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Wynelda-Ann Deaver

The Ghost Of Reviews Past

I’m not going to be using a specific book this month but will be relying on the ghost of reviews past. Instead of reviewing a book, I want to talk a bit about form and function in writing. It is a topic I’ve seen crop up several times lately in WVU, and one that I have not seen in many books about writing.

I have, however, witnessed it in the fiction and memoirs that I’ve read.

Conventional wisdom states that you must follow the rules in order to find success. But if that is the case, then why did a book that broke almost every rule (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) end up on the Pulitzer short-list? How did Ahab’s Wife, or the Star Gazer pull the reader into its story despite shifts in time, tense and perspective?

I can’t speak for the authors who wrote the books I mentioned above, I can only give you my opinion as to how they seamlessly accomplished experimental forms. They may have outlined, perhaps wrote two or three versions of the same story. However they accomplished it, the finished version of the stories flowed easily and organic.

So how do we accomplish the same thing? The same way we get to Carnegie Hall:

Practice, practice, practice.

Is it better to write 10,000 words that you have to throw out because they don’t work, or is it better to not try at all? (Before you get twitchy with me, yes, I have thrown out whole chunks of novels that didn’t work.) Trying something that doesn’t work does not make a failure. It simply narrows the field.

So how do you know when a form, especially an experimental one or one that breaks the rules, is working? There is the gut feeling, the one that pumps your blood every time you fire up the computer. If it’s there, then you know that something is working. And there is also reader response. Do your readers say that they are confused? That the text lost them? Or do they say, “I loved this but noticed that you broke this rule…” As writers giving feedback, WVU group members often will comment on things like this. If you are posting an experimental form, make sure to state it before posting, and ask the group if it works on the whole. And if they still point it out? My study group in WVU has a great caveat on all of our feedback: Take what you can use, feel free to toss the rest.

Just remember that it is, finally, your story to tell. It is up to you to choose the form, whether you care to fracture a time line or have the muse speak directly to the author. Whether the form is a failure or a success, you still need to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and write it.