Friday Speak Out!: Inspiration for The Pelton Papers: A Novel

by Mari Coates

Inspiration. Where does it come from? If I search it out, it eludes me, flits off and leaves me alone. I knew I wanted to write about the artist Agnes Pelton long before she began speaking to me and long before I first saw her mystical abstracts. I’m not a writer of fiction who makes things up. I need an anchor—an image, a place, a person. Fortunately, I had anchors galore: the portraits Pelton painted of her close friends, my grandparents; that same year my mother and uncle as children; a later pair of desert landscapes; a view of her windmill studio on Long Island.

I also had transcriptions of my grandfather’s letters and had seen his beautiful large-format family photographs. I found that he and I shared a penchant for imagining the lives of others, tagging his photographs with captions about his neighbors in his rural New York City neighborhood. I was inspired by the joy evident in these images. Really, though, it was the simple fact of his own life—here so vividly and then gone—another introvert who, I felt, would welcome my intrusion into his life and thoughts.

So, I began a novel about him. While reading through a series of letters he wrote from California in 1906 to family in Brooklyn, I found a reference to his friend Agnes Pelton and decided to bring her into the novel: another artist of fragile constitution, raised as he was in the very conservative Protestant sect called Plymouth Brethren.

But once I saw Pelton’s abstracts, the landscape of my imagination was flooded with color and upended by an urgent need to understand. Who are you, I asked Agnes. I began using my daily train commute to start scribbling. I recommend it: a pad of paper, a pen or pencil, and whatever pops into one’s mind. It was on one of those mornings, mulling over how she had come to make these astounding works, when a voice came to me and said, “I want! I want to make BIG pictures that COVER a BIG piece of paper!” All right, I thought, let me help you with that.

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photo by Lynn Shepodd

MARI COATES lives in San Francisco, where, before joining University of California Press as a senior editor, she was an arts writer and theater critic. Her regular column appeared in the SF Weekly with additional profiles and features appearing in the San Francisco Chronicle, East Bay Monthly, Advocate, and other news outlets Her stories have been published in the literary journals HLLQ and Eclipse, and she is grateful for residencies at I-Park, Ragdale, and Hypatia-in-the-Woods, which allowed her to develop and complete The Pelton Papers. She holds degrees from Connecticut College and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Find her online at maricoates.com
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Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration. We look forward to hearing from you!
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2 comments art, art and writing, Friday Speak Out, inspiration for writers, letters, Mari Coates, novel writing

Friday Speak Out!: On Craft: The Perfectionist’s Nightmare

by Mari Coates

I haven’t always been a fiction writer. At one time I toiled over screenplays and scripts for television—all unsold. Screenwriting is demanding and exacting, a complicated puzzle. But I love puzzles, so that aspect of it was a big draw. The hard work—numerous drafts, many false starts—I was willing to undertake for the thrill of stumbling on that perfect solution. I even enrolled at the American Film Institute for two years, hoping to earn an MFA for my efforts.

It was like an addiction—day after day attending classes and writing pages I would then discard as not good enough, until suddenly it was spring of the second year, and I had not completed the first required full-length film script, never mind the second. Panicked, I looked at what I had written that very day—another new beginning, which was pretty much like yesterday’s new beginning—and I threw the newer one out too.

I had spent a lot of money to be at AFI, where I was a full-time student. Read: no job. Was all of that to be wasted? I knew that my efforts, however inadequate I might deem them, would not be rejected; the issue was simply to finish. I briefly considered just quitting, slinking away red-faced with shame, wasting the two years and thousands of dollars I’d already invested. But that was no solution. I wanted the degree I’d been working for.

I leafed through all the beginnings I’d pounded out and gradually realized that, actually? All of them were adequate. Fine, in fact. I picked the one that seemed best that day and started again. I cried as I typed, mourning the failure of this final attempt, regretting my own dearth of talent. After about a week something strange happened: I started getting interested in my character instead of my own misery. I was curious about her predicament. I found myself coming alive to the story that was unfolding in front of me. Despair receded and excitement rose as I observed and listened, wanting to find out what was going to happen.

By the end of the second week, that screenplay was finished—and well received by classmates and teacher. For the second script I seized on the barest idea for a character—an overweight romantic named Art who owned a delicatessen—and, almost out of time, I started following him around too. Most importantly, listening to what he had to say until ten days later I typed “the end.” Neither script made it to the screen, but my writing life was transformed. I had stumbled on what has since been my best writing tool: to look deeply at someone or something—a character, a scene, a situation. To take the focus from myself, my own fears and perfectionism, to observe and listen and let the character and story come to life. The secret to writing is simply to write. May you find joy as you try it for yourself.

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photo by Lynn Shepodd

MARI COATES lives in San Francisco, where, before joining University of California Press as a senior editor, she was an arts writer and theater critic. Her regular column appeared in the SF Weekly with additional profiles and features appearing in the San Francisco Chronicle, East Bay Monthly, Advocate, and other news outlets. Her stories have been published in the literary journals HLLQ and Eclipse, and she is grateful for residencies at I-Park, Ragdale, and Hypatia-in-the-Woods, which allowed her to develop and complete The Pelton Papers, her first novel. She holds degrees from Connecticut College and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration. We look forward to hearing from you!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Read More »

1 comment beginning pages, fiction writing, Friday Speak Out, listening, Mari Coates, screenplay, writer tip