March 28, 2007
You write because
Lately on all sides I’ve been hearing variations on an old adage; this article quotes Robertson Davies: “There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die.” And in other articles, in conversations, books etc. lately, I’ve encountered this same pressing melodrama, and it troubles me. I understand F. Scott Fitzgerald’s take on it, to some extent. He said, “You don’t write because you want to say something. You write because you have something to say.” Point taken. But my first reaction to Davies’s assertion is a crisis of confidence. Because if I never wrote anything again, I don’t know that I would go mad or die. The world is far too rich for such an ultimatum. I know that a hole would grow up in my days, and that my fingers would itch for release by pen or keyboard. I know that ideas would continue to appear in my mind, and they’d wait there patiently for cultivation, until they’d wilt and die. If I never wrote again, I would miss it as I would miss never reading again, or never kissing again. But to go out and out mad, or die? I don’t think so. And so I wonder, does this mean that I am therefore not allowed to write at all?
Lately I’ve sat down to write for six or seven hours every day, and I’ve done it because I love it. In my life so far, I’ve found no better way to spend my days. I know I will have to rejoin the real world soon, which makes me appreciate the last two years all the more. It has been a pleasure to devote my days to reading, learning, and writing. Writing makes me thoroughly happy, and if I never have such freedom again, at least I had it once. And I think that’s enough really. No Robertson Davies lightning bolt has ever shot down from the sky and compelled me to deliver my manifesto, but world all around me inspires me to write all the time.
Everywhere I go is whispering with stories, and I write them down because to do so fills me with joy.
March 20, 2007
Reality is Ralph
From Lisey’s Story by Stephen King:
~He didn’t even plan his books, as complex as some of them were. Plotting them, he said, would take out all the fun. He claimed that for him, writing a book was like finding a brilliantly coloured string in the grass and following it to see where it might lead. Sometimes the string broke and left you with nothing. But sometimes– if you were lucky, if you were brave, if you perservered– it brought you to a treasure. And the treasure was never the money you got for the book; the treasure was the book.~
March 15, 2007
Uneasy
I am somewhat uneasy based on the fact that the story I’ve been working on for a year now must be put away for a week or two. Until I get some feedback on the whole thing, which might just lead me toward defenestration. And I just don’t know what to do with myself. Luckily I’m reading Lullabies for Little Criminals and it’s gripping and surprising.
I am also uneasy by the fact that it looked like spring, it wasn’t, I didn’t wear gloves, and now my hands won’t move properly.
March 15, 2007
Quite
I tend to overuse the word “quite”, which is probably apparent from this blog, but I’m not going to check to be sure because then I’ll just be embarrassed. And so I’ve just gone through my entire story and removed most instances of the dreaded Q word. It really is the most ineffectual word one can use. In its ability to either intensify or lighten meaning, it comes to mean nothing. It’s not so bad in speech I think, when tone can guide it, but in writing it just obscures the point. Or in my writing, at least.
Not so related, but thinking about this has made me remember the way students use to use “maybe” when we taught English conversation in Japan. “Maybe” preceded anything someone didn’t feel quite (! but I won’t backspace) comfortable saying.
“Why don’t you love your boyfriend Yumiko?”
“May-be [drawn out long] he is not so handsome.”
or
“Are you okay today Tadayuki?”
“Hmmmm. May-be, I am sleepy.”
And most effectively:
“Gosh, it feels cold in here today.”
“May-be there is hole in back of your trousers.”
Other words I overuse: suppose, perhaps, so, bit, sure, fast, etc I am sure.
March 14, 2007
Anywhere
In lieu of news about us going without jackets these days, check out a good old fashioned spring post over at Calhounsville. And I have been gobbling books like mad: just finished The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, which was like one big looong story out of her prize-winning collection. This is not a bad thing; it’s just not the most typically-structured novel (ie my thesis advisor would probably hate it). Does that woman wrench hearts though? Also, I’m realizing that final changes to my story are just about done, which is very odd. I’m sending it out to my helpful copy-editors this weekend. And now I’m about to fall into the tub with Ami McKay (haha- she has a cool website though).
March 5, 2007
Weapons to be deployed
~It is easy to make light of this kind of “writing,” and I mention it specifically because I do not make light of it at all: it was at Vogue that I learned a kind of ease with words (as well as with people who hung Stellas in their kitchens and went to Mexico for buys in oilcloth), a way of regarding words not as mirrors of my own inadequacy but as tools, toys, weapons to be deployed strategically on a page. In a caption of, say,eight lines, each line to run no more or less than twenty-seven characters, not only every word but every letter counted. At Vogue one learned fast, or one did not stay, how to play games with words, how to put a couple of unwielding dependent clauses through the typewriter and roll them out transformed into one simple sentence composed of precisely thirty-nine characters. We were connoisseurs of synonyms. We were collectors of verbs. (I recall “to ravish” as a highly favoured verb for a number of issues, and I also recall it, for a number of issues more, as the source of a highly favored noun: “ravishments,” as in tables cluttered with porcelain tulips, Faberge eggs, other ravishments.) We learned as reflex the grammatical tricks we had learned only as marginal corrections in school (“there are two oranges and an apple” read better than “there were an apple and two oranges,” passive verbs slowed down sentences, “it” needed a reference within the scan of the eye), learned to rely on the OED, learned to write and rewrite and rewrite again. “Run it through again, sweetie, it’s not quite there.” “Give me a shock verb two lines in.” “Prune it out, clean it up, make the point.” Less was more, smooth was better, and absolute precision essential to the monthly grand illusion. Going to work for Vogue was, in the late nineteen-fifties, not unlike training with the Rockettes~ Joan Didion, Telling Stories
March 4, 2007
Drawer, get ready for this.
Finished. Conversations About Gravity. 80500 words, many of which, I admit, I’m rather fond of. Beginning, middle and end.
March 4, 2007
New Title
Conversations About Gravity. I think it’s perfect. And the whole thing will be finished tomorrow.
March 1, 2007
Titled
Today my story was named The Evolution of the Village Green. I think it is a wonderful title. Unfortunately it would probably be a better title for a story that wasn’t this one, and I’m tempted to rewrite the whole thing around it. All right, not so tempted. But still, as titles go, I’m awfully fond of it and I’ll keep it around until I find something better suited.
Along those lines, upon Sunday the whole darn thing will be done. Hell or high water, etc. How exciting!
February 26, 2007
The good and the bad
The good news is that I received a wonderful letter recently. My grade three teacher (and that was twenty years ago, please note) saw my story in The Star last summer, and tracked me down. For me, this was the teacher. Whilst under her tutelage at the age of eight, I penned my first poem, short story, received my first publication credit, and decided I wanted to be a writer. And so it was wonderful to hear from her, learn what she was up to these days, and I was so pleased that she’d read my story.
The bad news then? She tracked me down by sending the letter to my dad’s house. He received it ages ago, opened it, read it, proceeded to lose it, found various pages again, and finally the whole letter. I finally got my paws on it when I was home this weekend, but there is no sign of the envelope. Which was of course where the return address would have been found. And so I have this wonderful letter, but no way to reply. I’ve done some searches on Canada411 but to no avail. What a mess!
