The Wonder of Worlds Within Words

When I was much younger and beginning my studies as a graduate student in the newly designed MFA Writing for Children program at Vermont College, I was assigned to participate in a workshop led by two writers whose names weren’t widely known outside the field of children’s literature at the time.

One of the writers was a skinny, gruff guy with a Boston accent, broad shoulders, pitch black hair, and an intimidating stare, a young man by the name of Chris Lynch, whose more than thirty books since then, including Iceman, Slot Machine, Whitechurch, Gold Dust, Freewill, Inexcusable, and The Big Game of Everything, have been named ALA Best Books For Young Adults and have received many awards.

The other writer, a soft-spoken young woman with a gentle smile and a voice that sounded like velvet, was Jacqueline Woodson, who was named earlier this year as the United States' National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and who this week received word that she had won the Astrid Lindgren Prize, the world’s largest award for children’s literature, for her work of more than thirty books, including I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This, The House You Pass on the Way, If You Come Softly, and Brown Girl Dreaming.

Even then, long before these two writers had established their reputations, it was an intimidating workshop.

There was another writer, though, who helped lead that workshop long ago. She was a graduate assistant who offered insights into our manuscripts with a Southern drawl that I later learned was more of an Oklahoma-Texas twang, and who spoke about the writing process with the self-assuredness of a poet and with the sensitivity and kindness of a writer who understood our disappointment and pain when we were told our stories needed more work as if it were her own. 

Her name was Sharon Darrow, and she went on to become an esteemed member of the Vermont College faculty, teaching at her alma mater for more than twenty years, as well as publishing her own award-winning work for children--Old Thunder and Miss Rainey, The Painters of Lexieville, Trash, Yafi’s Family, and Through the Tempests Dark and Wild.

Memories of that workshop flooded back recently as I opened Sharon’s newest book, Worlds Within Words, a hefty collection of her thoughts on writing and on the writing life that she's shared with her students and other writers over the course of her career. 

What she’s learned over a lifetime about writing and teaching the craft of writing might be summed up in three words: Trust the process.

Again and again, in various chapters devoted to the writing life and to the craft of writing, as well as to the art of teaching writing, she suggests that trusting this process, which is filled with mystery and setbacks, obstacles, frustration, and despair, is the only way a writer can go forward into the dark, leap off a cliff, set foot into an unknown forest, or swim into unchartered waters.

Trust in your ability, she seems to whisper with assurance, and you will find a way where no way existed before you picked up your pen to write.

But don’t listen to me summarize her work. Here are a few samples from the book:

On first drafts:

“Allowing the reader to share in the character’s thoughts and responses as the scenes unfold, allowing more of the character’s emotional core to show through is difficult, and can’t usually be expected to come to the fore with power on the first draft. In first drafts you find the characters, setting, events, and begin to watch the scenes unfold. In subsequent drafts, do not settle for what you noticed first, but continue to discover the hidden moments in the folds and layers of your story.” 

 “In the first bursts of inspiration, a writer is struggling to tell herself the story. In revision, she is striving to show the story to the reader.” (p. 105)

 On beginnings:

“The first step in the presentation of a story is the setup, and in that setup, the spotlight shines upon the first sentence. It signals what kind of story we can expect, it gives us the first sound of the voice of the story, and, for some readers, may determine whether they keep reading or put the book down and go make a cheese sandwich.” (p. 137)

 On revision:

“The first draft is a way to tell yourself the story. The succeeding revisions will be your increasingly successful efforts to show the story to the reader. That’s why revision is such an important and necessary part of the process of discovering your real story. You don’t always find it in first draft, but in revisiting the moments one after the other and finding more than you could possibly have seen at first glance, just like entering a room day after day and viewing it from many angles each succeeding day. You will gradually discover the most minute and elusive details. Then (and only then) will you absolutely know which details are the most important ones for the story. In the same way, you won’t really know the whole story until the details have unfolded through revision and re-vision.” (p. 80)

 On finding our way:

“The contradictions and uncertainties we learners see coming toward us all the time seem to be detriments; they seem to be roadblocks, but really they are the road…We persist with courage and discover our way as we go. 

