My novel number 2. ROSEHEAD.

While finishing Draft 5 of Siren Suicides, my 1st novel, I was having a hard time holding back complete scenes that would come to me from Rosehead, my 2nd novel. "Why?" I thought. "Why is this bugging me, when such deep pain of mine is seeking an outlet in the shape of my 1st story?" It was puzzling, until one day I realized that the reason these scenes come to me is because I was ready to move on. I guess in any artistic endeavor there comes a point when you know you're done. You need to stop. You need to start something new. I learned how to write better dialogue, and I couldn't wait to try it out. I learned how to plan and plot and weave in suspension, and I wanted to test it out on a new idea. Above all, I was holding back all the bizarre and macabre and circus-like and extravagant things that I witnessed, the fabric of my childhood, where violence mixed with extreme intelligence, neglect went step in step with exquisite meals, designer dresses, and dance classes. And I wanted to create a character very different from Ailen, (the main character in Siren Suicides), not a raw emotional teenager, but a very polite and quiet preteen who is incredibly smart and broken on the inside. That would be Lilith Bloom, the main character in Rosehead. 

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS DISTURBING IMAGERY. 

Why Rosehead as a title? I must step back here and give a little bit of backstory. Where did the idea come from? Well, like I said on my editor Colleen Albert's blog, my ideas come from my past which was so rich with odd eccentricities and simple-minded brutal force, that at times I didn't know what reality I belonged to, utterly confused. In short, I grew up in Soviet Russia where all normal girls would wear the same dress that every other girl in USSR wore because it was the type of dress that all state malls sold. In contrast to that, I would be wearing crocheted concoctions made by my great grandmother (I still have that dress, by the way). Or I would wear exceptionally cute hats that my mother would knit for me (she was and still is a starving struggling artist back in Russia, knitting amazing things that she doesn't know how to sell). I remember being invited over to a friend's house, and hearing my friend roll on the floor in hysterics as soon as the front door was closed (I was leaving) and yelling at her mother that she wants a hat like mine. On top of it, my aunt has cut my hair to a French bob, and almost none of the other girls in class had their hair like mine, they all had braids, or their hair was in long pigtails. This is not all. One of my grandmother's sisters sent me real wooden clogs from Holland, and I think every girl wanted to kill me from envy. That was Soviet Russia. I was aloof and didn't understand why girls didn't like me, so I hung out with boys. Rosehead is the name for a many-sided pyramidal head upon a nail or a nail with such a head. I had severe ADD and PTSD and I want to write about what it feels like to be inside the head of a child like that.

The double world of abuse. Now comes the not so pleasant part. Ever since I remember myself, and I don't remember much, because most of it is blocked out, I was abused in all possible variety of ways, from being constantly yelled at, to being pulled from under bed (where I liked to hide) and beaten, to being painfully smacked on my forehead with a table spoon to make me eat (or having soup turned over my head in punishment), to the most horrific experiences that I only started piecing together about 5 years ago, after launching into a series of panic attacks and becoming suicidal again (I ran away from home at 16 and wanted to kill myself then). I was sexually abused by the second husband of my grandmother, my step-grandfather, a butcher and an alcoholic who just got out of prison for stealing. It was done mostly at his dacha, one of those summer houses everyone in Russia flees to, to escape the scolding heat of the city. They were neighbors, and my grandmother frequently left me with him. My mother was mostly absent from my life, which is a whole another story. I was also sexually abused by my father. He was (and is) a prominent writer and an intellectual who took me for visits once in a while (my parents divorced when I was 4) and taught me lessons, as he would say it, so I wouldn't turn out like my mother, which, in his view, was a prostitute. His plan was to root out of me any sexual desire, which he indeed managed to do, for many many years. He would go into these violent fits and after all done, would kiss my hair and wonder why I was crying, saying I'm silly because he loves me. I escaped into my head. So here again is my wish to describe the double world of a very sensitive child who has to flee reality for one reason or another.

