Blog # 8: Jess Yaun

I haven’t worked on my novel once this summer. I needed to take a break and let the story simmer; let lime trees, hot Carolina sun, a hedgehog and two tigers set up residence in my imagination. With every book we read I entered a different world, each of them complete and vivid. I found myself on a shrimper’s boat watching for a white dolphin, hiding in the concierge’s armchair sipping jasmine tea, and falling asleep on a plush, new mattress given to me by my lover. Whenever I thought about leaving one of those worlds to enter my protagonist’s world, I found my limbs unwilling. I realized there wasn’t a world to return to.

The first section of my novel suffers a loss of place. In the second section, when my character Rebecca lives among the Cherokees, the place is bright and vibrant. I can feel the breeze on my bare skin, walk beneath the red and orange leaves of the forest, and hear the river rushing on the edge of the village. But the first section of Rebecca’s life, in the present moment, there is no world. I gave the reader the vaguest sense of where she is. I wanted her to be lonely but I made her too alone; I wanted to show a disconnect present in modern times but didn’t give the story enough characters to depict that disconnect. And above all, she has no place. I wanted Rebecca to not have a place, but I failed to create a place around her in the process. Instead, I need to create the world around her and figure out how to show that she doesn’t feel a part of it. Just because she feels she doesn’t belong to her world doesn’t mean there isn’t a world!

The books also reminded me to let go. Since beginning the MAPW program I’ve been like Hemingway, painstakingly choosing each word. But this is not the kind of writer I’ve always been. While I’ve learned the value of revision and careful word choice, I’ve restricted myself to the point of strangling my creativity and forcing myself into rigid lines of what is acceptable. Strout prompted, there are different ways of constructing stories. Smyth whispered, find the heart of your character’s world and let it flow from you in beautiful words. Barbery advised, the big things you want to say are important, more important than technicalities or what others may think of how you express it.