Rebecca Entel’s first novel is Fingerprints of Previous Owners (Unnamed Press, 2017). Her short
stories and essays have appeared in Guernica, Joyland
Magazine, Literary Hub,
Electric Literature, Cleaver Magazine, The Madison Review, and elsewhere. Rebecca is an Associate
Professor at Cornell College, where she teaches multicultural
American literature, Caribbean literature, creative writing, and the literature
of social justice. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Wisconsin
and a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania. Rebecca grew up in
Cleveland and currently lives in Iowa City.
Please welcome Rebecca Entel.
Maybe
it’s part of my process to imagine having better writing days than I actually
have. In my mind’s eye, there I am at my desk or on the couch or at a table in
the library, fingers flying as I produce and produce and produce. It’s much
harder to be inside that body I’m imagining watching from afar – to be the one
staring at the screen, resisting the click-away temptation of the internet,
believing in what could come next.
I
had been writing and teaching writing for many years before publishing Fingerprints
of Previous Owners. Part of my process in writing that first novel was
seeing if I could, in fact, even finish one. I got to travel many times for
this project, which takes place at a Caribbean resort built over the ruins of a
slave plantation. I even learned how to use a machete to reach those ruins for
my research. But most of my time was spent staring at the screen, feeling
frustrated. I’d spend too much time trying to get the conditions right for
becoming the writer that existed in my mind, and then when I actually sat down
to write, I’d feel fundamentally not up to the task. Those images of watching
myself writing prolifically had become one more weight getting in my way.
The
only way I seemed to get anything done was when I tricked myself into writing, by
using all the tricks I’d counseled my students to use when they were feeling
stuck. Two of these tricks had a
major impact on the development of the book.
What’s something you know about
that your readers may not?
A
grad professor of mine once recommended we think about this question, finding
something unique to describe that might inject some energy. Posing it to myself, I thought back to learning
how to use that machete. I’d been taught it was a tool of gravity, not of
force. No matter how strong you were, hacking away wouldn’t do much good. You need
a sharp blade and the right angle, then let gravity do its job. I began free-writing
about this and discovered a voice that belonged to Myrna, the book’s main
character, who was secretly excavating the ruins. The machete became
thematically important, too, since Myrna didn’t have much power, physical or
otherwise; she had to be sharp and find the right angle to get where she wanted
to go.
What will you learn if you
free-write from a minor character’s perspective?
I
advise my students to find multiple ways to jump away from the main thrust of
their stories. This particular exercise isn’t necessarily about writing
material to be included in the text; it’s about the writer discovering new information.
On
the days I felt most stuck, I let myself write short narratives from the
perspectives of minor characters in my protagonist’s community. I learned a ton
about the island’s history, more than my narrator could know, and much of it
allowed me to add texture to the fictional island I was creating, where what
does not get talked about fuels Myrna’s
machete adventures. That secretive aspect of the book hedged me in because I
couldn’t reveal anything beyond Myrna’s perspective, which, combined with the
typical limitation of the first-person narrator, and her intense focus on her
excavations, isolated her character from friends and family.
Some
of these free-writing exercises eventually became parts of the book in which I
let other characters speak. These characters never would have come to life if I
hadn’t let myself experiment with their voices. In talking to readers, I’ve learned
how important these side stories were to their reading experience. They needed
these breaks from Myrna’s perspective. So perhaps my feelings of being mired in
the writing was actually a clue into what my readers might feel, too.
I
wouldn’t have finished Fingerprints
if I hadn’t relied on these tricks to help me stop thinking about the
to-be-finished Fingerprints. I hadn’t
thought of the various exercises I offer students as necessarily related before,
but I came to see that many of them focused on relieving writers of the
pressure of writing a book – distracting
writers from that larger aim so they could write something.
In
speaking with other writers, particularly students, I’ve also been reminded how
helpful it is to hear writers speak honestly and practically about what their
processes were before their books were ever books.
