I spent last week not writing. My excuse for slacking off was that I felt too crummy to write. Or crumby. Like little bits of me were falling away and I couldn't catch them up again. Not that what I did instead of writing helped me feel much better, but there are times when sitting in front of a blinking cursor and blank screen is a prescription for self-hate rather than self-actualization, and last week was one of those times. Suffice it to say, no good would have come out of my trying to write. Possibly I would have ended up with a self-inflicted bloody forehead. And as I sit here now, I wonder what this says about me as a writer.
I often envy musicians. First, they get all the babes - the ratio of the number of women who swoon for writers to the number of women who swoon for guitarists alone is, to quote Douglas Adams, "As near to nothing as makes no odds." But also, I can think of no more direct translation of emotion to art form as occurs in the making of music. The connection is so prominent that an entire genre was created based upon it. And, yes there is expressionism, and yes there is LonelyGirl15, but you can't seriously tell me that they trump this for universally accessible emotional power.
All of which is to say, I'm a little jealous because I can't get that out of writing. I can't pick up a pen the way B.B. King can pick up Lucille and start laying down words in a minor key on my way to artistic catharsis. It just doesn't work that way. The type of thought process involved has an element of self-conscious detachment that doesn't allow for it. There's too much time for reflection.
For example:
You write a sentence, "I feel crummy." And you stare at it. And you think about it, and you realize that what you wrote doesn't convey what you meant it to convey, and you think about it some more, and you employ an eraser or the delete key or a scratchy, inky X, and you write something else in its place. "I feel crumby." But the only reason you wrote that is because your first sentence made you think of an old cartoon you used to watch that has nothing to do with the way you felt at first, and by that point the emotion that you were feeling when you first began the sentence has been slightly skewed or even forgotten, and so now what you're writing is maybe even less connected to your initial emotional state than what you'd originally written and conveys even less of what you'd meant to convey in the first place, but here you are, and now you've written it, and it's there on the paper, and already the truth has gone out of you, and that's just in one simple, declarative sentence.
Of course, none of that is necessarily true. Certainly not for every writer. I'm sure there are multitudes of writers whose notebooks' ink-swept pages are full of beautiful passages scarred by teardrops and slips of laughter. And even those writers like me who find it so hard to transmit raw emotion through the tip of a pen have days when it all flows out onto the page and it works, by God, it works! And I'm just as sure that there are musicians who run into the same analytical frustrations inherent in the process I outlined earlier. And painters. And probably even mimes. It's naive to think otherwise.
When you get down to the nub of it, so much of it is process. Which brings me back to my original point: I wonder what all this says about me as a writer. Is there something in my process that makes this kind of writing harder than it should be - that keeps me tangled up in mechanics and perceived inaccuracies when I should be pressing on and delving deeper into whatever it is that's trying to escape my mind through my fingertips? Because those are the moments when I think I write best - those pressing on moments. But those are often the hardest moments to come by. I'm sure it's oversimplifying things, but I want to say that the thing that's holding me back in those moments when I could press on is a fear that my best just won't be good enough, and so I bog myself down in minutiae as a distraction. I think this is something I need to remedy.
Someone wrote something on the wall of the little cubby where I'm writing this now. I think it sums things up better than I'm able to:
"Breathing may surprise ourselves
Let us then
Despise what is not courage.
--EE Cummings"
Monday, October 27, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Sounds like somebody's got a case of the usedtas.
Famous comedian Mitch Hedberg once told a joke that went like this:
"I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too."
Well, I used to be able to write moderately funny pieces. That's all. But in honor of that, and of the fact that I just re-read one of those moderately pieces, and also in honor of the fact that a new (posthumous) Mitch Hedberg album just came out, I've decided to repost a post from an old blog. And here it is:
"I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too."
Well, I used to be able to write moderately funny pieces. That's all. But in honor of that, and of the fact that I just re-read one of those moderately pieces, and also in honor of the fact that a new (posthumous) Mitch Hedberg album just came out, I've decided to repost a post from an old blog. And here it is:
| Local Rock-Paper-Scissors Champion Dethroned Mont Pelier, VT - Pine Tree elementary school was the site, Thursday, of the unseating of reigning 5th grade rock-paper-scissors champion George Roberts by upstart 4th grader Seth Johnson. In a rochambeau for the ages, Johnson and Roberts were pitted against each other in a best 2 out of 3 contest throughout most of recess before Johnson finally emerged victorious with a cunningly timed rock to beat Roberts' scissors. The duel began as many expected it would, with Roberts gaining the early advantage. After both competitors threw rock on the first turn, Roberts followed up with a paper to cover Johnson's second round rock. After the quick start, however, the challengers settled into what would become an epic series of doubles. "After that first quick loss, I knew I was in trouble," said Johnson after the match. "But I just took a deep breath and tried to let my training take over." Indeed both Johnson and Roberts seemed to enter trance-like states for most of the battle, their eyes barely open, bodies still and relaxed save for their pumping fists. Spectators later described the sight with superlatives that ranged from, "Awesome," to, "Awesomely awesome." Dana Sedgewick, a 5th grader and Roberts' alleged girlfriend, had a vantage point virtually right on top of the action and perhaps summed it up better than anyone. "I've never seen anything like it. It was more than rock-paper-scissors; it was high art - grace and glory fully realized." After Roberts' second throw victory, both competitors threw scissors, then rock, scissors, scissors, paper, scissors, paper, paper, rock and scissors as the contest entered a streak of 327 consecutive draws. The next score was set up when Johnson and Roberts both employed Bonetti's Defense simultaneously. Named after Charlie Bonetti, a 19th century rock-paper-scissors master, Bonetti's Defense is a complex pattern of 43 sequential throws that's been known to confuse even the most heralded rock-paper-scissors champions. That Roberts and Johnson were both able to employ it is evidence enough of their mastery. That they each decided to do so at the same time was incredible. But what happened next was sheer magic. Roberts and Johnson each appeared to notice the other's strategy 11 throws into the series, and, again simultaneously, both Roberts and Johnson diverted from the scripted 12th throw of paper and each threw scissors instead. This led