Cultivating the Fearless Writer, On and Off the Page
By Guest | June 20, 2021 |
Tom’s early dreams of writing novels were short-circuited by a 25-year jaunt into songwriting and acting. Like all people in the arts, he has held many jobs — California vineyard foreman, builder, meditation teacher, football coach, real estate agent and ESOL teacher for foreigners. Now he is three novels into the literary scrum, with his third coming out today.
We’re so glad he’s with us today to discuss some of the fears we face as writers, the questions we should ask ourselves as we grapple with them, and how he’s managed them.
Learn more about Tom and his work by following him on Twitter, Facebook, and by visiting his website.
Cultivating the Fearless Writer, On and Off the Page
When we lack the personality traits and experience our characters must call upon, how do we write the stressful scenes and the climax? Digging deeper, do writing deadlines or our fear of social or commercial repercussions (with agents, publishers, and readers) hamper our storytelling?
Except for those brave souls documenting wars, domestic abuse, crime, and cultural upheaval on scene and in real time, we writers are a privileged bunch. The irony is that, from the safety of our garrets and writing nooks, we often prognosticate on conditions and results of risk, peril, and stakes—the secret sauce of our novels—with the stone-faced ease of riverboat gamblers.
I’ve been contemplating my lack of authenticity on this: What credentials do I have regarding danger, wily heroism, and tough subjects such as lethal revenge to presume my stories can offer life lessons to others? I am not Tim O’Brien, the soldier who wrote The Things They Carried. How cheeky of me to posit a deep fear of snakes, say, to the experience of being hunted by a deranged killer. Is using the totaling of my car on a concrete parking pylon sufficient to imagine a woman losing her children?
While I am not concerned about the whole world reading my risqué sex scene, how did I tailor it because of what my very dead parents might have thought? How many contortions must I go through to veil disputes with my sweetheart that end up in a novel? And is this good for the characters, for the novel? (For my relationship?) What factors guide what we will not write? What don’t we tell, and why?
If we analyze our latest draft, we may expose a hazy schematic of interactions we intuitively avoid. But what if our characters lead us there? Do we abandon the work? Should or shouldn’t we invest more time in a deeper excavation? Will readers know? Will they care? In the big view, is it wise to place our characters in circumstances that would seem extreme for us? Can we afford not to? Might that not be the best territory to explore?
My first novel had a great premise that lay dead flat on the page until I “remembered” that as a young man, my doctor protagonist killed his neighbor with his bare hands in a fit revenge for the neighbor having murdered my protagonist’s father. The choice and the challenge of bringing it to the page troubled me for months. Gradually—and then suddenly—I faced the fact that, to be liked, I’d spent decades hiding great personal rage behind a facade of kindness. This explained the flatness of my character. My muse was forcing me to reckon with a deeper truth. You’ll be pleased to know I didn’t kill anyone for research. But when I visualized my hands and my heart beating an old enemy to death, the story started to sing.
Off the Page
If we intuitively avoid risks on the character level, might we also be doing so on a personal one? How much does our Twitter or Facebook persona hide or alter who we are? How much do we fear being the fool? Or are we being foolish to adopt a brand that doesn’t truly represent us? Where would literature stand if Hemingway, Angelou, and Tolstoy had wanted to be liked?
Do we really want agents and readers to think we are wiser than we are? Do we color safely inside the lines so they will find us acceptable—whatever that means—hoping for a deal or more sales?
Hopefully, our brand sells books to a particular market. Does it also affect how we dress for readings and interviews? How much do we try to rehearse what we say into microphones?
Since our work together with our comportment creates our brand, do our actions regarding how we want to be known change either or both? Though I sometimes swear like a sailor, I removed the protagonist’s F-bombs in the final pass for my current novel because I didn’t want readers being distracted from the heart of the story—corruption and lies, which is something I do know a thing or two about. I want “depth of subject” associated with my brand and not “uses a lot of F-bombs.”
I get squirrelly if I feel pressure to comply with rigid norms. So when it came to marketing Imperfect Burials, the prospect of pictures of me smiling while holding a copy seemed a fate akin to being drawn and quartered. I decided to go rogue. Right on cue, the muse pushed me to take a chance with my marketing rollout. The campaign entailed writing a pair of parallel novellas, one version with very short chapters for Facebook posts, the other with chapters crammed inside the 280-character limit for Twitter. They tell the story of my characters hiring a Russian doll to overthrow my intentions to market the book…a spoof thriller metafiction campaign. The premise is that the characters had become so real they revolt to avoid being imprisoned forever between the covers of a book. How ghastly a fate!
Marketing Coup #11: I’m whispering cuz my IMPERFECT BURIALS launch assistant Katya is acting surly, as if she’s secretly against the anyone reading my Cold War thriller. She has a bit of a temper, so don’t tell her I'm offering it free until June 4th at https://t.co/bU2z1g3Fnw pic.twitter.com/sHgkTzbc4g
— Thomas Henry Pope (@thomashenrypope) May 19, 2021
Spoiler alert: There were fatalities. Even if many now think I am a fool for having done so, I had a great time exploring a different kind of writing. The fun I had was real. The format also afforded me the opportunity to speak about the nature of writing, and of reality, and to play the tyrannical author.
In the end, succeed or fail as authors, we have to live with ourselves.
Have you ever sensed A-list authors falling flat on important issues? How about you? As part of your writing do you inspect the creator (yourself)? What do you do when you come to the edge of your comfort level and experience if your characters or agent or editor demand you take a leap? How has leaping or holding back worked for you? What ideas can you give the rest of us? What are your tendencies? And what have the results been?
Many thanks to today’s guest.
You can read more WU guest posts by visiting this link.
Hey Tom – I hope the very clever marketing nets you’ve thrown haul in a lot of new readers, because they’re going to be hooked early, and afterward will gladly return again and again to swim in your authorial pond. (Sort of a drenched tacklebox of a metaphor, but I cast it on the fly.) It’s such a great read.
Thanks for being both unboxed and brave. You’re an inspiration. Wishing you the very best with the book. Happy Father’s Day.
Hi Vaughn,
Some metaphors need to be tackled and boxed, but never on this site!!!
Thanks for your support and counsel over the years. Here’s to getting our work into the hands f readers everywhere.
I had waffles with fresh strawberries from the garden served with love and laughter for breakfast. It doesn’t get bette for fathers than that!
This is a fascinating commentary, one I much appreciate. Thanks for sharing.
As I leaped around as an author from one genre published traditionally into indie-published and now, a whole different genre for a different market (mass market as opposed to the former inspirational market), all this via 3 different agents (I am currently agent-less) yet I’ve just sold a trilogy to a small publisher, I’ve dealt too much with trying to please folks. I think this “don’t say this… don’t write this” started to truly interrupt my muse. I had to make a decision about what I like to read and write and be brave enough to march ahead. I’ve had to learn how to respect myself and my writing.
I am now enjoying creating stories once again and have no regrets, leaping into story-worlds I truly enjoy.
Elaine,
Yours is an inspiring journey and I am glad for how it now yields fearlessness. Carry on. and on.
I see the creative world as having two sphere’s–one of craft and one of art. The crafters see what has been done and either try to make it better inside the boundaries or to merely rewrite it “with names changed to protect the innocent.” Many bestsellers are masters at the latter.
Those in the artist realm are drawn to dig deeper, even under the the walls that create what has already been done…maybe “out from under the genre” is away to say it. Art is a subversive pursuit. And its power to help others shake off norms that have become corrupted or eviscerate confused ways of seeing is why it stirs awe.
[Many writer inhabit both realms.]
To break norms with authority though, we must know what they are and master them, so perhaps your years of compliance have been a necessary stage of development.
Thanks for commenting and let us know how the work goes.
Tom, thanks for your encouragement and even more insights on writing the best story possible (at the time).
Elaine,
Yours is an inspiring journey. it is wonderful to hear how your bravery is being rewarded. Carry on and on.
I see the creative world as having two spheres–one of craft and one of art. The crafters work to make work similar to what has been been done, but to make it better. Others try to simply render it the same with “names changes to protect the innocent”. Many bestsellers are masters at the latter.
The realm of the artist is less bound. Artists are passionate to learn what will happen if they burrow under the walls that genres rely on. They dig out from under what is expected, not to be different–which is another kind of posing–but because they genuinely want to know what lies outside. Interestingly, that involves inner work. The effort can help others see norms that have become corrupted or to resolve confusion about what is real.
[Some creative types inhabit both worlds.]
Of course authentic work breaking norms requires us to know and master those norms. It sounds like your time of compliance may have been ground for great work. Let us know how it goes.
(Sorry to answer in a new thread. I haven’t been able to get the reply system to work today, TP)
Elaine,
Yours is an inspiring journey. it is wonderful to hear how your bravery is being rewarded. Carry on and on.
I see the creative world as having two spheres–one of craft and one of art. The crafters work to make work similar to what has been been done, but to make it better. Others try to simply render it the same with “names changes to protect the innocent”. Many bestsellers are masters at the latter.
