Guest Blogger Rebecca Entel on the Tricks that Helped Her Finish Writing a Full Novel

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.

Connect with Rebecca at her website, on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

She is teaching an online novel writing workshop for Catapult beginning in June.

Stuff My Writing Students Say, Part 15

"I'm just not that into this assignment."

I give out an assignment in a nonfiction writing class. It typically has well-defined parameters, an assignment specifically designed to flex a new or developing writing muscle, with a word count that makes sense for the time that will elapse between assignment and due date. An assignment that will subtly force the writers to edge just outside their writing comfort zone, or to engage with a sticky craft concept we've been covering, or to introduce a new way of working with prose or approaching a familiar form in a new way (a personal essay in second person).

It's not that I want to inhibit a student writer's imagination, limit their subjects, or promote a particular aesthetic. Rather, I want them to stretch, to try something new or something hard or sometimes just something else. And yes, I have a reason, which might not always be apparent at the moment.

Mind you, it's almost never an assignment that would stretch over more than one-third of the class sessions, and usually it's simply a one-week project. And – and this is important – I'm talking here about organized, instructional-based classes in writing development; not workshop-style sessions where the underlying assumption is that you write what you like any way you like it, for any reason you may have. Here we are talking about a class which built on the assumption that assignments will be made, that such assignments will help develop and polish writing skills.

So, the assignment is made, and inevitably, someone complains/explains, "I'm just not really interested in that assignment.  Maybe I can do something else instead."

Reasons?  Oh, plenty:  I've never liked doing X.  I'm short on time and Y will be easier. I'm just really into Y right now.  I can't see how doing/writing X will help me.  I'm trying to write a book, and there won't be anything like X in it. I'm on a roll in my other writing and don't want to distract myself with X.  It seems like busywork. How can this possibly help my writing?

To which I reply: I understand, I get it, I've been there. 

But that's the assignment. Try it. See what happens.

My reasons: You may learn something. You may surprise yourself. You may like it. You may not like it. You may figure something out about yourself as a writer. You may have fun. You may be miserable, but still find a way to complete the assignment – and pass another milestone on the way to being a grown-up writer.

You may find, as I did many times when I completed assignments I initially groaned about, that sometimes the best response is no response. The best response to an assignment in an instructional-based class is simply to do it. Write it.

You may find (maybe not right away, but eventually), as I did on several occasions, a door or a window or a crack you've never once thought of seeking out on your own. You may find that through that door or window or crack is the small beckoning stream of light that opens you up to something new and wonderful, on the page, in your writer's mind.

Try it. See what happens.*

You can read the first 14 installments of Stuff My Students Say here.

* I use this simple two-sentence bit of advice all the time, something I cribbed from a writer I admire enormously, Leslea Newman.

Writing Prompts for 51 Winter Days

Can a short writing prompt, delivered to your email inbox every morning, make a difference in your writing day? If you think it might, if you wonder if it could, if you have no idea but are curious -- consider signing up for my Winter 2013 Prompts Project.

Who are the prompts for?  Writers.

Novelists. Essayists. Bloggers. Poets. Short Story Writers. Dramatists. Writing Teachers. Freelance Writers. Creative Nonfiction Writers. Am I leaving anyone out? 

It's a simple idea, really - read the prompt, see what happens. Maybe it triggers something. Maybe you write something. A single meaningful sentence. A single spontaneous, silly, insignificant sentence - but one that feels good to write.  A few lines. A paragraph. Two. 

Maybe, if it's an off day or you have commitments that don't allow it to be a writing day, that's all you write that day. Maybe the prompt trips you into something more, pries something loose that now has to plow its way onto the page.

Maybe not.

Maybe you save the prompts for another day, when you need a little something something to get going at the keyboard, in your notebook, in your head. A day when the page is blank but you know your mind is not, though it just needs a little shake.

Maybe you delete that day's prompt. See what tomorrow's brings.  Or you pass along a prompt or two or all of them, to the writing class you teach, at the next freewrite in your writing group. Maybe it informs your next blog post, Tumblr, tweet.    

Interested?  Sign up here.*  Be prompt. Emails begin on January 9 (and end on February 28).

* Opt out anytime.

Writers: Start Your Exercise Engine

Every month or so, when email coupons arrive, I order a few books about writing. I mine them for new insights and examples to share with my writing students, and read them to expand my own craft development. Some of my favorite writing books are sprinkled with writing exercises, tips, suggestions and "assignments."

One new purchase was Writing Life Stories: How to make Memories into Memoirs, Ideas into Essays, and Life into Literature, by Bill Roorbach, the paperback edition of the successful 2008 hardcover. I especially like his exercises, many of which are infused with the wit and grit of his entire book.

In a chapter titled, Saying it Right, he discusses the importance of assembling words and utilizing language in precisely the right way for your writing project. The beginning of the instructions for an exercise he calls Forget About Style goes like this: "In this exercise you are to throw a fit – perhaps you're furious because of the latest round of rejections slips, a stupid reading from a friend, Cheetah ran off with Ken – throw a fit and kick the pieces of your style kit around the frat house while the drunken brothers yell…."

