Artículo invitado: Scott Wilbanks sobre su proceso de escritura

Es un placer y un honor tener a Scott Wilbanks, author de The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster (que reseñé hace unos días) compartiendo con nosotros algunas pinceladas de su proceso de escritura. Podéis averiguar más cosas sobre Scott en su página web y contactar con él tanto en Facebook como en Twitter. 

¡Espero que os guste este artículo invitado!

(Nota: También podéis leer este artículo en inglés/You can also read this article in English)

Mi proceso de escritura, por Scott Wilbanks

Cuando me enteré de que Sourcebooks había ofrecido mi “proceso para escribir misterio, ficción histórica y romance” como un tema de artículo para blogs, entré en pánico y envié un correo a mi compañera y lectora crítica. Jennie, escribí.  ¿Qué proceso? ¡Yo no tengo ningún proceso!

Después de tres años trabajando juntos, puedo asegurar que sí que lo tienes apareció en mi bandeja de entrada al día siguiente.

            Exasperado porque no hubiera sido más explícita, simplemente le mandé dos símbolos de interrogación como respuesta. 

            Todo lo que recibí de vuelta por mi malhumor fue una palabra.  Piensa.

            Eso hice. ¿Y sabéis qué? Sí que tengo un proceso.

Escribo en ondas.

Para entender qué quiero decir, empecemos por el principio.

Cuando escribí la primera frase de mi manuscrito, no sabía nada del oficio de escritor. No debe de ser una sorpresa, pues, que mi novela no empezara con una premisa, o incluso un concepto; esos términos ni siquiera formaban parte de mi vocabulario en aquel momento. Soy una criatura visual, así que, por el contrario, todo empezó con una imagen en mi mente. Imaginad dos mujeres (una joven excéntrica del San Francisco actual, con una obsesión por las ropas victorianas, y la otra una viaje cascarrabias maestra de escuela de finales del XIX viviendo en un campo de trigo en Kentucky) que comienzan a cartearse de forma bastante agitada a través de un buzón de bronce situado en un terreno mágico entre ellas. 

Con esa imagen fija en mi mente, tiré para adelante a todo motor, juntando un conjunto de flujos de conciencia mal escritos en poco más de meses; cuatrocientas páginas en total. 

Mirando atrás, eso no era escribir. No en mi opinión. No en el sentido del arte de escribir. Pero si pensáis visualmente, como yo, me proporcionó un esquema sobre el que comencé el proceso de “añadir color”, o, como lo llaman otros, revisar. 

Y ahí es donde llegan las ondas.

Mi pensamiento no es lineal, así que no puedo escribir en línea recta, progresando de una escena a otra. 

Por el contrario, aprendí a plantearme preguntas, Instead, la primera de las cuales fue:  ¿qué pasaría si Annie (mi protagonista) leyese sobre un asesinato ocurrido más de cien años atrás en su línea temporal pero para el que aún faltan tres días en la de Elsbeth?

Esa pregunta fue como una piedra arrojada a un estanque. Fue la causa, y las respuestas que generé fueron el efecto, creando pequeñas ondas que se desplazaron hacia fuera por todo mi manuscrito. 

Cuando tuve una respuesta satisfactoria a esa pregunta, simplemente me hice otra, tirando otra piedra cuyas ondas se expandieron desde el punto de origen a la vez que impactaban con las ondas creadas por la pregunta previa. 

Seguí haciéndome preguntas con un propósito en mente. ¿Cómo podía poner las cosas más difíciles a los protagonistas? Más precisamente, ¿qué obstáculos podía ponerles para hacerles tropezar, tanto en el paisaje de sus viajes interiores como en el de los exteriores? Si una pregunta no les suponía un reto casi insuperable, la descartaba. 

Reuní suficientes preguntas para que mi manuscrito pareciera la superficie de un charco durante una lluvia de primavera, en el que las ondas se expanden y se intersecan, chocando unas con otras. 

Y aquí viene lo interesante. Descubrí que no había ninguna pregunta de las que me había hecho que no afectara a todas las demás, cambiando su respuesta de algún modo. Mi manuscrito había desarrollado capas.

Pero os podéis preguntar cómo se relaciona esta técnica con la escritura de géneros. En el aspecto más básico. Para mí, al menos, escribir en esos géneros consistió menos en el proceso y más en el tipo de pregunta.

