Fiction Scribe

Hello once again Fiction Scribe readers. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Bird by Bird discussions. Last week we talked about “False Starts,� “Plot Treatment,� and “How Do You Know When You’re Done�. While I had expected them to go differently, I wasn’t in the least disappointed in the content. Once again, Lamott presented valuable lessons in a simple but effective way.

This week we’ll be talking about “Looking Around� and “The Moral Point of View.� Please join me in the discussion – even if you disagree. I’d be happy to hear from you.

I started this chapter slightly confused, admittedly, about what she was talking about. It took me reading a few things twice to grasp what she was trying to talk about – and that is a number of different things.

The first message is one of reverence. Writers need to look at people not so much with their own eyes, but with the detached eyes of someone who realizes everyone is struggling through their own huge piles of crap – self-made or otherwise. It is in realizing that and applying it when you look at people that you lose some of the predispositions that could get you in trouble in your writing.

“Anyone who wants to can be surprised by the beauty or pain of the natural world, of the human mind and heat, and can try to capture just that – the details, the nuance, what is. If you start to look around, you will start to see.�

Learn to get rid of your prejudices and see the world and everything in it for what it is, not for what your upbringing, beliefs, prejudices, and all else cause you to see it with colored perspective. If you can’t see your own world with wonder and awe, how do you expect to present it to anyone else and make them feel anything?

“If you find that you start a number of stories or pieces that you don’t ever bother finishing, that you lose interest or faith in them along the way, it may be that there is nothing at their center about which you care about passionately.�

Dear readers, now that is a sentence that should be quoted repeatedly. I have heard so many people say, “Yeah, I’ve started a bunch of stories, but I never really finish them.� I’ve been guilty of starting things and not finishing them as well. I realized, though, that I did not care about them.

I don’t think everyone else does, though, and that quote gets straight to the heart of the matter.

Though Lamott speaks of detachment in the previous chapter, that applies to observing – not everything to do with writing. Detaching completely leaves you with a flat story. It’s your moral center – what stands for right and wrong in your life – that gives your novel passion.

I really like how Lamott presented this because it’s passion for what you are writing that will keep you writing instead of starting story after story and never finishing. What could instill in you more passion than your view of right and wrong, good and evil?

“As Molly Ivins put it, freedom fighters don’t always win, but they are always right.