Who's Awed by Virginia Woolf?

I read Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse twice this fall, once alone and once with a class of high-achieving Advanced Placement students. I was wowed the first time I read the book, but taking a second look –– reading it to teach it –– forces one to take a closer glance under the hood, so to speak. This is particularly good for a writer –– the chance to study a master at her craft.

Now I’m a huge Virginia Woolf fan. Among the things she does fascinatingly well in the book is her manipulation of the point of view. And, yes, I use the word manipulation intentionally. The full-omniscient point of view allows her to accomplish things (in only 209 pages) that us mortals simply cannot achieve. One is the book’s ending: Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision. The writer in me (and the teacher) asks how the sentence changes if you switch the verb tense. Have had is past perfect. Something happened before something else –– a brilliant way to conclude a novel about feminist themes. What is to follow? What will come next? And this speaks to the book’s precision.

Point of view is where many writers begin when they settle into a project. I’m working on the second draft of a book that took far too long to write. The point of view was a struggle. I wrote the first 30 to 50 pages three times, using three different points of view. Finally settling on one that felt right –– present tense, first-person.

My friend (and former professor) Rick Demarinis, author of The Art and Craft of the Short Story and numerous novels, used to say when a scene is going nowhere change point of view. He used this as a way to jump start a piece of writing that seemed to have no energy. One thing he did was to take a random (or seemingly random) photograph of people in interesting states and write a scene about it. If the scene was a dud, he’d change the energy of the scene by writing the same story from the point of view of another character in the photo.

Here are two pictures. (Since deleted.)

Think about how the scene changes depending on whose perspective you choose and whether you use first-, second- or third-person point of view. Give it a try.

And read Woolf’s To The Lighthouse.

Lessons from my 7-year-old

My daughter Keeley (the youngest of my three daughters – Delaney and Audrey are the other two, hence the pseudonym) gets off the bus each day, and the same conversation ensues. 

Dad: How was school?
Keeley: GREAT!

What was great about it? Well, she's a first-grader: everything. New books make her smile. Getting an addition problem correct draws a fist-pump. Playing sharks and minnows in P.E. is something she talks about. And art class leads to lots of after-school stories.

Shouldn't we all go through life this way? I'm teaching an independent study this semester, working with a young woman who will surely be a novelist one day, and we're reading Rick DeMarinis's The Art and Craft of the Short Story. In it, Rick stresses the writer needs to be alive, to be awake, to drink in all of life's details. Keeley sure does that.

There's more, though, I think. When asked what it takes to be a writer, I never hesitate: empathy is my answer.

Empathy – the ability to walk in another's proverbial shoes – is the No. 1 requirement for anyone looking to take up the writing life. Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day. The boarding school where I live and work celebrates MLK Week, offering students different speakers and other opportunities to learn about diversity and social justice each day this week. I took Keeley to the opening event, an hour-long presentation about who MLK was and what he accomplished. Three times during the session Keeley broke down in tears. Her best friend is an African-American girl. "It should be equal," Keeley whispered to me, when I asked why she was crying. "I want it to be equal."

How does it feel to be African-American in the U.S.? I can't know. I can ask. I can read. But at the end of the day, I'm a middle-class white male with a master's degree. Privileged for sure. Characters in my books often discuss racism, sexism, or oppression. I think about those issues, and my characters talk about them. Now, I'm writing from the perspective of a female protagonist. This means I play the role of a female US Customs and Border Protection Agent for a couple hours a day. What is it like to be a female in a male-dominated, militaristic profession? I try to imagine it. What's it like to have men treat you a certain way? In essence, what's it like to not be a middle-class white male in my society? I'm privileged, I know, but writing pushes me to look beyond my boundaries.

And, as my 7-year-old daughter (the real Keeley) can tell you, that's a good thing.