SethFleisher.com

Persons Are People

2010-06-25T17:13:15Z

After hearing my three-year-old refer to a group of kids he'd met at the park as "persons" (pron. "pawsons"), my mother reminded me that when I was roughly the same age, angered that she wouldn't give in to some random demand of mine--an army toy or a twelfth chocolate chip cookie--I declared with Hollywood-level drama, "I'm a person. And persons have feelings too."

Which got me thinking about persons and my novel. The story is told in alternating chapters from the points of view of a father and son on two different continents in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. I had been writing both narratives in close third person, as I often prefer to do with my fiction, but still hadn't found the exact voice I wanted for the son's chapters. The story is intended to be his story, and I needed to nail the voice.

On a whim, late one night last week, I went back and rewrote one of his chapters in first person, and eureka!, I hit on it. You know what I mean--when you knock right into a voice you've been searching for and you feel it resonate almost bodily?

So, I'm planning to keep writing the son's chapters in first person, at least for a while, as I think I'm onto something and it's suddenly feeling like less of a struggle with him. Certainly possible that when I get to the end of the book, I'll choose to switch his chapters back to third person, but by then, well, I'll have the book, and it will hopefully just be a matter of tinkering.

You writers out there--do you prefer to write from a certain point of view in your own fiction?

SWKTR8UPRAMP

Knee-Deep

2010-05-28T18:02:21Z

I've been remiss, and not just because of an ill-timed work trip to Rwanda. I'm knee-deep in my novel.

The novel proposal's been something of a hit. Turns out people want to see pages. Pages! Who knew that in order to sell a novel you'd have to, well, write a novel? Makes things that much more complicated.

So I've been writing. And making decent progress. With solid drafts of the first three chapters, I'm already nearing the 20k word mark, which leaves me with, let me see, only another hundred thousand words left to write. Hmmm....

So I suppose I should get to it. Happy Memorial Day y'all.

PS And on the right, my brand new bathing suit. (No photos please.)

Short Story Collection Titles Redux

2010-03-12T19:01:39Z

You may recall the quandary in which I recently found myself--with a book title that my agent thought was not sufficiently memorable, at least not without a strong cover design. Of course, you generally don't get the benefit of cover design when you're shopping a book to publishers.

So, we may ultimately go with a different title for submission purposes and use the name of the first story in the collection along with "and other stories." Easy peasy.

The new title is lovely, if I do say so myself, with a very specific mood that it conjures. Can it effectively stand for the whole book? I don't know. If we sell the book, I figure the whole titling issue likely will be reopened at that point anyway. Perhaps the original idea will ultimately stick.

To Market, To Market....

2010-02-11T21:34:29Z

My manuscripts will soon be out there in front of publishers. I get all goose-bumpy just thinking about it. Kind of like my own version of a debutante ball.

The agent-editor hobnobbing all takes place in what feels like a strange, parallel universe--in some ways, I'm glad I'm not privy to more of the details. I'd probably be getting even less sleep.

Should have an update to share sometime in the next 500 days. Please hold.

I've Proposed!

2010-02-05T19:50:42Z

No, not that way. Sheesh, I'm already married.

But I did spend the past six weeks hunkered down, drafting a 30-page narrative proposal for the historical novel I'm about to start writing. And I'm pleased to report that it's good, really good.

My agent had asked me to put the narrative proposal together to help sell my story collection, potentially as part of a two-book deal. But the whole process has turned out to be incredibly useful to me as a writer too--it's forced me to map out the entire book chapter by chapter. Plot and characterization kinks that might otherwise have bogged me down mid-way through the book have largely been worked out already. Hoping this will cut down on my writing time by about ten years.

So today I officially begin. And now that I've got my new Macbook Pro, I'm toying with the idea of using Scrivener for managing the novel. Any recommendations for or against?