Of reading, writing, and coaching

Whereabouts by Jhumpa LahiriIt has been a long time since I’ve posted here. Yes, I’ve been busy. But it’s more than that. A lot going on both personally and professionally. Right now I should be rehearsing the live webinar I’m giving on Tuesday that’s related to my coaching, but somehow I want to be a reader and a writer for a while today instead. Or in addition. That could be partly because I just watched the She Writes Press onboarding webinar I missed when it was live. My novel The Portraitist will be published by them in Fall, 2022, and such prospects always produce a measure of soul-searching.

Beginning with, which of those personas am I (reader, writer, coach)? And does it matter?

Reading, writing, and coaching gently fighting with each other

You’d think with so much in common they’d all get along beautifully. Each one informs the other on so many levels. For instance, the book I just finished reading last night, Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri, had my reading, writing, and coaching selves all in a lather. It’s exquisite, first of all, but it breaks every storytelling “rule” I follow myself and coach my clients to follow.

Perhaps that’s why I’m in such a bizarre frame of mind today. Let me explain.

To begin with, the story is barely perceptible. If you asked me, “What’s it about?” I’d have a pretty hard time answering you. As for what the protagonist wants, or where the obstacles are, or her arc of change—I’m not entirely certain. I couldn’t even tell you what the exact setting is, except that it’s clearly in a European city, and because Jhumpa Lahiri lives in Italy and wrote the book in Italian, I’ll go out on a limb and say it might be Rome or Florence. What I do know about the protagonist is that she’s a professor, although I don’t have a clear idea of what or where she teaches. She also lives alone and has had love affairs, but never married.

And yet I devoured the book in a few gulps. (It is short.) I loved it. The prose is elegant and spare. Each chapter is a perfectly formed little scene, a snapshot of a moment from the protagonist’s life that doesn’t so much lead to the next one as add a delicate layer to a barely delineated picture. If I could use any term to describe it, I might call it pointillist.

It succeeds, on its own terms. Only a master craftsperson could pull something like that off.

And so I dread the time when one of my coaching clients says, “But what about Whereabouts?

This remarkable little book could be the exception that proves the rule. Or it could be an example of literary form so deeply integrated as to be almost imperceptible.

Here’s what I can say:

  1. Each 1–5-page chapter either is a scene in itself or has a scene in it. That means it adheres to at least those scene characteristics of being a single point in a particular time and place in which something happens. As to change—in pretty much all cases the change (if there is one) is subtle.
  2. The scenes are not chronological. The first-person narrator goes back and forth in time, and yet it’s never confusing or unclear. I believe that’s because the writing itself is so very clear. Lucid.
  3. Everything does eventually lead to a change in the protagonist, but it’s so seemingly insignificant that it’s hard to understand how a novel could be built around it.

Here are the questions I’m left with:

  1. What constitutes an event?
  2. How big does a change have to be in a scene or a novel to work?
  3. How confident do you have to be in your own literary abilities to dare to write a book like Whereabouts?

That leads me back to what I might tell my anxious writer self:

You would never dare attempt such a thing, and you have 12 novels under your belt. Does that diminish your worth as an author? Not really.

But I am fully aware of my general place in the literary world: skillful storyteller, conscientious spinner of tales, not afraid of using my imagination to its fullest. I keep pushing myself to learn and do better, but I will never be Jhumpa Lahiri.

And here’s what I’ll tell my coaching clients:

Books like this one are to be savored, but never imitated. Therein disaster lurks. So savor away! Then write books with plots and points.

Related Posts

Write What You Don’t Know

Write What You Don’t Know

This is, of course, the opposite advice than is often given to young writers. But it occurred to me from a chance comment by someone on my email list that this is exactly what I do—in a way. It's not that I write from ignorance, exactly. Perhaps it would be better to...

read more
Fishermans Cowl

Fishermans Cowl

Cast on 28 stitches. Size 19 needles. Knit one row.  I had to throw so much yarn away before I moved, thanks to the moths. Alpacas and merinos that would have felt soft and warm as they slipped through my fingers and grew row by row into something, anything. Blues and...

read more
Is My Idea Original?

Is My Idea Original?

This is a question I'm asked from time to time by inexperienced writers, who are—quite naturally—concerned that they're not seen as copying another author or idea, or are afraid of having someone else copy theirs. I say "quite naturally," because in many areas of our...

read more
Books you have to write

Books you have to write

The peculiar thing about writing a book is that sometimes you don’t know where the idea for it came from. Other times you can trace it exactly to something you saw, heard, read, researched, etc. But whatever spawned the idea, something about it made you feel as if you...

read more
The Pleasures of Reading Together

The Pleasures of Reading Together

I moved into an apartment in an old mill building in Biddeford, Maine in February of this year. Although I have a daughter, grandsons, and a brother and his family who live in Portland (twenty minutes away), I knew no one in this town. I stayed in touch, of course,...

read more
Nothing Is the Same

Nothing Is the Same

My Life Changed. But I Still Have a Book Coming Out. I knew something was wrong with him almost a year ago, but I didn’t know how wrong. He’d seen me through nearly eleven book launches, was always there for the triumphs and the disappointments. He read my books, he...

read more

Comments

2 Comments

  1. Sandra Gulland

    A beautiful post, Susanne, and your new website is gorgeous! I love how calm it feels.

    Reply
    • Susanne

      Thank you Sandra!

      Reply

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *