Category Archives: writing

Progress Not Perfection

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I finished Draft 7 of the novel and started Draft 8. There was no party, no press release. Poets & Writers Magazine sent no one for an interview. Maybe I was expecting too much, too soon?

That was a few days ago, and now I’ve finished the rewrite of Chapter 1. It’s better. You’ll have to take my word. 

Some big decisions were needful in tackling another pass. (Oh look, a glaring non sequitur!)

Draft 8 will be an actual rewrite, not yet, still, again, another pass through the computer files pecking at them like a chicken. In other words, I’m writing the whole thing over, using what I’ve already written for reference, but creating – typing – new files. There’s just no other way to tap into fresh creativity, leave out the crap, and make it better than it is.

The emphasis will be on scenes, not plot. I need to be relieved of the mechanics of plot. It’s making my writing dry. Life is not continuous or perpetual, it’s fragmentary. Which is not to say there isn’t a story behind it, an arc. It’s just not the point, when it comes down to story. Thankfully, I have help for the plotting, a co-conspirator, so to speak. (Isn’t the term co-conspirator redundant?)

I can report, with surprise, that so far re-writing from scratch is quicker – more facile – than trying to schmooze mounds of existing text around. I know writing is rewriting, but sometimes it’s like trying to sculpt a suspension bridge out of marbles and dry sand.

Onward and inward!

Hope you’re enjoying the full moon tonight!

fed up

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What is the duty of a cook? It is the same as the duty of a writer. You must begin where there is nothing but need, where there is an emptiness.

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You must use your talent and skill, and what resources you can gather. Clean water, fresh things. And with attention to detail, create something to fill that emptiness; something nourishing; something that won’t make people sick.

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There is no way to focus too much on this task, no way to take it too seriously. It is all that you are doing right now.

Last night, I decided to watch an episode of a TV show from England called Doc Martin on my computer. I’ve watched 2 and a half seasons of the show in this way, over the past few months, and I notice it’s recently begun a run on PBS in my area. You can read about the show here.

Doc Martin is about an emotionally detached, disaffected doctor who leaves London and opens a practice in a small fishing village. Maybe I identified with the concept because of my long and fervent appreciation of the American show Northern Exposure. I loved that show, never missed it, and the plot was similar, is my point.

The local people don’t get Doc Martin, because he has the bedside manner of a small table with a dim lamp. He is very hard to like, but through all the episodes I’ve seen there’s been a vague insinuation that he is about to give us some reason to think otherwise. On that score, I give up.

In fact, I’m not going to watch the show anymore, for 2 reasons: the main character is about as likeable as a stretch of frozen asphalt, and for me, the show lacks Quality. Doc Martin hates dogs. I keep thinking that’s going to change too, but no. He yells at dogs and chases them away. He is the sort of man I might enjoy hitting repeatedly with a large piece of wood. As for the rest of the townspeople, well with rare exception they’re just not growing very much are they?

The last straw came in a scene in which the doctor goes to the home of his aunt and finds her having sex with her housepainter on the kitchen table. He is shocked. We are shocked. As I said, this show is on PBS; there’s been not one clear drop of R-rated content in any previous scene. And look at her. What manner of worthless writer would have such a character shagging where she should be shelling peas?

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Now I’ve got that image burned into memory. Can anyone guess how many brain cells I lost, that I’m never getting back?

As I closed out the feed from Netflix, I thought about the people who make that show, and all the attention I have given their work, and what I was owed in return. I guess it’s basically this guy named Dominic Minghella, creator and writer. He created this occasion of Fail.

Our Duty as Creative Types

We writers owe our audience some cognizance of their attention; some fidelity to the fact that we have it as long as they’re willing to give it. Hopefully, they’re willing to give it for as long as we ask for it, but maybe not. In any case, we are creating something where there was nothing, and serving it up to feed them. We have a duty to make sure it’s fresh and honest, and the best thing we can make with what we have.

At some point, not in the shitty first draft, but by the last draft at least, we have to give our dish the old sniff test, make sure it hasn’t gone bad along the way. In the case of Doc Martin, the writer allowed the show to take a huge lurch out of its usual path – almost out of its context – and it lost its nutritional value to me.

