Is He A Man, Or Is He A Chihuahua?
I'm hitting a bit of rough patch with the book. Probably thinking too much about it. I can't seem to shake the worry that if I ever when I finish this book it will be condemned as a romance novel. There is no reason for such fears. My friend Sid, who has read the first 29 pages, says it's way too dark to ever be considered a romance. I've been obsessively rereading all of Mary Stewart's suspense/romance novels (as I already mentioned) and it makes me itchy that she is considered a "romance" writer when her books don't focus much on the love interest- it's more about the chair gripping suspense: all that running for their lives across the dire rugged Greek landscape. It's true that every single one of her suspense novels also has a romance in it...and she writes romance in such a charming way that it becomes the most satisfying finish to her books. I know I'm going to be so happy those two kooky kids got together after almost dying on the cliff face.
It has got me thinking about how books get categorized. I started thinking about every good book I've ever read and asked myself what was good about it. Almost every good story worth reading (and this is highly personal and I fully expect some people to vehemently disagree about the essentials that determine a book's greatness) has a love interest in it. It doesn't matter if it's serious literature, mystery, suspense, travel, memoir, adventure, or science fiction...they all would pall without some kind of love interest. Why? Because it is one of the most basic of human desires to pair up with someone.
So what makes a book an actual "romance" novel instead of plain fiction or any other genre? I need to know. I think I've figured it out. For a book to be a romance it needs to be about the chase between man and woman. The point of the book is the suspense of "will they or won't they?" and whose bodice will get ripped first? Romances are specifically and only about the pursuit of love and sex. The rest of the story is only there to hang the romance on which is why Barbara Cartland's plots are routinely lame. (I read a lot of her books when I was twelve, so don't tell me I don't know!!!!) Plot doesn't matter. Personal growth is irrelevant. Adventure is only allowable if it leads to a romp or an almost romp in a bed or in the woods or anywhere where clothes could potentially come off and people can get frisky.
My book is not about the chase. It isn't about romance. It's about people adjusting to change and coming to terms with the black hole that life sometimes is. It's about violence and how to build a life worth living after you've gone through the worst thing you could ever go through and then finding out that that wasn't the worst thing after all. It's about how we all have to keep going, no matter what obstacles fall in our way- so it's about hope when there is no more call for hope. It's about rising from the ashes of your funeral pyre and kicking the shit out of the person who lit you up on the logs. There is love in it. Yes. But the love is necessary because love IS necessary to all of us.
I feel a little better writing all that out.
Still, the words have felt dead on the page the last few times I sat down to write. Like I've lost the track, I'm off road with no water, no wine, no food, and no good words left. It's all dust in my mouth even though it's still vibrantly living in my head, it comes out stillborn.
Jane's boyfriend Isaac is not perfect and yet I can't help but notice that I haven't come up with any evidence to show this. Can a man be that good and not be as flat as Paris Hilton's* ass? I know why I have made him so perfect for Jane: because nothing else in her life is. Jane has to go through absolute hell and I want her to have one thing in her life she can count on. I wanted Isaac to be the one solid and good aspect of her life while it's plunging through fire. I know that when I was going through the very worst moments of my life I wish I'd had a boyfriend like Isaac (relax! My worst moments were long before I knew Philip, it isn't disloyalty to say such a thing).
I am in the middle of writing out the darkest part of the book. I thought I already had. But no! That old bitch of a muse drew me into deeper water without a life jacket. Now I'm treading very cold water and trying to swim back to shore with a cramp in my leg. Naturally this is when all of my doubts come washing over me in endless waves of nausea like uneasiness. I am suddenly needy like all irritatingly fragile artists and performers who tread a delicate thread between the real and the imagined worlds. I am fighting myself on this one. I am ready to wear a hair shirt to punish myself for wanting a boatload of reassurances and to hear everyone I know say: YOU CAN DO THIS. YOU WERE BORN TO DO THIS. YOU HAVE TO DO THIS. AND YOU WILL MAKE IT MAGIC AND GORGEOUS AND VIBRANT AND YOU WILL SHOCK THE DEAD BACK TO LIFE.
There is a gentle breeze blowing in the window and brushing across my back. The evening light is soft and it's been a good day. A great and lazy Saturday. There are hours left and I wonder what is the right thing to do? Sit in front of my book and try to eek out a few more sentences? Even if it feels like dragging the moon from the sky to light my way through a dark so complete I'm going to be swallowed whole otherwise?