to 31 playful draws consisting of precisely the opposite throws of those prescribed by Bonetti's defense that filled the previously tense rochambeau circle with laughter. Once the altered series was completed, the amazing run of ties was finally broken up some 10 throws later after draws of paper, paper and scissors when Johnson's further scissors cut Roberts' paper. After a short break in the action punctuated by the amazed gasps of the audience, the opponents played out a thrilling series, likely to never be repeated, of no less than 546 draws, the highlight of which was a mind-bending set of 22 straight rocks followed by 3 papers, 2 scissors and a further 12 rocks. The contest finally concluded on the 876th throw. Following draws of scissors, scissors, scissors, rock, paper, scissors and paper, Roberts' scissors was defeated by a rock which Johnson immediately thrust into the air as a proclamation of victory. The opponents then looked to each other and embraced in a show of sportsmanship rarely seen in this day and age. Afterwards, Roberts, whose win streak of 657 matches had come to an end, remarked that, "After a match like that, you're just proud to have been a part of it. Sure I'm disappointed with the loss, but that was one for the record books." When asked about the possibility of a rematch, Roberts replied thus: "There's plenty of time for a rematch. Right now I just want to spend some time with my family and regain my focus. I'll be back, I'm just going to need a little time." Johnson, for his part, was magnanimous, extolling the virtues of his competitor only moments after defeating him. "George is a great role model of mine. Just the chance to be able to compete with him was an honor. My only hope is that I can follow in his footsteps and bring the same pride to Pine Tree Elementary that George did as champion." The school was abuzz with the news of Johnson's victory for the rest of the afternoon, and students will likely be talking about the momentous contest at least until next month's tetherball tournament begins. |
| |
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
This is water
David Foster Wallace died on Friday, which is to say he committed suicide. Many people have written about this already, and, well, here's one more. It's with good reason that Wallace has inspired so many glowing obituaries: he was a consummate entertainer, an adroit stylist, seemingly fearless in terms of the scope and depth of the stories he was willing to tell, and as exhaustive a thinker as you're likely to find this side of ancient Greece.
On Monday I read an article of Wallace's that I hadn't come across before. It's about Roger Federer and the sublimity of his tennis. As wonderful a fiction writer as Wallace was, I think he may have been more talented at non-fiction, and this article, although not my favorite of his, is still certainly a good example of his prowess. In it he refers to "Federer moments." "These are times," he writes, "as you watch the young Swiss play, when the jaw drops and the eyes protrude and sounds are made that bring spouses in from other rooms to see if you're O.K." I wonder if Wallace understood that his own work is full of many such moments. He was such a talented writer and thinker, he must have known what he was capable of, so I wouldn't be surprised if he did understand he could produce those kinds of effects in readers. And so, I suppose, what I really wonder is if he believed it, the compliments and accolades, or if he thought it was all just people being nice.
But putting that to one side, for all the acclaim of Wallace's literature that has poured out of commentators over the past few days, there has been, it seems, just as much space dedicated to his compassion, deep understanding, and overall human decency. This is what Sam Anderson said in New York Magazine:
"You got the sense, from his work and from interviews, that he was a deeply sweet man looking hard for wisdom."
Wisdom. That's what I'd come to expect from David Foster Wallace in the short time I'd been reading his work. Which is why, despite the dark themes and bleak forecasts that appeared in his writing, his death was such a shock to me. A wise man doesn't tie his own noose - it's such a simple rule it could fit inside a fortune cookie. And David Foster Wallace was a wise man.
The news came as even more of a surprise to a friend of mine. All she knew of Wallace's work was this commencement address - something a lesser writer such as myself would have been proud to consider his magnum opus and which, if you haven't read it, you should go read instead of this - delivered at Kenyon College in 2005. There's real truth in that address, "capital T truth," to use Wallace's words, as there is real truth in almost all of his work, and within that Truth there is humility and humanity and honesty and hope and an image of a world in which it is rarely, if ever, easy to live, but which it is nonetheless worthwhile to experience and to attempt, with extreme futility at times, to understand. There is wisdom in that address. And then there is the fact of David Foster Wallace's suicide.
The question wasn't so much "why?" as it was "how?" "How could someone who wrote that speech kill himself?" my friend asked. I think I said, "I don't know." But of course there is an answer to that question: people are complicated, and you can't judge a writer-cum-person based on the breadth of his work let alone one fifteen minute commencement address, just as you can't judge a book by the stock of its paper or the elegance of its font. But that doesn't really answer the question because the question isn't really about David Foster Wallace the person (and honestly, can we actually, truly, deeply care about DFW the person, those of us who never actually, truly knew him?), it's about David Foster Wallace the character, the one that she and I and you and they have drawn in our minds, created out of his own words, who is sage and clownish and fragile and hyperliterate and strong and sad and professorial and who is always holding a tennis racket and on and on and on, and what it felt like, to me at least, was that that character (always toothfully smiling in my mind, incidentally) also killed himself and not just his wife, but we found him dangling from a rafter in the attic (and still smiling, and dangling, and smiling, but) dead, and how can he kill himself, because if he kills himself, then what the Hell are we supposed to do? And I don't know the answer to that question - I'm no David Foster Wallace. I don't even know where I'm going with this line of thought, really, except to say that the both of them were/are important - the person and the character of David Foster Wallace - and that both of them will be missed and mourned, but that, I think, they each deserve to be mourned in different ways and understood in different ways because one death was of a fellow member of the human race, but the other death, the death of the character, feels as if it was the death of a piece of our own bodies and minds.
To go back to that article about Roger Federer, it was, in standard Wallace form, full of the eye-popping, jaw-dropping verbal and rhetorical acrobatics for which Wallace is rightly celebrated. But for all of those Wallace moments, my favorite part of this piece is the final paragraph of the final footnote. It's the moment, I think, that the Wallace wisdom shines through, and it's the moment that he's at both his most fearless and his most hopeful. It's the joyful kernel of Truth that he dug out of the story. It's the piece that hits you in the heart. And it's one of the things about his work that I loved most.