It’s good to be brave with the spices, to write what we believe is real. But we also have to remember, if we decide to publish, that we are feeding people. Nutrition matters. Don’t leave the tater salad out in the sun, Hemingway.

Searching for Quality

I’m not saying that creative people shouldn’t be ready and willing to offend their audience. Are you offended, for example, by what happens in the courthouse in To Kill A Mockingbird? Sure. I’m saying that we owe the audience Quality. What is it, and why did I capitalize it?

Quality with a capital Q is the properties of a thing which create in the observer of it a sense and understanding of himself with respect and in relation to the thing. In other words, Quality is something that the reader can relate to.

When I watched Northern Exposure, I loved it because I could relate to it. I could picture myself living in Cicely Alaska, hanging out at The Brick, listening to Chris in the Morning on k-Bear, going fishing with Ed. And very much unlike Doc Martin, I could imagine I might trust Dr. Joel to be my doctor. (My real life’s doctor’s name is also Joel.)

Can you imagine the Old Man and The Sea and find some meaning for yourself therein? If so, that’s Quality. It doesn’t have to be as specific and personal as my Reaction to N.E., but it has to draw the audience in, as opposed to making them feel alienated. Speaking of which, does Alien scare you? Can you identify with Sigourney Weaver’s terror? If so, that’s Quality.

That is my problem with Doc Martin. I can’t relate to the writing, the setting, the characters, their motivations. I have waited time and again in hope of being drawn in and finding a way to identify – a handhold of Quality – and it has not come. I have the same problem when I’m reading a bad poem or a bad novel and I put it down. There’s just no me in it, no us there at all. So I have been known to toss a crappy novel hard against the nearest wall because I can’t relate. Not because some people don’t like dogs or older people shouldn’t have sex, but because if it’s done badly – if the shitty from the first draft is still showing thru – and if it ain’t art, then it’s alienation.

bread and apples

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To kick off my flash fiction project, and to inspire myself, I completed a flash fiction piece this week. It’s called The Morning Wind. You can download it here, or on the Flash Fiction page.

Click here to read or download The Morning Wind (PDF).

You must read the piece, which is less than 2 pages, in order to learn what is meant by the term, “bread and apples.” Yes, it will be on the test.

The piece is complete in itself, and I hope you like it. But my friend Erik gave me the idea to try writing 2 companion flashes, one before and one after The Morning Wind. Expand it in both directions.

I think it’s an excellent idea, and we’ll see what comes of it.

meanwhile, in the shade

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I found this in the prefatory text of today’s A Word A Day from Wordsmith.org.

Short story writer Guy de Maupassant once wrote, "Whatever you want to say, there is only one noun to express it, one verb to animate it and one adjective to qualify it." As a master of the short story, Maupassant knew something about finding the right word.

While a word has many synonyms, each synonym has its own shade of meaning. A good writer picks just the right shade to paint a picture with words.

Well, that’s true. That’s what we do. Well, it’s what you do, you good writers. The rest of us stare at the sheet of paper until drops of blood extrude from our foreheads, just trying to imagine the vast array of possibilities. By some accounts, English has over a million words.

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The truth is that everyone consults the color palate of words, but writers take it more seriously and pursue it as an art. (Or in the case of business and technical writing, a profession.) There is a poet in every man, just like everyone makes music, even if it’s singing in the shower. We’re not all Beethoven, but we’re somebody.

When my nephew was a baby and learning to talk, he would see a telephone and say tonebach. It was the perfect word. But it’s weird that he chose a sound that was closer to telephone than simply phone, since we rarely use the older, larger word anymore. And he used tonebach for everything from a wall phone to a desk phone to the smallest cell phone. How did he know? Because babies are geniuses, that’s how. Words are an exploration for them.

Writing is always an exploration, whether it’s discovering the hidden lives of characters or the perfect way to say you owe me money, pay up.

“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
—Thomas Mann

Oh, that’s right. And there are several reasons. Among them is the fact that it is our art, so we can’t stop until we get it as close to perfection as possible, and the last drop of sanity forces us to abandon it and move on. It’s never simply good enough.

There’s the search for something to write about, and that’s usually hard. Though I admit that sometimes for this blog, I just paste in a quote I find interesting, then see where it leads. That’s what I’m doing now. And isn’t that how inspiration works? Didn’t Van Gogh see a field of wheat and follow it into his mind?

