Jeannine Atkins

A few days ago at the Associated Writing Program conference in Boston, I was lucky to attend several panels about writing poetry. The question of what a verse novel is was raised in a session called “It Could Always Be Verse.” Helen Frost, author of the forthcoming SALT, answered poetically, comparing verse and prose to water and land, and saying that a verse novel is neither one nor the other. She cautioned about how narrative’s need for clarity can weigh down the poetry. Lesléa Newman mentioned how verse is a good fit for intense subject matter and that she chooses the form when it can do something she can’t do in prose. She gave the example of how in her collection OCTOBER MOURNING, which is a response to the murder of Matthew Shepard, as a poet she could personify the fence and stars and let them tell stories that a journalist, for instance, could not. She noted that the repetition some forms call for let her go deeper with each round.

Marilyn Nelson, author of books including CARVER: A LIFE IN POEMS, said that she does not write verse novels, but considers herself a verse historian, a title she was given by a seventh grade girl. She said that as a formalist her definition of verse has to do with rhythm that’s intentionally made different from prose. This combined with being book length gives the double pleasure of narrative and verse. Meg Kearney,   whose books include THE GIRL IN THE MIRROR about a teen dealing with wanting to know her birth parents, felt the form was right for this as poetry’s white space reflects the silences of a family who could talk about some things, such as the moment the mom and dad got a call that a baby was waiting, but not at first the daughter’s wondering about her birth parents. She spoke of each poem representing a scene or emotional state that moved the story forward, using “the tool of the line break, which layers meanings, creates tension and rhythm, and undercuts expectations.” 

In a session called Staggered Tellings: Immediacy, Intimacy, and Ellipses in the Verse Novel, Kevin Young, author of ARDENCY: A CHRONICLE OF THE AMISTAD REBELS, spoke about wanting to reclaim the word epic as used by Ezra Pound, and noted that one important thing about poetry is that there is no division into fiction and nonfiction sections. Poetry naturally lets us move back and forth between truth and imagination. Rita Dove, former poet laureate and author of SONATA MULATTICA, told us how this book was inspired by seeing a lone black violinist on a biopic of Beethoven, wondering who he was, finding the bare bones about George Bridgetower’s life via Google, then becoming obsessed with a story she first resisted telling, not wishing to spend years with men from eighteenth century Europe. She was pulled in for about five years, and felt bereft when she finished the book. She spoke of knowing the basic plot points, so that her work became an “excavation of a life.”

I didn’t speak on a panel about poetry, but in the hallway, some friends asked me about what I think makes a work poetry. I muttered this or that, but now that I’m before my computer hope I can be clearer about why I love to read history and poetry together. The elevated language of poetry can shed light on what’s wrongly been forgotten. In BORROWED NAMES, I worked around big moments that made the women famous, and focused more on what happened before and after them, which may be as important as what might happen in a family between posed snapshots. I used common moments to frame poems and let us see bigger ones from a more intimate angle than one usually taken by historians. These ordinary moments can connect an extraordinary person with the rest of us, and using devices such as alliteration or metaphor, repeating sounds or imagery, was a way to suggest those links. Each line should have a weight and a reason for being there. A clunky sound may be forgiven in a novel in which readers are gripped by characters, but a thud in a poem may stop the reader. Line breaks can offer a way to enter silence that may tease out a feeling.

I like beginning with facts, and using them as a framework, then inviting in my imagination and that of readers. Poetry gives me a license to do this, for as Kevin Young pointed out, this is a form that historically blends fiction and fact. I read primary and secondary sources with an eye out for things such as who quarreled with brothers, messed up on tests, or kept a spectacularly untidy room. I read a lot and select ruthlessly, like a person who spends a long time in attic and returns with one small, revelatory object. A biographer or historian would be on more of a lookout for general patterns, which I watch for, too, but I depend upon small moments. Looking for the right word is like approaching possible treasure with proper reverence. As I polish until it shines like something sacred, I may find my way deeper into theme or plot.