 “We walk into the dark and find the light, tread upon the rough ways and find a road. We learn by doing. We are here to give it our all, to teach, to learn, to read, to write, to grow, to become what is possible.” (p. 169)

As I turned the pages in Sharon’s book, I could hear her gentle voice, filled with the same compassion and encouragement that I remember hearing more than twenty years ago, whispering in my ear “You can do this!”

She’s the kind of teacher every writer needs to hear when facing a challenging part of a story or when coming up against a blank page. She trusts in the creative process—its beauty and mystery and, ultimately, its ability to enable us to grow and expand as writers and as human beings.

Her book is packed with lots of helpful advice, some of it, I’m sure, gleaned and stored in her heart from that remarkable workshop of ours with Jackie and Chris so many years ago.

But mostly it’s the sound of her gentle voice on each page that inspires us to keep going, to keep putting words on paper, to keep having faith in the process, and, most importantly, to trust our ability to write our story.

For more information about Sharon Darrow, visit her website: http://www.sharondarrow.com/

And to check out her book, Worlds Within Words, visit: https://www.amazon.com/Worlds-Within-Words-Writing-Life/dp/0998687804

Creating Tension

Fans of Printz Honor Award winner and National Book Award finalist Chris Lynch (Kill Switch, Freewill, Inexcusable, Pieces, Angry Young Man, Gold Dust, and Iceman), will be happy to hear he's writing a new middle-grade, historical fiction series that’s loaded with tension.

Set in Vietnam, the series tells the individual stories of four guys—Morris, Rudi, Ivan, and Beck—who swear they are best friends for life. When Rudi receives his draft notice, his buddies vow to stay together and sign up to serve, too, each in a different branch of the US military.

In Vietnam: I Pledge Allegiance, the first book of the series, Morris signs up with the US Navy—the best place, he thinks, to watch over his friends—and initially is stationed on the USS Boston off the coast of Vietnam, providing support for his buddies and the troops on the ground.

But then, with the tension already high after attacks on his ship, Morris finds himself reassigned: 

For only the second time in about a hundred years, the US Navy has divided itself in two. My life on the USS Boston, floating off the coast and on the ocean, was part of the Blue Water Navy. What a lot of people would call the easy war. 

From now on, that won’t be the case at all. I am now part of the Brown Water Navy, where life is a whole lot more complicated. 

What do you notice about these two paragraphs? How does Lynch suggest danger? How does he raise the stakes of the story?

Now here’s Lynch building tension as his main character settles into his new home: 

There is a lot of jungle in Vietnam. There is a lot of jungle. And it is cut up, north-south, east-west, and every possible combination of all that, with rivers. Thousands of miles of rivers. If you are going to move effectively around here, if you are going to find the enemy, engage the enemy, deliver troops, equip them, move them from place to place, and above all cover them with the Navy’s special brand of protection, you are simply going to have to use a good bit of boat power to do it.

And where that jungle and those waterways come right up close and personal to each other? Well, that is about the most dangerous place on planet Earth.

Welcome to my new home. Welcome to the Mekong Delta. 

Again, notice the tactics that Lynch employs to build the tension. Not just jungle but a lot of jungle. And thousands of miles of rivers, size clearly indicating more opportunities for danger to strike.

It’s not just a question of finding the enemy, is it? No, it’s a question of finding the enemy, engaging the enemy, delivering troops with equipment, moving everyone and everything from place to place, with the implication that each task exposes US forces to greater risk, and at the end of the long list of necessary actions will be a fight. The Navy’s job in such a situation will be to protect the fighters. And the outcome of all these preparations? Lynch has planted a seed in the reader's mind: expect trouble.

Here Lynch continues to raise the stakes, building a heightened sense of tension: 

We’re cruising south down the Mekong, returning from dropping a load of Army troops off about halfway to the Cambodian border. Cruising back down should be the simple part, but nothing is simple in this brown water. We can go days without seeing anything hostile on the banks, but that by no means indicates that hostility isn’t hiding in there. Facing the Vietcong sprinkled throughout the heavy foliage of the southern riverways or in the hills beyond is a much more dicey and uncertain thing than taking on the regular army of the North. 

Ping!

It starts with just one shot bouncing off of plate metal. Then two and three and six, like popcorn starting up. 

