Writing fiction with Drusilla Campbell and lessons on life
I studied strategies for writing fiction with Dru[silla] for over a decade. She was a mentor in the best sense of the word. We shared the same birth date, 20 years apart. When she was diagnosed with cancer and given a short time left to live, she bemoaned that she had not yet written her “best book” despite writing many great books.
After her diagnosis, her community rallied around her, and the writers amongst them plotted a different sort of “best book.” Dru’s Best Book sprung into shape as a series of essays and tributes to her as a person, a writer, and an educator.
Read the essay I wrote for Dru’s Best Book.
I was a creative, free-range writer at home in the hippie landscape of California with a string of novels under my tie-died t-shirts that never seemed to make it past the first five chapters. I was taking writing classes on jazz poetry and wild women writing the stories of our steamy nights at The Writing Center [in San Diego] when I stumbled across Dru’s class entitled “The First Hundred Pages.” I signed up and in excited anticipation attended the first session.
My indoctrination into Dru’s fiction boot camp felt like jumping from a LSD induced dance party into the life of a Catholic schoolgirl. Rules. Not just a few, but pages of requirements and formulas. Despite her elegant manner and petite physique, Dru enforced her rules like a cross between a Literary Nun and a Marine Drill Sergeant.
I, the author with a capital A, had to have a Story Intention. Not only did that seem to stifle my creativity, but I was not the sort of person who did things intentionally. After all, the muse was speaking through me and that was enough. Or so I thought then.
According to Dru, my novel had to have a “Strongly Held Belief” or “SHBL” in writing before I wrote Chapter One. The walls of structure choked the flow out of my pen. How could I write a “Statement of Purpose” or a “Story Question” before I wrote one word of my soon-to-be masterpiece? After all, writing was my way of processing experiences and creating meaning out of events. She was an egg before the chicken sort of teacher and I was a vegetarian who believed that chickens made great pets.
I left the first few sessions on the verge of tears. My grades-free public school education prepared me to express myself and think critically, but the experimental California educational system of the nineteen sixties and seventies lacked rules. Even the University of California accepted me as I was and stamped a big fat “A” on most of my work. Only Dru would be able to create order out of my chaos.
With the speed of an elderly woman trudging through mud, I learned the rules Dru diagramed for the class. My chapters became series of interlocking character goals that ended in the infamous “yes,” “no” or “yes, but.” I learned to create sequels where my character could reflect on what went wrong in the prior scene and to formulate a goal that would lead her down another wrong turn and teach her a valuable lesson. The objective was that by the end of the book, all the small lessons would create a permanent and lasting change in my main character.
Both my character and I were transformed. Dru taught me to see “rules” as frames on which to hang my ideas, not as impediments to creativity. By the time I completed the first draft, my writing had shape, direction, and purpose as did my life. Dru’s “Story Starter” should be renamed Dru’s “Life Starter.”