Writing isn’t often fun and it isn’t always done for fun. And that’s an extreme over-generalization. But it has some validity, at least for me when I’m wearing my hat of poet and literary writer. It’s all about practice, just like mastering a musical instrument. And It’s about digging for common groundwater, buried streams that run between our lives. All too frequently, the subterranean shores on which they meet are points of pain and grief. Such feelings are common in the lives of human beings.

When William Faulkner – my ultimate, all-time favorite writer – accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature, he said:

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work–a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before.

Then there’s the solitude, the need to find free hours, and the fact that the people around you don’t appreciate that very much. You go off by yourself for long swaths of time, and come back with very little to show for it. Especially compared to someone whose art is The Well-Tempered Clavier or the well-turned chair.

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Well, it’s nobody’s fault but our own, after all. We could’ve made chairs, or birdhouses. Or some nice paintings of mountains, rocky coastline or dogs and cats. (Though people might have more room for books in their lives than for chairs and paintings.) We choose to string words together, finding the right ones and the right order for them, and we’re probably stuck with that choice. It’s a calling too easily accepted, but borne with some difficulty.

There was a strong sense of the sacred in my task. She should be borne from her old bed to her place of rest in one fluid motion, as of a bird in flight. Still I wanted to lay her down so badly, just for a minute to shake out my arms and stretch my back. No. All I have to do is this step, then that step. One after another, the next right thing. Like words in their order, or how you tie a knot. Step by step until I get it done. It’s my burden to bear and mine alone. I should be grateful for the privilege. Not every man has half a day to spend on death, let alone kindness.

— Kyle Kimberlin, Charlie’s Crossing, work in process.

wake me when it’s over

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I wasn't going to look at all. Watching election night results is like watching dolphins play around the propeller of a cruise ship. It's unnerving, to say the least. So I was just going to say wake me when it's over, don't make me watch. The plan was to slip a Deadwood DVD into the player and await our collective doom in placid oblivion, come what may with the breaking dawn.

I have been silently repeating this mantra to myself all day, in which I've come to invest no small amount of belief:

We get the government we deserve.
We get the government we deserve.
We get the government we deserve.

As a younger man, I looked on the sausage factory of politics and its machinations as being essentially onanistic, the purpose and practice of government to be basically insular and moot. What do government people do? Well, they govern the government. People in the real world do the work of the real world.

I don't feel that way anymore. Not as much. A butterfly lands on Schwarzenegger's nose and he shuts down a state park, which shuts down a town. Only Providence knows what somebody like Whitman would shutter up, given half a chance. Or what manner of rough beast might confront her proboscis in the process, is my point.

Either way, whether we get bad government or good, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Some come to laugh their past away
Some come to make it just one more day
Whichever way your pleasure tends
if you plant ice you're gonna harvest wind

— The Grateful Dead, Franklin's Tower

So I peeked. I clicked over to Google News in spite of my own most sane interests. Which, ironically, is how I suspect many people make their voting choices. They know what's best, and they're poised with their pen in the little styrofoam and cardboard voting booth, and then the lights go dim. 

Looks like everything is going to be OK. With the exception of the Congress of the United States. And that's been a mental hospital for 200 years anyway. Because, to paraphrase my dear ol' Dad, they have to do something, even if it's wrong.

Puts me in mind of the end of Cormac McCarthy's novel, The Crossing:

After a while he sat in the road. He took off his hat and placed it on the tarmac before him and he bowed his head and held his face in his hands and wept. He sat there for a long time and after a while the east did gray and after a while the right and godmade sun did rise, once again, for all and without distinction.

the mood I’m in

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On Saturday, I posted that I’d learned about an interesting technique for visualizing a creative design project, called a mood board.

Wikipedia says, “A mood board is a type of poster design that may consist of images, text, and samples of objects in a composition of the choice of the mood board creator. Designers and others use mood boards to develop their design concepts and to communicate to other members of the design team.

As promised, I gave one a try for my novel in process. I had some images that I’d collected in a folder. They were meant to help inspire my writing, but had never been brought together to help each other jiggle. Other images I found pretty quickly online.

It was kind of fun, but challenging. I had to find photos taken by other people, in some cases before I was born, which actually look like what I’ve been picturing as fiction in my imagination. The dogs were may have been the hardest photos to find, because I’ve been not only imagining their appearance but their personality.

