Karen Bender's Guest Post: Revision

I’m currently revising a fourth draft of my second novel, “Allegations.”I’m going into my fourth year working on the book, which for me isn’t bad—my first novel, Like Normal People, took seven years to really finish. As a writer and teacher, I’m a big cheerleader for revision.
Revision isn’t, in my mind, the process of just changing a few words here or there or inserting one line that “changes” the whole story; it’s about really thinking about how to push a manuscript and make it better, to tear out and start again, and rethink. It can be arduous and aggravating and illuminating and playful and ultimately rewarding; I tell my students that revision can help you write things you never thought you could write because it is, ultimately, about patience.


I know the word “revision” can strike fear into writers. Why isn’t it good enough the first time? Why can’t I just sent it out the minute I get it onto the page? I’ve felt that, too, often; but I think that’s a reaction to our frenetic, get-things-done-instantly culture. Why can’t we congratulate each other on the fact we can stick to it for three, four, five drafts? I know that sometimes when writers speak about work, the discussion turns to when something will be finished, and the whole dreaded marketing process, etc. I do this, too. But instead, why can’t we affirm the bravery we have at working at it further? Could we ask each other--what are you discovering in this part of the process? Or—what are you learning about your characters now?

When I was a child, my mother, a dancer/choreographer, would tell my sisters and I—think about “process, not product.” I often had problems listening to this—I wanted product, product! I wanted publication, now! Now I think that working on a piece of art requires that you consider both process and product. You have a vision in your head, of your work, your wonderful creation, what you want to add to the world. And along the way, you find a way to enjoy the process, to allow its unpredictability, to follow that messy, divine road that leads you, finally, to art.

Karen Bender's Guest Post: The Problem with Mary

We’ve had a project in our house the last few months. We’ve been reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder series, and it’s been wonderful returning to it. There’s nothing quite like reading “On the Banks of Plum Creek” to two children in 2009. When we read them the fact that Pa walked three hundred miles in patched shoes to find a job that paid a dollar a day, they looked shocked and said, “What a gyp.”

The books really hold up. In fact, they are a good way to stop whining, especially after reading “The Long Winter.” The kids were less likely to complain about their dinner menu after reading that the Ingalls ate only brown bread (and not a lot of it) for three months. The recent article in The New Yorker about Laura Ingalls Wilder and how she wrote the books with her daughter, Rose, is excellent. But as a writer, I want to lodge a complaint about Mary.

Mary, as you may remember, is the oldest daughter, the one with the beautiful blonde curls, the one who is notable for being endlessly “good.” She becomes blind after having scarlet fever in book five, “By the Shores of Silver Lake,” and Laura is given the job of being her eyes.

This is when Laura, I think, starts becoming a writer—when she “sees out loud” for Mary. For example, there’s a beautiful description in which she is describing the prairie for Mary and says: “There’s just the big sky and grassy land, and the little low creek…It trickles along from pool to pool, by dry gravel stretches and cracked dry mud flat.”

Great job, Laura! But then Laura says this:

“The road pushes against the grassy land and breaks off short. And that’s the end of it.”

“That can’t be,” Mary objected. “The road goes all the way to Silver Lake.”

“I know it does,” Laura answered.

“Well, then I don’t think you ought to say things like that,” Mary told her gently. “We should always be careful to say exactly what we mean.”

“I was saying what I meant,” Laura protested. But she could not explain. There were so many ways of seeing things and so many ways of saying them.

Mary naturally wants to be told how the world looks. And Laura is trying to do it. But Laura is trying to describe the world in her way—metaphorically, poetically. And Mary becomes a literalist. She doesn’t want Laura to see things in her own way.

This happens other times in the book too. When she is describing a man, Big Jerry, who is riding away, Laura says:

“The brown prairie all around—and they rode right into the sun as it was going down. They’ll go on in the sun around the world.”

Mary thought for a moment. Then she said, “Laura, you know he couldn’t ride into the sun. He’s just riding along on the ground like anybody.”

But Laura did not feel she had told a lie. What she had said was true, too.

