As I write, I find that the more I focus my attention on the quiet moments produced by a life of reflection the happier I am, the more I feel at peace. This is not to imply that I am passive. As ever, I am a passionate soul who desires trial by fire over all else. I do not seek comfort or ease, but I must also acknowledge that life is long and complicated.

Photo Credit: storm crypt (flickr)

If I turn my eye towards this sort of writing, I enter a new world of impressions cast from the past onto the present, of the future implied in the current moment. I write in a universal sense that we can all see, that we can all experience and understand what is felt by a sentence.

Combining the means and the terms with the stark images of places, people, and events that we have deliberately forgotten, is one method for creating a deep sense of emotion. One must layer sense impressions on top of the metaphysical intuition. One must not only see the ruined castle but all who lived within it and all those who dwell about its decay. One must see the loves of life that pranced within those walls and the deadly tears wept at the malicious contempt of others.

One must not always speak in such a silly voice. Sorry.

When I write like that, I feel almost as if I am lighter than the words and yet heavier than the whole. I sink down to the bottom of the pool, open my eyes in the silent darkness, and see the blue light above and the shadows of those who are swimming just out of focus. I sense there, as the oxygen grows thin, a possibility of never coming to the surface, of stopping time at this single moment and walking around it, through it, until I come back to the firm realization that I require air to live and push off reluctantly.

Perhaps he never properly recovered from the pain that his imagination revealed to him. To see clearly, the delight, the celestial vision, of pure, unedited Art, would drive a person mad, but only because they had no hope of reproducing such perfection. I believe that such visions, above all else, are what drives artists insane (that and cheap liquor). The artist who does not accept their human failings is doomed to pursue an endless course of fruitless labor, culminating in their eventual destruction at the hands of their own mind.

I am slowly coming out of just such a night walk, but unlike some others, I see my imperfections and I accept them. I do not look up to the stars and wonder why it is that I cannot match their beauty with my skill, for their beauty only has meaning in their unassailable position as stars in the dark fabric of my memory. I accept their place and I accept my own inability to render them accurately, but this does not diminish my love of their beauty. My tears are still wet and I am still enthralled with the possibility that I might try to grapple with them.

If I pull back because I am afraid of losing my grip on clarity, I stem my expression, cause it to wither. The result is a dying vine that bears no fruit save for a few hard, bitter berries not worth harvesting. The artist must drive forward regardless of certain failure.

There are times when I would rather go off and be alone, to be like Thoreau at Walden. Of course, Thoreau wasn’t alone at Walden. He trucked down the road for regular meals and conversation. And when I remember this, the image of Thoreau is spoiled. It makes no sense to continue dreaming about something that wasn’t done, but some artists cling to this possibility and pursue it at the peril of their own destruction.

In Writing Mysteries (1992, edited by Sue Grafton), children’s author Joan Lowery Nixon contributed this great list of 9 points for keeping children engaged with suspense.

The mystery plot for today’s impatient young readers is fast-paced and filled with action. Writers should pull out all the stops and use any and every technique for establishing suspense. These are a few ways in which this can be done:

1. Use the description of the setting to help create and maintain suspense.
2. Your main character makes a mistake, which is obvious to the readers, and takes a wrong course of action.
3. Time is rapidly running out. Will the main character make it?
4. The main character needs some information, and the person who has it is tantalizingly slow to come forward with it. The delay tantalizes readers too.
5. Suspicion can be thrown on someone the main character has trusted. Maybe it’s just the reader who becomes suspicious, and the main character is innocently unaware. When will the main character wake up and discover the danger she’s in?
6. Unexpected surprises can make a sudden shift in the story’s direction. Was that a wrong turn or a right one? Read and find out.
7. Readers are made aware that something dangerous or frightening will happen to the main character, but they don’t know when it will take place.
8. Peculiar characters may fit only certain stories, but when they do appear they add suspense.
9. Chapters should end with dangling questions, creating such suspenseful curiosity that young readers can’t put the book down and must go on to the next chapter.

Two for one: Book Plug and a Publisher’s Plug…

I was just browsing the NYTimes and I came across a little ad for The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff.

From the publisher’s website:

The Monsters of Templeton, a novel spanning two centuries: part a contemporary story of a girl’s search for her father, part historical novel, and part ghost story, this spellbinding novel is at its core a tale of how one town holds the secrets of a family.

The publisher is really putting a lot of oomph behind this book.

[Monsters] is a fascinating combination of contemporary novel, historical fiction, and ghost story, and the critical praise that the book has received so far (from the likes of Stephen King, Lorrie Moore, and Lauren Belfer) is spectacular and signals that more of the same is to come. We’ve pulled out many stops in this publication, including the creation of a special website devoted to Monsters. Here you’ll find a book description, Lauren Groff’s blog, info about events, and (our favorite part) the “community” sections, where you can find a reading group, offer thoughts about Monsters as you read, share stories about your hometown, or pose a question to the community at large. This effort crystallizes what Voice is all about.

