Brian Kiteley - The 3 A.M. Epiphany

THE 3 A.M.
EPIPHANY

UNCOMMON WRITING EXERCISES
THAT TRANSFORM YOUR FICTION

BRIAN KITELEY

Cincinnati, Ohio
www.writersdigest.com

THE 3 A.M. EPIPHANY 2005 by Brian Kiteley. Printed and bound in Singapore. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published by Writers Digest Books, an imprint of F+W Publications, Inc., 4700 East Galbraith Road, Cincinnati, OH 45236. (800) 289-0963. First edition.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kiteley, Brian.

The 3 a.m. epiphany : uncommon writing exercises that transform your fiction / by Brian Kiteley. 1st edition.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-58297-351-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN-13: 978-1-58297-690-7 (EPUB)

ISBN-10: 1-58297-351-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)

eISBN: 978-1-58297-690-7

1. FictionAuthorship. 2. FictionTechniqueProblems, exercises, etc. I. Title: Three a.m. epiphany. II. Title.

PN3355.K53 2005 2005002989

808.3dc22

Edited by Michelle Ruberg
Designed by Grace Ring
Production coordinated by Robin Richie

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Janet Bland, Greg Chaimov, Cynthia Coburn, Dudley Delffs, Andrea Dupree, Brian Evenson, Eli Gottlieb, Allen Hibbard, Joanna Howard, Harry Mathews, Eric Melbye, Gary Norris, Josip Novakovich, Sigrid Nunez, Blair Oliver, Ken Payton, Josh Russell, Carol Samson, John Yau, Bill Zaranka, and especially my agent Laurie Marcus and my editor Michelle Ruberg. I am grateful to all of my students over the thirteen years Ive been constructing this bookthey worked out its kinks and added many of their own kinks.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brian Kiteley is director of the creative writing program at the University of Denver (one of the very few schools to offer a Ph.D. in creative writing); he teaches writing workshops to both undergrads and grads. He has published two novels, Still Life With Insects (Ticknor & Fields, 1989) and I Know Many Songs, But I Cannot Sing (Simon & Schuster, 1996). Awards include the Whiting Writers Award 199697; Finalist for Grantas Best American Novelists Under 40; and a Writing Fellowship with the NEA, 199192. His work has been published in Best American Short Stories.

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INTRODUCTION

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric,
but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

William Butler Yeats

IDEAS BEHIND THE EXERCISES

Working backwards. This book is a collection of fiction exercise instructions whose main goal is to teach writers how to let their fiction find itself. The book works on the simple idea of teaching writers how to teach themselves how to writeor of teaching writers how to read themselves and read for themselves. Making exercises the center of a book on fiction writing is a mildly subversive idea. Most texts that try to help writers write use one kind of exercise or anotherfirst thing in the morning,before coffee, before any bodily functions, write for half an hour withoutlifting pen from paper. Something like that is most common, but equally common are the exercises at the end of a chapter on Voice or Character, for example, that illustrate what the author means by her description of Voice or Character. This book works backwardsoffering instruction through the activity of writing the exercises.

The pinhole of understanding. Learning how to write is the same as writing. Many novelists will tell you that when they begin a third or fourth novel it feels like theyre doing it for the first time. Richard Sennett says, I feel I have to start from scratch each time I write; I gain no greater confidence no matter how many books I publish. We do not know what were doing until we start doing it again, making the same mistakes, finding the same pinhole of understanding in the ten-mile-long wall of brick. We often dont know what were thinking until we speak the thoughts aloud to someone else. These exercises try to respond to how writers censor themselves, how we react to familiar patterns of behavior, and how we fall into ruts. Golfer Jack Nicklaus said, The more I practice, the luckier I get. All the other artsas well as athletics, obviouslytake the notion of practice and exercise very seriously. Too many writers make a fetish of the natural, untroubled writer who just breathes out a great story. Writing is hard work, but this book can make that hard work a little more fun, a little less painful.

Analysis and action. The French poet Paul Valry said, Let us assume that thought in general is a kind of music. My ideal would be to construct its scales and its system of harmonies. Malcolm Cowley, in an essay on the poet in Atlantic Brief Lives: A Biographical Companion to theArts, claims Valry sought to find a successful cooperation between analysis and action. This book tries to help you find the same thing the place between analysis and action, art that is both self-conscious and innocent of its intentions.

Mind and fiction. Consciousness in and of itself is a kind of fiction, a cleaned-up version of reality. Understanding how the mind works is vital to creating interesting and innovative fiction. William James said that consciousness seems to be continuous, without breach, crack, or division. We move cleanly from one thought or feeling to the next without breaks or pauses. But James also claimed consciousness only seemed continuous to itself by an illusion. He said consciousness was a function, not an entity. Its four essential qualities are sensation, emotion, volition, and thought. Our own minds build continual fabrications, elegant and simplified summaries of reality, and writers should take note that fiction, like consciousness, is artificial. There is also a great deal we do that our minds dont really noticeturning a steering wheel, tapping the brakes, picking our noses as we adjust the rearview mirror. Even our own minds edit out the extraneous material of a days activity. Fiction is made up of all sorts of other bits of language and image, knowingly borrowed some of the time but most of the time unconsciously stolen. There are a lot of other peoples words and symbols in our writing, whether we want them or not. We share the same language, after all, even if we also have our own unique versions of this language. Many of these exercises take these ideas for granted, urging you to explore your own personal consciousness as well as the collective unconscious and the many written and spoken resources that can inspire and create our fiction.