Notice how Lynch builds toward danger, lulling the reader into a false sense of security with the opening sentence (“cruising”), but note the hint of danger (“nothing is simple in this brown water.”). Onward Lynch leads the reader into uncertainty until the moment when Morris hears—and the reader hears it at the same time—the first sound of trouble: Ping!

And then the trouble is defined. It starts with just one shot. Then it multiplies: two and three and six, like popcorn starting up.

And then, after building to the climax, Lynch takes his reader down the other side and offers this, the aftermath: 

There’s one last, loud salvo from shore, then Everett throws an arm around my neck as the captain powers up the monitor to head upstream. The air is filled with sulfur, smoke, and sunset. Everything around us is burning.

The brown water is like gravy, bubbling in our wake. To make us more nimble on shallow water, we have light, crisp armor plating and jets instead of propellers pushing us on.

My heart has never pounded like this. I take a moment to watch all thirty-two inches of my sweaty chest puff crazy like a hummingbird. Then I look back out at the water, the banks, the low sky ceiling. There is something beautiful there, in the smoking murky scene we’re fleeing.

“Wow,” I say to Everett. “Who did we shoot?”

“Who knows?” He laughs weakly. “We got ‘em all, though, whoever they were.”

There’s something wrong. I look down at where Everett’s arm is draped over and down my chest. There’s blood. His blood. 

Again Lynch lures his reader into the scene with a false sense of security—the "last" salvo—and the afterglow tension of the battle (even going so far as to note a kind of beauty in the battle’s aftermath) before pushing the pedal to the metal again and increasing the tension: “There’s something wrong.”

What could be wrong? 

There’s blood. His blood.

And you can bet there's more tension to come.

If you want to learn how to create tension in your work, read the books that make up Lynch’s newest series set in Vietnam: http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&keywords=Vietnam&page=1&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3AVietnam%2Cp_lbr_one_browse-bin%3AChris%20Lynch

And for more information on how to create tension in your work, visit:

http://suite101.com/article/how-to-build-tension-in-fiction-a83387

http://lesedgertononwriting.blogspot.com/2010/06/creating-tension.html

http://andreajwenger.com/2011/07/08/five-key-elements-to-creating-tension-in-fiction/

http://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-goal/beat-writers-block/how-to-build-tension-to-heighten-the-stakes

http://trinaallen.wordpress.com/tag/building-tension/

One Writer’s Process: Chris Lynch

If you want to write, says Chris Lynch, the Printz Honor Award-winning author of several highly acclaimed young adult novels, you have to learn to be a watcher rather than watched, and you need to welcome silence rather than chattering away all day.

This advice is in keeping with his motto for life: “Shut up and write.”

Since setting out to become a writer, Lynch has diligently followed his own advice, producing such award-winning titles as Inexcusable, a National Book Award finalist and the recipient of six starred reviews, and Angry Young Man, as well as Freewill, Gold Dust, Iceman, Gypsy Davy, and Shadowboxer (all ALA Best Books for Young Adults).

He has spent his professional life as a writer, he admits, “ doing what I had spent my entire prior life fighting: I’m giving it up. I’m showing you, the reader, mine, and at the same time I believe you are showing me yours. If we’re in the book together, we are showing each other.”

Lynch holds nothing back as he explore his characters’ bruises and soft spots, their scariest thoughts, funniest jokes, and most perverse desires. And it’s this style of writing that draws him such praise from reviewers and fans.

“I believe the system I dys- functioned within is very much a part of many teenagers’ lives,” Lynch says. “My goal is to do my part to dis- mantle this system by exposing it.”

Lynch, who grew up in Boston, now lives in Scotland. He used to work at home when his children were younger, but leaves the house to work now. “I have started writing in the library of the Scottish Agricultural College, and the change of atmosphere has helped. I've been acting more like I have a regular 9-5 (ish) job that I go to in the morning and leave in the evening, with a trip to the gym in the middle. This has become something of a structure for me, though it's still evolving.”

Without his laptop, he says, his writing life would be entirely different. “It would be almost impossible to imagine a laptop-free existence at this point. My professional life is a testament to the progress of writing equipment, from pen to typewriter to clunky desktop to this practically self-sufficient machine I'm working on now.”