"She's so melodramatic!" I hear them say. I heard them say over and over and over. The sentence trails itself over the stacking years like a sick ferret whose teeth are finally falling out of old age. Death comes soon.
"God, she's so dramatic." the words they say dragging through my night, staining my dreams like an incantation of the devil. As though the sentence could make everything I ever felt untrue. As though those words made me into a liar. One long lie. I remember my spirit screaming into the dark of our old creaking house full of sleeping (less dramatic) people: it's real! I'm telling you all the truth! It lives! It's right in front of you! Why can none of you see that it's all exactly as I say and that this isn't theatrics or pretend or anything untruthful? Why can't you see what I see? You are all hung with signs pointing elsewhere, cardboard hung across your chests with messages and I see them because you write them there. You all breath neon and I only say it out loud. You can't stand that I actually say it out loud because no one is supposed to ever say it out loud.
And so it goes.
Jane must lean on Isaac because he's all she's got to herself. Tim (her best friend) is shacking up with his partner Luca in Marin and so she has Isaac. He is there. Why can't she be like a normal girl and lean on someone who loves her like no one else ever has? Why should I worry over perfection? Why should I withhold love from her?
For me these characters are real. They have become the wallpaper in my head.
As for the title of this post...I ask myself what kind of man Isaac is? Here he is taking on the responsibility of a relationship with a person who has gone through an unthinkable trauma who has gone mute and is fragile and broken and he loves her completely and is there, and is strength and is love. So then I have to ask: is he a man or a chihuahua? Men, as I have known them, are not generally cut from the same cloth as Isaac. I must ask myself: when will he assert his childish manhood? When will he shirk his responsibilities like a real man? When will he become helpless and lean on Jane like most men need to lean on women?
YOU HEARD ME RIGHT.
No, let's not argue about it, ok? I love men, I really do. I see men and women as needing each other. Speaking in very general terms: I see men as having strength in certain circumstances more than women, they are rarely intimidated by altercations as fully as most women are. A man may hate violence but the majority of men, whether they think of themselves as tough or not, will protect themselves more quickly and with less show of fear than women. Women have iron balls in other ways. A man could never deal with giving birth to a child, of this I am 100% certain.
Do I really have to go on? No, no. Because you know what I mean, I think.
I think I have drummed up enough courage to face the book again tonight. I need to try. I can go back and write differently or better later on. But the very least I should do is sketch the bones of the story. It is so serious and oddly frightening to bring characters to life with words and worry about them as though they really did live. Please don't equate that with Geppetto bringing Pinocchio to life because I hate that story. (I'm not kidding. I truly loathe that story and won't watch any version of it even for my kid's sake. Luckily, he's discovered he doesn't like that story either.)
All of this on a Saturday night.
*I am so sorry, I couldn't find a picture of her to illustrate the "well known"** fact that she is assless. Only someone like myself, who has read a busload of gossip magazines would know this for the unquestionable fact it is. You'll have to take my word for it if you haven't seen this for yourself.
**Completely spurious statement. It is only well known by me.
It has got me thinking about how books get categorized. I started thinking about every good book I've ever read and asked myself what was good about it. Almost every good story worth reading (and this is highly personal and I fully expect some people to vehemently disagree about the essentials that determine a book's greatness) has a love interest in it. It doesn't matter if it's serious literature, mystery, suspense, travel, memoir, adventure, or science fiction...they all would pall without some kind of love interest. Why? Because it is one of the most basic of human desires to pair up with someone.
So what makes a book an actual "romance" novel instead of plain fiction or any other genre? I need to know. I think I've figured it out. For a book to be a romance it needs to be about the chase between man and woman. The point of the book is the suspense of "will they or won't they?" and whose bodice will get ripped first? Romances are specifically and only about the pursuit of love and sex. The rest of the story is only there to hang the romance on which is why Barbara Cartland's plots are routinely lame. (I read a lot of her books when I was twelve, so don't tell me I don't know!!!!) Plot doesn't matter. Personal growth is irrelevant. Adventure is only allowable if it leads to a romp or an almost romp in a bed or in the woods or anywhere where clothes could potentially come off and people can get frisky.
