It was a scene Gene Fowler could appreciate. Fowler's the guy who famously said, "Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."
The scene, back in April of 2001, was a bunch of writers locked in a hotel room for a day and a half, sitting in front of their laptops, beads of the red stuff gathering on their brows, trying to write a book.
Seventeen writers, to be exact. Each was a participant in the 2001 ACE Writing Workshop held in Ames, Iowa. Each was writing pieces of a novel called "Pulp Feathers."
You'll be hearing more about "Pulp Feathers." The novel makes its debut at the 2003 ACE/NETC International Conference in Kansas City. Proceeds from sales of the book will benefit the ACE Development Fund.
"Pulp Feathers" contains a set of sure-fire elements for a best-selling mystery: a university setting, a plucky communications specialist and her hunky newspaper-reporter boyfriend, a mysterious research project, a gruesome murder, a sinister university administrator, and a bumbling campus security officer who longs to accomplish more with his life than dragging drunken students out of the town fountain every weekend. Oh, throw in some genetically modified ostriches, too.
When the idea for "Pulp Feathers" was hatched, it was not a dark and stormy night nor was a Gothic mansion in sight. The setting was a bright, spring day on exceedingly pleasant front porch of Robert Wolf's country home in the hills of northeast Iowa. On that sunny day, a year before the workshop, I and three other meeting organizers - Elaine Edwards, Doug Cooper and Karen Bolluyt - hung out on the porch of Wolf's house and brainstormed the bones of the plot for those who would add the flesh at the workshop. Wolf, a noted writer and teacher who has led writing workshops around the country, led the fiction-writing session at the workshop.
Why write a novel? It would be a chance for writers to explore applying fiction-writing techniques to news and feature writing. Some of our best writers use narrative in reporting, as if they were crafting a piece of plotted fiction. We see it in the nonfiction of writer-reporters like Rick Bragg, the Pulitzer-Prize winner who spoke last year at the ACE meeting in Savannah. And we see it in the work of ACE writers.
So why not take that idea and stretch it? The workshop would show writers how to use common tools of the novel - storytelling, scene-setting, character development, dialogue, and a generous helping of the five senses - to enhance human interest and generate reader interest.
I recently spoke to a class of graduate students about techniques for communicating their research with the public. I told them how important it was to have a story to tell. People love a good story. In one sense, science could be viewed as a continuing narrative of how land-grant universities fulfill their mission. There are characters, there are plot points, there are sudden reversals of fortune.
It rarely gets written that way. The novel-writing workshop let writers exercise the techniques that could be put to use. Albeit, perhaps more judiciously in the real world.
It also would be an opportunity to take a fresh perspective on writing. To find out what fiction can give you and where it can take you. The value of inspiration and getting the creative juices flowing (on deadline, naturally) wouldn't be sneezed at either.
All these things were taken to an extreme, of course. You'll realize that quickly when you read "Pulp Feathers." For example, the description was taken to a level unparalleled in the everyday work we writers do, mostly in academia. Those beads of blood on their foreheads were purple.
In that respect, it was a sweet release for those of us who've chafed under editors quick to stamp on adjectives like cockroaches scuttling from under a refrigerator. That's right, Bolluyt. I'm talking about you.
So, on the porch of a country house, the workshop organizers came up with a set of characters, a setting and a chapter-by-chapter plot synopsis. At the workshop, Wolf and the 17 writers worked together to fill in details on characters (one was short, skinny, finicky about his custom-made suits, and had a trophy wife; another was scruffy, ambitious, always running his fingers through his hair). The group divided up chapters and began writing. The group read aloud these first efforts, listened to suggestions, and worked on.
The following excerpt, written by Chris Sigurdson of Purdue University, may give you a feel for the rest of "Pulp Feathers":
Pete Dickens sidled up to the cart and checked his watch. Governor Knott had specified the exact time for the rendezvous and had ordered Dickens to be punctual. Disappointing the governor was not in the game plan for the president of the Ostrich Producers Association. Striving for anonymity, Dickens had traded his cowboy hat and boots for a polo shirt and tennis shoes. The oversized belt buckle was still in place, though, because he needed it to hold up the striped Bermuda shorts. He looked like a redneck yuppie with a farmer tan. The black socks didn't help.
Dickens wondered why he let Knott call all the shots. It should have been the other way around. The governor had made his political fortune on the back of an ostrich. Ostrich producers had donated money for his slush fund, sponsored Easter ostrich egg hunts for near-sighted inner city kids and done all manner of favors for the politician. They even gave him first pick of the ostrich princesses on the now-aborted trips to exotic locales.
In return, Knott had passed several laws that exempted ostrich farms from confined feeding regulations and meat inspections. He also kept state money steadily pouring into Tallgrass University for ostrich research. The school had come through by developing the first macho drumstick, the ostrich-meat pizza and the ostrich-feather futon. One research article had even suggested a link between ostrich consumption and running a one-minute mile. It just didn't mention that you had to be a cheetah.
It's fair to say Robert Wolf's session was an intense experience. I was one
of the 17 writers. For me, the workshop demonstrated just how seriously writers
take their words, no matter how far-fetched the premise. And "Pulp Feathers"
is one silly piece of work. People attending other sessions of the workshop
would pass by the room and, glancing inside, see a level of concentration in
the glow of the laptops reminiscent of Mission Control during a moon landing.
The staccato sound of fingers on keyboards was punctuated now and then by guffaws.
At the end of the workshop, we emerged from the room dazed and drained, but
with a feeling of accomplishment. In the evaluations, the participants thought
the session was a great experience.
"I really appreciated the release and the exercise," said one. "I
learned a few things about writing I hadn't tried before."
Another said: "Intense, but fun. There was a sense of having accomplished
something."
On a shelf above my desk is a stack of grammar and usage books handed down
from hoary Experiment Station editors who've since died and gone to heaven.
One is an often snide usage manual written by Clarence Stratton in 1940. (The
book has a section on "Hackneyed Phrases," including stuff like "pearly
teeth," which I'm embarassed to say I used in a press release last week.)
Stratton has an entry entitled "easy writing" that reads:
"A person who writes with no effort is not likely to be easily read .
. . Few great authors have written spontaneously. Planning, selecting, writing,
revising, copying, revising [sic] are the usual steps, often repeated much more
frequently than the reader will believe."
The "Pulp Feathers" writers put much effort into their work, even
though they were denied most of the "usual steps." And although it
may be true that few great authors write spontaneously, there are exceptions
to the rule. Read "Pulp Feathers" and judge for yourself.