Lynch says he’d feel inept if he had to make a living in any of the old ways again. “It has gotten so serious,” he admits, “that, while I would love to do some writing in longhand again, I cannot do it. Every time I try now, it's a disaster because I have no respect for my handwriting. It's like the sound of my voice on recordings --- I find it hideous, and cannot work with it.”

Currently, Lynch is working on a four-book middle grade series for Scholastic on the Vietnam War. (The first two books are out--Vietnam #1-I Pledge Allegiance; Vietnam #2-Sharpshooter--and Vietnam #3-Free-Fire Zone will be out in the Fall, with Vietnam #4-Casualties of War closing things out next Spring.) His most recent YA novel, Kill Switch, has just come out with Simon & Schuster.

When he’s not writing, Lynch teaches in the low-residency MFA creative writing program at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, just across the river from his boyhood haunts, and mentors aspiring writers. He was kind enough to take a few minutes from his works-in-progress to share some thoughts on writing with wordswimmer.

Wordswimmer: If writing is like swimming…how do you get into the water each day?

Lynch: First thing, I studiously try to avoid all the other marine life. This is of course a lot easier for me at this point in my life than when my house was busier, but it still takes some maneuvering some days. The thing is, I want to get started swimming in my own head right from the get-go, and even the most routine interactions with other people pull me away from that. It can mean getting up really early and taking the dog for a long walk until I know I have a quiet house to come back to. It can mean hanging in bed until the coast is clear (which is harder than it sounds). But starting with no human contact can often mean the difference between a mighty focus and some maddeningly diffused morning hours.

Wordswimmer: What keeps you afloat...for short work? For longer work?

Lynch: I love the rhythm of a short story schedule and it almost always means three days for me. Ramp up, full stride, pull it all together. I don't plan it that way, but I sort of expect it, and this pacing really helps me focus. To put it back into a swimming-related context I suppose it's like the pacing triathletes appreciate. Only way, way, way less brutal.

For novels, I can be thrashing away unproductively for a whole day, then hit on something that I know is good and right and it fits and while it doesn't amount to a lot of words it gives me a kick. Then when I get away from the keyboard for the day I wind up getting a stream of ideas over the next few hours at the gym or out walking or whatever I'm at. Those ideas become notes, which bridge to tomorrow's writing, which slingshots me into the next section of the work. Those slingshot moments are the ones that sustain long-form writing for me.

Wordswimmer: How do you keep swimming through dry spells?

Lynch: Dry spells simply require you to keep hammering away. There are so many times when I feel like I don't need to be at the desk because stuff is percolating, and sometimes that's true and sometimes that's a ruse I pull on myself. During those times I have to sit down and write through the deadly dull dry bits until I hit that thing which does not happen unless I am typing. Trying to write a thing leads me to the moments that I need to really WRITE in order to progress. Writing leads to writing in a way nothing else can. Then, see answer #2. (I also recognize that there are times one needs to get away, but here I am just addressing something specific.)

Wordswimmer: What's the hardest part of swimming?

Lynch: The hardest part of swimming is the ever-whispering voice in the conch shell that suggests you can't really swim at all. Or that you are going to suddenly forget how.

Wordswimmer: How do you overcome obstacles, problems, when swimming alone?

Lynch: You overcome the obstacles by acknowledging that ultimately you are always swimming alone. The mind is a pretty resourceful thing when it has to rely only on itself.

Wordswimmer: What's the part of swimming that you love the most?

Lynch: The part I love the most is when I hit it--a phrase, sentence, paragraph, a characterization, chapter, whatnot--and I know, my subconscious editor knows, instantly, that I got it right, achieved the elusive it. And whatever happens to the piece from there, wherever it goes, almost doesn't matter because I just got the thing, the thing of all things, that makes writing so special, so singular for every last one of us who does this at any level, in any form. And yeah, just like first mastering that other form of swimming, at that moment little me is inside, splashing madly and shouting, "Look at me! Watch me, watch me!" 

