Steven Daniel: Hearts and Sciences

I am a victim of WADD. Yes, we live in a world of acronyms and abbreviations so why not a new one? WADD: writer’s attention deficit disorder. I think as writers we all live on a spectrum. Some of us get extremely focused on one project and might write one or two (hopefully) great novels in a lifetime ( would that be OCDW?) Others seem to be prolific to the point of mania, scattered and disordered. Then there are the ones that are prolific and focused. There’s a word for that too…PUBLISHED.
I am always a bit surprised when people ask me how I come up with ideas to write about. Every now and then one of my patients looks a little worried when I finish a synopsis. I can never tell if they are worried about my launching into a new career (fear not, still need the day job), or that I have become a little creatively unhinged. As I trot out the usual… “Oh, a news item, a personal experience, a fragment of a family story from a friend,”… really, in the back of my mind I am thinking, how can I stop the ideas?
This problem was illustrated vividly for me this week by the intersection of three events. My blog debuted here on the Write on the River website. The consequence? I had better get back to some serious work on my novel. Second, I started reading Natalie Goldberg’s book Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life ( http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Mind-Living-Writers-Life/dp/0553347756/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1317566449&sr=8-3 ). Third, Larry Brooks (storyfix.com) came to Wenatchee and teamed up with Kay Kenyon for our fall First-Page Critique Session.
Four days from the event, I still was not sure what to submit. Should I use my new opener (yes, the third first chapter!) I had written for my novel Luck? Or how about one from my other two outlines Love and Faith. So I did what I usually do when trying to make decisions relating to my creative side. In the non-clinical portions of my life I am an expert in WWP: weapons of waffling and procrastination. I pulled out one of Goldberg’s exercises in which you write steadily for ten minutes without lifting your fingers from the keyboard. When I was done, I had the first two pages of a new sci fi starring Jesus and a research scientist named Faithless Kruis. And that was what I submitted- no outline, no plot just two characters, a concept and a page of dialog and action.
For those of you who have never participated in this kind of exercise, it is a bit like having your elementary school teacher read, out loud, the love note that she intercepted on its way to the little blond girl three seats to your right. But the teacher only reads the first page. So you sit in exposed agony and when she is done, instead of relief, all you can think is….read the next page…read the next page…all will be explained.
As for our intrepid mentors who have to comment on these hopeful creations? I don’t envy them either. I imagine it’s a bit like doing a movie review based on the marquee poster or the first frame of film hoping not to crush a budding Hemingway or Harper Lee. Thursday night this happened over and over again, sixteen times in all, giving new meaning to the word ‘empathy’, as you suffer almost as much for the other anxious souls.
Then it is your turn….
As I listened to Kay and Larry’s useful and sometimes charitable comments about my page, my mind raced ahead to the structure, outline and even a few powerful phrases for the end of the story. Suddenly I was on board a spaceship with Jesus and Faithless speeding through star-pierced scenes on the way to some new adventure. Scary? Yes. Exciting? Certainly. Distracting? Absolutely.
I realized then that the challenge for me is not where my ideas come from….but rather where they are going. There is a reason that I have one ten-year-old, unready manuscript, three detailed and researched outlines and six or eight catchy premises complete with brief synopses. And now I have a name for it: WADD. I need a doctor….
So, back to work. I must dedicate myself to the manuscript at hand. Come up with a finished product and throw it into the maelstrom of scrutiny and rejection. Then and only then can I get on with my other novels.
And as for Faithless Kruis…well, friend, you’ll have to hang out on that asteroid and play scrabble with the Jovians until I can come back for you. You’ll be okay. You are not alone. There are plenty of others waiting to catch their ride to the planet of Times New Roman. And after a few more turns around the sun when I come back for you, maybe we both will have grown up a little.
SD
P.S. Half a chapter before work this morning!

Scene: 2015 Write on the River conference, Wenatchee Valley College:
“Dr. Pinchpoint, how far into the story should I start my novel?” The question echoes in the rapt silence of the lecture hall.
Dr. Pinchpoint looks out over his half-glasses, into the gloom of the auditorium, another gallery of dreamers. He sighs, pauses for dramatic effect and then, trying to keep condescension from his voice, says “You start the story as late into the story as possible.”

