Le Guin Apprenticeship Journal VI(b)

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is very, very weak. Picture, if you will, a highly bred, middle-aged chihuahua; that's roughly how well I handle the change of seasons. So I'm a little dizzy today, but I'm here.

And I'm playing with time again.

The gods of literature, and Le Guin herself, were relatively kind to me this week. I know! I was shocked too. But we were in my comfort zone. (I'll explain in a bit, and let you be the judge of whether it shows.)

Anyway, enough preamble; let's dive in.

Exercise Six: The Old Woman

Version Two:

Write the same story. PERSON: Use the person of the verb you didn't use in Version One. TENSE: Choose a) present tense for 'Now', past tense for 'Then', OR b) past tense for 'Now', present tense for 'Then'.

Steering the Craft, Ursula Le Guin

Her advice is to rewrite it, not just comb through and change the pronouns. And, of course, she's right. We're looking for change. We're shapeshifting.

In version one, I did THIRD PERSON and PRESENT TENSE. So now we're in the FIRST PERSON and, look, as unpopular as that is these days, first person is my flow state. (Le Guin herself says, "I suspect some people write in the first person because they're afraid not to." Which left me feeling a little bruised and small, I won't lie.) I like the intimacy, and I even like the times it forces you around blind corners when you wish you could leap into another character's head for ease, but you CAN'T, and you have to find another way.

I digress. Onward!

So, it wasn't the person that scared me. It was the verb tenses. Le Guin has this to say about screwing them up, or not, as the case may be: "It can be done invisibly, but only if you know what you're doing. So make sure, if you change tenses midstory, that you know you're doing it, and why."

The Lady says know what you're doing TWICE in three lines if you're doing it midstory, then she sets an exercise where she asks you to do it multiple times...MIDPARAGRAPH. Did I feel like I knew what I was doing? NO! Am I doing it anyway?

I guess we'll see.

Here I'm going to pause for a moment and let you peruse the original piece, so you can compare the changes for yourself:

So, what changed?

The rewrite has changed the imagery a little. Putting yourself directly in someone's mind offers a little more leeway, which for me usually translates to a little more strangeness ("my old crow's claws"). People can see the world in deeply poetic ways, especially in the privacy of their own mind.

And, as I said, I love the intimacy of the first person. It's come out here very incantatory, which is likely to do with the themes of grief and remembrance. I love it. It resonates with the fairy-tale sense of the piece as well, when combined with the imagery: roses, kneeling, the crow reference, age versus youth, a wedding, a burial.

Here endeth the comfort zone.

What about the dreaded verb tenses.

I actually ended up leaning into them harder. Which... dramatic irony surely knows my home address at this point.

As much as I was afraid of bamboozling the reader ("only if you know what you're doing", remember?), I was too tempted by the rhythm to resist skipping more nimbly back and forth into the past. So, now with a verb tense in each hand, I prayed to the gods of control and hoped I could pull it off.

It was the last paragraph where I pushed my luck. And I think (I hope, I believe) it's worked! I was greedy; I wanted it all: the pause in the present where she takes the rose in her hand, the twinned moments with the wedding suit, and the final beat in the present where the rose carries on, as nature is wont to do.

You'll have to let me know if I did, in fact, pull it off. And I'd love to hear about any times you've challenged yourself to take on a narrative effect you wanted to master, verb tenses or otherwise:

So, where does all this leave me now?

I know what I'm doing.

With verb tenses at least.

And I want more.

If improving my control over my own prose allows me to pack every effect I want into four lines, then I will not slow down. I will keep being greedy. I'm taking it all, and the ones who want to come with me can get on board.

Except right now I'm taking a tea break. Perhaps a cheeky biscuit as well.

Goodbye for today. Maybe see you next week, for a lesson in perspective.

xx