My book is not about the chase. It isn't about romance. It's about people adjusting to change and coming to terms with the black hole that life sometimes is. It's about violence and how to build a life worth living after you've gone through the worst thing you could ever go through and then finding out that that wasn't the worst thing after all. It's about how we all have to keep going, no matter what obstacles fall in our way- so it's about hope when there is no more call for hope. It's about rising from the ashes of your funeral pyre and kicking the shit out of the person who lit you up on the logs. There is love in it. Yes. But the love is necessary because love IS necessary to all of us.
I feel a little better writing all that out.
Still, the words have felt dead on the page the last few times I sat down to write. Like I've lost the track, I'm off road with no water, no wine, no food, and no good words left. It's all dust in my mouth even though it's still vibrantly living in my head, it comes out stillborn.
Jane's boyfriend Isaac is not perfect and yet I can't help but notice that I haven't come up with any evidence to show this. Can a man be that good and not be as flat as Paris Hilton's* ass? I know why I have made him so perfect for Jane: because nothing else in her life is. Jane has to go through absolute hell and I want her to have one thing in her life she can count on. I wanted Isaac to be the one solid and good aspect of her life while it's plunging through fire. I know that when I was going through the very worst moments of my life I wish I'd had a boyfriend like Isaac (relax! My worst moments were long before I knew Philip, it isn't disloyalty to say such a thing).
I am in the middle of writing out the darkest part of the book. I thought I already had. But no! That old bitch of a muse drew me into deeper water without a life jacket. Now I'm treading very cold water and trying to swim back to shore with a cramp in my leg. Naturally this is when all of my doubts come washing over me in endless waves of nausea like uneasiness. I am suddenly needy like all irritatingly fragile artists and performers who tread a delicate thread between the real and the imagined worlds. I am fighting myself on this one. I am ready to wear a hair shirt to punish myself for wanting a boatload of reassurances and to hear everyone I know say: YOU CAN DO THIS. YOU WERE BORN TO DO THIS. YOU HAVE TO DO THIS. AND YOU WILL MAKE IT MAGIC AND GORGEOUS AND VIBRANT AND YOU WILL SHOCK THE DEAD BACK TO LIFE.
There is a gentle breeze blowing in the window and brushing across my back. The evening light is soft and it's been a good day. A great and lazy Saturday. There are hours left and I wonder what is the right thing to do? Sit in front of my book and try to eek out a few more sentences? Even if it feels like dragging the moon from the sky to light my way through a dark so complete I'm going to be swallowed whole otherwise?
"She's so melodramatic!" I hear them say. I heard them say over and over and over. The sentence trails itself over the stacking years like a sick ferret whose teeth are finally falling out of old age. Death comes soon.
"God, she's so dramatic." the words they say dragging through my night, staining my dreams like an incantation of the devil. As though the sentence could make everything I ever felt untrue. As though those words made me into a liar. One long lie. I remember my spirit screaming into the dark of our old creaking house full of sleeping (less dramatic) people: it's real! I'm telling you all the truth! It lives! It's right in front of you! Why can none of you see that it's all exactly as I say and that this isn't theatrics or pretend or anything untruthful? Why can't you see what I see? You are all hung with signs pointing elsewhere, cardboard hung across your chests with messages and I see them because you write them there. You all breath neon and I only say it out loud. You can't stand that I actually say it out loud because no one is supposed to ever say it out loud.
And so it goes.
Jane must lean on Isaac because he's all she's got to herself. Tim (her best friend) is shacking up with his partner Luca in Marin and so she has Isaac. He is there. Why can't she be like a normal girl and lean on someone who loves her like no one else ever has? Why should I worry over perfection? Why should I withhold love from her?
For me these characters are real. They have become the wallpaper in my head.
As for the title of this post...I ask myself what kind of man Isaac is? Here he is taking on the responsibility of a relationship with a person who has gone through an unthinkable trauma who has gone mute and is fragile and broken and he loves her completely and is there, and is strength and is love. So then I have to ask: is he a man or a chihuahua? Men, as I have known them, are not generally cut from the same cloth as Isaac. I must ask myself: when will he assert his childish manhood? When will he shirk his responsibilities like a real man? When will he become helpless and lean on Jane like most men need to lean on women?
YOU HEARD ME RIGHT.
No, let's not argue about it, ok? I love men, I really do. I see men and women as needing each other. Speaking in very general terms: I see men as having strength in certain circumstances more than women, they are rarely intimidated by altercations as fully as most women are. A man may hate violence but the majority of men, whether they think of themselves as tough or not, will protect themselves more quickly and with less show of fear than women. Women have iron balls in other ways. A man could never deal with giving birth to a child, of this I am 100% certain.