I'm still sure that David Foster Wallace was wise, is wise. I'm sure that he will remain wise, as long as his words can be read. The voice of that dangling caricature, smiling and hanging from a rope in my mind, hasn't been silenced by the rope around his neck. He's still talking and twirling a tennis racket, and every now and again he laughs which, as strange a thing as that might be for a hanged man to do, is still of some comfort to me because it tells me that the David Foster Wallace part of me is still alive. So maybe wise men do tie their own nooses, they just make sure to tie them loose enough that their souls can still slip out. You will be missed, Mr. Wallace, but I don't think you will be forgotten.
On Monday I read an article of Wallace's that I hadn't come across before. It's about Roger Federer and the sublimity of his tennis. As wonderful a fiction writer as Wallace was, I think he may have been more talented at non-fiction, and this article, although not my favorite of his, is still certainly a good example of his prowess. In it he refers to "Federer moments." "These are times," he writes, "as you watch the young Swiss play, when the jaw drops and the eyes protrude and sounds are made that bring spouses in from other rooms to see if you're O.K." I wonder if Wallace understood that his own work is full of many such moments. He was such a talented writer and thinker, he must have known what he was capable of, so I wouldn't be surprised if he did understand he could produce those kinds of effects in readers. And so, I suppose, what I really wonder is if he believed it, the compliments and accolades, or if he thought it was all just people being nice.
But putting that to one side, for all the acclaim of Wallace's literature that has poured out of commentators over the past few days, there has been, it seems, just as much space dedicated to his compassion, deep understanding, and overall human decency. This is what Sam Anderson said in New York Magazine:
"You got the sense, from his work and from interviews, that he was a deeply sweet man looking hard for wisdom."
Wisdom. That's what I'd come to expect from David Foster Wallace in the short time I'd been reading his work. Which is why, despite the dark themes and bleak forecasts that appeared in his writing, his death was such a shock to me. A wise man doesn't tie his own noose - it's such a simple rule it could fit inside a fortune cookie. And David Foster Wallace was a wise man.
The news came as even more of a surprise to a friend of mine. All she knew of Wallace's work was this commencement address - something a lesser writer such as myself would have been proud to consider his magnum opus and which, if you haven't read it, you should go read instead of this - delivered at Kenyon College in 2005. There's real truth in that address, "capital T truth," to use Wallace's words, as there is real truth in almost all of his work, and within that Truth there is humility and humanity and honesty and hope and an image of a world in which it is rarely, if ever, easy to live, but which it is nonetheless worthwhile to experience and to attempt, with extreme futility at times, to understand. There is wisdom in that address. And then there is the fact of David Foster Wallace's suicide.
The question wasn't so much "why?" as it was "how?" "How could someone who wrote that speech kill himself?" my friend asked. I think I said, "I don't know." But of course there is an answer to that question: people are complicated, and you can't judge a writer-cum-person based on the breadth of his work let alone one fifteen minute commencement address, just as you can't judge a book by the stock of its paper or the elegance of its font. But that doesn't really answer the question because the question isn't really about David Foster Wallace the person (and honestly, can we actually, truly, deeply care about DFW the person, those of us who never actually, truly knew him?), it's about David Foster Wallace the character, the one that she and I and you and they have drawn in our minds, created out of his own words, who is sage and clownish and fragile and hyperliterate and strong and sad and professorial and who is always holding a tennis racket and on and on and on, and what it felt like, to me at least, was that that character (always toothfully smiling in my mind, incidentally) also killed himself and not just his wife, but we found him dangling from a rafter in the attic (and still smiling, and dangling, and smiling, but) dead, and how can he kill himself, because if he kills himself, then what the Hell are we supposed to do? And I don't know the answer to that question - I'm no David Foster Wallace. I don't even know where I'm going with this line of thought, really, except to say that the both of them were/are important - the person and the character of David Foster Wallace - and that both of them will be missed and mourned, but that, I think, they each deserve to be mourned in different ways and understood in different ways because one death was of a fellow member of the human race, but the other death, the death of the character, feels as if it was the death of a piece of our own bodies and minds.
To go back to that article about Roger Federer, it was, in standard Wallace form, full of the eye-popping, jaw-dropping verbal and rhetorical acrobatics for which Wallace is rightly celebrated. But for all of those Wallace moments, my favorite part of this piece is the final paragraph of the final footnote. It's the moment, I think, that the Wallace wisdom shines through, and it's the moment that he's at both his most fearless and his most hopeful. It's the joyful kernel of Truth that he dug out of the story. It's the piece that hits you in the heart. And it's one of the things about his work that I loved most.
I'm still sure that David Foster Wallace was wise, is wise. I'm sure that he will remain wise, as long as his words can be read. The voice of that dangling caricature, smiling and hanging from a rope in my mind, hasn't been silenced by the rope around his neck. He's still talking and twirling a tennis racket, and every now and again he laughs which, as strange a thing as that might be for a hanged man to do, is still of some comfort to me because it tells me that the David Foster Wallace part of me is still alive. So maybe wise men do tie their own nooses, they just make sure to tie them loose enough that their souls can still slip out. You will be missed, Mr. Wallace, but I don't think you will be forgotten.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Is pizza the world's most perfect food?
Writing's slow. When I was in grad school, one of my professors - and this is a full-fledged novelist, mind you - told my class that, if he pumps out 2 pages of text in one day, then it's a good day. A little daunting when you're looking at a final product somewhere in the 250-500 page range. We're talking a year just to get a rough draft together. And that's assuming that you're writing every day. And that's assuming that every day is a good day. (Every day most certainly will not be a good day.) And then there are all those revisions. Reams and reams of revisions. It's slow.
