March 4, 2008

So there was every reason

“So there was every reason for me not to write fiction. In fact, there was not a single reason why I should write fiction. Not least of which was the fact that those early stories I was writing about African men in prisons and lust on North African beaches? They were absolutely terrible. Not a single one of them– thankfully– was ever published. But I carried on because I simply couldn’t stop. If you ask most writers why they write? The answer is usually that simple.” –Camilla Gibb, “Telling Tales Out of School”

February 20, 2008

I'll give you a reason

“A novel can educate to some extent. But first, a novel has to entertain– that’s the contract with the reader: you give me ten hours and I’ll give you a reason to turn every page.” –Barbara Kingsolver

February 18, 2008

On envy

All right, so when I was twenty-one years old and had a column on the back page of my school newspaper, I once wrote an article about a certain notorious Canadian newspaper columnist which was headlined, “I hate [said newspaper columnist]”. (Please forgive the vagueness; I have no wish to incur the wrath of Google). I didn’t write the headline, and nor in the column did I actually cite any hatred. But I did outline my numerous problems with the principle of this woman’s success, and it certainly wasn’t the worst thing I ever wrote, though I also doubt it was much above the abilities of said columnist either.

The point of this being that I have a particular position, I think, on the loooong thread of comments recently unfolded on Bookninja, in response to a post about columnist (who is still columning her way through life with gusto). My particular position being that of one who did once spend innumerable hours slinging vitriol her way (as many of the commenters do) and then having subsequently grown up.

I know I’ve grown up, not because I suddenly find her columns altogether inspiring, but because I don’t really get off on being vitriolic these days. (I’ve previously acknowledged that she might have grown up a bit too). Because I understand now that she’s paid to do something, and she seems to do it well, even if it irks me. And finally because I understand now that what I felt towards this woman more than anything when I was twenty-one years old was envy.

And of course it was! She was assured, high-profile, well-paid for writing, and I was penning a column on the back of a school newspaper. Of course I couched my envy in technical terms, but I really don’t think I would have directed such reproach towards, say, a celebrity biologist or a supermodel. She was a writer, I wanted to be a writer. She had what I wanted, and life is unfair.

This all comes up on the Bookninja comments– one particularly vitriolic is accused of the deadly sin. He asks, “Why whenever someone is called out for being a public asshole, some ditz invariably appears to accuse people of envy?” Well, I guess I’m the ditz here (and I was on the Zadie Smith post two weeks back too).

It’s because nothing else could make someone that angry about something so incidental. It’s because the people who are so angry are invariably writers themselves (albeit struggling ones). Non-writers don’t give a damn about who gets allotted what column space in the Saturday paper, or which novelist gets what advance. These are just not things that normal people ever care about.

Maybe I am totally wrong, but I doubt it. I know from personal experience what an easy swing envy is to fall into, how comfortable it is to be angry instead of sad. And even if envy is not at the root, still, is the anger doing any good?

I know that for me taking a concerted step away from such mean and greasy feeling was the healthiest thing I’ve ever done, and that the only real solution to any of this is just to write harder. Hating those who’ve got what you want certainly won’t make you any better. There are plenty of words to go around, stories to make your own, and stories to share too.

February 7, 2008

If we can awaken

“If we can awaken sympathetic comprehension in our readers, not only for our most evil characters (that is easy: there is a cord there, fastened to all hearts that we can twitch at will), but of our smug, complacent, successful characters, we have surely succeeded…” –Graham Greene, London 1948 from A Life in Letters

February 6, 2008

Inedible, Indelible Love

She was eating mouldy cheese at the table, and he was reading a book on the couch. Outside it was raining, and their telephone didn’t work when it was raining. They’d tried calling the telephone company about this a hundred times, but no one believed them, and of course by the time someone was sent over for repairs, the rain had stopped.
“Your phone’s just fine,” the repairman always would say, and when they explained the rain, he’d say “Impossible.” And present them with a bill for $76.00, and so they stopped worrying about it. The broken telephone became a fact of rainfall as much as getting wet was, and this was what life was. And life was fine.

January 25, 2008

My new quest

I had to go into a bookstore today to pick up a gift for a friend, and of course, while I was there, why not get something for myself? For this is how my mind works, and why bookstores– for me– require infinite will not to go broke in. But I got The Paris Review Interviews vol. II, which I think was most sensible. For they’re interviews with writers, of course, and good ones, and one of my favourite book bloggers has raved about it. So there is learning aplenty, but multitudinously, for this book shall also be the textbook of my new quest to learn to interview.

