to him unless he asked for them. And it wasn't an "everyone working in the same room" approach. We sent our contributions in from a distance. He did much of the compiling and early plotting of Centennial at my grandmother's celebrity dude ranch, having gone there because I worked with his last wife, Mari, and suggested it as a good setting for a Colorado book. He used the valley the ranch was in as his setting, but moved it to the other side of the Rockies from where it is because it suited the stories he was collecting better.

 

[3113]

IJack Kerouac made a whole career out of writing "Spontaneous Bop Prosody," writing books and poetry just as the words came out and never changing a thing. He wanted his writing to be the literary equivalent of a jazz musician's improvised solo, free, pure, spontaneous.

I wasn't entirely shocked then, when some years ago a bunch of his original drafts were released and all showed extensive editing, revising, and rewriting, all done by him to make his stuff seem more "spontaneous."

Great story on Kerouac. Of course, Truman Capote's opinion of Kerouac's writing was: "That's not writing, that's typing." And, of course, the problem with stream of consciousness type writing, no correcting or changing, is that, unlike improvised jazz at a jazz club, it's done by one person on their own and it's in print. The joy of jazz improv is that musicians work off each other, and if your part's not working, someone else's might, and if you go blank for a bit, someone else will carry on till you're ready to slip back in. Besides, none of it's on record. It's experience in the moment, not played over and over again.

That doesn't work at all with the written (as compared to spoken) word. Readers can stop and put the book away, pick it up and re-start where they left off, or go back and re-read passages, etc. Meaning any glaring mistakes or problems are not only yours alone (your name on the work), but also there forever and always (or at least until e-books ). Poetry evolved and changed because of this. It used to be, in a less literate world, that poetry was all verbal. Someone spoke it, and someone listened to it, like music. But when it became something that people read in books,well, then poetry writers had to change, making poetry as much like art to be looked at as music to be listened to (witness e.e. cummings).

Which leads us to "re-write" comments like that of Oscar Wilde about spending the morning putting a comma into a poem and spending the afternoon taking it out. When poetry is written down and read, the poet has to cue the reader how to read it, as compared to just reciting it as he feels it ought to be recited.

As for writers who say they never re-write, I'm in agreement that they do, and that this is often where the real magic of writing can happen. Ben Johnson claimed that Shakespeare "never blotted a line" but beyond the fact that we've no way to prove this, writers do "rewrite" in their heads. Milton did this; going over and over a passage in his head, tweaking and correcting it, till he was ready to dictate it to his wife or daughter. We're not jazz musicians who must keep playing along with the band right there and then or be left behind. We're solitary artists (Mr. Michener there notwithstanding ), who don't show our work to anyone till we're ready--and what we finally do make public sticks around. Both our medium and the way we create encourages us to make changes and corrections.

 

[AllardChardon]

My writing style is like watching a movie. I sit at the keyboard, the movie begins and I follow along, transforming the visual imagery into words. The characters speak their dialog into my ear and I simply write it down. That is the easy part. The re-writing and continual editing are the hardest parts, even though very satisfying upon completion.

To add something of substance to this thread, here is my contribution by my favorite author;

It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
- Mark Twain

 

[SamScribble]

This conversation reminds me of something Nabokov said:

‘I have rewritten – often several times – every word that I have ever written. My pencils outlast their erasers.’

 

[damppanties]

This has to do with 3113's point too, that maybe the content of the story isn't as important as the way the author tells it: the attitude he or she takes toward it, the angle or context, the descriptions, the characters. These are all things that are often developed (and sometimes only discovered) in a rewrite, as scenes and characters are fleshed out and details are added. Speaking for myself, I often don't even really know what a story I've written is about until I start to rewrite it. Then I'll find that what i thought was just some toss-off about a coach fucking some gymnast, say, is actually about his resentment toward her, or maybe about her sexual manipulation of him.

This is fascinating to me. I finish all my creativity, story-wise, in the first draft. Cannot change or tweak that at all in the revisions. Revisions are for language and structure and stuff.

Is this like the characters dictating the story / taking it in directions you don't want it to go or am I reading too much into this?

 

[sr71plt]

I do practically no substantive revision after the first write either. Sometimes I go back and fold in another plot thread during the writing and have once or twice after the writing. But only rarely. The more I fiddle with it, the more stilted, less freeflowing it becomes.

 

[damppanties]

I do practically no substantive revision after the first write either. Sometimes I go back and fold in another plot thread during the writing and have once or twice after the writing. But only rarely. The more a fiddle with it, the more stilted, less freeflowing it becomes.

Exactment.

 

[Stella_Omega]

and another from Twain;

"The difference between the right word and the almost right one is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug."

 

[damppanties]

"The difference between the right word and the almost right one is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug."

Or lightning and lightening. I always have trouble with those two.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I relate writing to music, and to my way of thinking, music/writing must have a form and the right mix of ingredients from the start or its Kitten on the Keyboard noise. That is, if you start with the right stuff its hard to fuck it up with ham-fisted execution, cuz what there is, is good, and gets better with polish, elbow grease, and some sensitivity.

Or you can make good better by arranging all the parts in a new pattern. What if Pip was the the asshole, Estella was the angel, Miss Haversham was Pip's secret mother, and Pip was indebted to Magwitch beyond redemption, and Pip obsessed about murdering the old man to seal his lips forever? It might make a better tale than the original GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

I simply dont get how writers throw shit against the wall and expect any of it to stick.

 

[sr71plt]

I don't get how folks pontificate on how to write but never do any of it.

(Well, other than steal it and slap it on the forum as their own work, as JBJ did a couple of days ago.)

 

[Stella_Omega]

I don't get how folks pontificate on how to write but never do any of it.

(Well, other than steal it and slap it on the forum as their own work, as JBJ did a couple of days ago.)

You and Charley have that confusion in common.

 

[mynameisben]

Or lightning and lightening. I always have trouble with those two.

Just remember that lightning is fast. So fast, there's no time for writing that extra 'e'.

 

[damppanties]

Just remember that lightning is fast. So fast, there's no time for writing that extra 'e'.

And loose (vs. lose) is so loose that there's space for the extra 'o'.

 

[TE999]

Since we're discussing writing styles here (Sherry? No thanks. Have any Port?) Anyway, as I was saying, Once I get an idea for a story, I play it in my mind as a movie or a stage play, outlining scenes and dialogue, and making notes in my Idea Book I always keep handy. When I was younger, I wanted to be a cartoonist, but didn't have the drive to practice drawing for hours on end. I'm still good at visual imagery tho, portraying my characters in vignettes that are assembled into a (hopefully) cohesive whole.

 

[3113]

Just remember that lightning is fast. So fast, there's no time for writing that extra 'e'.

Oh, that's a great mnemonic, thank you! I've always been a bad speller and I always need those to help me along.

 

[AllardChardon]

Slightly off topic - A few years ago, I attended a New Riders of the Purple Sage concert in Eugene at the WOW Hall with former Merry Pranksters, (can they ever be former?), which included Mountain Girl. The following day, I met Chuck Kesey, Ken's brother, at the annual Nancy's Creamery Christmas Party (the Kesey family's business, located where they live in Eugene. The Keseys owned a dairy farm and Chuck revived the business with their excellent yogurt. At any rate, I just wanted to report that group of experimental folks were doing just fine and still having a lot of fun, when I saw them last. I was also fortunate enough to attend the Acid Test's 40 birthday in Las Vegas (No, I did not partake, but many others did). The following day I got to sit in the real Further bus and meet its famed driver, Zane Kesey, Ken's wonderful son. He has a great website, if you are interested.

I couldn't find a Kesey quote, but I did find this gem;

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved . . . the ones who never yawn and say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.
- Jack Kerouac

 

[Safe_Bet]

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! You crack me up, SR!

Now you're saying that you aren't only a spy, a super sonic jet pilot and a diplomat married to one of the DuPont heirs, but NOW you were James Michener's ghost writer, too!

Oh that is just TOO rich!!!! (and about as believable as any of your other stories! = not very!!!)

 

[Stella_Omega]

Slightly off topic - A few years ago, I attended a New Riders of the Purple Sage concert in Eugene at the WOW Hall with former Merry Pranksters, (can they ever be former?), which included Mountain Girl. The following day, I met Chuck Kesey, Ken's brother, at the annual Nancy's Creamery Christmas Party (the Kesey family's business, located where they live in Eugene. The Keseys owned a dairy farm and Chuck revived the business with their excellent yogurt. At any rate, I just wanted to report that group of experimental folks were doing just fine and still having a lot of fun, when I saw them last. I was also fortunate enough to attend the Acid Test's 40 birthday in Las Vegas (No, I did not partake, but many others did). The following day I got to sit in the real Further bus and meet its famed driver, Zane Kesey, Ken's wonderful son. He has a great website, if you are interested.

I couldn't find a Kesey quote, but I did find this gem;

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved . . . the ones who never yawn and say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.
- Jack Kerouac

I sat in the first real Further bus as a kid! The one Zane is driving is Further number two.

Every time I read one of those Kerouak quotes, I always think; "yeah, so easy to say, so hard to do unless,of course, your mother and girlfriend are taking care of you behind the scenes."

 

[TxRad]

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! You crack me up, SR!

Now you're saying that you aren't only a spy, a super sonic jet pilot and a diplomat married to one of the DuPont heirs, but NOW you were James Michener's ghost writer, too!

Oh that is just TOO rich!!!! (and about as believable as any of your other stories! = not very!!!)

Please take it somewhere else. We don't need it on this thread.