Sunday, February 15: The A.D.D. Detective
WRITER’s BLECH
by Leigh Lundin
I don’t have enough mileage to experience writers’ block, but I get writer’s blech. Writer’s blech happens on days when the words I put on paper come out heavy and dreary despite my best efforts.
I look at what I’ve written. I picture my old English teachers giving it an A, noting that all the words are spelled correctly and the grammar is faultless. Nonetheless, I know that it’s lifeless, lying there on the page without a pulse.
Nineteenth century literature did me a disservice. I grew up with classics from the 1800s, tomes with convoluted, multi-depth, forty-word sentences overloaded with adverbs, books that could take three pages to describe the eyeglasses on Mr. Portfinch’s nose.
My dialogue’s pretty good, but my prose suffers from a preponderance of too much English lit with an emphasis on, well, ponderance. Charles Dickens was paid by the word, and it not only shows, it infected me without my realizing it. To get passages right, I have to read them again and again, preferably over time, to ‘listen’ how they sound to my ear.
I envy writers who effortlessly get it right the first time.
I mentioned this to an acquaintance who has the opposite problem I do. Her plots are sketchy but her words trip lightly off her pen like water in a babbling brook.
"Hey, we should collaborate!" she told me.
Yeah, I thought, imagining my stories tippling out like rivulets of a spring stream. "Sure," I said.
"Well, all righty. We’ll soften the mystery bit and …"
"Wait," I said. I’m damn proud of my mystery plot.
"… and instead of the main character a cop, we’ll make her a waitress whose …"
"But, …"
"… whose husband cheats with her best friend …"
"Why do so many plots have cheating husbands? There’re more stories about cheating husbands than there are cheating husbands."
"Don’t you know anything about writing? Anyway, that’s perfect for the Hollywood angle …"
"What Hollywood angle? The crime’s set in the Shenandoah Valley where …"
"See? There’s your problem. The real crime isn’t the murder, but the cheating bastard of a husband and her best friend, the lying slutty bitch. And, just because I met with, er… I mean, just because the wife met this old boyfriend from high school, he didn’t have to …"
"I want to pick up my toys and go home."
"Sure! Walk out! Just like every other guy! You’re all alike, aren’t you. Hey! I’m talkin’ to you!"
So I’ve got writer’s blech, see, and the words lie lifeless on the page.
Well, that dialog wasn’t lifeless at all.
When you read your text over and over make sure you try reading it out loud. You catch a lot of awkwardness that way.
I agree. That was not blechy at all!
I want to report to all you that yesterday I was standing in line at a booksigning at B&N. A nice lady beside me said I have many signed copies of Dick Francis books.
“Oh, really?”
“Don’t tell me you don’t know who he is…”
I began to recite everything I’ve read on this blog.
She said so you’ve read him as well?
I had to say no, but I sort of know many who have!
Just wanted you to know I was able to speak mystery because of you guys and gals.
I agree with Rob, not lifeless at all. I’m glad, Leigh, that you’ve given a name to something I seem to experience a lot lately.
You’re writing is far from blech!!!
Sometimes, when things don’t go as planned, it’s best to “pick up our toys and go home”. Starting over, though difficult, may give us a new perspective.
Maybe trying to write your prose as if it were dialogue might help, since you claim your prose is leaden (there are those of us who might argue otherwise) but recognize you have snappy dialogue. One way to do this is to try writing fiction in the first person, as if you were directly relating the story to a specific person instead of to posterity.
When I write a first person narrative, I imagine it’s being told to me over a beer in a cozy neighborhood bar and see if I can catch the right cadence for the character telling it.