We know the rules of grammar for sentences and the beats and sounds of meter and rhyme in formal verse, but we may feel uneasy with free verse in which we get few clear ways to measure. Some say a definition of verse novel isn’t so important, but all of us working in the regions where verse and narrative cross should struggle to define what we do and why we do it.  What does the form tell us about the speed with which someone might read? In yet another panel, David Levithan, who both writes and edits verse novels, mentioned that all publishers seemed to have placed the form as sold to young adults under novels, which seems a good decision, as it’s likeliest to find readers there drawn to story but who may be invited into poetry.

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Last weekend I walked with a friend who laughed when she mentioned my facebook posts, saying something like, “You make writing sound so complicated.” I’m not sure what she said, but there wasn’t envy in her voice. I really don’t mean to suggest there’s a maze on my desk every day, even if I often feel a little crazy. Most of the writing I’ve done for the past decade has begun with a real person with a real history, so starting now from a mix of whim and obsession makes me feel as if I’m floundering in deep water. I remind myself that a long distance swimmer might have to swim a long time with no markers. But doesn’t she usually have a boat beside her, someone ready to pull her aboard in case of jellyfish, frigid water, sharks, or getting lost?

Looking for a direction, the state of mind I’ve called feeling stupid, isn’t entirely unfamiliar. It’s just not one I usually choose. I want to know what’s going on, but as a fiction writer, I pretty much have to wait for strangers to speak. Will they, and will they say anything worthwhile? I feel awash in doubt, but am trying to rename that, calling it a space where something new can happen. I need to find my own balance of drawing from life and sheer imagination, recollecting and letting memories go. I’ve been here, or somewhere like it, before

Some fictional characters have origins in real people, often strangers, or those we’ve read or dreamed about. Something about the way someone bends to pick up a stone at the beach or turns her neck to see who’s behind her while in line for popcorn may become the seed of a story, and even carry the importance we feel when an owl appears under moonlight in a fairy tale, all omen-y. We may feel a softening in our belly or a pinch behind our knees, as if a ghost has entered the room. We might call it chance or coincidence, and may feel haunted, gifted, or bedeviled. Or simply relief. Here’s a place to begin, even if the process leaves behind the moment that set off the sparks.

We don’t need to analyze this too much. We probably don’t need to analyze anything too much. A novelist may be best off honoring a moment that whispers to us by writing it out and seeing where it leads. In fact maybe it’s that imbalance of knowing and not knowing, an awareness of life’s quiet connections and many missteps, that starts the story. Maybe the overheard sentence or semi-familiar gesture stirs a memory, so someone steps out of the shadows, though perhaps not too far. It seems good to work within a sort of dusk for a while, where characters may be  comfortable enough to confide in ways they might not at a dinner table.

Following these chance encounters takes a willingness to end up in the mind’s back alley. I ask myself a series of questions to develop characters which I’ve posed to students, but suspect it helps to have the questions spoken by an instructor with perhaps a little chicken-shaped timer at her elbow. Surprising answers may come from the unmystical format, the measured box of time that lets writers hurry past the inner-decider-of-what’s-stupid, which most of us have been taught to cultivate more than the hey-whatever-happens part of us. I’m talking neuroscience here, referring to the same principal as writing too fast or steadily for the discriminating part of our brains to catch up.

I ask about characters’ favorite dreams and worst nightmares, the contents of their handbags, knapsacks, or top bureau drawers. What was the most damaging thing their mother ever said to them? What was the happiest moment of their life? What color is their favorite shirt? Such questions can be useful, especially when limited time means we’re bound to use our first thoughts, which can be developed later. It’s not so much interrogation as hanging out with someone that deepens a friendship or characters. It’s important to step in and commit to bringing in some of what we know and some of what we didn’t know we knew. And also important to step back and listen up. Characters we so-call-create have some kind of free will, and if we respect it, we may be swept to places we’d never have thought to go if we’d just relied on our judgment. “Keep your pen moving,” I tell students, and tell myself. Sometimes we slam through words into something never seen before, perhaps a character that readers will feel that they’ve met before. Some readers may even recognize themselves

I started my work-in-progress with a quiet, curious girl and an intention to write for children about ten years old, tossing in some magic. I had a big old house in mind and a shimmering sense of a world beyond. That’s really not so much, but I managed to get a few characters talking, and started to learn more.