Guest Post: Scott Wilbanks on his Writing Process

It is a pleasure an a honor to have Scott Wilbanks, author of The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster (which I reviewed a few days ago) sharing with us some insights on his writing process. You can find more about Scott at his website and reach him at both Facebook and Twitter. 

Hope you enjoy this guest post!

(Note: You can also read this article in Spanish/También podéis leer este artículo en español)

My Writing Process, by Scott Wilbanks

When I found out that Sourcebooks had offered my “process for writing mystery, historical fiction, and romance” as a potential topic to blog sites, I emailed a panicked message to my critique partner.  Jennie, I wrote.  What process?  I don’t have a process!

After three years of working together, I can say that for certain that you do popped up in my inbox the next morning.

            Exasperated that she hadn’t spelled it out for me, I merely typed two question marks in response.

            All I got in return for my peevishness was one word.  Think.

            So I did.  And you know what?  I do have a process.

I write in ripples.

To understand what I mean, let’s start at the beginning.

When I wrote the very first sentence of my manuscript, I was completely lacking in the craft of writing.  It should come as no surprise, then, that my novel didn’t begin with a premise, or even a concept—those terms weren’t even part of my vocabulary at the time.  I’m a visual critter, so, instead, it began with an image in my head.  Picture two women—one a young, modern day San Francisco eccentric with a penchant for Victorian clothes, and the other a cantankerous, old schoolmarm living in turn-of-the-century Kansas wheat field —pen pals who get off to a rather rocky start, depositing their correspondences in a brass letterbox that stands in some common magical ground between them.

With that image lodged in my head, I plowed ahead full throttle, throwing together a stream-of-consciousness compilation of badly written words in a little over two months—four-hundred-fifty pages in all.

Looking back on it, this was not writing.  Not to me.  Not in the sense of craft.  But if you think visually, like I do, it provided a sketch over which I began the process of “adding color,” or as others call it, revising.

And that’s where the ripples came in.

I’m not a linear thinker, so I can’t write in a straight line, progressing from scene to scene.

Instead, I learned to ask myself questions, the first one being: what if Annie (my protagonist) reads about a murder that took place over a hundred years ago on her time line, yet will take place in three days on Elsbeth’s?

That question was like a pebble dropped in a pond.  It was the cause, and the answers I generated were the effect, creating little ripples that radiated outward throughout my manuscript.

When I answered that question to my satisfaction, I simply asked another, dropping another pebble whose ripples expanded from the point of origin while also impacting the ripples created by the prior question.

I kept asking questions with one purpose in mind.  How could I raise the stakes for my protagonists?  More to the point, what obstacles could I put in their way to trip them up, both within the landscape of their inner journeys and their outer journeys?  If a question didn’t challenge them to the breaking point, I discarded it.

I came up with enough questions for my manuscript to look like the surface of a puddle during a spring rain in which the expanding ripples intersected, and crashed over one another.

And here’s the interesting thing.  I discovered that there wasn’t a question I asked that didn’t affect every other question, changing its answer, in some small way.  My manuscript was becoming layered.

But how does this technique related to genre writing, you might ask.  In the most basic way.  For me, at least, genre writing was less about the process, and more about the type of question.

The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster, de Scott Wilbanks

Banda sonora de la reseña: Sugiero leer esta reseña escuchando A Letter to Myself, by Lemoncholy (Spotify, YouTube).

Es una verdad universalmente aceptada que no se pueden mezclar un libro romántico, una historia de viajes en el tiempo, un pastiche de Jane Austen, una novela epistolar y un drama familar. ¿O sí se puede? Parece que el Universo va a tener que verdades acepta porque precisamente eso (y más) es lo que Scott Wilbanks ha hecho en la muy entretenida The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster. 

La novela de debut de Wilbanks es, por tanto, muchas cosas en una pero, sobre todo, es la historia de una serie de inadaptados. Los personajes de la novela son muy diferentes entre sí (¡incluso provienen de distintos siglos!) pero tienen una cosa en común: han encontrado difícil encajar en el tiempo y lugar en los que se supone que tienen que vivir. Todos ellos han tenido problemas que los han hecho solitarios e introvertidos:

El was not lovely. She was old and dusty. And she spent her evenings sitting in the wooden rocking chair by the fireplace gathering more dust. Inevitably, she had a book in hand, which she read through wire-rim spectacles that took delight in slowly slipping down the bridge of her nose. This was not an easy task for the spectacles, as El had a rather large hook on her nose that one would think obstructed their mischief. They managed anyway.