For more information about Lynch and his work, visit:

http://www.goodreads.com/interviews/show/377.Chris_Lynch

http://www.harperteen.com/author/authorExtra.aspx?authorID=12419&displayType=interview

http://www.thepageturn.com/2010/12/books/chris-lynch-talks-about-hothouse/

http://www.teenreads.com/authors/chris-lynch/news/interview-100908 

http://www.bama.ua.edu/~jstallwo/yal/Articles/YA%20Authors%20Insights.pdf

Taking Risks

Two writers--Jack O'Rourke and J. Irvin Kuns--were kind enough to share their thoughts on risk-taking in response to my comments about taking risks in our work and not backing away from fear. (See "Diving Off the Edge," Nov. 13, 2005.)

Jack O’Rourke started the conversation:

"Chris Lynch ... takes a lot of risks in some of his work. Freewill comes to mind. Also a very early one, Gypsy Davy. Even a less literary one, Extreme Elvin, takes chances. For the joy of reading, Gold Dust scores high, even if less risky."

His comment--about a work that he felt required less risk--prompted J. Irvin Kuns to respond:

"I would like to address ... the element of risk involved in a book like Freewill vs. a book like Gold Dust, both written by Chris Lynch. I disagree with Jack’s implication that Gold Dust is less risky than Freewill mostly because I know a little bit about the impetus behind each of these books.

"Freewill came about in part as a result of the Columbine shootings and the placement of crosses for each of the victims, including the shooters. Gold Dust was written after Lynch ran into a former baseball teammate, the encounter forcing him to re-examine some rather uncomfortable childhood memories.

"To me, writing about the events surrounding something personal, especially one I’d rather not revisit, takes as much if not more courage than writing a book about an event that was somewhat more removed. But I also know that it was risky for Lynch to 'go there' with Will in the writing of Freewill and to live with him in his depressed state for the duration of the writing of the book.

"I haven’t had that much experience in novel writing, but I do know that each book I write changes me somehow. In light of that, I think it would be very scary indeed to write a book like Freewill. As a writer I think I would fear that I might never recover.

"So, I had been thinking a lot about Jack’s comments and finding myself unable to articulate exactly what was bothering me about them when I had the good fortune of meeting up with Chris Lynch at the recent NCTE convention. He was there to discuss his most recent young adult novel, Inexcusable, another very risky book as well as a National Book Award Finalist, no less.

"I asked him then which book, Freewill or Gold Dust, he thought was riskier. He immediately asked, 'For the reader or the writer?' My knee-jerk response was 'for the writer,' but after I thought about it, I realized that this was the distinction that was bothering me about Jack’s comment.

"Freewill may seem riskier for the reader, partly because it is written in second person and immerses the reader, from beginning to end, in Will’s depression. Gold Dust, on the other hand, might be easier on the reader, but I’m sure felt every bit as risky for the writer as did Freewill or any other book, for that matter."

For O'Rourke, though, the notion of risk is inherent in the choices an author makes in telling the story, such as those Lynch made to tell the story of Will in the rather unorthodox second-person point of view:

"I still have to say that Freewill is the riskier, both for the reader and the writer.

"For the writer there's the rarity and difficulty of writing in second-person point-of-view and keeping the reader engaged, demanding the reader interact with Will all the way through his depression, risking losing the reader who doesn't want to have Will lean on him/her all that terrible distance. It's my own salute to Lynch that he succeeded with me, but it was hard.

"Gold Dust, though, was an engrossing, spell-casting story all the way. There is rarely a character portrayed as fanatical about baseball and as likeable as Richard. Lynch's words propel this character through life in his Boston Ward with all the ease of last Olympic's gold medal girl who took her sledboard through all those pipes, half-pipes, and full flights with total confidence. I don't even like baseball, but I enjoyed Richard.

"Sure, Richard (white) has to face down racist talk/attitude from some locals about his friendship with Napoleon (West Indies black), and about Napoleon's friendship with the redhead, but I don't think that's taking very much risk with the reader today. I can't imagine anyone except maybe dispensable, non-reading Fifties retrogrades having problems today with such issues and how Richard navigates the situations.

"It wasn't delivered in the form of 'messages' either, it flowed smoothly with the story. Maybe I'm being too casual about the literary risk (not the story interest) of this conflict theme today, but I hope not. Kudos to Lynch."

But for Kuns the risk involves something different, not so much the stylistic risks that Lynch took but his willingness to risk exploring his feelings about a difficult, not entirely positive experience that he had in his life.