I've been having bad days for the past couple of weeks. It's been slow. I blame my job. Specifically, I blame a student with whom I've been "working" at my job. I say "working" because what I really mean is "getting yelled at, insulted, and threatened by for doing nothing more than trying my very hardest to help her in what are increasingly complicated and frustrating situations." I've come to dislike this woman, as I'm sure she has come to dislike me, and it's made me have to struggle for the first time in my life to not yell very loud and scathing words at a person with whom I'm conversing. But what's worse is that this has affected my writing.
I was on a hot streak for a while. Getting back into the novel, churning through rewrites, pumping out the pages and digging back into the material. I'd gotten through 45-odd pages as of the beginning of last week. And now I'm at 52. That's a marked decrease in production, for those keeping score at home. What happened was this woman. I remember distinctly, last week: I was muddling through the last half-hour of the business day, waiting for the clock to wind down to 5 so I could shut my office door and open my laptop for a couple hours, when the phone rang. Half an hour later, I was ready to kick a hole through a tree, and my mind was buzzing with fury and self-doubt. I was racked with guilt and righteous indignation. I haven't been able to dispel these emotions. They've continued to invade my thoughts whenever I've had a quiet moment to think. They've even invaded my dreams in strange ways. This woman really pushed my buttons. I think she has a Koz user's manual somewhere. It's too bad she's been using it for evil.
There are artists who can use these strong, chaotic emotions and create great things from them in the moment. There are some artists who need these emotions, who can use them like a paintbrush or a keyboard. And I say, bully for them, but it's not for me. I need peace, quiet, pleasant calmitude if I'm going to produce anything. But it stretches farther than that. I've had this conversation with my mother before: "Do you produce better work in bleak times or happy times?" "Happy times," we both say, and we scratch our heads at the genius of Van Gogh. "It's just so much easier to work when you're happy," we say. "It just feels so much more rewarding."
As I write this, it leads me to think of duende, and to wonder about its place in my writing. Because I think that soul, that duende, does have a place in art in general, and even in my writing. I've experienced it before, an outpouring of deep and almost frighteningly powerful emotion. And I know that it's vital in every respect of the word. So what does it mean that I crave peace and quiet? Am I too immature and inexperienced to be attempting the things I'm attempting? Am I unable to properly or effectively sublimate emotion into art? Am I not up to the task of being an artist?
I don't know for sure, but I think it's something a little different. There are moments when we all become trapped by emotion. It ensnares us and we become helpless. It infantalizes us, sands us down to the unvarnished id. And that's just life, it's just one of those things. Id happens. And like so many other aspects of life, it's what you do with it next that's important.
Like a lot of the rest of the world, I've been watching the Olympics over the last couple weeks. (Interstice - I LOVE the summer Olympics, and not only because it's the one time every quadrennium that I get to see rowing on TV.) I think they can provide an interesting and illustrative example in this case. Picture a gymnast about to do a routine, picture the pressure of having a gold medal on the line, in front of your parents, in front of your teammates, in front of the whole damn world. Add to that the memory of a hard fall taken on that very routine just a few days earlier in qualification or an hour earlier in practice. Picture the swarm of those emotions, and picture the gymnast taking a deep breath, inhaling those negative feelings, tasting them, and then releasing them, letting them go, pushing them away with her breath and stepping slowly up onto the stage.
It's the same thing with writing, really. You need to be centered somewhere - or I need to be centered somewhere - if you're going to be in the right mindset to write anything coherent. But that's not the interesting part. The interesting part is when, from that centered place of calm, you choose to dive back into the chaos, when you choose to do battle with your duende. From that centered place, you look out and see the dark angel with his rusty wings and flaming sword and you step forward and throw open your arms and throw back your head and wait for him to strike. The interesting part is that it often is not until you have the choice to face those emotions, and you make the choice to face those emotions, that it becomes possible to turn them into an expression of truth.
There's an old Arthurian legend about a woman named Dame Ragnelle. The moral of the story rings true for men as well as women. We just want the right to choose our own fates rather than have them enacted upon us. Without that choice, that power, we can become trapped and buried - devoured. But with that power, with that choice, we're capable of making the basest horror sing with beauty.
I've been having bad days for the past couple of weeks. It's been slow. I blame my job. Specifically, I blame a student with whom I've been "working" at my job. I say "working" because what I really mean is "getting yelled at, insulted, and threatened by for doing nothing more than trying my very hardest to help her in what are increasingly complicated and frustrating situations." I've come to dislike this woman, as I'm sure she has come to dislike me, and it's made me have to struggle for the first time in my life to not yell very loud and scathing words at a person with whom I'm conversing. But what's worse is that this has affected my writing.
I was on a hot streak for a while. Getting back into the novel, churning through rewrites, pumping out the pages and digging back into the material. I'd gotten through 45-odd pages as of the beginning of last week. And now I'm at 52. That's a marked decrease in production, for those keeping score at home. What happened was this woman. I remember distinctly, last week: I was muddling through the last half-hour of the business day, waiting for the clock to wind down to 5 so I could shut my office door and open my laptop for a couple hours, when the phone rang. Half an hour later, I was ready to kick a hole through a tree, and my mind was buzzing with fury and self-doubt. I was racked with guilt and righteous indignation. I haven't been able to dispel these emotions. They've continued to invade my thoughts whenever I've had a quiet moment to think. They've even invaded my dreams in strange ways. This woman really pushed my buttons. I think she has a Koz user's manual somewhere. It's too bad she's been using it for evil.
There are artists who can use these strong, chaotic emotions and create great things from them in the moment. There are some artists who need these emotions, who can use them like a paintbrush or a keyboard. And I say, bully for them, but it's not for me. I need peace, quiet, pleasant calmitude if I'm going to produce anything. But it stretches farther than that. I've had this conversation with my mother before: "Do you produce better work in bleak times or happy times?" "Happy times," we both say, and we scratch our heads at the genius of Van Gogh. "It's just so much easier to work when you're happy," we say. "It just feels so much more rewarding."
