Trusting the back brain
In the fiction writing program I attend, there’s an assignment in Advanced Fiction classes called the Steeplechase. The Steeplechase is dangled over students as something terrifying, a rite of passage that only the strong will survive.* In fact, the Steeplechase is a twelve step writing exercise, that, as it turns out, is excellent for building novel backstory.
One of the steps is called Overall Storyteller, which is meant to focus on the narrator’s voice. I’ve been working on commercial fiction for the last five years, though, so I’m much more accustomed to writing a really close third person POV. Which means that I pretty much dreaded writing that bit. We’d done some similar in-class writing that I really struggled with, fighting against my conceptions of head-hopping the entire time, so I really wasn’t looking forward to writing that short section.
But I soldiered on, and wrote a couple of pages about the town where my novel’s set. At the beginning of the story, my heroine returns (after a twelve-year absence) to the small Midwestern town where she grew up. I thought it would be a good idea if I could get an idea of the town’s history. I started in 1897 and wrote up to the present day.
Frankly, I hated it.
That’s okay, though. I turned it in anyway because I’d fulfilled the assignment and also because I don’t have to love everything I write. I got a bit of good backstory out of it and that was enough.
The other night in class, though, it was my turn to have some of my work read. Including, of course, that section I hated. As I read aloud, I worked very hard to keep my pace slow — I have a tendency to read faster when I think the writing’s not working, trying to get to the parts I think are better, I guess.
Afterwards, the class participated in a bit of Recall. Recall is another thing we do multiple times every classroom meeting. It’s simply retelling what we remember from a story, whether we read it the week before (typically at the beginning of class) or just heard it. It’s a quick way to get feedback on what’s working. It’s a very positive environment; there’s not a lot of criticism. The Story Workshop method is 180 degrees from the typical environment in creative writing classes, where the student presents a story and it’s torn to shreds by classmates. Personally, I think there are times for both approaches — Story Workshop when a piece is in the draft phase, the other (which I call Iowa method, after the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. I had a Vague Idea that’s where this system developed, but the internet doesn’t seem to agree with me.) when you’re getting ready to send the work out for publication. But at any rate, my classmates did a little Recall about my work.
Imagine my surprise when almost all of the Recall came from the two pages (out of about six) that I hated the most. There was a comment about how, by writing about people leaving and returning to this little town, I was echoing the theme of the rest of the story.
I was? Oh, I totally meant that. Well, at least my back brain did.
Jenny Crusie calls her back brain The Girls in the Basement. I’ve heard it called the mud, among other things. It’s the subconscious, doing its own little thing back there, writing the story while our ego up front flails around, writing and deleting the same scene or avoiding writing altogether by searching Etsy for tiny bird sculptures.***
We know the stories we’re trying to tell. The novels and short stories and poems are all there, just waiting to be dug out. I once wrote about how my process felt like floating around on the bottom of the ocean, in the dark, scrabbling with my hands and hoping that I’d find a treasure chest. That much, at least, hasn’t changed in the last ten years. But I am learning to trust the back brain to sit up there on deck and steer me.
*Possibly exaggerated for dramatic effect.**
**New blog title, y/y?
***That last bit might be just me.
I think you’re right about the stories. They’re like part of an archeological dig, the bones of the tale we’re trying to tell, and everything else we add to it and layer in is built up over that skeleton. Trust is such a difficult thing — whether in writing or life — but necessary to do either one fully.
Oh! I really like the archeology metaphor, too. Sometimes it feels like digging, sometimes it feels like carving out of marble.
Great post, Liz. Sometimes I’ll come across a particular line or passage that I think ‘did I lift that from someone because no way am I bright enough to string those babies together.’ But, then it does turn out to be mine.
As you said, it’s so amazing that the things we ourselves might consider mundane and uninteresting on the surface, tend to be relevant and sometimes deeply lyrical.
Pamala, it’s so true! I sometimes come across things I’ve written online, for example (which I’ve been doing for a loooong time) and am surprised. I don’t remember writing them at all. But there it is, with my name on it.
I love reading what you write about writing. It reminds me that I should be writing something myself…one of these days…
Thanks, Carrie. :) I hope you don’t wait much longer.