The richness of appearance against the poverty of soul. The juxtaposition of my mother showing up at home once or twice a month, teaching me how to properly eat a grapefruit, how to slice it and sprinkle it with sugar and spoon out the flesh, and then disappearing again, leaving me to being constantly hungry (there wasn't much food in the house, I rather needed chicken and potatoes, not a grapefruit). The juxtaposition of dirt and filth and piles of grimy dishes in the kitchen in the apartment I lived, to handmade amazing knit dresses that I wore. The juxtaposition of my father reading to me out loud the poems of such Russian masters like Pushkin, Akhmatova, and Blok, even Chekhov's stories, and then painfully pinching me, forcefully sticking his fingers between my buttocks for fun, and slapping my face, and then later sexually abusing me when we were alone, claiming later to everyone that I'm a drama queen, an actress, and a liar, that I have my mother's genes and will turn out a whore, when I grow up. All of this often left me in such state of confusion that I couldn't tell up from down or left from right. Literally, I remember trying to burn into my brain which of my arms is left and which is right, and I remember it slipping me. Thus Lilith in Rosehead will be in the world of shifting rooms, appearing and disappearing doors, growing houses and spinning gardens. Since I was a loner, she will be too, with her pet whippet Panther for company (I grew up in that filthy apartment with 4 dogs, 3 cats, rats, mice, and even a hedgehog... oh, and cockroaches).

Sarcasm as a cover for pain. One of the ways I survived all of this was, actually, something that my father's side of the family taught me. Humor. Sarcasm. On the positive side, whenever something drastic happened, there was always a good joke to go with it, and this is what I'm dying to write about in Rosehead, spicing up the dialogue with bitter biting funny sarcasm, the type that hides layers and layers of people's personalities and their life experiences. I mean, I'm itching, I can't wait. Each of the characters will be a grossly inflated version of that or another person I've been in touch with, but they also will be their own people, as opposed to characters in Siren Suicides, who are closely tied to my own relationship with my father. Hence, I can't wait to start on Rosehead because I have no restrictions anymore. It will be drawn from that exuberance of experiences that I had growing up, the macabre, the horrific, the rich, the beautiful, the eccentric, the... the... I'm catching my breath here to stop. To summarize, it will be a feast.

Well, I suppose I need to give a one-liner for Rosehead here. Rosehead is a story about 12 year old Lilith Bloom, who travels from her American hometown to Berlin, Germany, for a big family reunion in her grandfather's house (I lived in Berlin for 4 years in my teens). With the help of her pet whippet Panther she discovers that her grandfather is not just a famous rose grower, but a murderer. He kills women and turns them into roses, hence his incredible success.

All books are character driven. END OF STORY.

Photo by Joel Robison

I'm risking here to alienate many of you, and I truly apologize if I do, because what's about to follow is purely a speculation based on a very strong feeling of an epiphany that struck me today while reading the 7th book of The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. I swear, I didn't plan it, I didn't think nothing, I was making myself tea, holding the book in one hand and the cup in another, when I nearly dropped both. Because in the book something absolutely random happened, which didn't make much sense, and which I proceeded to believe and ignore and gloss over for the sake of the story. It was like one of those random things that happen that we shrug off, like a crow flying into your window, and then, as soon as it appears, flying out. You stand there, your life flow interrupted, you muse about it for a minute or two, and then move on with your life. Same phenomenon happened to me while reading 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, where a character would suddenly appear, keep developing, and then, BAM, disappear and be never mentioned again. Yet it didn't bother me and I continued reading! So, here is the deal, I haven't read enough, nor have I written enough to claim any kind of knowledge on the matter, but I have a very very strong feeling, a feeling that all stories are character driven, period. And stories that are plot driven are interesting, but ultimately never touch us in the same way. 