(...)

And as he was crossing Church and Twentieth on his way to Annie’s house, Christian saw the face for the third time. His own had been pressed, inevitably, in a book. Christian was something of a reading opportunist—science fiction, primarily. He read while he ate breakfast. He read on his lunch break. He read before he slipped off to sleep each night. He even read while crossing Church Street, ignorant of gathering rain clouds—not the most brilliant activity if his aim was survival. But Christian wasn’t a survivalist. If he was, he’d work in any field but the one in which he found himself. He worked in finance. 

Por medio de la magia del viaje en el tiempo, estos personajes se verán envueltos en una aventura inesperada que incluirá peligros, asesinatos y revelaciones sorprendentes y, lo más importante, los hará unirse y descubrir su propósito en la vida.

Si, como yo, sois lectores veteranos de ciencia ficción, esta descripción puede que no os resulte demasiado atractiva y, de hecho, pienso que The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster probablemente será más popular entre el público general que dentro del fandom de la CF (no puedo evitar pensar en libros como La mujer del viajero en el tiempo, por ejemplo). Pero no sería bueno hacer un juicio tan a la ligera, porque la novela tiene muchas cosas buenas que ofrecer.

Me ha gustado mucho la forma en qué está escrito el libro, especialmente en los primeros capítulos, mezclando narración convencional con las cartas que El y Annie se escriben la una a la otra. La prosa es cálida y divertida, con un sentido del humor ligero pero maravilloso como, por ejemplo, en los siguientes breves extractos:

Lacking the disposition for subtlety, I’ll get directly to the point. Trespass is dealt with at the business end of a shotgun in these parts! 

And while it may appear to the contrary, I am not by nature the quarreling type, though that sissy of a representative from the county tax assessor’s office might beg to differ. Frankly, I think the reports of his limp are greatly exaggerated.

(...)

Westport, Kansas, was a community of thoroughbreds, where proper breeding was not only expected, but also required. Decorum was the air the town breathed, and the first commandment of local society was “mind your own damn business.” Privacy was considered so sacred to the good people of the township and so jealously guarded that—and this should come as no surprise—there were no secrets there at all, human nature being what it is. Everyone was taught reconnaissance at their mama’s knee and went on to become an agent provocateur. In Westport, secrets were scandal, and scandal was sport. 

Even those who survived the carnage of the rumor mill learned that Westport was anything but an egalitarian society. A pecking order existed. The big hens pecked at the smaller hens that, in turn, pecked at the even smaller hens on down the line until they reached the last unfortunate soul with no one to peck.

La historia de viajes en el tiempo en sí puede que no sea tan elaborada como en otras novelas de pura ciencia ficción, pero tiene todos los tropos del género, incluyendo paradojas e intentos de cambiar el futuro mediante cambios en el pasado. Las explicaciones, sin embargo, son un tanto difusas y me habría gustado que algunas de las ideas que simplemente se apuntan hubieran sido desarrolladas en más detalle:

P.S. I offer a topic for discussion. The past is nothing more than the present romanticized, while the future is history with imagination. Any thoughts?

(...) 

A tree looks much the same from one century to another, but a city is another thing altogether.

La novela tiene algunos problemas, quizá a causa de su propia ambición. La estructura es un tanto irregular, con largas partes en las que no se sabe nada de ciertos sucesos o ciertos personajes que de repente vuelven a aparecer, y la narración a veces es ligeramente confusa. El principal problema para mí, sin embargo, fue que algunos de los personajes añaden relativamente poco a la historia y podrían haber sido eliminados sin afectar demasiado a la trama general. Estoy pensando, por ejemplo, en Nathaniel y en Christian y Edmond aunque estos dos últimos son un perfecto ejemplo de cómo se puede escribir son una pareja gay sin estridencias y de una forma completamente natural y normal.

Sumándolo todo, The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster es una novela entretenida, original y optimista. Puede que no sea del gusto de todo el mundo, pero recomiendo darle una oportunidad si buscáis una historia de viajes en el tiempo que se salga de los caminos más trillados.

(You can also read this review in English/También puedes leer esta reseña en inglés)

The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster, by Scott Wilbanks

Review Soundtrack: I suggest reading this review while listening to A Letter to Myself, by Lemoncholy (Spotify, YouTube).

