Meditation and the Art of Paper Shredding
My office paper shredder is small, the economy model of economy models. More than three pieces of paper at a time risks a jam. Six pieces of paper at a time ensures one. So by twos and threes I feed my professional life from 1999 through 2001 into the confetti maker. The paper is mostly white, but there are occasional sheets of yellow or pink. Those appear in the bin below as cheerfully colorful strips. I’m told that shredders that only cut the sheets into strips are not effective security devices and that it is relatively easy to puzzle back together the sheets of paper destroyed this way. I suppose the pink and yellow sheets would be that much easier to piece together, since the color stands out so brightly against the field of white surrounding it. Still, this entire exercise is a bit silly, and I refuse to spend too much time worrying about it. This whole homeland security thing has gotten a bit strange, and I refuse to fuel internal paranoia around here by pointing out our little shredders aren’t up to national specs.
Thousands of pages, two and three at a time: That’s a lot of time to let a mind wander while the hands are busy. I spend a fair amount of time thinking about my writing class. I had a bit of an epiphany yesterday afternoon regarding the book I’m working on. And yes, I now feel I can call it a “book” without feeling I’m kidding myself and misleading others. I’ve worked out an approach that will allow me to pull two story lines together without having to awkwardly bounce back and forth between disparate scenes. Well, OK, there will be some disparate bouncing BUT there will be a way to segue the two subplots together until they finally merge into one single line of action. My idea pleases me immensely, and though I suppose there’s a good chance I’ll drop the idea once I try writing it, I still take this as a sign of progress. It was the last hurdle I had to pass in order to proceed happily with the second chapter (and yes, the first chapter is nearly drafted, though I anticipate making many changes to it before I’m satisfied).
I’ve taken to writing down “Teacherisms” in class. I’m coming to understand that the things that work for her have become black-and-white ways to do things. When we point out exceptions to her, she replies that they were from a famous or popular writer, and they could get away with doing it. For example, she holds as a mandate that the main character must undergo some change from the beginning to the end of the story. Now, I well remember learning that this was one possible definition of the protagonist when I was in high school. I even remember a story that featured David and King Solomon that we read in class and identified who the main characters were depending on the different ways one could define a “main character”. But that’s neither here nor there. One of my classmates boldly pointed out that Sherlock Holmes was the main character in Doyle’s books, and that he didn’t change. Teacher squeezed out of that one by pointing out that mystery books could be an exception if they used a recurring character and that you could see the Sherlock Holmes’ clients as being the main characters. I refrained from comment.
She spent a fair amount of time discussing viewpoint, specifying that we should be considering only first person or third person limited (third person, single viewpoint). She specifically said not to use third person omniscient. I’ll compromise, and use third person limited rotating. Which is what I’d planned to use all along, before she spoke about voice last night. As for third person omniscient … I don’t see why people shouldn’t be allowed to try it. It worked well enough for Tolkien and Hemmingway, after all.
We’ve also been given a formula to follow in our writing. Notice there are an awful lot of “musts” on this list:
 We must start with a “day that is different from all other days”
 The Protagonist must be faced in the opening scene with a situation that will change his/her life
 The Protagonist’s self-concept must be threatened in this scene
 Here’s the kicker: The Protagonist must make a wrong decision regarding the situation in the opening scene, and then proceed to make a series of subsequent wrong decisions. “Every time he makes a move to correct things, he chooses wrong” is how Teacher put it.
Wa-huh? I thought that’s how television sit-coms were written. I’m supposed to write a serious novel where the protagonist is a loser? I have elected to ignore this particular piece of advice. After due consideration, it simply doesn’t fit my concept of how to write every book. What’s she going to do? Kick me out of class?
We also did our first “journaling” last night. She gave us a topic: “What’s my goal in this course?” We were to then write for a period of time “without lifting pen from paper”. I didn’t keep track of time, but I wrote enough to fill half a sheet of 8 1/2″ X 11″ of paper with pretty dense writing. Midway through the exercise she announced that she’d been rustling the paper on her desk on purpose to try and distract us and that we shouldn’t let that happen. Well, I hadn’t even noticed her rustling paper, but her lecturing in the middle of the exercise certainly interrupted my chain of thought. I’m not entirely sure why she couldn’t wait until the end of the exercise to educate us on the power of concentration, but then again, I’m not running the course.
We were then to read our journaling aloud to the class, on a volunteer basis. Of the twelve of us, only I and one other person in the class declined to do so. We then got a lecture about “writing shyness” and how we’d need to harness that sensitivity to improve our writing. I’m not sure that “writing shyness” had much to do with my failure to read aloud. I just didn’t want any amateur Freudians trying to analyze my work.
I’m not a big fan of free-association journaling; while I know it helps some people with writing blocks I find that more often than not I’m writing in circles when I try it. I’ve found that free-associating while feeding paper into a paper shredder works well for me though.