As I write this, it leads me to think of duende, and to wonder about its place in my writing. Because I think that soul, that duende, does have a place in art in general, and even in my writing. I've experienced it before, an outpouring of deep and almost frighteningly powerful emotion. And I know that it's vital in every respect of the word. So what does it mean that I crave peace and quiet? Am I too immature and inexperienced to be attempting the things I'm attempting? Am I unable to properly or effectively sublimate emotion into art? Am I not up to the task of being an artist?
I don't know for sure, but I think it's something a little different. There are moments when we all become trapped by emotion. It ensnares us and we become helpless. It infantalizes us, sands us down to the unvarnished id. And that's just life, it's just one of those things. Id happens. And like so many other aspects of life, it's what you do with it next that's important.
Like a lot of the rest of the world, I've been watching the Olympics over the last couple weeks. (Interstice - I LOVE the summer Olympics, and not only because it's the one time every quadrennium that I get to see rowing on TV.) I think they can provide an interesting and illustrative example in this case. Picture a gymnast about to do a routine, picture the pressure of having a gold medal on the line, in front of your parents, in front of your teammates, in front of the whole damn world. Add to that the memory of a hard fall taken on that very routine just a few days earlier in qualification or an hour earlier in practice. Picture the swarm of those emotions, and picture the gymnast taking a deep breath, inhaling those negative feelings, tasting them, and then releasing them, letting them go, pushing them away with her breath and stepping slowly up onto the stage.
It's the same thing with writing, really. You need to be centered somewhere - or I need to be centered somewhere - if you're going to be in the right mindset to write anything coherent. But that's not the interesting part. The interesting part is when, from that centered place of calm, you choose to dive back into the chaos, when you choose to do battle with your duende. From that centered place, you look out and see the dark angel with his rusty wings and flaming sword and you step forward and throw open your arms and throw back your head and wait for him to strike. The interesting part is that it often is not until you have the choice to face those emotions, and you make the choice to face those emotions, that it becomes possible to turn them into an expression of truth.
There's an old Arthurian legend about a woman named Dame Ragnelle. The moral of the story rings true for men as well as women. We just want the right to choose our own fates rather than have them enacted upon us. Without that choice, that power, we can become trapped and buried - devoured. But with that power, with that choice, we're capable of making the basest horror sing with beauty.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Well...here I am
So where am I now? Well, now I'm in chapter 3. I wrote a bit today (and yesterday) about...well, about the things that happen in chapter 3. I suppose I shouldn't bother talking too much about the plot. I suppose I should talk about the writing itself.
The writing lately has been going well. Which is something of a new experience. Or, if not a new experience, an experience that has a flavor I'd forgotten. This isn't to say that it was easy today. It's never really easy (unless you're the kind of crazy person who writes novels in a weekend) - especially when you start off with a full day of work beforehand. But what it was was enjoyable.
There are days when the writing makes me hate. There are days when writing is the worst thing in the world. Unfortunately, there tend to be a lot of these days, and I'd been living in a string of these days for quite some time until recently. But recently, something changed.
I mentioned this book the other day, and I mentioned it because it did a lot to alter my mood. The experience of reading the book inspired me to delve deeper into the experience of writing. I'd like to tell you why, but I'd rather that you read the book. But I'll tell you why anyway. Why is because I like to feel important. And if there is any lesson imparted by that book it's that stories are important, perhaps to the utmost. Sometimes there's nothing quite so invigorating as a sense of purpose.
But there's another reason as well, and it has to do with something that used to frighten the writerly side of me: parallels. As I was reading the many examples of myths and legends in the book, I kept noticing parallels with what I'm trying and hoping to do with my story. Like I said, this used to scare me. The goal I used to strive for with my writing was one of novelty, freshness - I wanted to be something that no one else ever was and write things that no other writer had. When I saw parallels to the work I was doing, I grew frustrated at both my lack of novelty and the fact that someone else did it first.
Those desires and fears have...changed. They're still there, to be sure, but they're also coupled to the desire to express some kind of human truth (<-- this is the kind of thing that, when you say it, most people will roll their eyes at you - feel free to roll away, but it's true). And where I saw a lack of originality in the parallels I saw in the past, I now see a sign that I'm on the right track. Because if something's worth saying twice, then it's probably worth listening to.
Also, plagiarism's fun.
The writing lately has been going well. Which is something of a new experience. Or, if not a new experience, an experience that has a flavor I'd forgotten. This isn't to say that it was easy today. It's never really easy (unless you're the kind of crazy person who writes novels in a weekend) - especially when you start off with a full day of work beforehand. But what it was was enjoyable.
There are days when the writing makes me hate. There are days when writing is the worst thing in the world. Unfortunately, there tend to be a lot of these days, and I'd been living in a string of these days for quite some time until recently. But recently, something changed.
I mentioned this book the other day, and I mentioned it because it did a lot to alter my mood. The experience of reading the book inspired me to delve deeper into the experience of writing. I'd like to tell you why, but I'd rather that you read the book. But I'll tell you why anyway. Why is because I like to feel important. And if there is any lesson imparted by that book it's that stories are important, perhaps to the utmost. Sometimes there's nothing quite so invigorating as a sense of purpose.
But there's another reason as well, and it has to do with something that used to frighten the writerly side of me: parallels. As I was reading the many examples of myths and legends in the book, I kept noticing parallels with what I'm trying and hoping to do with my story. Like I said, this used to scare me. The goal I used to strive for with my writing was one of novelty, freshness - I wanted to be something that no one else ever was and write things that no other writer had. When I saw parallels to the work I was doing, I grew frustrated at both my lack of novelty and the fact that someone else did it first.
Those desires and fears have...changed. They're still there, to be sure, but they're also coupled to the desire to express some kind of human truth (<-- this is the kind of thing that, when you say it, most people will roll their eyes at you - feel free to roll away, but it's true). And where I saw a lack of originality in the parallels I saw in the past, I now see a sign that I'm on the right track. Because if something's worth saying twice, then it's probably worth listening to.
