Molly Ringwald: Film icon... and writer?

Based on A.M. Holmes' assessment of Molly Ringwald's first novel, When It Happens To You, Molly Ringwald is a writer, and this is what Salon via Holmes declared on August 24:  One of 2012's most dazzling debut novels comes from an actress we all think we know.

Please don't clump me in your "all."  I don't know Molly Ringwald. I remember her movies from the 80s, but I don't know her.  And dazzling?  That makes me want to read her novel, and I'm planning on it, especially after what Holmes says:

"Her stories deftly capture the confusion and heartbreak of betrayal, the power of family secrets, and the struggle to find and maintain both autonomy and intimacy within a marriage."

And

"I was especially impressed with her story telling style-- the stories echo a bit of Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel and Lorrie Moore.  Ringwald also pulls off a very cool technical feat-- the stories progress in the spaces between the stories-- there is an invisible gathering of momentum and you feel things are happening even when on one is watching.  With this auspicious fiction debut you might actually forget Ringwald's also a film icon."

Though I don't know Ringwald, I might find it difficult to forget she's a film icon

Nonetheless

Holmes' review intrigues me mainly because it's a vastly different opinion from Dan Kois' opinion of When It Happens To You in the NYT the other day and the subsequent writing lesson I derived from his review-- which I blogged about here.   To be continued...

Update on January 12, 2013:  I attempted to read When It Happens to You and failed.  I could only make it through a couple chapters.  Too much telling and the conflicts weren't interesting.  And I was able to guess correctly what would happen next.  Oh well.

Fiction Writing 101: More about Characters & Story

So Molly Ringwald not only wrote a novel, but it was published recently by HarperCollins.  There was a review by Dan Kois of When It Happens to You: A Novel in Stories in yesterday's NYT, and I'm going to quote a chunk of it:

"...the stories feel less like narratives than like exposition uploads, with action happening mostly in the past or in characters' imaginations.  Ringwald's characters feel rather than do, and their feelings are often expressed schematically rather than dramatically.  'Pain, regret and guilt mingled just under the surface,' we're told of Greta's mom, 'the aggregate of all her profound sadness.'  That's really a lot of profound sadness. But it's not a story. Most M.F.A. students would hear this in the first week of class. They wouldn't have the bad fortune to have their still-unformed stories picked apart in public.  On the other hand, most M.F.A. students wouldn't have the good fortune to get their debut collection published by Harper Collins."

We can debate about what a story is and about the doing and feeling of characters, but most novice writers, whether or not they're in an M.F.A. program, have their characters observing a lot and feeling a lot instead of doing a lot, and that's just a part of the journey of becoming a fiction writer. It takes guts and skill and practice to get your characters to start taking action, to start making decisions, and this is one thing that separates the novice writers and the professionals writers.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

State of Wonder was published by Harper over a year ago, and so many thoughts have already been hanging in the ether (if thoughts can hang in the ether) about this novel.  But here are the things that stuck with me after finishing this book recently:

I was really involved in this book and was dragging out reading it because I was enjoying it, but something happened in the last 100 pages-- or maybe it was the last 70 or 80 pages.  The story started speeding up. At first I thought it was my imagination, but no, it wasn't my very active imagination. And I didn't stop enjoying the story because of this speeding up, but for a few minutes it took me outside of the story because I imagined that Ms. Patchett became tired of writing this novel and hurried things along because she simply wanted it finished.  I was relieved at my imagined scenario because, well, it was a very human scenario to imagine.  Of course, I also imagined that some outside force was telling her to hurry and get it done-- an outside force like a publisher-- but I pushed that aside because I didn't want to imagine that.

So now if you haven't read this novel and want to, you'll want to skip this paragraph and move along to the next one.  It was predictable that Dr. Singh was going to perform a c-section and not  mess it up like she did so long ago.  Yes, I had figured out that she'll get her chance to earn praise from her former teacher, Dr. Swenson, by successfully performing this operation amidst entirely difficult circumstances -- i.e. not in a hospital.  I suppose that was an easy way to show character growth, development, and change that so many readers seem to look for, especially if some of these readers are also book bloggers (i.e. amateur book reviewers).  (See my post about characters & change.)  But it was far too tidy for me.