Here's what Lynch has written about the genesis of Gold Dust. (His comments appear in a HarperCollins flyer that Kuns shared with us.)

"The idea for Gold Dust came to me very slowly. In fact, it gestated in the back of my brain for 25 years. There are just some things, I think, that we bury among the trillions of small, important, and routine events of adolescence. And sometimes we bury them for significant reasons.

"The story here, and the character Napoleon, were based on my friendship with a guy named Michael Gray, who did in fact move to Boston from Dominica when we were about twelve. This was in the 70's. I was a catcher, and he was a pitcher who threw so hard I had to pack an extra inch of material inside my glove to protect my hand from the swelling. He'd learned the game by looking up the rules in a book the night before sign-up for the Regan Youth League. He joined because so many of us were doing it.

"That was the good stuff. The bad stuff, almost all of it, I had blocked out for years.

"In the 90's, Michael turned up in my life again, this time as the manager of my bank. One day during one or our banking conversations, Michael brought up the past. Didn't I remember? he wanted to know. Didn't I realize? He was talking about the one time the two of us got in a bit of a scrap. It hadn't come to much, but was unpleasant enough to attract the attention of all our mutual friends and admirers.

"Only the friends and admirers turned out to be not all that mutual. Not for him, anyway. Didn't I realize? he wanted to know two decades later. Didn't I notice?

"Michael turned into the invisible man after that fight. He was placed outside a glass wall. Inside the wall was almost everybody in my class, and me too. And there he was, the outsider. Totally ignored. Didn't exist.

"And I think I was the one who started it.

"After that, I started remembering. And I remembered that I remembered a lot more than I wanted to. And so, as a writer, I knew I had to go back. And that's Gold Dust."

Many thanks to Kuns and O'Rourke for pondering the nature of risk-taking as writers (and readers), and to Lynch, of course, for having the courage to "go back" and develop a seed of memory into a powerful work of fiction.

Have other Wordswimmers read or written stories that they feel take similar risks?

How would you define risk... for the writer? And how would the definition change, if at all... for the reader?

Do you think books that take risks are more significant than those that avoid risks? Why? (Or why not?)

Let Wordswimmer know when you get a chance.

Going Deep

"If I'm writing, and I'm writing realistic fiction, I have to come up with the goods. Otherwise, what am I doing? So I have made a commitment, in my work, that when I write I'm going to write as hard and as tough and as raw as I can about real emotions. My emotions included."

That's award-winning author Chris Lynch describing his writing process in an essay that he wrote for The ALAN Review (a publication of the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the National Council of Teachers of English).

"I'm showing you, the reader, mine," Lynch writes, "and at the same time I believe you are showing me yours. Your bruises, your scary thoughts, your best jokes, your perversions. If we're in the book together, we are showing each other."

You have only to take a closer look at Lynch's work--Shadow Boxer, Iceman, Free Will, Who the Man, and the recent NBA-finalist Inexcusable-- to know that he comes up with the goods every time.

In Lynch's Gold Dust, for instance, a remarkable story about friendship that crosses racial lines, he explores the difficult and complex emotions on both sides of the color-line.

The story begins when two boys--Napoleon Charlie Ellis from Dominica and Richard Riley Moncrief from Boston--meet in the racially charged hub-of-the-universe in the 1970s.

At first, Richard is a bit perplexed by this blossoming friendship between himself and Napoleon:

Did I ask for this? Was I looking for this? Did I go following anybody into the bathroom to spark up a friendship? No, I did not. I was minding my own business, doing just fine, marking off days on the calendar until baseball season started. Next thing I know I'm chasing a guy out of the bathroom to patch things up. Makes no sense. If I ran things, nobody would have names. We would just have batting averages. Then there would be no misunderstandings.

That's Lynch coming up with the goods, going deep into the psyche and heart of his character, and touching that place where the character's emotions are percolating, way beneath the surface, and giving them to us, the reader. Nothing censored. Nothing held back.

It's Richard's obsessive love of baseball that keeps him from seeing anything wrong with his city, his school, his friends.

But once Napoleon arrives, Richard begins to see cracks in his perfect egg-shell world--racial slurs, taunts, threats. Eventually, everything comes down to black-white because that's the real world, Napoleon's world, not Richard's egg-shell world.

