Do authors find their own works interesting? What I'm asking is, is possible for an author to have a good book but they don't like reading it because they wrote it? by Kyle Phoenix

 

Yes, there are works which have been published—-short stories, novels, non-fiction books that when I go back and look at them, I’m less than pleased. I see them as complete, as the tale told, as perhaps as much as I could wring out of it, wrung out, but I don’t always like it. I can detect something missing, some element that I didn’t know how to infuse, not in, that particular piece/project.

In many ways your work is like children, and there are aspects of your children that you don’t like or notice that don’t work or are dysfunctional. You can’t help but notice them because you’re constantly comparing one work to another, one idea to another—-not to try and trump your last idea but to find creativity, originality in this new project. The editorial process, yes, also gives far too much insight to one’s work.

Plus there’s the weight of time—-if you’re good and aiming to be better at the Art of Writing, you’ve progressed from rehashing ideas (mimicry—-generally 2000+ hours of writing) and graduated to finding your own Voice (which occurs in 5000–7500+ hours of writing). So I have works that have occurred in each of these “epochs” of my initial 10,000+ hours of initial writing (up until I was about 21); then I have writings that happened in what I would consider my 2nd Phase (college, advanced mentors—-10,000 to 20,000 hours) and there is a marked difference because what I knew in the 1st Phase is drastically different then what I did in the 2nd Phase. Which is even further different than 30,000 to 50,000 hours, my 3rd Phase, that included more teaching, more reading, deeper reading, being able to afford pretty much any books I wanted. Which brings me into my 4th to 5th Phases, which include having published over a hundred books—-fiction and non-fiction, 3500+ blogs and articles, plus thousands of pages of professional/technical writing.

So I have about 3–4 “epochs” of writing and each is vastly different.

I recently went back to the 10–15,000 “shelf” for a 125 unfinished manuscript and was able to in about 18 months turn it into a 700 page novel (Stay With Me, available on Amazon—-shameless plug) but what I can tell you about that work is that less of those 125 pages made it into the final manuscript—-maybe 25, because my work was so much less than what it is now—-twenty years later. It was a good idea/story, but the execution lacked the ability, skill, finesse, I’ve developed over the years since originally shelving it.

I didn’t engage it deeper then because I didn’t “like” it enough as it was, to engage. What I learned not only in characterization, but plotting, pacing, dialogue, was also an openness about identity, relationships, sexuality, and exploring that in my writing. I hadn’t matured enough to write such a mature, complex novel so (now) those initial pages struck me as deeply sophomoric.

Which translates yes, to some of my earliest work I’m often going through in my 12 Draft edits that I do, and if it’s from the past, enchancing it, or maturing it, if it’s unfinished work, or I’m smirking at it in magazines, chapbooks, even a collection of short stories. I can see my own levels. I can see clarity, burgeoning skill. But I can also see hesitation, lack of a more expansive word vault. Clunkier curves and spins of ideas.

What I’ve considered doing for a 3rd in a collection of short stories, is typing up my notes/inspiration on each story, to deconstruct and show the construction of the stories. I had started writing out my ideas about them when I was writing them in college, Phase 2, so I have immediate connections to those thoughts.

Writing, writing well, writing through multiple phases of thousands upon thousands of hours and pages, is often a wide, spanning rewriting, reiteration, reinvention of previous attempts at ideas, work, plots, characters. So the dislike of Kyle Iteration #2 writing is generally because I’m at Kyle Iteration #7 now and I can see all my own clumsiness, my hesitation, my limitedness.

But here’s the horrid part—-that’s sort of the same lens I use to see novice writers too.

Been there, done that, recognize it, because I’ve been there and done that.

#KylePhoenix

#TheKylePhoenixShow

How has therapy helped your work as an artist in regards to gender, race, and sexuality in creativity? by Kyle Phoenix

It, self introspection, even done in the boundaries of therapy, really is the only way to blossom any form of talent. I spend a lot of my time not simply teaching but designing ideas, curriculum, projects for students to develop them—-so I'm constantly looking at, measuring, contemplating the development process. What I am lucky to have done, though I wasn’t considering it as feeding into my interests/career path then, is being a teacher’s Asst. in undergraduate. What this meant was that I was developing (writing, reading, critical thinking) but I was also witnessing/absorbing teaching, higher levels of writing, reading, class and curriculum design and the measurement of whether students/myself were progressing.

Polite/Federman/Feldman

In their classes we would submit a 10 page project, 3x a semester, read it aloud and critique/be critiqued You provided the other 25 to 30 students a copy of your project—-that was in lieu of buying a book for the class. What i can tell you is that the challenge was doubled in that you were trying to come up with something original and you had to stand and read your work and then get about a half an hour of detailed feedback and questions. I did this for about 5 years, sometimes as many as three classes a semester where I also acted as essentially an administrative TA.

