As I write this post, I am at the Highlights Foundation Whole Novel Workshop — Writing the Unreal. This is a week-long workshop involving delicious stretches of time for writing, presentations from amazing faculty, workshops of participant work, and lots of informal conversation that ranges over topics from robot cats to the challenges and opportunities of point of view. All this happens in a rural, mountain setting with unending supplies of food and drink.
This is my cabin. I’ve spent hours inside and on the porch writing and rewriting and thinking and free writing and then rewriting again. I’m working to make A Sketch in Time the best it can be. At the moment, I’m exploring whether changing the point of view to third person is the path to a better book. I usually write in the first person, so attempting third has involved working muscles in my mind that I didn’t even know I have. Like a physical workout, it is a little painful and a lot daunting, but it feels good. I feel the stretch not only in my words and in my brain but also in my imagination.
I was led to attempt third person by my miraculous faculty mentor, Laura Ruby. And this brings me to my title: mentors. The mentoring here is amazing. The faculty–Anne Ursu and Laura, with assistance and wisdom from Chris Heppermann and very special guests Deborah Kovacs and Tina Wexler–have all been wonderfully generous in sharing their experience and their knowledge. They have been careful and attentive to our particular challenges. They have been kind. I am honored to be able to add the faculty, and my fellow participants, to the list of mentors who push me to try new things, who ask me hard questions, and who love writing and reading and talking about books as much as I do.
I have taken pages and pages of notes because so many smart ideas have been spoken here, and I expect I’ll be referring to this workshop in many posts to come. But one remark that really moved me came from Deb: she said, “books are mentors, too.” I hope this rings true for any writer, and any reader for that matter, but it struck me especially since I came to writing from reading. The books I’ve read taught me to write. And as I stretch into third person, it’s the guidance of people mentors who keep me from collapsing to the ground in a quivering heap, but it’s the guidance of books that will show me how far I might be able to go.
My main subject in this post is the craft of writing. But Deb’s words also resonated because I think of books as mentors for life, too. The books we read teach us how to live our lives. I think of C.S. Lewis who wrote in his essay “On Three Ways of Writing for Children” that stories equip children for the difficulties they will face in life: “Since it is so likely they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.” We learn from books how to be brave and sad and hopeful. We learn from them how to empathize with our friends, our enemies, and people very different from ourselves. Books teach us how to read. They teach us how to write. And they teach us how to live.
So to all my mentors, the people and the books, I thank you for all you’ve taught me and all I have left to learn. Shifting my point of view is just the beginning.