The realm of the artist is less bound. Artists are passionate to learn what will happen if they burrow under the walls that genres rely on. They dig out from under what is expected, not to be different–which is another kind of posing–but because they genuinely want to know what lies outside. Interestingly, that involves inner work. The effort can help others see norms that have become corrupted or to resolve confusion about what is real.
[Some creative types inhabit both worlds.]
Of course authentic work breaking norms requires us to know and master those norms. It sounds like your time of compliance may have been ground for great work. Let us know how it goes.
(Sorry to answer in a new thread. I haven’t been able to get the reply system to work today, TP)
Hey Tom,
I think you’ve put it all in a nutshell when you say “we have to live with ourselves.” If we do it humbly, boldly, with a sense of excitement and forgiveness, anything we do will come from us and not from what others expect of us. (I’ve been discovering Myles Horton, who has a brilliant interview with a young Bill Moyers, whose work and life exemplify this principle, truly inspiring in style and substance.)
But I’m puzzled: do all sailors swear like…?
Thanks, John, for joining in Humbly, boldly, forgiveness. Words not often found in literary discussion. Their inclusion tips the world of artist on its axis.
Will have to look into Myles Horton.
As for sailors swearing? Yes.
Tom, as a known fool, and one who only in my dreams has strangled my enemies, I appreciate you questioning how far you want to take your writing down those dark cellar stairs of your own and your characters’ consciousnesses. (Do wear the LL Beans rather than the house slippers on those stairs.)
Because you can’t take the Catholic out of the boy (another word for “old man”), I confessed to several things in the memoir I recently wrote that still tingle my shame spine, and they aren’t even central to the book’s premise, my shoplifting career.
But memoir is only a close cousin of fiction. In the last novel I wrote, the lead is an alcoholic who stumbles back and forth from the drink, from redemption to anguish and again. Having watched the shank of alcoholism stab in my own family gave me something to work with.
Anyway, I love the meta-marketing gambits you describe here. Congratulations and best success with the book.
Tom,
You always make me laugh. And it is from how you mix pain and unpleasant truth with kind acceptance.
Knowing the pain of what our characters go through provides a huge leg up on our honesty on the page. Readers love authenticity. And they can smell its opposite. It’s great when we have personal access to the flaws our characters have, either because we have them or live them vicariously through family and friends.
The other thing I am discovering is that deep empathy is like a muscle. Using it makes it stronger. Good on you for addressing the shop lifting.
There is, though, the situation where we have no experience of what a character is dealing with. Reaching authenticity in these stories demands more of us. For example, trying to write about the deaths of children in government Native American schools from the children’s point of view. (I’m thinking of Colson Whitehead and the Nickle Boys.)
I think the bravery we then need is to go outside of our cultural “genre”, to approach people who were there, go to the graveyards on the school grounds, and meet the kinds of guards who might have done the brutalizing and/or burying. If we “bask” in their evil, we might begin to feel the terror one of our characters lives with. But this is tricky ground. We ultimately have to give up part or all of our protective field.
Thanks for joining in.
“You’ll be pleased to know I didn’t kill anyone for research”.
Frankly, I was disheartened.
Jay,
Perhaps you would let me have you some night for dinner — fava beans and little Chianti.
Coming in with a comment days later as I catch up on my reading this week. This post is especially timely for me as the subject matter of my current WIP involves how much we consider others’ opinions of us and our creative work. I feel I need to push things a little further.
Also the next two manuscripts I intend to start will involve some pointed exploration of some serious personal failings. How far does one go into the worst parts of oneself? For the reader’s sake, oughtn’t we go all the way? For our sake and the sake of our families…does that answer change?
I know that for the novel I have coming out in January, I didn’t hold back. And I feel good about it, despite it making some early readers uncomfortable. I think that’s what we need to push for in our writing. No holding back. Being willing to expose oneself to censure and ridicule in service of the story and the reader. So that’s what I’ll continue to try to do.
Erin,
I’m glad I checked back in to see your comment.
You say you need to push a little further, but it seems as if you “left it all on the field” in your novel coming in January. This is to be commended…always. Even if the work receives bumps along the way from beta readers, I imagine what you are learning about yourself the person and about you the creator of characters will help your work sing. In a way, even if we don’t want to go the distance with ourselves, experiencing some of that journey gives us authenticity to have our characters reflect.
Of course in the latter case, some genres might not be an easy fit with a self-reflective character. But if you write historical fiction, literary fiction, romance and any genre with close third POV, or cross-genre work (as i do) readers will be more taken you the work and you. That becomes an aspect of your brand.
I hope we hear about the release and I would love to meet you in person to carry on this conversation.