Also, plagiarism's fun.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Get back, Joe!
So grad school brought back the book. There were approximately 7 grad schools applied to by me. If you imagine the worst hand you can be dealt in Texas hold-em' poker, then you should have an idea of how many of those grad schools accepted my application. Oddly enough, the only schools that accepted me were the ones to which I did submit an excerpt of my novel as part of my portfolio.
At any rate, I ended up at Sarah Lawrence, which was generally a good time, although there were a few hiccups along the way.
Most of my time at Sarah Lawrence was spent working on the novel. This is how that worked out. In the second semester, I got just about 90 pages deep. Of these 90 pages, approximately 23 remain in the current version. The third semester was probably the most productive. With the help of Mr. Ernesto Mestre-Reed, I had a very productive semester and eclipsed the halfway point of the story. And that's where things started to go downhill.
After that third semester, I ran into a problem, and that problem was this: I decided that it makes far more sense to rewrite 1/2 of a novel over and over and over and over and over and over and over (get the idea yet?) and over and over and over and over (sure you do) and over again, rather than just finishing a stupid full-length rough draft. So there. And that's what I did. And that's what I've been doing. For a long, long time.
I got some good stuff out of those re-re-re-re-re-re-writes, don't get me wrong. With no small amount of help from a World Champion Ultimate Frisbee player (that's David Hollander for those not in the know). But the fact of the matter is, the writing, once I left the comforting confines of grad school, made me want to smash my face into things with extreme abandon.
Listen, it's time to end this prelude. Here's the long story shortened: I started the novel, I put it on hold, I went back to it, I wrote a bunch of it, then I kept writing the same thing over and over until my soul was ready collapse in on itself and pull me down into the shadowy pit of Hades. But now I'm feeling better about it. Much better. Why? Mainly because of this book. I must say, it was inspirational.
Now, here we are. I'm back in the groove. I'm three chapters deep again, and from here on out, I'll try and talk about the day-to-day issues of writing. We'll see how it goes. But all that is for next week. For now, let's drink until our hearts stop:
At any rate, I ended up at Sarah Lawrence, which was generally a good time, although there were a few hiccups along the way.
Most of my time at Sarah Lawrence was spent working on the novel. This is how that worked out. In the second semester, I got just about 90 pages deep. Of these 90 pages, approximately 23 remain in the current version. The third semester was probably the most productive. With the help of Mr. Ernesto Mestre-Reed, I had a very productive semester and eclipsed the halfway point of the story. And that's where things started to go downhill.
After that third semester, I ran into a problem, and that problem was this: I decided that it makes far more sense to rewrite 1/2 of a novel over and over and over and over and over and over and over (get the idea yet?) and over and over and over and over (sure you do) and over again, rather than just finishing a stupid full-length rough draft. So there. And that's what I did. And that's what I've been doing. For a long, long time.
I got some good stuff out of those re-re-re-re-re-re-writes, don't get me wrong. With no small amount of help from a World Champion Ultimate Frisbee player (that's David Hollander for those not in the know). But the fact of the matter is, the writing, once I left the comforting confines of grad school, made me want to smash my face into things with extreme abandon.
Listen, it's time to end this prelude. Here's the long story shortened: I started the novel, I put it on hold, I went back to it, I wrote a bunch of it, then I kept writing the same thing over and over until my soul was ready collapse in on itself and pull me down into the shadowy pit of Hades. But now I'm feeling better about it. Much better. Why? Mainly because of this book. I must say, it was inspirational.
Now, here we are. I'm back in the groove. I'm three chapters deep again, and from here on out, I'll try and talk about the day-to-day issues of writing. We'll see how it goes. But all that is for next week. For now, let's drink until our hearts stop:
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Stupid life
After college, the whole writing thing lost some of its luster amid the heady glamor of "real life." Which is only to say that, as easy as it is to avoid writing when you do have a lot of free time, it can actually be easier to avoid writing when you don't have a lot of free time. This isn't true for everyone, but it certainly was for me, and the year after I graduated was spent, more or less, as far away as possible from creating fiction.
Somewhere along the line, though - not too long after a 2-year relationship stopped consuming my life - I got bored. As many of you out there know, real life can be pretty effing boring, and we all have to find various ways to combat that boredom. TV, video games, and binge-eating can only do so much, and I decided that writing might amuse me for a bit. I wasn't ready to get back to the novel, so I started up one of them there blog things, and surprise of surprises, I remembered that I actually enjoy putting words on paper (or paper's virtual facsimile) every now and again.
It was also round about this time that I decided I would at some point have to either put some real concerted effort into my writing, or relegate it to hobbyhood for, if not the rest of my life, at least the forseeable future. And so came the fateful decision to go to grad school.
Hey, remember when the point of this was that I would be writing about writing a novel?
Next time...the book is back! Like this guy, only not.
Somewhere along the line, though - not too long after a 2-year relationship stopped consuming my life - I got bored. As many of you out there know, real life can be pretty effing boring, and we all have to find various ways to combat that boredom. TV, video games, and binge-eating can only do so much, and I decided that writing might amuse me for a bit. I wasn't ready to get back to the novel, so I started up one of them there blog things, and surprise of surprises, I remembered that I actually enjoy putting words on paper (or paper's virtual facsimile) every now and again.
It was also round about this time that I decided I would at some point have to either put some real concerted effort into my writing, or relegate it to hobbyhood for, if not the rest of my life, at least the forseeable future. And so came the fateful decision to go to grad school.
Hey, remember when the point of this was that I would be writing about writing a novel?
Next time...the book is back! Like this guy, only not.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
College Years
By the end of high school, I'd developed a plan:
1. Go to college.
2. Major in something innocuous but interesting.
3. While in college write a novel, publish the novel, and watch that novel become an overnight bestseller.
4. Rake in the dough.
I managed steps 1 and 2 ok, but by the time I graduated I only had 30 pages worth of best-selling novel to speak of. They were roughly hand-written on a yellow legal pad because I thought at the time that writing by hand on a yellow legal pad would somehow make the words come out better. That theory is still up for debate.
