Dear Erin,
Well, it looks as though we’re both dealing with flailure when it comes to revisions this month. While I made great statements of being finished the last time I wrote… it turns out I may have been fibbing a bit. “Done” is such a useless word when it comes to writing.
It’s true I haven’t been able to truly sit down and write since I last “finished.” After all, June arrived, and as such, I’ve spent my days running about at the bidding of my children. But despite this, there’s been a wiggling in the back of my brain about a missing line in my story, and I regret to inform you that the wiggling is a truth-teller. You see, I have skimped on the romance portion of my book. (As usual.) Which means, I am going to have to “go back” and “put in a few scenes.” (Doesn’t that sound easy!) I am also - apparently - going to need to slow down my ending and actually let my reader experience what is happening. Why the reader should expect to enjoy the ending after making it through all the other 28,000 words in verse is beyond me…
Oh, the pain.
Still, rather than get to that “easy scene writing” this morning, I have been thinking about obituaries. Because I just love obituaries.
Now, before you accuse me of being downright morbid, let me make it clear that the part I love about obituaries is the living part of them. That is to say: I love the parts that tell about the living person and all they did and accomplished. (I’m not that interested in the dying, although I guess that can be cool too.)
My favorite obituaries of all are those published by The Economist, as they choose the most interesting people you’ve never heard of and then tell the most unexpected details about them. I shall include a link here of last week’s obituary, though I am not sure how many “free” reads the Economist gives away each month or whether you will be able to read it. May the force be with you (even though that happened last week).
If you should manage to get through the pay wall and read the obituary, you will learn about a piano tuner for Steinway and the amazing work he did to prepare pianos for the greatest of piano concerts. One small detail will include his own flirtation with the possibility of being a violin master, and a subsequent injury that brought his music journey to the world of tuning. One man’s life brought down to small details, and how those details make me ponder.
Which all goes to say that details matter. I guess that’s the point. Details are what make a person (or character… or romance… or ending…) interesting to us. Details are what makes one story different from another.
Recently I was reading a plethora of first chapters for a contest I was helping out with and - over and over again - the feedback that felt the most useful was to speak to the writer about the idea of Specificity.
“This is a great scene,” I’d say, “but make it your own! Why is this character different from any other other written? And why is this character the only character that can be in this specific book?”
The word Specificity became an obsession for me after a lecture I listened to given by Maggie Stiefvater. Also, after reading Pride, a Pride and Prejudice retelling written by Ibi Zoboi, and made her own primarily through specificity and a deep dive into the pertinent (and specific!) details of her characters’ lives.
More and more, as I read books I love, I find out I love them because they’re specific… because they know the kinds of things about their characters that you would find out about in their obituaries. Not details like their eye color or their favorite car, but details that tell you the reason they love cars. How the only time their older brother really talked to them was when they went for a drive in the early morning. How sitting in a car, with the windows down, bring their brother back.
I’ve spent a lot of time glossing over details in my reading life, which has given me the pitiful habit of glossing over them as a writer, but I’m thinking it was because they were the wrong details entirely.
So maybe, when I’ve thinking about those love scenes and endings - which it turns out I’m going to have to write - I need to think how the obituary writers at The Economist would tell them. What’s the odd angle they’d find? Where are the details they would ferret out? And how would they let me know what mattered by telling me about a man, in a lonely room, with a tuning fork, for hours on end?
I promise I’ll get to it, eventually,
after I drive my kid to the next thing on the list.
In the meantime, I have never attended a high school reunion, and I applaud you. I am thinking that your missive was in many ways an obituary for your old school, which makes sense, since it was, in fact, buried alive behind that wall. I am still wrapping my head around the idea that you attended the same high school you ended up teaching at, and I am sure this is the kind of detail that should eventually be included in your obituary. Make a note of it, Erin. These are the things that matter, after all.
Jamie