I'm working on the last complete McKenna book that I actually wrote in longhand a couple of years ago. At the time, I was keeping in mind the cardinal rule of writing...don't describe what is happening; show it. At the time, I was doing just that in this particular book, and I was thinking to myself: "This is so great; this is one of the best; I'm writing better than I ever have."
Now, I am reading back over this "show me" work, about which I had so congratulated myself. I had been concise and to the point. I had culled down the description of characters feelings, any insights into their motives, cut down the flashbacks, turned up the action and just "let the reader experience it". It had seemed so....good.
But. There it is..the big But. But I realized something interesting. In reading it over, it was pushing me along too fast. It had lots of fast things happening, but it was hard to follow. It felt disjointed. I read it and really didn't know how I felt, let alone how the characters felt. And I didn't want to read it again.
The plot, I liked. But, in thinking over books from other authors that I have loved through the years, I realized that there is something else there, in those books besides plot. Sometimes plot takes a back seat and the story just meanders. And the meander is really nice. In reading back over some of the McKenna books that I like the best, it's in the meander that the real character of the books comes out.
Not just the character of the characters....but the character of the book itself.
Does that make sense?
Now, I know that too much wandering around in a book tends to get tiring, too, like walking a maze that doubles back on itself until you realize you're not really getting anywhere. And the reader being told by the author how to think about a character, whether to like him or hate him, is very dull.
But, there is something to be said for peeping into characters' everyday lives, hearing their insights into other characters' psyches, knowing if they like cream in their coffee. There is something to be said for hearing characters remember something relevant to the events that are being experienced right then in the present book.
Maybe the word is texture.
There is, I suppose, a balance between walking the reader through the paths of a flower garden of memories and insights, and then opening up the gate to the pasture and letting the reader face the bull standing there, for himself. You have to have the garden to appreciate the bull. Or you need the bull to make the garden bloom.
I prefer to think, you need to walk through the garden, to be able to fully appreciate the bull. And, with every writer, you have to write for yourself before you can hope to find who you really are as a writer.
Before you show the story to the reader, you have to show the reader who you are, yourself. That's the tricky part.
So, what to do about this book? This book that had seemed so clever and worldly-good at the time I wrote it? I guess I'll go on and do what I had somehow felt I should have done all along.
I guess I'll get to work and just....write it.