It is a truth universally acknowledged that you can't mix a romance book, a time travel story, a Jane Austen pastiche, an epistolary novel and family drama. Or is it? Well, it seems that the Universe will have to check which truths it acknowledges because all that (and more) is what Scott Wilbanks has done in the very entertaining The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster. 

Wilbanks's debut novel is, thus, many things in one, but, above all, it is the story of a handful of misfits. All the characters of the novel are very different (they even come from different centuries!) but have one thing in common: they found it difficult to fit in the place and time they are supposed to live in. All of them have experienced their problems that have made them loners in some way:

El was not lovely. She was old and dusty. And she spent her evenings sitting in the wooden rocking chair by the fireplace gathering more dust. Inevitably, she had a book in hand, which she read through wire-rim spectacles that took delight in slowly slipping down the bridge of her nose. This was not an easy task for the spectacles, as El had a rather large hook on her nose that one would think obstructed their mischief. They managed anyway.

(...)

And as he was crossing Church and Twentieth on his way to Annie’s house, Christian saw the face for the third time. His own had been pressed, inevitably, in a book. Christian was something of a reading opportunist—science fiction, primarily. He read while he ate breakfast. He read on his lunch break. He read before he slipped off to sleep each night. He even read while crossing Church Street, ignorant of gathering rain clouds—not the most brilliant activity if his aim was survival. But Christian wasn’t a survivalist. If he was, he’d work in any field but the one in which he found himself. He worked in finance. 

Through the magic of time travel, these characters will be involved in an unexpected adventure that will include danger, murder and surprising revelations and, most importantly, will bond them together and find their purpose in life. 

If you, like me, are a seasoned science fiction reader, this description might look slightly unappealing and, in fact, I think that The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster will probably prove more popular among general readers than within SF fandom (I can't help recalling books such as The Time Traveler's Wife, for instance). But you shouldn't judge too lightly, for there is a lot to like in this novel. 

I did really enjoy the way the book is written, especially in the first chapters, intertwining conventional narration with the letters that El and Annie write to each other. The prose is warm and funny, with a light but wonderful sense of humor as, for instance, in the following short excerpts:

Lacking the disposition for subtlety, I’ll get directly to the point. Trespass is dealt with at the business end of a shotgun in these parts! 

And while it may appear to the contrary, I am not by nature the quarreling type, though that sissy of a representative from the county tax assessor’s office might beg to differ. Frankly, I think the reports of his limp are greatly exaggerated.

(...)

Westport, Kansas, was a community of thoroughbreds, where proper breeding was not only expected, but also required. Decorum was the air the town breathed, and the first commandment of local society was “mind your own damn business.” Privacy was considered so sacred to the good people of the township and so jealously guarded that—and this should come as no surprise—there were no secrets there at all, human nature being what it is. Everyone was taught reconnaissance at their mama’s knee and went on to become an agent provocateur. In Westport, secrets were scandal, and scandal was sport. 

Even those who survived the carnage of the rumor mill learned that Westport was anything but an egalitarian society. A pecking order existed. The big hens pecked at the smaller hens that, in turn, pecked at the even smaller hens on down the line until they reached the last unfortunate soul with no one to peck.

The time travel story per se might not be so elaborated as in other, hard-core SF novels, but it has all the tropes of the genre, including paradoxes and attempts to change the future by changing the past. The explanations, though, are a bit handwavy and I would have liked it if some of the ideas that are only hinted at would have been more thoroughly explored:

P.S. I offer a topic for discussion. The past is nothing more than the present romanticized, while the future is history with imagination. Any thoughts?

(...) 

A tree looks much the same from one century to another, but a city is another thing altogether.

The novel also some issues, probably because of its own ambition. The structure is a bit uneven, with large chunks in which nothing is known about certain events or characters that then suddenly return, and the narration sometimes becomes a bit confusing. The main problem for me was, however, that some of the characters add very little to the story and they even could have been removed without greatly affecting the overall plot. I'm thinking, for instance, of Nathaniel and of Christian and Edmond, although I think that the relationship of the latter two was a perfect example of how to write about a gay couple without stridency and in a completely natural and normal fashion. 

All in all, The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster is an entertaining, original and optimist novel. It might be not everybody's cup of tea, but I recommend that you give it a try if you're looking for a time travel story that strays from the trodden path.     

(You can also read this review in Spanish/También puedes leer esta reseña en español)