Irving Feldman was what I dubbed Hard Master from Asian ideologies of training. He was often brutal, dismissive, eviscerating of student’s work. he and I once closed out a class, arguing back and forth over one of my pieces about whether it was grounded in Black Rage or manhood rage. We were both right. I would sit at his right hand at a thirty foot long conference table and he would slowly go around the room and then almost as the final act, ask me to give my input.

By the time I’d advanced to his classes, I had a reputation, not only as the only undergraduate TA in the entirety of the SUNY system but also as being deeply invested in the work itself. Not just my own, but the other students. My attention to the work of others was my trying to de-code what worked, didn’t work, was unique, was problematic, was interesting, etc.—-to enhance my own abilities. There were many times when someone did something, created something that was beyond my thinking and i was duly impressed. So by the time Feldman got around to me I had gone through the 10 page piece half a dozen times, with a pen, marking up, asking questions, etc..

(He would later tell Carlene at a cocktail party at how impressed he was at my attention to the works of others and how good my work was. To my face he was pleasant, direct but not effusive with praise.)

In class he laid out very strict boundaries for poetry and then for prose. For prose one had to not write in any genre—no mysteries, no sci-fi, no guns, no vampires, none of that. You had to write a story with dialogue. because I’d taken his class before I was ready with years of training in how to write a story but I would say half the class, coming in to masturbate their ideas into their favorite genre were often deeply perplexed and gobsmacked at the challenge.

Federman’s classes were more—-raucous, fun but with a firm underpinning of thought and work. his specialty was experimental fiction so he encouraged folk to go out on a limb. He spent the first two weeks giving examples of experimental writing, lectures and discussions, some readings and then projects were due. Part of the challenge of the class was to create something outlandish, big, good and still maintain control of it. His biggest compliments were—-”There's Something Here, but it needs a lot more work”, “This is yet another Great American Failure”, “Yes, you’re onto something.”—-He recommended myself and another young man, who was ill, to publishers, the young man, a year before me, but there was a greater urgency to his work/time as he was working, supporting a family and ostensibly, dying.

Federman was in many ways the Chaos Master—-whose antics, and thick, impossibly French accent, experimental OUT THERE ways of seeing words, writing, the page itself, were so chaotic as to be almost impossible to understand, because the point was to create your own controlled chaos.

Carlene Hatcher Polite, who wore expensive, custom made haute couture with jewelry and necklaces and bangles and berets, made of the finest materials on Earth, purchased from all over the planet—-often teased classes, while dancing in front of the room, that she was the Monkey Master—-but she was in fact the Soft Master. She was the firmest, gentlest, complimentary, loving teacher who was also deeply, deeply grounded in knowledge, reading and sussing out bs. Her methodology was to announce that on the first day everyone would be getting an A. It could be either for Asshole or Awesome, it was up to you to interpret the A. She suggested some books, you could buy them or not, and she gave two, one page assignments for the entire semester.

Some thought her class an easy A. Her class was in truth an experience that would broaden you if you could patiently engage it. Some did, some didn’t. I became her first TA after John Ransom, gone then a decade, though many had applied. She felt, also teaching Black Literature and Prose Writing that unfortunately too many non-Black students knew Black history, literature better than Black students and were more qualified. Until I came along.

There were other professors—-Stacy Hubbard and Professor Fred See, who were instrumental in getting me to visit Princeton

(as a recommendation to Toni Morrison, who was also Carlene’s cousin) and then teach me how to think about teaching. Hubbard’s class on 19th century domesticity was a center point for me and when I first became aware that the professors talked about me behind the scenes.

In an effort to become a stronger student, having entered at 21, I took advice from another student who has a school program, Where There’s A Will There’s An A—-one of the tactics being to to purchase the books for college classes the semester before going into the class. Thereby creating long term planning and a deep familiarity with the work. I did so for several classes so when my name popped up on Hubbard’s class list plus my being known for TAing Federman and Polite’s classes, Hubbard told me she was excited. because of my pre-reading, a rather dense subject—-19th Century Domesticity—-I was a superstar at discussing in class, understanding what she meant, where she was going, the thrill of Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie!)

I give the above as a sort of an insight into my first formal, competitive development as a writer—-Debbie Freeman, Dr. WH Hunter and Denise Donnelly, along with Ann Campbell at John Jay High School, my first formal mentors in writing/reading/filmmaking, and then Harold Williams in an extension program I did at Long Island University—-all before SUNY.

To illustrate the development process in myself, my mentors work (then Professor Stephen Brookfield and Professor Elana Sigall at Columbia) I look back and I have done so with current students, to how others did and did not develop fro SUNY.

