One Writer's Process: Paul Acampora

Paul Acampora's first novel, Defining Dulcie, which earned starred reviews in Publisher's Weekly, School Library Journal, and Booklist, has been described as quirky, heart-warming, hilarious, and well-crafted. It’s all of that... and more.

My own admiration for Acampora's work began when I found his story, "No More Birds Will Die Today," in the short story collection, Every Man For Himself. It’s a story that he has described as the "runt of the litter" because it makes its appearance with stories written by winners of the kind of prestigious awards (Newbury, Michael L. Printz, Coretta Scott King, etc.) that no doubt Acampora's work will be nominated for one day.

Not only is Paul a remarkable writer, but he's a thoughtful and generous person who was kind enough to take the time to share some of his insights into the mystery of the writing process with Wordswimmer.

My writing process probably looks terribly disjointed looking from the outside in. With work, family, etc, I’m rarely able to follow the same regimen two days in a row. For that reason, I set a lot of small goals. I always try to produce 2 pages of something every day. This week I hope to spend at least 4 hours working on my current manuscript. During that time, I need to complete one new chapter and also smooth out transitions between a couple scenes that are bugging me. I think my writing process looks like the work plan of someone who is very quietly trying to build a house at night without a flashlight.

In between the times that I actually sit in a chair with a manuscript in front of me, I take a lot of notes on index cards and scraps as well as in my trusty composition book. In this way, I’m sort of writing all the time. Also, when I have time to actually focus on story writing, I don’t have to come to the page empty-headed. That said, a sense of empty-headedness is not necessarily a bad thing. From there, in a sort of beginner’s mind – which is a very easy place for me to be at this stage of my writing career – there’s freedom to do almost anything.

My favorite thing to write is dialogue. The rhythm of language – especially during the telling of a good story – tells so much about a person and about a situation. Later I go back and fill in physical details. I try to follow the “show, don’t tell rule.” For me, that means writing scenes of characters talking and acting in some interesting way. I’d much rather write scenes like those than write long passages describing thoughts and emotions. Later, I’ll string these rough scenes together in different patterns and arrangements, sort of like beads on a string. Once again, I go back later and try to build natural transitions between scenes.

I used to think that I was supposed to write stories according to a chart I recall from high school. In the correct order, I thought I should write exposition, then introduce an inciting incident, define some conflict, bring in complications and obstacles, throw in some discoveries & reversals, have a nice big epiphany/climax, ride down the slope of falling action and land inside a believable resolution and satisfying denouement. Also, I thought I was supposed to write page 1, then page 2, then page 3, etc… finally I’d type THE END in all caps. But that’s not what I do at all. Instead, I think I write all the fun stuff first and then go back and try to make it look like a story later. It’s not until the final rewrites and revisions that I want to really think hard about that chart.

I really enjoy revisions. It gives me a chance to discover what’s at the heart of things. In my early drafts, I think that all I’m really trying to do is create a certain quantity of worthwhile material so that I can get to the real, more rewarding work of rewriting, revising and reshaping things into some sensible order. While writing the first draft of Defining Dulcie, I discovered that 100 pages is about the minimum acceptable length for a YA novel. One hundred pages became my goal. (Since it takes up more room on a page than long prose, I realized that I could get to 100 pages even more quickly if I wrote a lot of dialogue. So I did that.) I actually told myself that I was not trying to write a good novel. All I wanted to do was write a very bad novel that was exactly 100 pages long. And that is exactly – and I mean exactly – what I did. When I got to the bottom of page 100, I simply put a period at the end of the last line, wrote THE END just below, and then patted myself on the back for writing my first novel. A few minutes later, I turned back to the beginning and started rewriting.

In a lot of ways, I think of stories as big balls of energy created by the relationships between
characters. Inside a story, I want to turn all that energy inward, back toward the characters and the small world defined by the story. Even the longest novel is a pretty small world compared to real life. In any case, I’m always looking to simplify things, to eliminate possibilities and choices for my characters so that all the energy they’re generating sort of propels them down an almost inevitable path. At the end of that path, I think my job is to give them some way out or maybe crush them. Typing this, I just realized that I’ve pretty much described how I figure out plot. I don’t follow a formal outline. For me, the best-ever advice about plotting comes from my editor, Nancy Mercado at Dial, who tells me to “pretend there’s a plot and just keep going.” Another friend, Leann Heywood, who worked as an editor at HarperCollins (before moving to Michigan and opening her own editorial service, Heywood Editorial) , told me once that good editors know how to fix plots but only writers can create a great character and a great voice. So I work especially hard at making lively characters with voices that are as loud and clear and true as possible.

