What I do well

[pegkerr]

minnehaha K. posed a perfectly reasonable and straightforward question which pulled me up absurdly short: I talk frequently about what is causing me difficulty as a writer (the list is so long, but for the most part it’s plotting problems). What is it about my writing that I do well?

I thought about it at some length. I pulled open my "attagirl" file (which includes copies of e-mails I’ve received from readers, or nice reviews that people have posted, on LJ or elsewhere, saying what they like about my work--if you know of any more, please point me that way!) and spent a pleasant hour or two reading it over. What do people like about my work? What do I like about my work?

Once I started to think about it, I found something extremely interesting, and that was my inner reluctance to answer this question. And yet, I asked that reluctant part of myself, why on earth not? If I am trying to hone my critical eye to examine fiction, so that I can improve my writing, isn’t it equally important to be able to identify what I am doing well, so that I don’t waste precious time and energy laboring to needlessly "fix" what ain’t broke? Shouldn’t I be able to identify "good" in fiction writing so I know when I’ve nailed it and move on?

Well, one reason is perhaps a simple personality quirk, one I have identified in myself and have been trying to unlearn for years. As I have slowly come to understand, I am prone to depression, and I have the tendency to see the glass half-empty rather than half-full. After so many years of hard work, my inner critic is extremely muscular with an impressive tendency to bellow. My inner cheerleader, in contrast, is a near-sighted wimp with a stammering problem.

The other reason, as best as I can understand it, is something that falls in the gray area between morality and good taste. I am uncomfortable with being asked to praise myself. I think immediately of Luke 14: 1, 7-14, where Jesus advises those with good manners to choose the lower seat at the banqueting table so that the host will advise you to sit higher up. (Verse 11 reads "For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.") Aren’t people who boast about themselves more than just a tad bit embarrassing?

I think, in part, it’s almost a feminist issue, too. This made me think in turn of a group of friends, Lisa Goldstein, Pat Murphy, and Michaela Roessner, who banded together as a group calling themselves the "Brazen Hussies" to promote their books. They even have a promotional blimp!. Besides having some good fun, I think that the name they have chosen for themselves promotes some gentle consciousness raising here: they are aware that women in particular are trained in our culture to denigrate themselves, and of course, for women writers, that is a real handicap.

In thinking it over, I do believe there is a distinction between unseemly boasting, and honestly "seeing with a keen eye." There are some things I do well as a writer. It is important for me to remember, acknowledge, and honor that.

Here are some of them.

I think that I have a pretty good ear for natural-sounding dialogue.

I think that I have a knack for emotional resonances—for finding similarities between things that on first glance seem quite different. I believe that I used that well when writing The Wild Swans.

I am exquisitely tuned to theme.

I take especial pains to get my research right. I thought a lot about this while writing Swans: I knew that I was writing about a world where many people had suffered greatly, and I wanted to honor their experience by getting the details absolutely correct. It was a source of great satisfaction to me that many people contacted me after the book was out to tell me that yes, I did do a good job of evoking what it was like in Manhattan in the early 1980s when AIDS was first starting to spread.

One interesting exception was a review which complained that I "hadn’t bothered to get the details right" because I had stated that Eliza was going to be burned at the stake, and "anyone who knew their history" knew that criminals weren’t burned in colonial New England, they were hanged. I was irritated by this because I knew it perfectly well, too—in fact, I had carefully researched the methods for execution in the colonies. I knew that criminals weren’t burned, but I wanted to include the fire because of the importance of the vision of the pile of wood bursting into roses from the original fairy tale, not to mention the word play on the word "faggot." So I made the deliberate choice to ignore the details of history: I stated that Eliza would be hanged and her body would be burned after death (a fact that the reviewer didn’t seen to notice) so that I could have both historical verisimilitude and the pile of wood that I needed for that last, important image. It wasn’t an error, in other words, but a deliberate fictional choice.

Um. Those are the things that spring to mind, after a half day of thinking. I will ponder the question some more.