I recently finished my sixth draft of a new novel, which takes place in the Iraq war. I’m ready to show it to agents as I look for new representation. At the recent AWP Conference in Los Angeles, I attended a panel called “Agents on Agenting,” where afterward I asked Noah Ballard, an agent at Curtis Brown, “Do you consider war fiction?”
He said, “Is it literary?”
It is. He wanted to know more.
A year ago I wrote a guest blog for Lisa Binion: “Literary Fiction: What is it Really?” Now that I’ve finished the new book and am about to write more short stories, Lisa wanted to know: how do I go about writing literary fiction?
This question can be many writers’ biggest dilemma. We want to write something good—make that great—and we want it to be important and literary. We long for people to talk about it and for libraries to shelve it. We want translators to translate it and have AWP panels feature it and Oprah to call us to be her book club show. The Library of Congress will burn that show onto a gold DVD, which they will store with our books in an underground, earthquake-safe vault for future generations and aliens from other planets to find and say, “So this is what life was like then.”
But that’s a lot of pressure, right? That might be a goal, but you can’t write with that in mind. In fact, I can only write when I give myself permission to be mediocre and just have some fun writing. I tell my students, quoting Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird: “Write a shitty first draft.”
It’s not just true for creative writing but for all writing. Say one of your parents or best friend dies, and along with it, your world. You have to give the eulogy. You want it to be incredible. You want it to be memorable. You want it to be quotable, the best thing of your life. It’s only a small token of what that person gave you. With the first words you write, you may stop because it’s not as staggering as you hoped. You now are aware of your fallibility.
I will tell you to write it with the notion that no one will read that draft. This is a draft where you can include things you’d never say aloud. This is the draft where clichés abound and the grammar would fell an army of runners. It’s okay. You’ll polish things later.
The best writing comes in rewriting. Once you have a shitty first draft, you improve on it, keeping all the genius parts. Then you rewrite again. You think about it in the shower and as you drive and as you breathe. You make changes. It gets better.
first draft fancies, jsascribes.wordpress.com
And it’s literary. Why? Because you’re giving life as you see it from your point of view. That’s all you can do. Lisa asked how do I write often sad stories without staying deeply depressed, even finding humor? It’s just the way I see the world. Even though I’ve never taken a philosophy class, some writers become philosophers. We stumble upon or laser in on truth. We don’t like certain stories we read because they seem false, at least in some key area.
Literary writing is more than truth, though. Because I’ve also been a playwright and have seen my writing in front of live audiences, I’ve come to understand how to write dramatically, writing in scenes with turns—writing the way stand-up comedians deliver with a setup, buildup, and payoff.
The same sense works with prose. Picture your readers and how they should feel at any particular moment. Know that what is NOT said is as important as what is said. Don’t be afraid of poetry in your work. With poetry, you learn the lyricism of language, the art of condensing, the sense of beauty. Offer beauty.
digging a new grave, www.geograph.org.uk
Your prose isn’t mere plot, but also character. Character is revealed by what people do, not just in what they think or say. “Turns” are about stories zipping off in a new direction, surprising the reader but being believable. Plot marries character, even if character is skipping stones across a pond.
Some people base their stories on things that have happened to them or to people close to them. That’s what I often do. Years ago, I happened to be at a funeral for my father-in-law, and I noticed the grave diggers in green uniforms finishing the hole as we walked up. They only had a day to dig this hole. I thought if there were such thing as a funeral photographer, would she photograph the grave diggers?
Later this thought of a funeral photographer—combined with some problems a cousin was going through with her boyfriend of many years—became the basis of my short story “Shooting Funerals” in my collection The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea. The story was real to me even if I made it up. (Lisa reviewed the new audio version of that book, which led to this guest post.)
The new novel, tentatively titled The Chords of War, sprang from the life of my former student Sam Gonzalez as he found himself fighting in a surge in Iraq. He’d been in a punk rock band and then volunteered for the Army. He struggled to survive in the war. Over in Iraq, he created a rock band of soldiers to help fellow soldiers mentally escape, even for a brief time, the horrors around them.
I worked with Sam, and we changed some things to get at what it truly felt like. I didn’t start each day thinking, “How do I be literary?” Rather, I thought, “How can I turn this into an experience on the page and get the reader to feel?” I had to feel.
So much can be said on the subject of writing literary fiction, but what’s most important is that you’re writing. The more you write, the better you will get. When you are focused on what is true to you—even changing reality to get at the deeper truth of a feeling—then you aren’t worried about whether or not it’ll be a story for the ages, ready for aliens from another planet. You are in a new state of being. You are present in the moment.
Recommended Articles:
The Middle-Aged Man & the Sea – a Review
Literary Fiction: What is it Really? – Guest Post by Christopher Meeks
You’re welcome. A book you recommended a year or so ago remains one of my favorites: “Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See” by Juliann Garey. I might teach it in my college English class this fall.
Chris, I’m a big fan of literary fiction and have read some wonderful war fiction that does itself proud by reaching that level of intensity and reader-involvement in the minds of several well-developed characters. Too, I’ve begun to think that some thriller writers are writing “literary thrillers,” and I strive to pull their work from the thriller haystack when I crave a new thriller.
Do you think there is such a thing? How about literary mysteries and crime novels? Long series, I think, tend to become literary if the author has that ability. Just curious.
Sam, I became drawn to war fiction years ago with Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried.”. A few other war books have impressed me for their literary quality including “The Yellow Birds” by Kevin Power, “Redeployment” by Phil Klay, and just the other night I finished the astounding “Youngblood” by Matt Gallagher. Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Soldier’s Home” is one of my favorite after-war stories because long before the term PTSD came along, soldiers were wrenched and torn emotionally by fighting. This is a reality of war. Few if anyone comes out unaffected.
In good war fiction, however, the reader confronts life-and-death head-on, and the characters also are in touch with the experience of being alive. Contradictions abound. Beauty mixes with horror. Randomness swirls with the purposeful. It becomes a metaphor and condensation of this life we live. As mythologist Joseph Campbell once said about war, “In going to the office every day, you don’t get that experience, but suddenly, in war, you are ripped back to being alive. Life is pain; life is suffering; and life is horror–but, by god, you are alive.”
The same thing operates in good crime fiction. My wife is addicted to the ID Channel for true crime stories. “Why?” I’ve sometimes wondered, yet in crime stories, we see that in the act of going to get hamburger buns at the local supermarket, a person can end up dead, thanks to some twisted soul and the randomness of things. In my crime novel, “Blood Drama,” as you know, my protagonist visits a Starbucks in a local bank lobby when the bank is robbed, he’s taken hostage, and it looks as if he’ll die for that. A neighborhood can suddenly seem as dangerous as war.
I happen to be a huge fan of Michael Connelly novels, starting with his first Harry Bosch book, “The Black Echo.” Connelly fits into the literary because Bosch deals with many dark truths as a Los Angeles police detective. I also like Robert Crais’s novels because his detective Elvis Cole has an upbeat, even comical, sense of life, even though he often partners with the deeply serious, stone-faced war vet, Joe Pike. Their stories echo beyond the page because they have themes and explore the mystery of being human.
While I’m not a huge reader of genre novels, the best have that literary element, and they grab me because they can rocket along. I like that combination of page-turning and truth. It’s why I’ve written two crime novels, “Blood Drama” and “A Death in Vegas,” which you’ve reviewed brilliantly. I feel blessed having both you and Lisa review my books because you put a lot of thought and depth into your reviews. I’ll also add Teddy Rose, who has a comment here. You all care. Thank you!
Thanks for the insights, Chris.
Coincidentally, I just finished Gallagher’s “Youngblood,” and was impressed by the depth of his characters and their motivations. That’s one I’ll be remembering for a while.
You might want to take a look at a new memoir called “Walking Point” by Perry A. Ulander. It chronicles Ulander’s experience during the Vietnam War as an army grunt in, I think, 1968. It is every bit as compelling as “Youngblood” and gives a real feel for what that war was like from the point-of-view of a common foot soldier. I was in the Army about that time, and although I was never sent to Vietnam, much of what he says about the experience reminds me of the whole military experience. I’m reading an ARC but it is supposed to be published on May 17.
Like you, I’m a big fan of Connelly’s Bosch novels but, for some reason I can’t figure out, the “Lincoln Lawyer” books don’t do it for me. I did find the recent novel bringing the two characters together interesting, though, and would not mind seeing Connelly continue going that route.
I’d like to suggest the Tim Hallinan series of “Poke Rafferty” novels. They take place in Bangkok and are extraordinary, IMO. There are a bunch of them now and they are best read in order because the characters develop and change dramatically over time. I absolutely love that character, but the same thing happened with Hallinan that happened with Connelly for me. Hallinan has a second series of “Junior Bender” novels that are pretty popular and are very well received, but they don’t impact me the same way. It’s a strange thing.
Thanks again, Chris. I’ll be taking a look at some of the names and titles you’ve mentioned here.
Sam, did you review “Youngblood” somewhere? If so, I’d love the link. I’ll try “Walking Point”–thanks for the recommendation.
I just started “I’d Walk With My Friends If I Could Find Them” by Jesse Goolsby. It takes place in Afghanistan and back in America after fighting. It’s interesting so far, even though it’s in present tense and from an omniscient POV where we pop into various people’s heads. I tend to like a close third POV and past tense. Still, that’s not getting in my way, and Goolsby has a lyrical voice. Goolsby, Gallagher, and Andria Williams were a part of a panel called “New Directions in Contemporary War Fiction,” which I saw at the recent AWP writers conference in Los Angeles.
I do have a draft review worked up on “Youngblood” that needs more work before posting. Now you’ve given me another one to look for, the Goolsby book. What a great problem to have: reading as fast as I can process good writing and falling farther behind every day. I think we live in a golden age of literature right now despite what so many say about the state of the publishing industry. So, thanks.
Great description of what literary fiction is and writing it. I find that literary fiction has at least some moments of truth to it.