Interviews are the one written form I’m afraid to take on– I’d sooner write a play (which is not to say that I’d be good at that either). They’re an art-form, I think, and a difficult one done in dialogue. A dialogue in which you must be the guide… or do you follow? I just don’t know. Learning to interview will also challenge my tendency to break off into long-winded tangents about lies I told when I was seventeen, or my new favourite pop song, or whatnot. I also think it will make me a better storyteller, socializer, and writer in general. It will also be fun.

The plan is to post an interview monthly, once I’ve got some study under me belt. How exciting. Maybe I’ll even interview you!

January 8, 2008

On reading

“I enjoyed the reading classes, and the opportunity to function as a sort of cheerleader. I liked my students, who were often so eager, bright, and enthusiastic that it took me years to notice how much trouble they had in reading a fairly simple short story. Almost simultaneously, I was struck by how little attention they had been taught to pay to language, to the actual words and sentences that a writer had used. Instead, they had been encouraged to form strong, critical and often negative opinions of geniuses who had been read with delight for centuries before they were born. They had been instructed to prosecute or defend these authors, as if in a court of law, on charges having to do with the writers’ origins, their racial, cultural and class backgrounds. They had been encouraged to rewrite the classics into the more acceptable forms that the author might have discovered had they only shared their young critics’ level of insight, tolerance, and awareness.

No wonder my students found it so stressful to read! And possibly because of the harsh judgments they felt required to make about fictional characters and their creators, they didn’t seem to like reading, which also made me worry for them, and wonder why they wanted to become writers. I asked myself how they planned to learn to write, since I had always thought that others learned, as I had, from reading.” — Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer

December 18, 2007

Words I don't know

A wonderful piece in the Guardian Review about (bothering to go about) looking up all those unknown words we encounter all the time. James Meek writes, “For some reason that I have never fully grasped, it is easy for those in the word business to admit any degree of innumeracy (“I’m hopeless with arithmetic”), or helplessness with the daily machinery of their trade (“I don’t know anything about computers”), but difficult to speak frankly about not knowing what a word means.” Though I suspect it’s for the same reason mathematicians don’t like to voice their frustrations with long division.

Oh, but there are so many words I don’t know. As I’ve written here before, I decided to collect unknown words once upon a time, to keep them and tame them. It was while I was living in Japan and devouring battered paperbacks by Margaret Drabble, whose vocabulary still far surpasses mine. Inspired by my ESL students, I started writing down new English words in a little black notebook and the list grew and grew. I was hoping for admission to graduate school within the year and my minuscule vocabulary (consisting too much of “fuck” and “cool”) seemed like it might be an impediment. So I learned: “sybaritic”, “quondam”, “recalcitrant”, “bathetic”, “avuncular”. These are words I know, and whenever I see them, I remember I didn’t always.

But I stopped collecting– I don’t remember why or when. Probably when we moved to Canada, for it is easier to collect English in a land where it is scarce. I think the why also had something to do with leaving our tiny apartment where pencils (and the walls for that matter) were never out of arm’s length–namely I am lazy. But this article by James Meek has inspired me to start again– really. I’m not anticipating grad school, but it’s behind me, which is as good a reason as any to take responsibility for my education now.

Meek writes, “For clarity, we need common, current words; but, used alone, these are commonplace, and as ephemeral as everyday talk. For distinction, we need words not heard every minute, unusual words, large words, foreign words, metaphors; but, used alone, these become bogs, vapours, or at worst, gibberish. What we need is a diction that weds the popular with the dignified, the clear current with the sedgy margins of language and thought.”

“Sedge. n. 1. any of various grasslike plants of the family Cyperaceae, esp of the genus Carex with triangular stems, usu. growing in wet areas. 2. an expanse of this plant.”– though actually I can’t fathom what he means in this context– anyone?

December 16, 2007

"The only way to escape this cul-de-sac is invention"

“I know I can’t discover the key to peace in Israel and Palestine. But I want to do justice of some kind, and to make– or find– something of value, of which I will not be unspeakably ashamed. I want to write, and I want the writing not to be a lie.” –Jonathan Garfinkel, Ambivalence

December 14, 2007

My almost-absolute failure

Lately it’s been very convenient having an award-winning writer for a friend, for upon the completion of my novel two weeks back, Rebecca was kind enough to read it. And indeed she has offered wonderful encouragement, good advice and insight. (Which I will apply to my manuscript over my Christmas Holiday! How fortunate to have the time when I most need it). The most fascinating of all her feedback though is a note of my almost-absolute failure to use subordinate conjunctions. And and and and and, which I suppose is to be expected from anyone who talks too much (and I’ve been accused of this since I learned to speak). What about the “buts” and “thens” though? Reading through another story this evening I realize my “problem” (which it isn’t, entirely) is completely out of control. Causality where art thou? Fascinating. I will explore this further throughout my revisions, then I will use this awareness to strengthen my work, but I will not cease my ands completely for ands are what I do (so it seems). There.