There is one remarkable thing about the writing of the novel during my time in college (remarkable in that it's worth remarking upon), and that has to do with one of the early scenes. The scene is early both by virtue the fact that it comes near the beginning of the story and also because it was one of the first scenes I wrote, and it has remained in all subsequent drafts thus far. A quick precis would go something like this:
Our beloved hero is in attendance at the outdoor gala reception of his brother's wedding. The day begins sunny and hot, but thunderheads soon roll in, and before the cake has even been so much as nicked, a storm breaks out overhead. And though most of the wedding guests display varying degrees of disappointment, chagrin, and rage at this turn of events, our beloved hero delights in it because, a.) he's the kind of guy who finds the good in every situation, and b.) he gets swept off his feet by a hottie who takes him out for a waltz in the rain.
I plan to re-write that scene into the current draft within the next few days. It's a good scene, a scene I'm proud of, and one of those scenes that I hope sees the light of day sometime down the line. But the reason I bring it up here is because I so distinctly remember the genesis of that scene, and it happened one fine day in college.
I was walking back to my room from dinner, headed downhill from the uphill dining hall, when it started to rain. It was just a light sprinkling, nothing to write home about, and as far as I could see, everyone around me took it in stride. But it was one of those moments that spurred me to thought. It wasn't a mindbending thought, just something along the lines of: why are people so often upset and frightened by the rain? But that thought led to another thought, which led to another and another, and before I knew it, I'd sketched out most of the scene in my head, from the first crack of thunder to the end of the dance under a billowing tree. Also, I'd stopped walking so I could think better, and I'd become soggy. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's moments like that one, when the force of creation inhabits me momentarily and brings a new world into being, that lift the experience of writing to the peak of its wonderful beauty. That's why I write, more than anything else: because of all of the small and magnificent moments of creation. That's what keeps me coming back.
I've written too much again. Next time we find out what happens when people stop being polite...and start getting real.
1. Go to college.
2. Major in something innocuous but interesting.
3. While in college write a novel, publish the novel, and watch that novel become an overnight bestseller.
4. Rake in the dough.
I managed steps 1 and 2 ok, but by the time I graduated I only had 30 pages worth of best-selling novel to speak of. They were roughly hand-written on a yellow legal pad because I thought at the time that writing by hand on a yellow legal pad would somehow make the words come out better. That theory is still up for debate.
There is one remarkable thing about the writing of the novel during my time in college (remarkable in that it's worth remarking upon), and that has to do with one of the early scenes. The scene is early both by virtue the fact that it comes near the beginning of the story and also because it was one of the first scenes I wrote, and it has remained in all subsequent drafts thus far. A quick precis would go something like this:
Our beloved hero is in attendance at the outdoor gala reception of his brother's wedding. The day begins sunny and hot, but thunderheads soon roll in, and before the cake has even been so much as nicked, a storm breaks out overhead. And though most of the wedding guests display varying degrees of disappointment, chagrin, and rage at this turn of events, our beloved hero delights in it because, a.) he's the kind of guy who finds the good in every situation, and b.) he gets swept off his feet by a hottie who takes him out for a waltz in the rain.
I plan to re-write that scene into the current draft within the next few days. It's a good scene, a scene I'm proud of, and one of those scenes that I hope sees the light of day sometime down the line. But the reason I bring it up here is because I so distinctly remember the genesis of that scene, and it happened one fine day in college.
I was walking back to my room from dinner, headed downhill from the uphill dining hall, when it started to rain. It was just a light sprinkling, nothing to write home about, and as far as I could see, everyone around me took it in stride. But it was one of those moments that spurred me to thought. It wasn't a mindbending thought, just something along the lines of: why are people so often upset and frightened by the rain? But that thought led to another thought, which led to another and another, and before I knew it, I'd sketched out most of the scene in my head, from the first crack of thunder to the end of the dance under a billowing tree. Also, I'd stopped walking so I could think better, and I'd become soggy. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's moments like that one, when the force of creation inhabits me momentarily and brings a new world into being, that lift the experience of writing to the peak of its wonderful beauty. That's why I write, more than anything else: because of all of the small and magnificent moments of creation. That's what keeps me coming back.
I've written too much again. Next time we find out what happens when people stop being polite...and start getting real.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
The Story So Far
So I still have this blog, thing, and I figure that, as long as I have it, I should probably endeavor to do something more with it than just not updating it. Like update it.
Side note: I'm a big fan of the word "endeavor."
The way I'd like to update this blog - that is, the way I'd like to endeavor to regularly update this blog - is by writing about writing. More specifically, I'd like to do this by writing about the other non-blog writing that I have a tendency to do throughout the week. Whether or not I'm able to do this consistently remains to be seen, but I had the idea today, and I thought it was a decent one, so here I go with the endeavor.
Lately I have been endeavoring (really, like that word) to write a novel. And before I begin writing what I hope will be daily posts about the process of writing that novel, I feel I should elaborate upon the history of this would-be novel, as its history is, perhaps, of some slight interest to someone somewhere. That someone being me. So, in an attempt to begin at the beginning, I give you...the story so far:
I've been writing this novel, on and off, for the past 11 years. The name of the novel right now is The Acolyte, although that is only its most recent iteration, and probably just a short-term fix. I have a feeling I won't give it a title I'm satisfied with until I finish the thing. Of course, having been in the process of writing it in some manner or another for the last decade-plus-one, doesn't lend much support to the idea that I'll have a solid title any time soon.
Let me go back to the beginning like I promised I would. I was laying in bed one night as a teenage boy, half-comatose from too much pasta and not looking forward to waking up early for school the next day. In this state, I had an idea for a story - which was nothing too out of the ordinary for me at the time - and that idea was that a young man of roughly the same age, appearance, and level of intelligence as myself, would board a bus to somewhere and, unbeknownst to him, take a seat next to the devil.