Napoleon understands in ways that Richard must come to learn that not seeing racism is as much a problem as racism itself.

And that becomes the challenge for Richard. Can he step outside himself, outside his love for baseball, and see the world from another person's point-of-view?

Richard only wants life to be as clean and pure as the game of baseball. Once he steps onto the field, he knows the rules--strikes and balls, fair and foul--with utter clarity.

In life, however, he begins to see that being black is against the rules in certain parts of his city. This knowledge insinuates itself bit by bit into his consciousness. And, though he struggles against this idea because it soils his egg-shell view of the world, ultimately he comes to accept it:

"How stupid are you, Richard, may I ask?"
My first response was--I could feel it even if I couldn't see it--to go all red in the face. My second was to walk faster and try to leave Napoleon behind.
"No, no, listen to me," he said, staying with me.
"No. I don't want to listen to you. I don't want to listen to that, all right? You know, Napoleon, everything doesn't have to do with that, does it? You're always talking about the same thing, no matter what anybody else is talking about."
"What?" he said, and he laughed when he said it. But he didn't think it was a bit funny. "Listen to you. Always talking about that? You can't even speak it. You can't even say what that is."
"Yes I can."
"No, you cannot."
I breathed a couple of loud, exasperated, steamy whistly breaths through my nose. Then I said it. "Blackness," I said.
I knew why he was laughing now. I tried to hold my hard-guy face but it was a chore. I had heard myself, after all. I said the word in such a ridiculous stage whisper, like a three-year-old with a secret. It was the best argument I could have made for Napoleon's side of things.
"That doesn't prove anything, I said, giving up to a small laugh myself.
Anyway, I had managed to make him laugh. No small task. I didn't want to mess with that just yet.

Again and again, Lynch gives us everything, showing us his and demanding that we show him ours, diving into the deepest water to show us the real emotions of his characters. Not just what the character sees, but what the character feels.

Richard's struggle to see Napoleon's side of things reaches a climax outside Brigham's, an ice cream parlor in a supposedly neutral part of town... when they're spotted by two of their bigoted classmates.

"This is stupid," I said. "I'll go talk to him."
"Sit down, Richard," Napoleon said.
I sat.
"Please don't make too big a deal out of it, Napoleon," Beverly said. Beverly's face was making a big deal out of it, like she might cry. "He doesn't matter."
I looked outside. Jum and Butch were sitting now, in a bench at the park. Facing us. There were two more guys with them that I had never seen before. Older.
Beverly took notice too. "No, no..." her voice trailed away.
Then there were two more. And it looked as if they were all sitting on a wooden sofa, watching a TV that was the Brigham's window.
"They're just like dogs," Beverly said. "Territorial. Brainless."
"And what," I said, "they don't like other dogs in their yard? And anyway, I thought this wasn't even their yard."
"Apparently their yard is getting larger," Napoleon said.
We all stared out for a few seconds, waiting for whatever. But it was waiting for us.
"I am so sorry about this," Beverly said.
Napoleon stood up, wiped his mouth neatly at the corners with his napkin as he continued staring out across the way. Even now, he still had his manners. I thought of him and his father together in Pier 4, so graceful, so foreign, so many million miles away from here and now.
I could not ever remember actually wanting to fight anybody before. Before this moment.
"You want to go fight?" I asked.
"Don't be stupid," Beverly said to me.
Napoleon pulled his lips tight. His eyes went narrow as he looked out there, and he began lightly, rhythmically tapping the table with the meaty part of his fist.
"Yes, I want to fight," he said.
I thought Beverly was going to scream, or cry, or attack Napoleon herself.
"If you do," she said, pointing a finger at him, "if you do..." She stalled, to collect herself. "They are animals. What's your excuse?"

Lynch not only goes all the way, he keeps going deeper. He pursues the arc of a character's emotion as far as it will take him... and in that pursuit builds drama and tension.

He gives us everything he finds in his characters' hearts, bringing it back to the surface to share with us, and in the process opens his own heart to share with us, too.

By the end of the story, Richard finds himself and his world--Boston, baseball, school, friends--different. His friendship with Napoleon, his way of dealing with people, his obsession with baseball (which shielded him from the real world while offering him a way into that world)... Lynch shows us all of it without flinching away from painful or disburbing parts.

