About Writing

Further Reading: Second Impressions

~ Flynn ~ 3 Comments

Knowing little of the person but what I read in The New York Times, Sandy Lerner, as an idea, has long fascinated me, to the extent that she inspired a minor character in The Jane Austen Project, an ancient Ph.D. mathematician and tech billionaire with an obsession with literature, thought to be bankrolling the Jane Austen Project. When it turned out that Ms. Lerner (who for the record is neither ancient nor a Ph.D.) was giving a talk at my own local Jane Austen Society chapter, on a night that I already had off, no less, that I would be going to hear her was obvious.

I don’t know what I expected, except that it was certain to be interesting. It was that, and much more. Ms. Lerner, it turns out, has written a novel, having spent 26 years researching a historically accurate sequel to Pride and Prejudice. Continue reading →

What Are Chapters For?

~ Flynn ~ 1 Comment

In the long time that I have been away from this blog, I have not been entirely unproductive. Among other things, I’ve been revising The Jane Austen Project and am now through Chapter 6. In honor of that, I have decided to post Chapter 2 here.

I’ve also been thinking about a lot of things, like Downton Abbey, which deserves a post of its own, only I don’t know where to start, and also, not completely unrelated, about chapters. For one thing that intrigues me about Downton Abbey is the issues it raises about the different ways there are of telling a story, and chapters have something to do with that. How do we decide where they begin and end, and what do they have to do with the architecture of a novel? Continue reading →

Further Reading, Part II

~ Flynn ~ 4 Comments

Whose Jane Austen?

It’s a question I’ve often asked myself while researching and writing The Jane Austen Project, but never more insistently than when considering the works that make up the short story anthology “Jane Austen Made Me Do It, Original Stories Inspired by Literature’s Most Astute Observer of the Human Heart.” I use the subtitle advisedly, for this is one way of viewing Jane Austen, and perhaps a message from its editor, Laurel Ann Nattress of Austenprose, of how she, at least, does.

JAMMDI is on one hand a brilliant marketing idea, combining the brand recognition of Jane Austen with some of the biggest names in Austen and Austenesque fan fiction. But ideally it is more than that, being also an effort to wrestle with the question of what Jane Austen means to people living today, nearly 200 years after her death. Continue reading →

Flaubert and the Bears

~ Flynn ~ 1 Comment

Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity. –Gustave Flaubert

So my novel was workshopped. I was horribly nervous the whole day waiting to go the workshop at 8 p.m., like I was waiting for my own execution. But I needn’t have worried. My colleagues and instructor were enthusiastic in their praise; specific and constructive in their criticism. It gave me a much clearer idea of what wasn’t working and why not. More important, fixing it seemed, at that moment, both possible and completely worth the effort. It was an exciting few hours.

And now I have to actually do it. When I sat to revise Chapter 1 — that was when Flaubert and his troupe of dancing bears entered my mind; not only entered but sat down and made themselves at home. What a horribly blunt instrument language is, how inadequate to our supposedly profound ideas! That Flaubert came up with such an unforgettable metaphor for this inadequacy does nothing to diminish the truth of his observation.

Everything is there; I see it now, what needs to be there: sharper, deeper, truthier. But how to get it out?

Two, No, Three, Secrets of Novel-Writing

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There are a few things I figured out in the past couple of months that I find myself thinking about and thought might be worth writing down, as I come to the end of one stage of this process and start another.

The most important might also seem the most obvious. Writing a novel takes a lot of time. If you have other commitments, like children and/or an outside job, writing a novel is something you can do in your spare time only if you are willing to ruthlessly refrain from (or at least drastically reduce the frequency of) doing many other things in your spare time, things people often consider normal and desirable, even indispensable: seeing your friends, watching your television shows, exercising, going to the movies or to a museum, keeping your home reasonably clean, volunteering, attending worship services, studying a foreign language, managing your finances, spending a weekend at the beach, surfing the Internet, having people over for dinner, even reading other people’s novels. Such activities become the enemy, for however different they seem, they have one thing in common: they are not writing. When you are doing them you are not writing. Continue reading →

When Ideas Acquire Solidity

~ Flynn ~ 1 Comment

It’s a strange feeling when something that existed only in your mind, or in electronic form, suddenly emerges into the physical realm. Over the weekend I got a request from one of my writing workshop colleagues: she would be away the week I was supposed to deliver my manuscript to the group. Could I deliver it early? As in, Aug 2? I said I could. This meant I had to stop nervously tweaking and take it to the printer’s. I was not sure my venerable laser printer’s cartridge was up to producing 360 pages without warning; besides, I wanted to make my copies double-sided, having realized from attending the group how very bulky paper — each sheet of which seems so thin individually — can get after about 150 or 250 pages. I could not figure out how to do this at home.

I consulted the Internet for recommended copy shops in my neighborhood and set out to Remsen Graphics with my thumb drive. “I have a 360-page document,” I told the man there, who seemed more cheerful than was appropriate to a hot summer Monday morning in the copy shop. “I need five copies. Double-sided. Is that possible?”
“Of course! No problem! Come back in an hour or so.” He took my thumb drive and information about the file. He did not take my name or my money, nor did he write down any of the information I had just imparted. Feeling a bit uneasy about this and hoping the shop would get it right, I went away.

My fears were groundless. When I returned, the copy job was waiting for me, was just as requested, and the price was reasonable. The copies were given to me all in one big box, the thin kind of non-corrugated cardboard like bakeries put cakes in. I had wondered how big the product would turn out to be, had debated which of my reusable shopping bags would be the best size and shape to bring, but as it turned out I chose right. I paid and loaded the box into the bag and lifted the bag onto my shoulder and walked back out into the hot summer morning. The package was sharp-edged, and much heavier than a cake, and it was as I were carrying the weight of the product of my own mind, my own thoughts, home with me.