Of course I bumped into silences as I worked my way through the first few chapters and tossed ropes toward what might be a corner of the ending. At the ends of my chapters I stuck in notes about what might happen or be spoken, but not yet. I followed up on some of these, but when I feel disoriented, or wonder if the plot I’ve lightly sketched will hold, I’ve been returning to a single scene in my second chapter. The action there takes less than a minute and it’s not particularly spectacular. I mean there are no tornadoes picking up houses, boys flying through bedroom windows, or governesses sliding up banister rails. But it’s a scene I found early on and feels important to me.

So I keep coming back to shine up this little scene of a sister and brother on a plane. I knew a bit about what they’re leaving and where they’re going, but learn more as I return to the snapping seatbelts, safety plans, tray tables that rise and fall, the paper sheets meant to protect them, armrests that can hardly fit two elbows, an aisle that pretty much goes nowhere in either direction, and small windows looking out to the night sky. What I find gives clues about the roles in my book of safety, intimacy, getting stuck, and looking out.

And I’m looking for other ways to suggest the theme through gestures or the subtext of conversations. Maybe I’ll even be so bold as to spell it out in a conversation. In Save the Cat, Blake Snyder tells us that in the movies, a minor character often states the theme within the first five minutes. Composers of musicals speak of songs early on that express the main character’s yearning. In poems, too, I’ve often been swept in by images, then found direct statements in the second or third stanzas. So now I‘m looking for ways to slip a sense of what my book is about into the dialog without being heavy handed. Or maybe I’ll try to press my hands a little harder. I don’t want to set up placards with arrows. A theme should be the bubbles under the waves. We don’t necessarily need a girl to tap her shoes and murmur, “There’s no place like home,” to get a sense of a journey’s meaning. But sometimes a song or wise person speaking up can help.

Writing a first chapter is like tracking down the perfect outfit for a big occasion, then knowing the hem needs to be adjusted, or the right scarf found, while already having second or seventeenth thoughts. Did the scarf change everything, and should I start again? A second chapter is more forgiving. We’re older, and the outfit doesn’t seem quite as important, and if it’s a little bit wrinkled, so what? We’ve set up the characters, and can let them speak. A second chapter doesn’t have all the bother of pulling in readers with neither too much nor too little information, but it’s time to develop what’s at stake in the small world we created. We’ve brought readers through, but can we keep them? Maybe we should get out the iron one more time.

Like every chapter, my second one will go through a lot of drafts. But because it’s not quite so slippery or delicate as chapter one, this is the place I keep coming back to when I stall on my way forward, peering for threads I might be able to use. Looking back over my own work is a little like reading as a diligent English major. Themes or symbolism can pop into view. Back when I was in college, I never wanted to take this too far, and I don’t want to take it too far as a writer, either. It’s good to carry maybe a plastic toy shovel, not a killer spade. And the trick is to not bring in the vocabulary of someone who’s infatuated with literary theory, but to register, say, the differences that might come from describing someone’s hair as silver, tin-colored, or some other variation on metallic, make a choice, and move on, trying not to leave footprints of an author who thinks too much. Sometimes a rose is a rose, a bird is a bird, spring is a season, and swings, seesaws, and slides are just part of a playground.

Whenever we look back we’re likely to find something new, the way something may emerge from memories of someone’s long ago words, pauses, or gestures. Most of us grow up with shadow stories, and perhaps ten or twenty years later think, Now I get it. Let’s hope understanding as a writer isn’t quite that slow, but something can always be spotted from stepping back, like a new feeling that rises from an old photograph. 

Falling in love means swooning, but also falls and hesitations. I’d forgotten the shakiness and second thoughts, being giddy one moment, then the next wishing that someone was around who could tell me if the new book I’m working on is as good as it seems one moment, or when my confidence shifts, as awful. What is going on?