Kevin-Kayelyn, Nick and Jennifer

Kevin and I met in middle school and then he went off to SUNY Buffalo. I followed, first visiting, and then having a spiritual epiphany there, two years later. My family thought because we were best friends I chose Buffalo over NY or Pennsylvania schools I'd applied to but it was the spiritual epiphany. By the time I got to Buffalo, Kevin had semi-transformed into Kayelyn, a transgender person. I say semi because insanely in single sex shared room rooms, Kevin-Kaye would live, but tell other people, that it was a administrative mix up. Kevin and I had created comic books, he wanting to be an illustrator in middle and high school.

Kaye and I did a dozen in-house sex and sexuality workshops, being written up in local magazines and newspapers—-but I opted out of doing more—-I had come to Buffalo to pursue learning, writing, an English degree (maybe), not to be a vanguard about sexuality, publicly. I started writing for the school magazine, the school newspaper, and several school chapbooks, periodicals—-all at the same time.

Nick was a student who had flunked out of Brooklyn College and the following year got in to UB. We met, the first time I remember, at a chapbook meeting, where he came across a crowded room to squeeze into a seat next to me. I noticed it/him as odd. He then went out of this way to become my friend and it became obvious to me and dozens of others, that though he had a girlfriend, he was gay and interested in me romantically. He eventually came out to me and admitted all kinds of same sex shenanigans. He was also an aspiring writer.

Jennifer Karmin was a student and one of the creators/editors of the chapbook I was an editor for, and then President, and submitting work to. She was also in many of the classes I was, writing, poetry her specialty, particularly in women’s studies. She took to Federman's experimental style and even embraced the critique process, once calling me years later, know my embracing of the classes as a student and TA—-yes, I still had my copy of her work in storage, so I was able to give her a copy.

Starting with Jennifer and perhaps a couple of others that I wasn’t as close to, know about, she’s achieved success, directly in writing, poetry, being published, teaching, etc.. What she and I were “known” for around SUNY, we maintained and became, in our careers as well. She dressed and giggled like a hippie—-almost three decades out of her “time” but her work, I remember as being searing, playful, thoughtful, polemic. Then, and in retrospect, I would have bet on her becoming what she has become today.

Kaye and Nick not so much.

What I learned from Kaye, transgenderism, transsexuality, was that there’s a healthy way to do it and a non-healthy way. Kaye did it the decidedly non-healthy way. She was at SUNY for 7+ years, maintaining a 1.0 GPA but shielded from expulsion due to presenting trans to the school. She didn’t do the psychiatric care, the psychological counseling, the correct medical counseling for hormones. Instead she did hair dye, padding, and eventually illegal hormones.

We insanely became roommates for a couple of years, her driving me into therapy and then permanently severing the relationship when her inviting vagrants into the house to “draw”, her illegal drug use, her eating disorders, depression, tantrums—-a whole mélange of comorbidities—-simply grew to be too much.

• Having grown up in a dysfunctional household, I made allowances for such people—-I take full responsibility for—-eventually a therapist pointing out that Kaye and others (Nick, my family) gave me something to do, a veil which to help, fix, attend to, so that I didn’t have to admit and manage my prodigiousness and surround myself with contemporaries.
• I chose broken people so I wouldn’t feel bad about being capable of so much more.
• I also chose them because as an only child I didn’t grow up lonely, but I was deeply enamored with having close friends, best friends—-not even paying close attention to how Kaye and Nick resented one another because the other co-opted my attention from them, their dysfunction, their wants from me.

I offer insight to that dynamic to Nick’s closeted, unwanted homosexuality and Kaye’s body dysmorphia from sexual abuse as a child by an adult, which she termed the “best sex of her life”, as indicative of the impediments to their art, to their development.

Jennifer and I talked about her sense of attachment and guilt to her blind father, who I met at an event, and being a woman, a White woman, trying to establish her own identity. Though we had a blistering confrontation in the meeting where I became President of the chapbook she started—-she was demeaning/condescending towards my nomination—-when I apologized to her afterwards and invited her—-and as my mother designed, to ferret out hard workers—-those, on the invitations, who had worked hard to make the magazine happen for years prior to me—-Jennifer and her boyfriend, showed up proudly smiling to my apartment for dinner. My mothers' point, she a psychology major from Baruch, was that only people who honestly knew they had worked hard would show up—-even Nick didn’t show up.

In many ways, Jennifer and I, in our prodigiousness and development and hardworking mindset were/are, the same and we were also in our early 20s, able to maturely express ourselves and heal an argument.

Nick wanted to be a writer but was constantly sort of impaling those around him for pity, at the father who’d died in a car accident, when he was a child. He kept a shroud of perpetual depression, sadness about him and passive aggressively manipulated those around him with it. Trying to be a hyper-heterosexual male when in fact he wasn’t and then trying to stand constantly next to me as a friend—-for some sort of seduction/feelings—-undid his talent. I watched from across the Feldman conference table as he excoriated Nick’s lackadaisical work.

