May 14, 2008

Born full grown, or make room for a hero

“For a writer those things are what you start with. You wouldn’t have started a story without that awareness– that’s what made you begin. That’s what makes a character, projects a plot. Because you write from the inside. You can’t start with how people look and speak and behave and come to know how they feel. You must know exactly what’s in their hearts and minds before they ever set visible foot on the stage. You must know all, then not tell it all, or not tell too much at once: simply the right thing at the right moment. And the same character would be written completely differently in a novel as opposed to a short story. In a story you don’t go into character in order to develop him. He was born full grown, and he’s present there to perform his part in the story. He’s subservient to his function, and he doesn’t exist outside it. But in a novel, he may. So you may have to allow for his growth and maybe hold him down and not tell everything you know, or else let him have his full sway– make room for a hero, even, in more spacious premises.” —Eudora Welty, The Paris Review Interviews, II

May 6, 2008

Some links

Scroll down for Margaret Drabble’s letter to editor about sorry states of affairs at the British Library. More on Virago Modern Classics– this time from founder Carmen Callil. Listen to an interview with Sharon Butala on Sounds like Canada (from April 29). Writer Rebecca Rosenblum on creation (but not creationism– which is really a strange ism when you think about it). Crooked House passes on some Olivia love, among other children’s lit links.

April 20, 2008

A pleasure

“I think a young poet, or an old poet for that matter, should try to produce something that pleases himself personally, not only when he’s written it but a couple of weeks later. Then he should see if it pleases anyone else, by sending it to the kind of magazine he likes reading. But if it doesn’t, he shouldn’t be discouraged. I mean, in the seventeenth century every educated man could turn a verse and play the lute. Supposing no one played tennis because they wouldn’t make Wimbledon? First and foremost, writing poems should be a pleasure. So should reading them, by God.” –Philip Larkin, The Paris Reviews Interviews, II

April 11, 2008

A room of one's own

The New House tour continues, and now I take you to my garret. For yes, it is true– I have a garret. Actually the tail end of a very long strange half-gable off our bedroom, through a secret door in the wall. (What quirks have old houses with dubious renovations of yore!)

We use this long strange room as our closet, which contains two dressers, a long rack of hanging clothes, and a whole mess of things like Christmas lights and suitcases, things you’d expect to find in an attic. And in late February when we saw the apartment for ten minutes and decided to make our home here, I didn’t realize how big this room was. Didn’t consider that it could possibly accommodate my desk and a bookshelf, but it does.

My husband was a wee bit disconcerted at the idea of me setting up shop in the back of the closet, but this is not just any closet, and it has a window. And there wouldn’t have been room downstairs for the bookshelves and both our desks (for he requires a desk too, of course, being a brilliant graphic designer). It’s not much to look at, I know, but it’s mine, and really I’m just fond of saying “my garret.” I think I’ve wanted one forever without even knowing it.

(And if anyone’s asking, I’m now reading A Week of This by Nathan Whitlock, and The Myth of the Simple Machines by Laurel Snyder.)

March 16, 2008

What a relief

“Harriet… ran into her room and flung herself on the bed. She lay quietly for a minute, looking reverently at her notebook and then opened it. She had had an unreasonable fear that it would be empty, but there was her handwriting, reassuring if not beautiful. She grabbed up the pen and felt the mercy of her thoughts coming quickly, zooming through her head onto the paper. What a relief, she thought to herself; for a moment I thought I had dried up. She wrote a lot about what she felt, relishing the joy of her fingers gliding across the page, the sheer relief of communication. After a whole she sat back and began to really think hard. Then she wrote again…” –Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy

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.