Intimacy seems not so far from loneliness as I get to know these layers of stories, a process which must happen in one quiet room. Before I’m certain of whether this is flirtation or true love, it’s way too soon to introduce even a chapter to my critique group or inquisitive relatives. We have to work things out ourselves through the getting-to-know-you stage. It’s usually best to even avoid confessions over drinks. While friends may tolerate tales of flesh-and-blood romance for their drama, there’s not much to say about a new relationship with pages, especially since many of us are superstitious, perhaps another word for anxious, and don’t like to reveal details that may turn on us tomorrow. We might just grunt,  “Eh, chapter one. Erghh, chapter two,” and our friends with their own creative trials may nod and say, “I know.”

Writing a brand new novel is exciting, but when it’s not, doubts prickle my skin. I set down ideas and clipped scenes wishing for guides who could tell me if a single one is good. I try to skip past scales and just record the middle hunks of dialogue, blurry action, and a bit of fairy tale dust in the haphazard ways these come. Trying to never mind whether any of this will stay for the long haul, some mornings I manage to revel in the brand new shine of each detail. But by noon, I may find it just plain hard to pay attention to the vast unknown, where new ideas enter slowly and without signs of any kind. Are my ideas upscale, or do they belong in the bargain bin or worse?

We may yearn to spend all our time with a new beau, but this is where I have to break my human-book analogy. Spending time with a fresh off the fingertips manuscript makes the rest of the world seem so very attractive. I wish the phone would ring, consider organizing my files, and wonder if it’s time to check on the status of old work. Sometimes the last isn’t entirely procrastination. Most of us aren’t starting from a vacuum. Other manuscripts and books came before, and as they make their way into or out of the world our dismay or pleasure about this can color our feelings about the new. Counselors advise taking plenty of time between an old and  new relationship, but. I like to start a new book when the last isn’t entirely finished, winking at chapters which will be there to greet me instead of a silence between old and new. But this does mean we have to be careful that judgments on the old don’t spill over to the new.

So I’m back to asking if what I’m writing is perfect enough for me? Can it be worth spending the next year or two or three with, when I’m so riddled with doubt? Wait. Those hesitations are familiar. This is writing, something I know from every day, and not just part that’s starting out. Maybe this is a book after all.

As a child, I associated bravery with commanding lone deeds, sacrifice, or being part of a swaggering team. None of this looked anything like me. Even when I played games like Robin Hood, I was aware that the sticks I used for arrows were more apt to dribble to my feet than soar toward an imagined foe. Maybe I could be Dorothy at the moment of truth in Oz, accidentally spilling a bucket of water on the witch. But I never thought I could be Gretel, deliberately pushing a murder-minded lady into an oven. Even to save my own life.

As I grew up, I learned that some people act truly brave while feeling fear, and some manage derring-do that masquerades deep insecurity. Now I can give myself some credit for pushing past my own fears, which aren’t the kind that will be featured in any films. I was scared to post my new year’s theme of loudness, to risk stating that I want something that I might not be able to achieve. I don’t want to jinx even luck I don’t entirely believe in, don’t want to annoy any listening spirits, who might mock me for sounding greedy. It’s embarrassing to display hopes and make them look big and fabulous and like we mean it. No one wants to be laughed at. One of the first signs of a child leaving childhood is when they’re spotted flubbing up, and instead of moving on, they say, “I meant to do that.” Kids no taller than tables start wanting to look always in control, which may take many more years to learn is a mythical state.

I wanted to commit myself to taking a bolder stance to getting more of my words into the world, so made that vow public, thinking I’d then be less likely to turn back. I got even more. Generous cheers from friends made me not only less afraid of stopping in my tracks, but aware of how much I don’t want to. I’m going to move more of my words from my room, which means doing some self publishing and checking in on work that’s idled for months with no response. I’m going to tone down calculating vacations and problems and all the things that might get in a reader’s way, calling this being patient and polite, but is more truthfully being scared to be called a bother, a mask for a lack of self respect.

I believe I’m on the right path, which I didn’t clear alone. Courage is a form of love. I feel a little bit brave now not with that stomach-twisting sensation of stating a goal for all to hear, but with the affirmation of listeners. Naming our dreams for candy houses, a good mother, or a book we can hand to others makes us more apt to find the good people along the way who lend their sturdy enthusiasm. I’ll keep writing, which is always a bit like dropping bread crumbs, making a path that shows a way out of all the forests we enter. One true story is that if a an orphan, a princess, a boy named Hansel, a girl named Gretel, or anyone at all can find a way out, so can we.

When I sit to write, I’m hardly ever welcomed by a voice rising from the page. My characters haven’t been waiting patiently as dolls shoved in a closet, ready for a girl to come back and make them chat. Instead I’m greeted at my computer with the voices that have been in my head all along. There’s that list of chores, the emails owed, fragments of thoughts from the book I want to write someday but not now. I hear calls about all the other things I should be doing instead of what I planned.

I let these voices in, but not too far. Slamming the door shuts out everyone. The smack of the door is that unpleasant. Chores can be simple: there’s a notepad beside me where I can add to the list of things to get done. Some of those emails do get written. And those voices that tell me I’m off topic, that this scene doesn’t belong? I often put them right on the page. Who do you think you are to write this? You’re going to have to throw out the entire morning’s work. This isn’t pleasant to see, but it’s better than having such thoughts drift between my ears. Giving them their due seems to dim their power. And when the spoil-sporty words come back, sometimes they echo the old ding of a typewriter hitting the end of a line. A simple chime, to which I can say: You’re wrong. And move along.

While wandering through an antique shop some years back, I found a small stack of great old patches for a quilt that someone had painstakingly sewn, but never put together. I bought these, then some new fabric for borders and a backing, and stitched away. As I worked, I noticed that the old fabric pulled. As I kept on, full-fledged rips appeared.

I mentioned this to a friend who’s a seamstress and had given me some advice. Now she said, “Oh, yeah, that would happen. The old and new cloth won’t really go together, and the fresh stitching will stress the old. But anyway, it’s about the process.”

Um, no, I thought. I wanted a quilt. Something to put on a bed. But sometimes the process is what we get. Sore hands, soft curses over the sewing machine, and a quilt that’s sort of pretty though it’s left folded and untouched. Or stories we thought might astonish, but that stay mostly in our rooms.

As a writing instructor, my job is to encourage people to write more and vividly and deep. Maybe something of theirs will be found between covers down the line. None of us know. I’m also friends with writers who watch each other’s backs. Sometimes there are celebrations. Often there are disappointments. Always, I’m grateful for our conversations, and the ways we help each other to look more carefully at what’s under our hands or in rich and complicated pasts.

These include childhoods in which we played a lot of games that had finishing lines, or winners and losers. We couldn’t help taking these in as metaphors for life. But looking back, it’s the playing, friends, and family I remember, not when I crossed the lines or who won what.  And when I look at my life as a writer, the people are what matter, too. Most of us keep setting goals of books to finish and publish if we can. But getting there means trying to see more steadily and widely, which is a good in itself, one that usually happens on paths that don’t lead in a straight line to glory. We’re not the grownups we thought grownups were back when we were children. We’re more confused. We keep making mistakes. We learn that some things we thought were possible aren’t, and that some things we believed were impossible are possible after all.

Maybe we don’t belt out songs in the grocery store, as I heard a child tucked in a shopping cart do yesterday. I’m not going to wear red ornament-sized earrings like a woman in another aisle, bells jingling under her gray curls. The most I could manage was to take a breath when another shopper nearly tripped me in a dash to the dairy case. Hey, we all want butter. But if we’re lucky, the sense of hope and mystery we had when we were little doesn’t entirely fade away.

Writers work by ourselves, but we draw from each other’s courage. No matter whether we write science fiction, edgy novels, nostalgic essays, picture books, anything at all, when we’re facing the page we’re at least sometimes facing ourselves, and that’s never easy. Some of us are hugely ambitious, and some of us are happy for a small audience. All of us strive to balance a drive to keep going with the ability to cherish where we are.