(I felt only pity for him then—-Feldman had told me the horrible things Nick had told him about me before class, including that he needed all of his copied projects back as I might cast a voodoo spell on him with it. Yes, he obviously, as several professors pointed out—-he told a mutual Italian professor that he needed an incomplete because my mother had died, she hadn’t—-in fact, I took a semester off to work full time to pay for school. He had many mental issues, that one.)

But what I’ll offer of Kaye and Nick’s burgeoning talent was that their mental bullshit got in the way.

After college, Kaye eventually just leaving in year 8—-I pointed out to Kaye when she introduced a post-op trans friend who was a lawyer—-that the law degree was probably obtained pre-coming out as trans. Kaye asked how I knew and I pointed out that all of the trans folk I’d met through her had accomplished nothing beyond being transgender and basic survival (and I’d funded the apartment, making twice as much as Kaye by 25 and helping her get professional jobs.)

I offer these personal asides, insights into the idea of development to look at, as I have for myself and then into other students—-what works and doesn’t work, what derails potential talent.

It took Kaye 30 years to get an Associates Degree. What derailed Kaye was body dysmorphia, trans issues. Kaye never/still hasn’t pursued legal sexual reassignment surgery—-often lamenting a base confusion to progress.

Was Kevin a good artist? Was Kaye?

From Middle school through high school, Kevin was male appearing presenting and art was his refuge. Coming out at college seemed to have stuck Kaye, erased Kevin, yes, but fundamentally embedded Kaye as an identity who simply didn’t move in anyway. It was like becoming Kaye—-neither fully male nor female, was Kaye’s accomplishment. I didn’t see that then——we’d spent 10+ years going to school together, growing up, so I considered Kevin/Kaye like a sibling. And what I’ve learned as an only child with a faux sibling, is that you excuse their insanity.

In me, Kaye found a friend who simply accepted Kevin becoming Kaye. But in accepting Kaye, the closest to not caring about stepping on trans toes—-Kaye perfected using trans as both a shield and weapon against everyone from family to friends—-recruiting obese White women as coteries to make her appear more attractive. I once quipped to Kaye that eventually she would find a way to rid herself of me, our friendship, as she had done to others, particularly those who knew her as Kevin previously.

Ironically, I was the one to rid myself of Kaye (and Nick) but how did I get attached to them beyond friendship, love, desire for close friends/siblings?

My parents with their dysfunction drug and alcohol issues presented, invented the role for me to be the caretaker, the helper, the fixer, to broken people. And no one was more broken than Kaye and Nick—-amongst others I’ve met over the years. As a manipulative tactic at a restaurant, while trying to convince me to have sex with him, Nick insightfully mentioned that I would grow, blossom, when I rid myself of Kaye and my family. What he didn’t see in that moment was my being struck, not by his just being right—-but realizing he was as cancerous, as those he mentioned.

My Power

Growing up in that dysfunction chaos I learned to be a super helper, people pleaser, fixer, because it gave me passive aggressive control and manipulative power over sometimes my family but definitely Kaye and Nick. I got to dysfunction control people, make them dependent upon me through my love and acceptance of their rank insanity. Which translated into my feeling valuable, loved, attended to and it also served to allow me to push my burgeoning, outsized, talent aside—-so I was amazing-rocking 7, when I was really a True 12. But in my minimizing myself by surrounding myself with such self-destructive people, their dysfunction, it allowed me to be slightly bigger than them—-say they were 5s. So it served my ego in a dysfunctional way, as it also served me not advancing to my possibilities.

What shifted was siting across from Nick where I had once thought his masculinity comforting, a safe space, he seemed small, sniveling, talentless, gossipy, full of faggotry (years later as an LGBTSGL Youth Coordinator that was a term we used for outlandish sexuality related dysfunction). I remember thinking even his teeth looked yellowing, from smoking, spaced and rat-like.

Kaye as a roommate, once I recognized her projected insanity, and got into therapy to find out why I was mired in crazy, became passively attacking towards me/the apartment, willing to destroy it all—-with her divorced parents having homes she could go to—-all of my family thousands of miles away, down South—-her upending of the apartment potentially leaving me homeless.

I threw Kaye out and stood on my own two feet—I always had, I’d merely been holding/propping her up too and was fine afterwards in the apartment for quite some time (I’d been afraid of the rent alone though I made plenty. or more aptly, I was afraid of being alone, but within a year of ousting Kaye, with therapy, had worked that out, seen that as a false delusion of weakness. All that I had done for others was proof of my tenacity, brains, strength, etc..)