Reproductive Technology:  Big, big issue and dealt with in a not very big way, and that's ok because preaching in a novel is a huge no no.  However, I wanted something a little more-- in terms of commentary-- about the ethics of all of this.  This = a fertility drug for women that extends the age of child bearing years for, well, forever.  Oh, there's a sentence or two about ethics, sort of, and the delicate message is (oops, here's a bit of a giveaway so you might want to skip to the next paragraph) it's not a great idea for women in their 70s to get pregnant. Not exactly a news flash, and even those who are enthusiastic about reproductive technology (and women's agency) would (probably) agree that getting pregnant at age 74 is not a great idea. In fact, if we're honest here and can temporarily put aside the political correctness surrounding women's agency, it's a really, really stupid idea to get pregnant at age 74.  And the way the pregnancy turned out (not gonna give that away totally) isn't a surprise- -which also contributed to the last 100 pages of the novel being a little disappointing.  Too many obvious things were happening in those final pages besides the speeding up of the story telling, but maybe they had to occur because of the speeding up of the story.

Anyway, I still enjoyed the novel and wouldn't discourage anyone from reading State of Wonder simply because it shows that Ann Patchett is a human with strengths and weaknesses and vulnerabilities.  Sometimes I think we expect perfection, and that's just ridiculous.  So please read State of Wonder, and if you're in Nashville be sure to stop by Parnassus Books, Patchett's bookstore.

Fiction Writing 101: Characters & Change

In many writing workshops, you hear babble about character development, about characters growing, about characters changing.  Somehow and somewhere, someone taught millions of novice writers that a story is about a character changing. The result? We now have millions of stories in which characters develop, grow, and change in most ridiculous and unconvincing ways.  Is there an alternative to an all out metamorphosis? Janet Burroway says this about change:

"Often the notion of change is mistaken by new writers to mean change that is abrupt and contrived, from Scrooge to St. Nick-- yet this rarely happens in life or in realistic fiction.  Rather, change can be as subtle as a step in a new direction, a slight shift in belief, or a willingness to question a rigid view or recognize an unseen value in a person or situation."

In my novel Momentary Mother, which takes place over two weeks, the protagonist sees her mother in a new light on the very last page of the book.  The protagonist experiences a glimmer of hope on that last page that was nonexistent on page one.  There it is: a remarkable change.

I See France by Wendy Wallace

I See France by Wendy Wallace is going to be performed on August 18 as part of Island Theatre’s inaugural ten minute play festival. Hooray! The island is Bainbridge Island, Washington, and I See France is the winner of best play in the adult category. No, the San Fernando Valley’s adult film industry hasn’t moved to lovely Bainbridge Island. Apparently, Island Theatre solicited plays for an adult category and a teen category, so adult category in this instance doesn’t mean x-rated even though Wallace’s play is ostensibly about panties, which some of us realize immediately thanks to the clever title.  But Island Theatre might actually believe the story is about panties, for this is the one sentence summary of I See France that’s on the theater’s website: In a women’s lingerie department, panties from different eras argue about their popularity. Hmm. Based on this description, I’d conclude that I See France is simply personification run amok. Fortunately, that’s hardly the case, and there’s more to Wallace’s play than argumentative underwear.

Wallace’s play energetically illustrates the concepts that women are commodities and that female sexuality is a commodity. The three main characters are panties being sold in a department store, for goodness sake, and the fact that each panty is a different style representing women in different life stages means that no woman is exempt from being a commodity. The panties, whose names amuse and signify, are Granny, Hipster, and Lacey, and they exhibit a strongly internalized understanding of their social roles in relationship to men; they are all hyper aware of the connection between panties, sexuality, and desirability. This leads to a lot of seemingly superficial bickering but actually exemplifies the very real issue of women being pitted against each other in order to gain the attention of men. This fighting of women amongst themselves results in divisiveness; however, I See France also suggests, mostly via Hipster, that female solidarity is preferred to female infighting, and it is this potential for female unity that makes I See France transformative, for female solidarity would ultimately threaten male dominance and disrupt the consumption and circulation of women.

But I can hear it now: Men can be commodities too.  Sure they can, and Joe Boxer Shorts makes a quick appearance in which he brags that he is universally adored.  And that’s the difference: He’s universally adored, and his bragging implies that he isn’t a commodity in quite the same way as the ladies-- oops-- the panties are.  And this is further exemplified a few minutes later when the “next best thing” in the panty industry comes along, literally, in the lingerie department and causes Granny, Hipster, and Lacey to be put on sale. In other words, in pedestrian commodity speak, these darn things are not only no longer adored, they’re no longer useful, so we’ve gotta get rid of them and fast. Yep, nothing can subjugate, depress, and dishearten panties more effectively than being blatantly and unapologetically devalued. Now that’s something that can cause your undies to get into a twist.

Fiction Writing 101: Expose the Unexposed

From Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (page 198 in my edition):

"We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise, you'll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you've already been in. Most human beings are dedicated to keeping that one door shut.  But the writer's job is to see what's behind it, to see the bleak, unspeakable stuff, and turn the unspeakable into words--  not just into any words but if we can, into rhythm and blues."