Writing Anderson

Anderson started as a story entitled Anderson Detecting. It was originally written with the same sort of cadence as Monkey. I started it around the time that I was finishing Monkey. The writing style didn't suit it though. It felt affected. It didn't come naturally like it did for Monkey. It was just a style I was enamoured with and wanted to keep using. Things don't usually work that way for me. Everything I do has to have it's own personality. Like children.

I put it aside but the character still appealed to me. And the title. My work flows out of the title usually. But the title changed because it was a title that was in the style of Monkey's writing also. So eventually the title changed to just Anderson. I like one word titles. But the book I'm working on now isn't a one word title. I tried to make it a one word title, but it just felt like I was being affected again. I have more stories to tell about that book later.

Anderson was a short story for awhile. I had a plan to write and publish some short stories in hopes that my name would get around and people would trace it back to Monkey. I wanted more people to read Monkey. It got very good reviews, but not a lot of people read it. It is a very unusual style, and that may be part of the reason why it remains a bit obscure.

Short stories are an interesting form. There is very little support for experimentation in the short story by those who typically publish them. I don't particularly like short stories over all because of the standards and conventions that prevail with respect to them. But I do like to write them. I find them very good for getting film ideas out, and I do believe that they can surprise me by turning into novels, like Anderson did.

I was determined not to write in the style of Monkey after Monkey because I determined that was the Monkey style and should only be for it. With Anderson, I was finding a more simpler style to work with. It took a little while to find the right voice for Anderson. Myron Campbell helped to turn the short story into a longer story, and into a novel by way of his fascination with it and the character. Ravi Rajakumar was helpful in this respect with regard to Monkey. There is nothing better for writing than having an avid reader. But J.R. Carpenter was indirectly responsible for the voice of Anderson. It was simply because of a comment she made about one of the opening paragraphs. I was thinking about what she said in the context of situating the character in this particular paragraph. And as I thought about it and tried a sentence in different way, it suddenly dawned on me that I should change the whole thing. It was an epiphany. Anderson became wholly active from that moment.

I like things that manifest indirectly and organically. The more planned something is for me, the less interesting it is. There is a degree of planning, of organization, but it is very much done in the service of discovery.