People care for people, not for ideas. This is as simple as it gets. We can talk to death about ideas, but we don't really care about them, we care about other people and their opinions about our idea, precisely because the idea doesn't matter as much as somebody's validation of it does. (Case in point, me blogging about my idea here.) And why do we read books? To identify with characters, to have our own lives and ambitions and dreams and fantasies validated, through the eyes of... *drumroll* ...a character! Again, a person, not the idea. I mean, tell me, is it easier to read a novel or a textbook? Yeah, I knew you'd think the same. But what is interesting is that when a book is being written, ultimately first stuff happens to characters, then a plot develops, then perhaps it gets so strong, that it becomes a very interesting story, a very interesting pitch to put on the back of the book, so it might LOOK like it's plot driven, where in fact it isn't. So then when the book becomes successful, we, naturally, try to dissect it, to understand how this author wrote it, to learn from it, and in dissecting we try to find patterns, try to find some rule that we can apply to our own writing. I think perhaps this is where the whole idea of a plot came from. Did Homer think about a plot when writing The Odyssey? I don't think so. Yet here we are, trying to be smart about everything, cutting it apart and learning. It seems like this is what produces books that are plot driven, it's writers learning how to write, reading books about how to write, reading about plots, and ultimately writing with plots in mind. Right? Again, I'm not stating a fact here, only wondering.

We're happiest when we feel, not plan. This is one of those simple truths, you know, on how to be happy. Think back to when you were three and you did stuff because you felt like it, not because you had it on your to-do list. And now think about your job, about those endless notes and tasks and e-mails and meetings, and then more of those tomorrow, and more the day after, and think about how much stress it adds to your life, and how ultimately you feel burned out and are dying to go on vacation to decompress. Why? Because. Because it's not how we're designed to function, that's why we do art for therapy, or go to yoga resorts, or do mediation, or... . All because the planning doesn't make us happy, being spontaneous does. Back to the plot. When a book is character driven, stuff happens in it, but it feels spontaneous, and it feels good, it gives us the same high as if we were spontaneous with the character. And when a book is carefully plotted out, it just doesn't feel as good, because we don't really perceive it through the character's eyes, through emotions, we get it with our mind, the one that likes to organize everything and the one that makes us feel overwhelmed when there is too much shit going on and our to-do list seems never-ending. Again, this is simply a hypothesis, so bear with me, please.

We can't predict life, no matter how much we try. All of us at one point or another have tried horoscopes or other more obscure methods to predict future, because we're scared of death and bad stuff that might happento us and we want to know how to avoid it, or at least prepare for it. But we can't, not really, I mean, we predict weather and stuff, and that's about it. Same with books. We think we can predict the ending, we want to predict the ending, we're dying to know what happens next, because we're living through the character and we're afraid for the character, afraid the character might die or some other bad stuff might happen, we want good stuff to happen, right? Right. And here lies the problem with purely plot driven books. Again, I'm only thinking out loud here, not claiming that I know this, simply having a very strong feeling. And that feeling is, carefully plotted books are predictable, hence, boring. Now, chances are you might fail to see a pattern in a very cleverly plotted book, and it will keep you hooked till the very end. The benefit of a character driven book is, it's unpredictable, surprising us the same way life surprises us, throwing the character into a chaos that they have to solve, the same way life throws us into chaos. Hence, this explains to me why I didn't care much for Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (I was very upset about this fact, because it's on a best-seller list, and I thought something must be wrong with me.) On page 66 I knew where the story was going, plot-wise, and ONLY on page 220 the actual twist I suspected happened. By then I was so fed up with patiently plowing through pages, that I dropped the book, I simply couldn't read it anymore, I was that upset. Again, don't listen to me here as if I'm saying some ultimate truth. I'm not, I'm simply musing, trying to understand how to be a better writer and learning as I go, so please don't think that Gone Girl is not worth reading your time, check it out for yourself. There is a reason it sells well. What I'm stating here is purely my own understanding of why I didn't like it.

Whew. I'm scared now. I'm terrified of being honest here and spilling this publicly, because there are so many big and important people who would tear my head off if they only saw that I dared to contradict years and years of their research. So, please know, I wanted to share this burning epiphany of mine, to hopefully start a discussion and see if anything comes out of it, as a learning experience, to learn how to write better. And, hopefully, help you in the process too. It takes a village, right?