Nick I simply couldn’t fathom caring for anymore, he was so….pathetic. Almost avidly so. He allowed himself to be horribly abused (supposedly. he was a pathological liar so when me, his exes, friends, sat down, we had to piece together truth from his manipulations, years after.) by others.

When Carlene met Kaye at a university event, a few days later she asked my permission to tell me a truth—-and told me that she didn’t expect Kaye to be so fragile of a human being. And further that I would be friends with such a fragile person.

When she met Nick, she thought him small, weak.

Federman, when I introduced Nick to him, having known his ex-girlfriend, understood him as being gay, talentless. My mentors saw them clearly. Of course then my mentors were 40+ years older than us but after throwing Kaye out, I went on an apartment cleaning binge. Like scrubbing floors on my knees with Pine Sol. In my frenzy, Carlene gently, insightfully suggested that it wasn’t simply cleaning that I was cleansing my space from an unclean spirit—Kaye.

I wanted them both to be great artists—-with me. Though I saw the inherent, constant, profound limitations in their work.

True Development

To the idea of development—-I, having survived my dysfunctional abusive, family—-had significant amounts of therapy with family once they got sober, then LGBT youth groups with counselors to fortify my identity around sexuality, then groups, even at university, for years, around dealing with childhood sexual abuse, then after university, a year long therapist, when I saw Kaye’s deterioration and effect, towards me.

I also had at least 10 mentors by then focused on my writing and I was being regularly published in high school, college, and then even in college, referred to publications and publishers around the world, being published there too. Sometimes I look back and see—-in the face of Kaye and Nick’s stunted creativity. It must have been on some level, the vitriol they launched at me in covert and overt ways, resentment building in them, jealousy, envy. I often teach now how as an only child, I had no framework context for jealousy/envy until them because I was essentially unto myself. Is this what siblings teach everyone else?

Was Nick a good artist? Was he a writer?

No. And I was ashamed to be witness to Federman and Feldman telling him that. I was hurt for someone I cared for, being hurt.

But now I see, as a teacher, he didn’t put in not just the work that I and others (Jennifer Karmin for one) did, he also spent an inordinate amount of time hiding his true identity/sexuality, just as Kaye spent an inordinate amount of time building such a fragile one. Years later he sent a manuscript to a publisher/editor I incidentally know. I read it and understood why it was summarily rejected. He hadn’t put in the work—-Feldman's singular class, the writing one, he did in 6 years of undergraduate work—-I think I did like 30, and I know Jennifer did as many too. I often debate contacting her and asking her about her experiences with advancing, ability, etc., I suspect we had more in common than even I knew then because we were slightly separated by school-class, age, gender, and culture.

I felt guilty for being talented, celebrated, awarded. I felt a little shamed of myself. I downplayed myself. I segmented my life, into portions of Dysfunction Land I visited and played in, surveyed, judged and then I went back to my ever expanding Talent Land——where I even started getting paid for appearances-readings, short stories, etc. as far back as SUNY, never telling Kaye or Nick about the money, the recognition——and I slowly over the years stopped inviting them, minimized my accomplishments.

Over a Decade Later

Now over a decade later, I’m just all busting out with over a hundred books published, a TV show for 15 years, thousands of blogs and articles, hundreds of videos, work at corporations, charter schools, the NYDOE. and NYU. and Columbia University. I am rough, still got some stuff to work on, achievement of what my talent promised my mentors. Kaye and Nick, by internet searches and reporting friends in common, are not. I still wrestle with my prodigiousness even as I mostly don’t care what others think of me. It becomes sort of a totem to focus on not caring, and be so productively and demonstratively out—-you can Google my identity in many deeper ways than most people. Though I am recognized mostly here in NY because of the TV show, and workshops/teaching, I equate it closer to popularity than “fame”—-ironically, fame never being my goal as I do things that make me popular and will edge me towards popularity-notoriety-mayhap, fame.

I have had to slowly grow into my destiny, my prodigiousness, my abilities and artistic abilities—-accept them, flourish, embrace it, not sacrifice it for anything but air and water. I live by CANI in my art Constant And Never-ending Improvement. I am fascinated and live in anticipatory delight to see, in a decade, to look back on my creations, then again in 20 years, 30, 40, 50.

Yes, I sometimes feel sadness for the people whom I have had to leave behind, who I was using, harming in my attentions, as they would never fit, or satisfy me. Perhaps that’s why I try to patiently teach students, to make up for misusing my abilities, now to convey, to listen, to help, to fix in positive, directed, boundary based ways. I look back on my students I’ve mentored with a firm hand and so far, I’m marking myself a strong 80% success rate. I’ll get better.