Stitching those old quilt squares, I was trying to finish something beautiful that someone else had started, then put away, for reasons I’ll never know. I’m sorry that my work didn’t turn out as I’d hoped, giving an unknown woman a space her work deserved. I’m not looking for neglected projects under any more tables at antique shops, but I won’t stop looking for unfinished stories.  Like people who’ve been sewing through the centuries, almost always without their names attached to their work, we can’t know what part of what we leave is going to matter. Some of us will keep pricking our fingers, making stitches whether or not they hold. Some of us will keep blowing on candles, watching flames waver.

When I teach writing, I try to keep in mind that everyone has a different method. Just because I’ve plunged into work without a clear idea of where I’m going doesn’t mean that other people won’t write something great by beginning with a structure. So I offer exercises that focus on developing scenes, wherever they’ll end up, and exercises that ask writers to turn their eyes from particular moments to glance toward beginnings, middles, ends, and back again. A painter has to be very careful about the spot where her brush touches canvas, but often steps back to see how one color looks against another, how a particular shape looks within the frame.

As we near the end of the semester, I asked students to write one through ten, starting with their character’s birth, which is probably going to be outside the narrative frame, and use ten for the last scene of their novels. The other numbers should be key points of action or insight, and again, some may not appear within the story. They had ten minutes. I’m never very generous with time, as we have so much to do. Most found it helpful to take this long view with a rough outline, before going back to early chapters.

Recently, Amy Greenfield wrote a great post called How to Write Fast(er) about picking up speed (noting that speed is relative) while writing the sequel to her novel, Chantress. Her method includes outlining, and breaking away from it.  I’m in the very early stages of the first novel I’ve begun with an outline, albeit one that’s so saggy it flutters in the slightest breeze. I’ve got index cards and maps, but no push pins -- I’m willing to let everything slip-slide around as the characters develop, or change from minor to major, or disappear. I’m inviting a sense of structure earlier in my process, but also spending relaxed time with my characters to get to know them, and let them change before my eyes. A sloppy process, and when I’ve tidied some dialog, sometimes I go back to check my sketchy maps. Letting the outline speak to the paragraphs under my fingers, and letting them talk back.

I still write out of order, collecting parts of scenes that don’t belong. I won’t let myself stop until I’ve found them a place. And now my smudgy outline also gives me a sense of safety, like the stack of books at my elbow. People have made their way through. There’s something ahead to keep reaching for.

Those first ideas are as small as seeds, which gardeners can scatter, while writers seem bound to dive after them into the ground. It’s not particularly pleasant under the earth, though with the right clothing, one can get along. Murk, muck, mud, lots of m words come to mind. But ideas grow in the dark, and that’s where I’ve been, hoeing, roughing up the dirt, letting the seeds spread, get lost, or nestle. Gardeners don’t expect all the seeds to grow. I never liked thinning out carrots, but this meant I got a lot of scrawny and twisted vegetables. It’s better to be brutal. And add manure.

At last I can get to my knees and watch something sprout, before hacking it down not long after the first glimmers of light. I’m still coming up with bad ideas and even okay ones that I’m going to pull out to make room for the best. So I wait, watch, and after some vigorous weeding, it’s starting to look like a garden. I mean a book. I just started a file called Chapter Four, along with a title I might change tomorrow, and will surely change before I’m ready to taste anything, never mind consider a basket for friends. Between pages, I change point of view, and not in a meta-fiction but just messy way. Images flash and burn out. Characters come and go and evolve, trying out and losing all kinds of traits. But I’m starting to fall in love with some, though I can’t forget to push them into hard places. After a bunch of ideas that didn’t sprout, there’s a sentence that I scribbled Ta da beside and haven’t deleted it yet. There’s still enough murk in these drafts that anything could happen, and I try to let that be good news.

In the manuscript garden business, we have to not just conjure the seeds, but the dirt and water and sunlight, so there’s bound to be a lot of words, and we’re bound to take most out. I’m practicing the gardener’s faith. The plot of ground doesn’t look like much. But things have grown from patches of dirt before, and they will grow again.