storytelling

What makes a first paragraph feel "right" to you?

Now, this is one of those questions I'd like to be able to answer, but probably whatever I say will sound vague and touchy feely. But I'll give it a shot. ...Nope. Can't say much beyond the obvious: as I read the paragraph to myself (not aloud, in my head) the rhythm of it either works, or it doesn't. The images and associations evoked are enough, or they aren't. It's a wholly subjective process, based on years of experience and experimentation, and dependent on a hundred very subtle cues that I couldn't articulate for any money.

This isn't exclusive to writing. Anybody who paints, or sculpts or does anything creative from cooking to dress design goes through the same process; you feel your way there, and you know if you've lost your way, or overshot. You know when you get there. Sometimes you come to the conclusion that you just can't get there from where you are.

Often you have to walk away from the work in process because you've lost perspective. Some writers will tell you to take a finished story or novel and put it in a drawer for six months before going over it one last time. This isn't bad advice, if you can spare the time. Time, distance, perspective are important because -- this does need to be said -- sometimes your instincts will lie to you. You'll convince yourself that opening paragraph is as good as it's going to get because please dog you can't look at it one more time. And clearly what feels right to one person may read like dreck to another.

See? subjective.

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At the beginning of every month I check the stats for the webserver where all these pages live, just to see how things are going. For the month of March there were (on average) 435 unique visits a day (this is different, as I understand it, from 'hits' which averaged about 4,300 a day).

One of the more interesting sections on the stats page lists the top 100 referrers. This is a listing of websites where a person found the link to my pages, and clicked it. Most of these referrers are search engines. Somebody plugs in Sara Donati, gets a list of matches, and clicks on the url for this blog. Nothing confusing so far.

But. In those top 100 referrers there are some websites which make no sense to me. Imagine my horror when I found that seventeen hapless people had found their way to my webpages by way of http://www.nudecelebblogs.com/. As far as I can see (because, of course, I had to go have a look) there is no link to me here, nor has there ever been. Which of course is (1) no surprise (I'm not a candidate for this particular site, being neither a) a celebrity; nor b) nude while I blog; nor c) in the habit of blogging about nudity); and (2) a huge relief -- but does nothing to clear up the mystery. And for another wrinkle: seven people landed here by way of http://paris-hilton-video.blogspot.com, which is just plain nuts. There are a scattering of other odd referrers, a nude Brittany Spears, and a collection of amateur, really awfully bad, xxx pix. I don't spend time on these sites, I haven't contributed anything to them, and I'm just generally scratching my head here, when, of course, I have much better things to do. So I'll go and do them, now.

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Working down the list of questions from Chris:

What do you mean by "One step at a time", that you have to remind yourself about?

When I sit down to write, I try to stay focused on the task immediately in front of me. Just now, for example, I'm looking at a house through Jennet's eyes. She's seeing it for the first time. She's very anxious, and with good cause.

All I have to do just now is to get her from this boat onto the dock and up the path to the house while she's observing. If I can stay focused on that, I have a chance of making some progress. If I let my mind jump ahead: who are these people on the porch, and what is that older woman thinking, the one with the really sour look, and is that who I think it is? And if it is her, putting her pushy self on that porch when I had no intention of dealing with her for another twenty pages or so, what does that mean? Have I underestimated her and has she already outthought Jennet and everybody else, including me? And how in the heck do you get the best of somebody like that, with every advantage in this strange place where they are more than strangers, they are suspect strangers in a city on the brink of warfare.

See? It's best if I take one step at a time. If I can do that, and get Jennet up onto that porch, then next I'll cope with what Jennet says to that old woman and what the old woman is thinking, if she lets me inside her head, which, I fear, she won't. Whatever it is they say to each other, that will tell me where we're going next, and then I handle that one step at a time.

Other writers have addressed the importance of focusing on small bits rather than freaking out about the larger, incomprehensible whole. Lamott calls it 'the one inch frame' but I think of it as more of an actual movement, a dynamic process.

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