I found myself getting more and more annoyed with Mary as I read this book. For Mary-the-punitive- literalist is a familiar workshop type. As a creative writing student, and now as a teacher, I know that there can be a student in the class who is hell-bent on clarity. Over everything. Clarity is, in fact, important in writing—if a reader is confused, then the writer will lose him/her. But Mary is not just demanding clarity. She is telling Laura that her reality is not relevant. And this is a dangerous sort of critic for a writer.

How does a writer say what he/she means and not lose the audience? It can be a balancing act, between “seeing out loud” for the reader and “seeing your way.” Ideally, the best writing comes from an intersection between both—the description that communicates the image to the reader but that comes from the writer’s own unique point of view. It can take a lot of tries to get that particular image—and ultimately the most helpful critic will ask questions of the writer, not crush the writer.

Watch out for the Marys. For what Laura said was true, too.

Karen Bender Guest Post: How To Make Kids Hate Reading (And How Make Them Love It)

My name is Karen Bender and I’m a guest blogger this week for the Kepler’s site. I’m a novelist(Like Normal People) and short story writer—you can find recent work in New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best 2008.

I teach creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. I’m currently finishing a new novel called “Allegations” and story collection, “Refund.” I'm going to post some thoughts about reading and the creative process this week.


My first post is about reading--more specifically, how to keep kids reading. As a creative writing teacher, I’m often struck by how many of my undergraduate students—who enjoy writing!—are not always eager readers. They like to write, but they are sometimes surprisingly shy about reading. And this may be because of the way that reading is taught in elementary schools. I learned this from my experience as a parent of two young children—my son Jonah is 10 and my daughter Maia is 6—at our public elementary school in Wilmington, North Carolina.

At out elementary school, a highly regarded magnet school in our county, children learned reading through a program called “AR,” which stands for Accelerated Reader. It works like this. Jonah was tested for his reading and given a “level”—sat 1.6 to 3.0. That meant he could read books between these grade levels in the school library. He would trot off to the library and pick out a book. Each book was assigned a point level—1 point, 2, etc. Longer books were worth more points. After he read a book, he’d take a multiple choice test. If he answered a number of questions correctly, he’d earn the number of points that book was worth. He had a point goal—say 20 points—and once he finished his goal, he could join the class pizza party.

I couldn't believe this program when I first heard about it. It seemed like a kind of Orwellian joke.

But it was true. And worse, parents were buying into it! They were bragging about their kids’ point goals, as though a higher point goal meant the child was a better reader, were pushing their kids to read the longer point-heavy books, were threatening them that they would miss the pizza party.

I found it horrible. I hated it because the kids couldn't read books out of their “level” if they wanted. I hated it because books were reduced to multiple choice tests. And I hated the idea that he would miss out on a party because he didn't answer the multiple choice questions correctly.

Our son, who loved reading, began to resent it. I couldn't blame him. How could one enjoy reading when a test based on factoids was being held over your head? For him (and for me as a child) reading was about diving into a book, consuming it. It meant reading slowly or quickly, depending on how involved I was in the narrative, maybe skipping ahead to check out the end if I couldn't stand it anymore, reading the same passages over if I wanted to. It was not about memorization—it was about exploring. And it was about reading anything—a chapter book, a magazine, a joke book, a comic book.

At our elementary school, I noticed that some parents really only wanted their children to be reading chapter books—the longer the better. There seemed to be a competition between the parents—how early could your kid read Harry Potter? Third grade? First? It was a bizarre bragging opportunity. For even if a kid could sound out the words of Harry Potter at age six, would the child be developmentally ready for it? Aren't some books more meaningful if they’re read at the right age?

I think this might be some of the reason why some of my students hate reading. They've been taught to approach books as tasks. They view books as things you read to prepare for a test! The AR program, which is used to teach reading all over the country, is a problematic intersection between the desire to get kids to read and to measure how they’re doing it.

I think children should fall into books, like a puddle of mud. They should be able to sit and muck around in a book, reading it for the passages they enjoy, for the messages they take from it—which can be very individual messages. I think they need to fall in love with books their own way. As parents, I think we should just have them around, sit and read with them. And stop worrying about when they’ll get to Harry Potter.