Yes, my students, discussing development and success have helped me use the internet to I Spy into the lives of dozens of people—-friends, ex-lovers, family, etc. and we sit in a classroom dissecting them—-what they were, are, what didn’t become, what I remember. All of us learn, see my mistakes, the potential pitfalls, the areas where Kaye and Nick and others needed deep therapeutic help, still do. I forgive myself for settling for them, my work is my apology, my recompense to the world for wasting time in such a dysfunctionally self-indulgent series of friendships, relationships, even family engagements. Perhaps in another world, I wrote even more, more, more, more, spread myself further, faster without them. But then would I have as much grist for my creative mill?

When you know better, you do better.

#KylePhoenix

#TheKylePhoenixShow

How do you think about audience when you're writing? by Kyle Phoenix

I’ve been fortunate to have had an audience for about 30+ years—-in workshops, classes, from magazines, from blogs, from published books, from mentors nd from friends—-which equals about 10 million people. Now a very small number of that give me direct feedback which is both detailed and useful—-about 10% of that first 10%—-less than 10,000, maybe 1000 people over the years so far. A decent number for a good sized theater but not a stadium, yet.

What I try to do, what I’m thinking about when I’m writing fiction or non-fiction or even poetry (which I insanely won awards for and have done lots of readings, including at the Nuyorican Café! Pinero!) and also I’ve written and filmed a screenplay. I therefore think about yes, making a work accessible—-does this make sense? Can a reader follow where I’m trying to go?

But that’s generally secondary or farther done the list of goals in a piece.

First I’m trying to get the line of an idea out of my head and reasonably onto paper.

Stay With Me was a BIG book that came out of 125 pages I’d written 20 years ago and then infused and expanded into a 700 page novel. In the revising and editing—-12 to 16 Drafts before Final Edit and publication—-I was able to explore, yes, my idea of sexuality through a love triangle between two men and a woman. One of the men essentially in the closet and hiding his identity from his girlfriend. The first version, simply titled Stay, the girlfriend existed but she wasn’t a full character and fleshed out.

In the updating I saw that her space/character was valid and useful for seeing her boyfriend, into his mind and motivations.

About halfway through, seeing that there were so many permutations of identity and choices and there was a metaphysical angle—-I decided to situate the entire novel as being about a multiverse examination of the same people, in the similar situation but with slight different, life altering choices. This allowed ne to hold the magical realism I wanted to play with and at the same time treat the characters like diamonds with whom I would examine multiple facets of. I was in no way thinking about the reader at this point other than I have to design the chapters to be one world and another and figure out some way of that being obvious beyond the narrative.

The story, the characters, their permutations came first and foremost as I was trying to figure what kind of story I was telling, why and to what conclusion. Now those things are written in a linear narrative timeline but they were not designed/written that way.

Once I knew I had all of these narratives to explore I then decided on the format of the book itself and therefore the “chapters” changing from one standard form—-1, 2, 3, 4 and so on—-to Chapters and sub-realities of that chapter. The chapters then became 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 and so on through 4.1 to 4.4, with 5 being 5.0 thru 5.5. The chapters ultimately being refractions of the same events in the chapter group time and then having 0.0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 as my main BIG metaphysical/magical realism chapters that we may do something with even bigger in years to come.

What I’m doing there is yes, a form of design so that a reader-audience can follow my theme/narrative but it wasn’t as much for the audience as it was for me to express the idea and being able to follow it, design it for myself for the story. There are even chapters Un, Deux, Trois, Quatre titled in French but illustrating the elements and people involved in relationships. Again design for the narrative and myself BUT yes, it does help an eventual audience understand each chapter is a different person, headspace and perhaps even reality.

I finished the novel, all of my novels in multiple parts because I handwrite them first o by the time I am halfway through I’ve begun the typing process so it starts becoming multiple forms of racing, production Type, Write, Type, Write and so on until I literally catch up to myself. But by the time I type the last written pages I’ve generally finished the story in Draft 1–3 of what will be as many as 12 to 16 Drafts.

When I finished SWM Draft 12—-I had decidedly different ending then I had typed in Draft 9 or so. But then I had chapter from another novel, Myriad: The Orisha Wars, playing with magic and the multiverse and I saw a way to do a crossover of that chapter, at the end of SWM, that would answer-hint at other things occurring in both books and allow me to play a little bit. Myriad: The Orisha Wars’ chapter closing SWM is what made me directly complete SWMs ending. I toyed with leaving the resolution up in the air or open ended.

Now when I go back and I’m revising—-first for basic grammar, then narrative continuity, then character continuity then to shave out unnecessary or repetitive text then to further ruthlessly shave out unnecessary text—-that’s when I’m transforming into clarifying it for the reader-audience. Because I am now making it a thing for public presentation, dissemination and reading. Then it must be accessible. The further editing process by others then reflects back to me—-ooh, look at this, does this make sense, what did you mean here, this must be clearer…..etc. etc.

Amateur Writers

This is where amateurs get messed up—-they want/need constant validation from the beginning so they second guess every damn page or to the furthest extreme ignore all feedback.