Later, he talks about the motion, musicality and rhythm of writing, how our words must sing. This reminds me of a writing professor I once had who insisted an essay of mine needed more of a beat, that she should hear a BAM every few lines. Since she said that, I've always read my work aloud and listened carefully for the beats, the rhythm, and – though I never called it this – as Roorbach says, the "motion" in the flow of words.

Roorbach offers this exercise: "Tap Your Feet. Pull out the work of a favorite writer, and read it listening and feeling for the rhythm and rhythms. Tap your feet as you read out loud. Look for repeated words or phrases that set up a beat. Listen for sentences that rise, sentences that fall…." He goes on to suggest doing the same for another writer, and noticing the rhythm differences, and then giving your own work the same treatment.

I've been doing this sort of thing for several years, usually when I'm home alone. If I try to do this when my family is around, even if I close the office door – maybe especially when I close the office door – they begin muttering about how writers really ARE crazy.

Go ahead – get crazy with your words, too!

Stuff My (Writing) Students Say, Part II

Here's one I heard last year and it has stayed with me.

“I've found by doing the writing exercises and assignments (instead of just writing what I FEEL like writing) that what I NEED to write isn't necessarily what I WANT to write. That’s great and awful at the same time.”

Indeed.

If I collected a quarter each time I “found myself” writing what I need to write instead of either what I want to write, or what I initially set out to write -- well I could visit all the Laundromats within 10 miles on a busy Saturday morning and treat every customer to a free wash cycle.

Once, I set out – in response to a prompt -- to write about why I thought my sister would have been very happy as a nun, and before I knew it, I was writing about the crises that erupted for me when she left for college just as I started kindergarten.

Not long ago, I sat down to revise an essay I “sold” two years ago to a magazine which folded before the piece ran. I thought it needed just a bit of tweaking before sending it out again. Today, I no longer feel the need to say most of what was in it…but on page 4, something jumped out at me, and I started writing about that.

I’m also in the middle of another narrative nonfiction piece, which began life when a section of it seemed to sort of appear on the screen in front of me one day when I sat down to hammer out the bones of another piece entirely. Huh.

I’m not sure I believe that writing impulses come from some mysterious place, or that any mystical thing happens between the brain and what emerges from the fingertips onto the page or screen. But clearly there must be something else going on, in some undetectable area of the creative psyche, which asserts itself when necessary. Maybe that’s one reason I’m such a fan of writing prompts and writing exercises. Some of my best work started there, and where it came from and why I wrote about it, in many cases, I still don’t know. That's okay.

The first installment of this new series ran last week.

One More Time: Writing Prompts Program Held Over for February

In January, I offered to send a daily writing prompt to all who signed up. Plenty of folks did. By request, and because I like dreaming up prompts each morning while trying to wake up over my cup of lousy instant decaf, I'm extending the program for the month of February. (But that's it; I have a big project to tackle in March.)

If you want to participate, just drop me an email with the word "Prompt" in the subject line and your name (first, last, or both) in the body of the email. You'll get an email every day with the prompt. That's it, from my end. You decide what to do next -- write in response to the prompt, file it for future inspiration-starved days, take a pass, delete, or work it into the first line of your next novel, story, essay, rant, poem, journal entry, blog post, tweet?

Here is my original post about why I like prompts and what I hope they might do for you, and here is an update about how some folks used the prompts last month.

Also during February, you'll see a few blog posts by the January participants.

Gold in Them Notebooks, Part 9

"Gold in Them Notebooks" is a continuing, though sporadic, series of posts, featuring what I find while randomly looking through the notebooks I filled during my MFA program. The rest of the series can be found here.

As part of a seminar titled, "Stay Happily Writing," focused on keeping future MFA grads actively writing, we were urged to:

- List five writing-related goals each for the next month, the next year, and the next five years.
- Speaking as your own inner critic, write out why you won't or can't accomplish these.
- Now, addressing that inner critic, write why and how you will work toward making these goals happen.
- Give yourself three gifts as a writer: Read some good literature every day. Write something every day. Be teachable.
- Write the author flap copy for your first book. For your second book.
- Always be open to new suggestions and ideas -- about your writing, your goals, opportunities, volunteer projects. Try it. You never know.

- Leslea Newman, editor, writing teacher, and author of 50+ books, including children's books, young adult novels, poetry, writing craft, adult novels, essay and short story collections.

Gold in Them Notebooks, Part 4

Welcome to the fourth in a series of posts on what I find while taking a random cruise through a pile of notebooks from my MFA program.

From a discussion during a nonfiction workshop about writing while feeling stuck:

•Try this: Keep writing this sentence, filling in the blanks anew each time: "Part of me wants _____, but part of me wants _____."
•When you feel you can't write about something, write at it. Write in pieces – individual sentences, paragraphs.
•When you have something (or even if you think you don't) make your margins very wide and print it out, with text running down the center of the page only, so you can write in longhand on the sides of the paper (especially transitions), then…get some scissors and literally cut and paste. See what happens.
•Ask yourself if there is a part of you that is hiding behind the stuff you are not writing.
•Forget about explaining a concept like "forgiveness" – do it with scene, image, moment, emotional clarity.
- Richard Hoffman, memoirist and poet; Writer in Residence, Emerson College.

You can read the first three MFA notebooks posts here.