Shakespeare said: “The past is prologue.” So here it is, my first blog, the hopeful ruminations of a budding writer…written at the witching hour of 1:30 am… with clinic booked and medical student waiting later this morning, I prowl the night with this crazy obsession.
I have had a four month hiatus from my novel. The only writing I have done is to my lawyer, the late nights have been spent working on my home, to prepare it for sale or laying awake at night agonizing over my pending divorce. I made it to WOTR this spring, but cancelled my trip to the Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference and spent the time with a roller brush in my hand, spattered with Hotel Churchill Ecru latex paint.
But that is now ‘prologue’ as well. I am back at my computer keyboard. This is the next first day of my writing life.
I am Steven Daniel, 56 a father, physician, musician, a fly fisherman, yet all my successes seem to mean little in the face of this new quest.
Am I going to become a writer? Or, more to the point, have I always been one? Am I going to finally listen to the characters that have inhabited my head for decades, let them tell their story? It seems that my past is now prologue.
So, I invite you along on this journey in my attempt to move from writer to author, to publish a novel, hopefully the first of many. There will be weeks when the pages simply pour out and weeks when I am becalmed, a sailboat sitting on the hot glassy water of the tropics, waiting for the wind of inspiration. But I will struggle forward.
I cannot promise a happy ending or even one satisfying to the reader: real life does not have literary structure. Certainly, it has its backstory, plot points, turning points, but unlike good fiction, it does not end in resolution. The story just goes on.
What I can promise, is a window into my evolution, a sharing of some of the things that I learn along the way. Perhaps I can warn you away from some of the pitfalls, provide a few tips here and there. If nothing else, I can share some of the emotions harbored in secret agony by every other person who dares this neurotic adventure.
I have a writing and marketing plan…an outline so to speak, but ultimately, if we think we are the authors of our own story, it is nothing more than an illusion of the ego.
Just ask J. K. Rowling or Terry Brooks to tell you the story of their first publication. In his keynote speech to the 2010 Write on the River conference, Mr. Brooks made it clear that even with world class talent and skill, the number one factor in getting plucked out of the sea of unpublished authors is, of all things…luck.
And that, my friends, is the subject of my first novel. A novel conceived almost 13 years ago, the characters marinating in my brain, poked here and prodded there by new ideas and events in my life, the story line twisted and turned by the influence of readers, workshops and books on fiction writing. There are days when I wonder if it is still mine. I certainly belong to it.
Though the publishers will probably change the name…I call my novel just that: Luck. To quote Shakespeare once again:“What’s in a name?” A lot…I hope.
And so my story starts at a moment of great turmoil, long odds and a disaster for the main character. Yet it starts with great hope, with the indestructible adolescence that I have somehow found in this part of my life, with the determination to be the last man standing. In short, my story starts as far along as possible…Dr. Pinchpoint would be proud.

Steven Daniel

Old trick…staying up way too late to pursue this crazy craft. New trick…online writing course. Today, (that is yesterday to all of you on this side of the international date line…or is that tomorrow?) I started the first steps in an online writing course given by Margie Lawson through WritersOnlineClasses.com (http://www.writersonlineclasses.com/), the brainchild of Mary O’Gara and Diana Rowe. It is a two week course on incorporating body language and non-verbal cues into the behaviors of your characters. Facinating Freudian figures of speech.

The course starts with an exercise in BAD writing….converting exquisite prose into common, cliched drivel….something I have a natural gift for.

But bad writing can make for believable dialogue. We all speak in shorthand and cultural slang, even the eggheads in the biotech labs. Capturing that and, more importantly putting the right language in the right mouth is key to pleasing readers.

More importantly, I suspect that conveying the DELIVERY of those words with believable descriptions of body language is as important as the unspoken language of gesture, vocal timbre, and posture. That’s why I signed up for the course.

Stay tuned (tilts his head up and purses his lips, a deep breath and then a drop of the shoulders…).We shall see where this leads us.

Written today: One hour. Rewrote the end of a short chapter that ends with a disaster for my protagonist. They really do know his name. 

Somehow crammed that into a busy call day and a complicated life.

Welcome to my new home page. This will eventually be the platform for my writing, beginning with my series of novels listed above.

Soon, I will be posting articles from Writing My Own Story, a weblog on the Write on the River website (www.writeontheriver.org.) under the pen name Steven Daniel. It is a work in progress, so I will announce on this page when it is published. 

The blog will document my struggle to reinvent myself as a fiction writer and (hopefully) publish my first novel in the next year or two. When complete, my website Steven Daniel Stories will direct you to this blog, as well as a separate blog for readers that will discuss the content and background of my current and coming novels.

I hope you are game for an interesting ride. I know the odds…have heard it all at the writer’s conferences that I have attended, but no good protagonist worth his ink traverses the arc of his story without the requisite disasters.

For my friends who may recognize it, the photo above is one I took of the bridge across Rocky Ford Creek in central Washington. The path is cold, yet inviting and the solitude reflects the hours at the keyboard trying to find the right words. For me, writing is a journey across the terrain of my own soul.

Having said that, I welcome your comments, advice, shared insights and miseries: show me a protagonist that travels alone, and I will show you a story that ends in tragedy.

Thank you for your company!

Steve D