Over the course of the ensuing bus ride, the boy and the devil would progress from chit-chat to small talk to conversation and, eventually, pass into deep philosophical discussion. That I didn't know what "deep philosophical discussion" really was at that age didn't stop me from thinking it was a good idea (these days, however, that lack of understanding does at least give me pause for thought). The upshot of this deep philosophical discussion would be that this particular devil would turn out to be the cause of pretty much all of the world's problems, and that the protagonist would feel a deep, hopeful, soul-permeating responsibility to do his very best to thwart this devil. It would be more or less at the point at which the protagonist's soul was being fully permeated by this feeling that the devil would then say something along the lines of, "So, kid...that soul of yours looks pretty nice. What do you want for it?" And the protagonist, against the good advice of centuries' worth of literature and folklore, would think that this was the best idea he'd heard in a long, long time. And the reason he would think it was such a good idea would be because he would have an even better idea of what he would like to get in return for the sale of his soul.
I'm not about to say what that thing was, but I will say that I basically stole the idea from a cartoon.
I never did end up writing that story. I started it once, but I didn't get very far. That whole "deep philosophical discussion" thing kept getting in the way. But even though I didn't write the story, the idea stayed with me. It actually enthralled me, the idea of the wish, of the moment where the protagonist would say, "Alright Mr. Devil, you think you're so smart. I'll sell you my soul, but in return, this is what I want..." (still not telling), and then he would tell the devil what he wanted, and the devil would fall back, aghast, and it would just be totally awesome. Furthermore I, as the story's author, would also, more likely than not, be feted like a returning hero. Or so I thought (or so I still sometimes think during what I hope are my vainest moments).
And so the idea stuck with me. A common yet accurate metaphorical description would be to say that the idea germinated in me. And I continued to not write the story. And then I went to college.
This story of the story is already much longer than I thought it would be. And if there's anything I know about people who read things on the Internet, it's that they don't like to read things of any great length. I know this because I don't like to read things of any great length on the Internet, and I can only assume that everyone else everywhere is exactly like me in that (and most) respect(s). So what I'm going to do right now is stop the story, to be continued at a later date which, should all go according to plan, will be tomorrow's date. Goodnight for now, dear readers.
Tomorrow: The College Years - Like the Wonder Years, only with more vomit!
Side note: I'm a big fan of the word "endeavor."
The way I'd like to update this blog - that is, the way I'd like to endeavor to regularly update this blog - is by writing about writing. More specifically, I'd like to do this by writing about the other non-blog writing that I have a tendency to do throughout the week. Whether or not I'm able to do this consistently remains to be seen, but I had the idea today, and I thought it was a decent one, so here I go with the endeavor.
Lately I have been endeavoring (really, like that word) to write a novel. And before I begin writing what I hope will be daily posts about the process of writing that novel, I feel I should elaborate upon the history of this would-be novel, as its history is, perhaps, of some slight interest to someone somewhere. That someone being me. So, in an attempt to begin at the beginning, I give you...the story so far:
I've been writing this novel, on and off, for the past 11 years. The name of the novel right now is The Acolyte, although that is only its most recent iteration, and probably just a short-term fix. I have a feeling I won't give it a title I'm satisfied with until I finish the thing. Of course, having been in the process of writing it in some manner or another for the last decade-plus-one, doesn't lend much support to the idea that I'll have a solid title any time soon.
Let me go back to the beginning like I promised I would. I was laying in bed one night as a teenage boy, half-comatose from too much pasta and not looking forward to waking up early for school the next day. In this state, I had an idea for a story - which was nothing too out of the ordinary for me at the time - and that idea was that a young man of roughly the same age, appearance, and level of intelligence as myself, would board a bus to somewhere and, unbeknownst to him, take a seat next to the devil.
Over the course of the ensuing bus ride, the boy and the devil would progress from chit-chat to small talk to conversation and, eventually, pass into deep philosophical discussion. That I didn't know what "deep philosophical discussion" really was at that age didn't stop me from thinking it was a good idea (these days, however, that lack of understanding does at least give me pause for thought). The upshot of this deep philosophical discussion would be that this particular devil would turn out to be the cause of pretty much all of the world's problems, and that the protagonist would feel a deep, hopeful, soul-permeating responsibility to do his very best to thwart this devil. It would be more or less at the point at which the protagonist's soul was being fully permeated by this feeling that the devil would then say something along the lines of, "So, kid...that soul of yours looks pretty nice. What do you want for it?" And the protagonist, against the good advice of centuries' worth of literature and folklore, would think that this was the best idea he'd heard in a long, long time. And the reason he would think it was such a good idea would be because he would have an even better idea of what he would like to get in return for the sale of his soul.
I'm not about to say what that thing was, but I will say that I basically stole the idea from a cartoon.
I never did end up writing that story. I started it once, but I didn't get very far. That whole "deep philosophical discussion" thing kept getting in the way. But even though I didn't write the story, the idea stayed with me. It actually enthralled me, the idea of the wish, of the moment where the protagonist would say, "Alright Mr. Devil, you think you're so smart. I'll sell you my soul, but in return, this is what I want..." (still not telling), and then he would tell the devil what he wanted, and the devil would fall back, aghast, and it would just be totally awesome. Furthermore I, as the story's author, would also, more likely than not, be feted like a returning hero. Or so I thought (or so I still sometimes think during what I hope are my vainest moments).
And so the idea stuck with me. A common yet accurate metaphorical description would be to say that the idea germinated in me. And I continued to not write the story. And then I went to college.
This story of the story is already much longer than I thought it would be. And if there's anything I know about people who read things on the Internet, it's that they don't like to read things of any great length. I know this because I don't like to read things of any great length on the Internet, and I can only assume that everyone else everywhere is exactly like me in that (and most) respect(s). So what I'm going to do right now is stop the story, to be continued at a later date which, should all go according to plan, will be tomorrow's date. Goodnight for now, dear readers.
Tomorrow: The College Years - Like the Wonder Years, only with more vomit!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)