Drinks and Starters

IN THEIR OWN WORDS - authors and guests share thoughts, comments and musings with 24/8.

Written by Author Daniel Putkowski

Last year, novelist Pete Hamill and I were talking about the process of fiction writing. He mentioned that it was all about memory, that the story has to be in his head the way a memory of actual people and events would be. From there, it is a matter of getting it on paper. This rang true to me, even though I’d never thought about the process in this way before. In fact, the more I think about writing, the harder it is to do. Still, the words have to come from somewhere, and memory, either real or imagined, is the only logical source.

At the time of my conversation with Mr. Hamill, my novel, An Island Away, had not yet been published. I took a hard look at it, seeking out the weakest parts, parts that didn’t seem right. Sure enough, these were the elements that I’d forced into the narrative. In other words, these were parts that didn’t come from “memory” but were manufactured for a specific purpose, such as to direct the plot in a certain direction. They fell victim to the red pen, ultimately landing in the trash. Then I re-read the story that remained, let it soak in, and took several weeks to sleep on it. Bits and pieces started to fit together in more natural ways. Characters took on lives of their own without me prodding them into action. A few of them actually surprised me with new flaws and motivations, just as we find in real people.

The result of this effort was a much-improved story. The organic flow of the narrative was more believable. The clunky spots disappeared. Why? Well, I had to “remember” what those characters were really like, and given their dispositions, what they would do. Perhaps I had simply forgotten the way we forget so much of our lives. The good thing about writing is that you have the luxury of going back and fixing it. It doesn’t have to be the truth so much as it has to sound true in the form that it takes.

Certainly story telling is a form of collective memory. Tales handed down by the bards of yore, in the Bible, or painted on cave walls represent events that may or may not have happened. Nonetheless, they exist for a reason, to relate something the author felt worthy of passing along. The audience receives this information and may or may not retain it for themselves. It may vanish into the dust of history, or it may achieve immortality, even if the author’s name is never known. Whatever the case, these stories are the defining memories of a given culture at a specific time.

Thus, I subscribe to the following theory, one taught to me by my grandmother a long time ago: Write the truth. Just tell everyone it’s a lie. It’s the truth as I remember it, and if I’ve done a good job, you won’t know the difference.

http://danielputkowski.com/