An important part of my writing process is my reading process. I read all the time, and I read pretty voraciously. When I teach creative writing I tell students to “read like writers” and “write like readers.” To me, reading like a writer means keeping an eye on the mechanics of a story. Of course it’s almost impossible to stay focused on setting, dialogue, transitions, etc. when a story is really good. I always get carried away. For that reason, I tend to read books that I like 3 or 4 times. I listen to them on tape too. I want to see how talented people do this job. I guarantee that reading Because of Winn Dixie a dozen or more times won’t enable you to write like Kate DiCamillo, but you’ll sure be a lot better writer than you were the first time you read it.

As far as writing like a reader… reading is such a magical thing to me. In my own work, I want to have the same sensation of being “carried away” in writing that I get from reading. Like reading, I find that if I try too hard, I just won’t get into it. So I try to relax, get into the flow of things, look around a bit inside my head so I might see stuff I wouldn’t notice otherwise, and generally enjoy the ride. It doesn’t always work. Sometimes I do need to just slog forward. But if writing becomes more struggle than anything else, I’ll usually put the work aside for awhile and then go spend time with a good book.

For more information about Paul Acampora and his work, check out his website at
http://www.paulacampora.com/.

Defining Character

In the accidental, round-about way that I seem to find books these days--a little like following unexplored tributaries, not quite knowing where they'll lead--I found Paul Acampora's new novel, Defining Dulcie.

In this case, the tributary led to a new collection of stories, Every Man For Himself, edited by Nancy Mercado (an excellent collection of stories about being a guy), and one of the stories was Acampora's remarkable "No More Birds Will Die Today."

The emotions stirred by his story were still rippling days later. That's when I knew I had to go back to the library to check out his new novel.

Defining Dulcie is all about, well, defining 16 year-old Dulcie, only Dulcie's search for identity isn't apparent at first glance. That's because the story opens with a scene that describes a death in the family--in this case Dulcie's father, a janitor at the local high school, who mistakenly mixes together toxic chemicals and kills himself.

Ordinarily, when I find such a scene at the start of a story, I tend to expect the story that follows to explore grief... and the character's recovery. But Dulcie's story is full of surprises, and one of the surprises is that it isn't so much an exploration of grief as it is a search for her true home and place in the world.

Her father's death may have set the plot in motion, but it's a plot that concerns itself with Dulcie defining herself in his absence, not about her grief per se. So, it's not the mourning process that Acampora explores but how Dulcie comes to a new understanding of where she belongs.

What's interesting about how Acampora sets up the plot is the way Dulcie, who is literally yanked out of the world that she's known all her life, has to find a way back to what she knows in order to come to a new understanding of herself.

It's her mother who decides that they should start a new life (literally "re-defining" themselves) in California, and who insists that Dulcie leave Connecticut, where she feels most herself (and closest to Dad), and accompany her on the long drive across the country.

To get back home, Dulcie steals Dad's truck from Mom and begins the cross-country journey in reverse on her own. This adventure, along with the life that Dulcie begins to make for herself in Connecticut with her grandfather and an unexpected new friend, is what shapes Dulcie's search for identity.

Throughout this unusual coming-of-age tale Acampora deftly weaves Dulcie's memories of Dad with her insights into her current dilemma with Mom and her concerns about her future, deepening our understanding of her character as the journey unfolds, defining her with each new revelation about what she needs to become herself.

At the start of the story, Dulcie's confused, at sea, unconnected without Dad... and must find a way to connect herself to his memory, as well as to others. The move (and Dad's death) displaces Dulcie's sense of self, stretching her sense of connection with herself and her past, forcing her to ask such soul-searching questions as:

* How does the loss of Dad change who I am?
* And who, exactly, am I?
* And where do I belong now that Dad's gone?

These are questions that any writer might ask his or her characters while exploring their inner lives: Who am I? And how does the loss of someone (or something) that I love change me? And where, ultimately, do I belong?

But by the end of the story all of the invisible lines in Dulcie's life that connect her in mysterious ways come together:

I tilted my head and imagined my nose about even with the Triple J. I stretched out my left hand and pointed toward Mom and Roxanne in California. My right hand held an invisible line that went straight to Frank's house. If my feet were connected to wires, long rays could stretch from me all the way to Sister Clare or to the Kansas Fainting Goat Farm. Somewhere, there was a line to the pink cemetery stones too. All these things were connected to me, and for one brief moment I was at the center of things--my town, my story, my self.

Dulcie's found her place, her self. She may still feel unsure of where all the lines lead, but she can feel them nonetheless:

I thought again about all the lines, real and imaginary, that surrounded me. I was not sure whether they were strands in a giant web or huge broad strokes in a picture so close to my face that I could not see it clearly.

And it's sensing the map of her life as it might unfold along these invisible lines that's enough for her (and the reader) at this moment in her life.

Defining Dulcie is an impressive debut, as well as an excellent novel to study for learning how to develop a character with depth. Take a look. You'll have lots to thank Acampora for.

For information about Paul Acampora, check out his website http://www.paulacampora.com/ and his blog http://acampora.livejournal.com/