"My method for getting at what I'm trying to get at," Lynch explains, "is to write it all the way. I get as deep into the lives I write as I can, and I report what I find there whether I like it or not."

Going deep into the lives of your characters is the fiction writer's job. Like Lynch, you have to write it all the way. It's part of the contract that you make with your readers.

Equally important, it's part of the contract that you make with yourself when you enter the deep water of fiction.

To see Lynch's full essay in The ALAN Review, go to http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/fall96/f96-03-Lynch.html

For more on Lynch and his work, check out these sites:
http://www.teenreads.com/authors/au-lynch-chris.asp
http://www.bloomsbury.com/ezine/Articles/Articles.asp?ezine%5Farticle%5Fid=99
http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/0689847890.asp

P.S. - Chris Lynch was one of my teachers at Vermont College. If you think it's hard to write all the way, bringing real emotions to the page, you should try sitting in a class with Lynch, his penetrating eyes bearing down on you, asking you to explore what's at the heart of your character... and then helping you get there... in front of the class. He's as unrelenting in the classroom as he is in his books.

Diving Off The Edge

Staring down at a blank page on some mornings can feel like standing on the edge of a high-diving board afraid to leap into the unknown.

From such a height the surface of the water can look more like a sheet of steel than a shimmering liquid. Rather than dive, you want to inch backward and tell yourself it's much more prudent to climb down.

But... you can't back away from fear.

Why not?

Because taking such risks--free-falling, diving--is the essence of writing. That's the goal: to plunge into uncharted territory and explore new, forbidding landscapes.

Diving into the water... cracking through that illusion of fear...is exactly what you must do if you expect to find what's hidden beneath the surface.

But how do you step off that high-diving board into ignorance and uncertainty?

John DuFresne suggests in The Lie That Tells A Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction that failure and uncertainty are simply part of the territory that come with writing. People who invent things, says DuFresne, are always failing.

"Only a fool does not make mistakes," writes DuFresne. "You need to take chances when you write stories, and if you're afraid to fail, if you're afraid to take the wrong road in the story, then you won't ever write anything worthwhile. "

But your ability to take risks, explains DuFresne, depends on how you perceive mistakes. "James Joyce said that there are no mistakes, that an error is a doorway to discovery."

To find that doorway, it may prove helpful to begin diving from a lower height... to establish your faith in the process of diving.

To learn that the air will support you in your free-fall, and that the water will be there to welcome you when you reach the bottom.

Each time you dive, taking greater risks, you learn what it feels like to leap off the edge... and recognize the fear that accompanies risk-taking... and ultimately overcome it. The more risks in your writing that you take, the more likely you'll learn how to dive into riskier and riskier terrain.

It's important to remember that diving isn't about success or failure. It's about learning to find that doorway past fear... to let go of your fear and then let go again... and again. Each dive helps you see through the illusion of fear.

It was Chris Lynch, one of my teachers, who taught me about not shying away from fear. He came over to me one night as I was standing with a group of friends, waiting for the program of readings to begin, and said, "You're reading your story, right?"

Lynch (author of Shadow Boxer, Gold Dust, Freewill, Iceman and the 2005 National Book Award finalist, Inexcusable) looked at me with his blue-green eyes, and in that look was this message: If you back away from fear, it will devour you, and there will be nothing left of your guts or your soul with which to write the next day or the next week or the next year.

Give into fear, he was warning me, and you're done as a writer.

Not giving into fear, in other words, is one of the requirements of the job.

Another one of Lynch's students, J. Irvin Kuns, alludes to this fear in the acknowledgements section of her book, While You Were Out (Dutton, 2004), summing up the process of learning to dive in a poem by Guillaume Apollinaire:

"Come to the edge," He said.
They said, "We are afraid."
"Come to the edge," He said.
They came.
He pushed them... and they flew.

Learning to dive past the risks--to fly past our fear--is part of the writing process.

It never gets easier.

But, once you've done it... once you embrace uncertainty and trust the process of diving and plunge past your fear... you'll be surprised at the worlds that you'll discover hidden beneath the surface of the blank page.

(For more information about John DuFresne and his thoughts on writing, check out his blog at http://www.johndufresne.com/Dufresne%20Blog.htm. )