You must instead use all of your ideas and tricks and bits and bobs and pull it together, fix it to work as a story, then submit it to first a handful, then dozens, then thousands. for feedback.

And listen to and integrate all of the feedback. The invent of the internet——allowing everyone to write their pedantic thoughts and disperse them to every corner of the Earth doesn’t make you a writer. Pulling together most of it, 90% of it, whether that’s a 3 page short story or a 700 page novel and revising it a dozen times—-until it is different than what you began with—-if it resembles the original too much, you haven’t done enough work to it.

It should be noticeably different, tighter. I call it from my own blink-ability—-”cleaner”. Published work that has been well edited looks visually and stylistically cleaner. When I read amateurish work, it “clunks” to my inner ear and visual eye.

What I’m doing in my 12 Drafts minimum of revisions is I’m getting rid of my own clunks.

#KylePhoenix

#TheKylePhoenixShow

How does narration in the third person make a novel more or less enjoyable than narration in the first person? by Kyle Phoenix

 

Enjoyable for whom? As a reader or as the writer?

As a writer I’ve written in pretty much all forms of writing—-tenses and actual stylistic forms—-poetry, playwriting, scriptwriting, etc.—-so I’ve had to learn how to juggle and master whatever forms best served the project.

Writing in the first person, I did, I felt, I believe in and telling the story from that vantage point is often for an immediacy and internal exposition. How do I decide? Generally if I have a character that might be one the star of the project and also be directly going through some graphic things that I want to get an internalized view of, I’ll choose First person.

Tranny: A Transsexual Tale

Born one way but living another, Nicky K. has it all: low standards, unfulfilled dreams, tragic mulatto angst, a history of sexual abuse, a dead Daddy who is now a pestering car wreck mangled ghost who won't quit criticizing; several obese, depressed White women as BFFs; hostile male to female tr...

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Tranny: A Transsexual Tale, an idea I had for about a decade before commuting it to paper—actually typing it directly up—-I generally handwrite everything first—-pressed that i explore the lead character, Nicky K in a very direct, graphic, interior way.

I wanted this person who has started life male and is doing things, some illegal, to try and become female—-and is now questioning it after an illegal surgery, reflecting back on the pressures that got her to this point—-I needed that immediacy and internal access. I also wanted her to tell this story in 10 concise chapters. So I wanted a depth but a speed as well. There’s no time for languishing on the color of the carpet or the birds wending through the air—-no, Nicky K is telling you, the reader, what happened, why, where, who was involved and how that has affected and effected her. I knew that it would be extremely graphic, Nicky having been involved in prostitution, jail, drugs, affairs with married men so I needed the reader to if not wholly sympathize, at least understand her.

From the Third Person-Omniscient—-I would tell you Nicky K’s story—-me, Kyle would tell you—-with the 1st Person—-ostensibly Nicky K is telling you.

First Person also gives me, as a writer, a clean access to the character’s voice. Do they curse a lot? Use slang? How does she see things? Can I create a paradox where you the reader see through Nicky’s eyes and yet you can see what she sees differently than her? Then that presses that you, the reader, start to understand Nicky as faulty, faulted, blind in some areas. Which gives me the writer space to play and you the reader space to even deeper understand the character.

I would also offer that because it can seem so interiorized and personal—-the character’s thoughts and impressions immediately translated against their feelings—-the character becomes more “real”. Now the reality of a character, not just their inner world but the reality which they occupy for a reader—-becoming real to the reader, becoming articulated to the point that the reader considers this could be a real person—-has a lot to do with access to their inner thoughts, motivations, experiences, observations. Yes, you can of course do this in 3rd Person—-present a situation, put a character into it and in the omniscient voice have the character relate (to the reader) the reality they’re experiencing. But to do so deftly, to create almost a seamless transition from reader to reality, 1st Person is often stronger. To do so in 3rd Person generally requires more and more experiencing, building characters and what a lot of 3rd Person relies upon—-analogy/metaphors.

That skill, which is ultimately after writing, in rewriting and editing, going back and erasing the obvious seams and stitches and hooks, whether in 1st or 3rd person, is when one has worked, garnered such a skill at writing that it is now colloquially seen as “talent”.

Also 1st Person is easier to some degree because it is most similar to how a writer themselves externalizes their own thoughts. So when I write: “I walk down the road…” I, Kyle, have walked down roads so I know of where my character speaks. Graduating in sophistication, I can further explore the interior of a character because their feelings might be similar to ones I’ve had. That similarity then allows me as the writer to expound or explore something I went through and paste a character over it. If done well, as I have in some of my writing, readers might not again see the seams of woven in reality to this work of fiction.

Writing in the 3rd Person though, to completely re-examine the above I’ve done almost equally as much, most recently in the novel Stay With Me.