Do I really have to go on? No, no. Because you know what I mean, I think.
I think I have drummed up enough courage to face the book again tonight. I need to try. I can go back and write differently or better later on. But the very least I should do is sketch the bones of the story. It is so serious and oddly frightening to bring characters to life with words and worry about them as though they really did live. Please don't equate that with Geppetto bringing Pinocchio to life because I hate that story. (I'm not kidding. I truly loathe that story and won't watch any version of it even for my kid's sake. Luckily, he's discovered he doesn't like that story either.)
All of this on a Saturday night.
*I am so sorry, I couldn't find a picture of her to illustrate the "well known"** fact that she is assless. Only someone like myself, who has read a busload of gossip magazines would know this for the unquestionable fact it is. You'll have to take my word for it if you haven't seen this for yourself.
**Completely spurious statement. It is only well known by me.
Comments (4)
Best Wishes,
I am sure you can do this.
Sometimes words are swallowed by the fear of where they are taking us sometimes they just stand mute waiting for us to find the flow.
Either way I know you will get there this story is too strong to stay untold.
Kinda Regards
Belinda
Posted by simply.belinda | August 23, 2009 3:12 AM
Posted on August 23, 2009 03:12
Since you've asked for our opinions, I'll share some thoughts. Take what you like and discard the rest.
No one is perfect. If you create a "perfect" man as a counterpoint to your protagonist then you are not writing fiction, your are writing fantasy--a wish-fulfillment fantasy. I think that you are already aware of this and that's why you worry about being labeled as a romance novelist.
At this point you've reduced Isaac to a prop. He exists perfectly because you want your protagonist to have something to balance all the bad. "I know why I have made him so perfect for Jane: because nothing else in her life is."
So, no. Isaac isn't a man. Or even a chihuahua. He is a one-dimensional paper prop that exists solely to satisfy the main character.
And that isn't true. Because EVERY person is the hero of his own story.
So try this. As an exercise, rewrite the story from Isaac's point of view. What is his narrative arc? What does he have to overcome? When does he get a chance to fail and to grow? What haunts him? Maybe all that happened before he meets Jane and so those two arcs don't really intersect--but whatever comes before makes him who he is today, makes it possible for him to do what he does for Jane.
Posted by mss @ Words Into Bytes | August 24, 2009 4:41 PM
Posted on August 24, 2009 16:41
Well, he's not perfect really, I guess I am particularly worried because the main issues in the book aren't between her and Isaac. However, he is having to make mistakes and grow, he blames himself for not having protected Jane from something horrible that he couldn't have done anything about anyway, he is frustrated not knowing how to take care of anyone but himself. So he's got a girlfriend suddenly that needs him in a way no one has needed him before. And his grandmother is happy to see him going through this because she thinks it's finally making him into a man.
So he's not perfect, I just haven't given him any fatal flaws. Compared to Jane he seems normal and unbroken. But you saying those things is good because even though I know he's having to grapple with new feelings of responsibility, I haven't shown that enough. That's how he can develop dimension. In my head he's very three dimensional.
But I get tired of main guy characters who are faithless, or who have trouble with commitment (Though Isaac isn't interested in ever getting married or having kids, he's not afraid of commitment).
One of the things I find charming about Isaac is how he learns from Jane to see everything differently and to enjoy the small details and he realizes that he hasn't been really paying attention to his own life. He falls in love with her because even though she's a really broken person she has found a way to function almost better than other people who haven't gone through what she has. She carries a light around with her that she shines on other people.
I think your suggestion is really good- to write some scenes at least from his perspective. Or at the very least to elaborate how he sees things as they're happening. I love Isaac and I want everyone else to love him too, but not as a paragon- as a charming young man who's life has been fairly dull but which is now full of crazy people. He's lovable because he has a sense of humor and a certain unflappable quality when faced with people and situations that are different. (I should be writing this all in another post, huh?).
I love your direct and honest replies MSS, because they always give me plenty to think on and just saying what you did has made me feel a lot clearer. Thank you!
Posted by angelina | August 24, 2009 5:18 PM
Posted on August 24, 2009 17:18
"You all breath neon and I only say it out loud." This sentence alone garauntees I will purchase and read any book you produce. I read it three or four times in my head, just for the joy of hearing it. This is why I will always read you. Thank you.
Posted by estes | August 26, 2009 5:52 AM
Posted on August 26, 2009 05:52