I think it turned out well, for a first attempt.

You can view and download my mood board by clicking here.

an idea for writing

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“A mood board is a collage of your ideas and inspiration for any design work, whether it be web or print, in the form of visual representations. It’s like brainstorming, but solely for the development of a design’s aesthetics and feel, rather than its content and other plans as well.”

Mood Board 101: Branding and Image Development | Most Inspired: Design Inspiration Blog.

I’m going to try one for my work, probably using Photoshop. I’ll share, if anything develops. Hope you will too.

first, movement

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I want to lead your attention to this post on November Hill Press blog, whence my friend Billie will lead it onward to an excellent interview with the writer Jim Harrison. She’ll simply do that leading best.

There, as you sip your tea, as I do now, or your kool-aid, or Thunderbird, or Stolichnaya, maybe you’ll find a clue to why I’ve titled this post as I have. That depends on the quality and quantity of your quaffing, I suppose.

time shall surely reap

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Cole_Thomas_The_Garden_of_Eden_1828Click to Enlarge*

My mind is composting tonight; not enough vegetables to harvest just yet. I meant to stop by my parents’ house today and obtain some tomatoes – there are plenty and they look very good – but I forgot. This puts me in mind of a poem:

This is the Garden

This is the garden: colours come and go,
frail azures fluttering from night’s outer wing
strong silent greens serenely lingering,
absolute lights like baths of golden snow.

This is the garden: pursed lips do blow
upon cool flutes within wide glooms, and sing
(of harps celestial to the quivering string)
invisible faces hauntingly and slow.

This is the garden. Time shall surely reap
and on Death’s blade lie many a flower curled,
in other lands where other songs be sung;
yet stand They here enraptured, as among
the slow deep trees perpetual of sleep
some silver-fingered fountain steals the world.

— e e cummings

Isn’t that amazing? Read it aloud to yourself. Go ahead, it’s worth it, trust me. I did. Read it aloud several times.

Cummings was a master of his art.  And not the least bit shy about tackling the greatest common divisors of human life. After all, that’s the poet’s job, as it is the literary writer’s in any genre. As Stegner put it:

I am concerned with gloomier matters: the condition of being flesh, susceptible to pain, infected with consciousness and the consciousness of consciousness, doomed to death and the awareness of death. My life stains the air around me. I am a tea bag left too long in the cup, and my steepings grow darker and bitterer. [All The Little Live Things]

I’m saying we should not look away, those of us who choose to take the human condition as our reason for art. Nietzsche said when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you. And somebody said you should make the abyss blink first. I think that’s a motto of Twitter or something.

Actually, Nietzsche wrote, “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.” [Link]

Truer words were never writ. And Cummings has given us something like Heaven here in two stanzas; I couldn’t imagine it written more beautifully. But for me all this begs a question:

What is the abyss in life as we see it around us? I mean here, in the other world, where the slow deep trees may sleep, but fitfully for fear of our homuncular hammers and saws.

When I stare into the abyss, I see shoes. Old, worn, creased, dusty shoes. Ironing boards, cookie jars, jars of buttons and marbles. Old phone books with the numbers of the forgotten, scrawled on the covers in black ballpoint. I see dog collars, baseball gloves, oven mitts bearing the faces of animals as symbols of hope into the ever-retreating brave new world. I see the polished to glaring hell hallways of hospitals, peanut butter sandwiches and hummingbirds hovering before a rising sun.

How about you, fellow writer? What stares back at you, refusing to blink?

 

*Image: Thomas Cole The Garden of Eden,1828

what if there’s fog?

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Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you make the whole trip that way.

– writer E.L. Doctorow

Sure, Edgar, but it's worse than that, isn't it?

Writing is like driving a snowplow on a mountain road at night, in a blizzard. You can't see beyond the lights, or see the side of the road. (Yes, of course, somewhere out in the powder there's a yawning invisible precipice, meaning certain death.)

Nobody can tell you where your destination is, or whether the road behind you is clear enough. But the snow keeps falling, so you keep backing up, inching forward, backing up.

And at some point, you just have to call it bloody well good enough, holler let the traffic trough at their own risk, and go home to bed.

Writing is rewriting, is my point. The first pass is the fun part; after that, it's work.