Stay With Me

Stay With Me

https://amzn.to/3xV8uzh

I had 3–6 main characters 3 men, 1 woman and 2 children. I needed to throughout the novel move through time and space easier and faster and distinctly. By distinctly I mean that a paragraph starts out with Christina woke up—-blah blah blah—-what I’m doing there is setting up. introducing to the reader that this section/chapter is from Christina’s perspective. Now let me tell you what she’s going to do, why she’s doing it, who she’s interacting with her. The pitfall is that I could tell everything, I could tell it so much, so emphatically that I’m telling you—-not showing. So the line of the 3rd Person writing is to show—-to show Christina moving through her day, her issues, her interactions—-without an over-reliance upon directive-telling sentences and exposition. This balance between telling and showing is often such a problematic area in writing because of a lack of feedback.

Writing is personal, no matter the form/formula, but once it goes out in a classroom, over the internet——your skill or lack thereof, is exposed and rightfully open to criticism and questioning. This means that the general taste of the mass audience will be equivalent to the mass reading of the audience or the averaged/mean reading level of the mass audience. Or more pertinent to this counter-point—-the mass median level of the reading populace, which might differ from those simply capable of reading. I’m referring more to the people who actively read—-what would be considered “a lot” by the mass population.

I read on average 5 books a week so I‘m constantly being -re-familiarized with all of the rules of grammar, structure, punctuation, etc. so “bad” writing stands out to me faster—-generally within the first two sentences of nearly anything. Now I might give something “a chance” say if I’m the teacher of a class on writing or working with younger teens/adults or if it’s a subject I’m interested in/.information but I know that the writer is perhaps say more of a scientist than a writer so I’ll make space for them not being a wordsmith.

Now if you’re attempting or claiming to be a writer—-I assume, like you would to any profession that you have achieved some mastery of the tools—-grammar, punctuation, past-present tense, etc.—-just like I would a professional chef, a race car driver or a doctor—-I assume this because you shouldn’t go public with your work until you’ve mastered the tools, and know what the tools are.

When I write in the 3rd Person I’m using it to tell a story that might span more time or it would be cumbersome for an interior monologue to relate what happened each chapter—-that might cross decades. Also I’m able to jump from character to character—-perspectives and include more descriptions and reactions of and from other characters. In many ways 3rd Person is interactive with writer, reader and characters whereas 1st might singularly narrow the focus to the main character. That narrowing might help to enhance the characterization itself or in 3rd I can use the characterization to also make objective observations about the character/their reality.

Simply, subjective and objective, yes, but also a writer needs to control which is happening and why.

With objective-omniscience as a narrator I can illuminate the character in ways that they themselves might not readily offer ——if I kept it in the subjective, personal, it would be forced.

In Stay With Me—-Christina often “cheats” on her boyfriend—-who is secretly having an affair with men—-but the novel itself unravels that because of his family issues, he seeks out partners who as children—-have had trauma—-therefore manifest it as self-doubt/depression as adults.

Such a complex dynamic—-easily followed when directly explained—-is something Christina and Kirk, Stavros’s female and male lovers, come to realize, would not be as easily unveiled if I left it “in their heads”. The reader then gets to see them having parallel traumas as children. The reader then also gets to see—-aha! this might be connective tissue between two such disparate characters. The 3rd Person then lends to authenticity in the fact that the reader can see-read similarities that people/characters might not readily be able to express—-or it would be clumsy to express it—-again showing amateurish usage of writing tools. You always want, I want, in my writing two things—-naturalness and flow.

Naturalness is experimented with and elements of it are explained above. By “flow” I mean that I aim for each section, sequence chapter to move naturally into the next by value. Each section must earn it’s place so as not to be edited out. I tease early in Stay With Me, Kirk telling his son he’s too young to drive as the little boy playfully asks to be taught—-but that heralds to the future where Mateo actually tries to drive a car. It seems like simply a playful aside but 50 pages later the reader sees that as the book itself is designed to observe these characters through the multiverse—-of 5 alternate/related realities—-that the writer was also inner playing with the text itself. Which deepens the experience for the reader. The book is no longer simply a story but the reader sees that in the complexity of the construction, there is much to notice, to pay attention to, that there is a connective tissue.

In such a large work, there has to be a connective tissue or else it’s a huge word salad being cast at the reader—-the writer has the responsibility in their work of making it accessible for the reader and also making it , if not easy, possible for the reader to see deft stitching occurring—-the reader trusts the writer, and therefore the work, when they can see writing well done. Now they may not articulate this consciously but a reader is seeking a book to be “set” in the sense that as a reader one doesn’t have to do editing or corrections or (unless it is a mystery) suss out what is going on.

Strategic breadcrumbs.

#KylePhoenix

#TheKylePhoenixShow