That last sentence made me want to learn a little more about Voice.

They wanted fiction and nonfiction for smart, educated, busy, curious, seasoned women who are way, way over chick lit and its cousins, but for whom reading is a longtime passion. Books for women at the center of life, who for whatever reasons—be it a relationship, a career, or the biological clock ticking—are looking to redirect their lives or find what has been missing. Women who read to figure out what they want next. Women who want to read about the positives as well as the negatives from women who have emerged or are emerging as role models—strong women doing things that excite, scare, and thrill them—women who are happy and fulfilled, and who continue to push the envelope.

I have to say that this is exactly the kind of woman that interests me (i.e. those at the center of life). I happen to be married to one, so I’m quite lucky there.

Check out their growing list of titles and authors. What an impressive endeavor!

Right now, I’m reading the MWA’s Writing Mysteries Handbook (pub 1992 edited by Sue Grafton). Here is a snippet from Gregory McDonald’s introduction:

The five W’s are taught to anyone wishing to write. Regarding any story, you are taught you must report the Who, What, Where, When, and Why.

Before you ever think seriously of writing creatively, for your own sake, you must establish, as much as humanly possible, the Who, What, Where, When, and Why of yourself.

You are the only source of your originality, and the only person who can develop the skill to make that originality of interest to others.

…

The creative process starts with your establishing in your own mind what new element uniquely, personally you, you are going to bring to the short story, the novel, particularly your short story, your novel. Creative work is much too difficult to launch into blindly, without having a truly novel idea, and without knowing as precisely and as consciously as possible what that idea is.

I couldn’t agree more with this statement. I have plenty of novel and story fragments lying about, victims of failed planning (or no planning).

How often have you gotten 50 pages into your first draft and then thought, “What the heck am I writing here? What do I have to say?” Think about the five W’s as they apply to you and your idea before you get started and you just might make it past that block.

This morning at the cafe I was talking to the barista about American Gods by Neil Gaiman. She’s just about finished with the book and she loves it. This is her first exposure to Gaiman’s work and she plans to read Neverwhere next. Since I loved both of these books, I was happy to plug Neverwhere and chat a bit about American Gods.

When I left the cafe, I started thinking about the mechanics of Gaiman’s work and how he uses the Hero’s Journey in most of his work. it occurred to me that I might write a nice little article about this, but of course a quick search turned up scads of folks with similar ideas.

Roundup after the jump…

Eva, over at A Striped Armchair, neatly sums up a reader’s impression of Gaiman’s approach to the Hero’s Journey:

A typical Neil Gaiman hero is bumbling, or at least unaware of what’s really going on for most of the book. In American Gods, Shadow becomes the errand boy for Mr. Wednesday (on Mr. Wednesday’s insistence), who has some strange habits and appears in the most coincidental places. While Shadow is very efficient in the real world, he has to operate somewhat like a blindman in the world of mythology Mr. Wednesday plunges him into. The Fool (tarot card)In contrast, the protagonist of Neverwhere, Richard Mayhew, doesn’t function too well in either world. And while Shadows finds himself seeked out to begin his adventure, Richard stumbles over his, in the form of Door, a girl from the Underground. Coraline also accidently encounters an Other World, although she proves to be quite clever. Tristran Thorn of Stardust, begins his adventure due to a whim of the girl he’s in love with, Fat Charlie (one of Anansi’s Boys) both belong to the bumblers category with Richard: obviously, Gaiman’s quite fond of creating characters who are a bit like fools.

Ryan Paul’s review of the book Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman and Joseph Campbell: In Search of the Modern Myth – with special commentary by Leonard Nimoy (not).

Rauch is most convincing when he draws connections between Sandman and traditional myth, using Campbell as the bridge. For example, his discussion of the hero’s journey and how Gaiman has modified it was insightful, revealing a side of the series that I had never noticed. Another interesting chapter examines the social function of myth, and how Gaiman’s work expands the traditional social order to include marginalized groups.

A verse review (no, I’m not kidding) of American Gods by Suzanne Nixon at The Compulsive Reader:

Neil Gaiman’s American Gods
is a Tale for a person such as me;
is a Tale that pleads for all of us
to be Makers, in our beliefs

for there really is only one Tale
in the Universe:
the Hero’s Journey…

No, seriously, you have to read this poetic review. Quite surreal.

From Claire White’s interview with Neil Gaiman on Writer’s Write where Neil cries Sun God not Hero’s Journey in the case of Shadow (American Gods):

In some ways, as you mentioned, there are some parallels there to Christ. Some reviewers go, “Aha! A classic hero’s journey.” I’ve seen that phrase used a couple of times. And if it’s a classic hero’s journey, it’s not meant to be. What it’s actually meant to be is the classic Sun God story. Which is a very different animal. The solar deity which was the original pattern of the sun gods. I loved writing him. I loved writing a character like him. With both Stardust and with Neverwhere, I was very aware while I was writing them of the C.S. Lewis’ dictum that to write how odd events strike odd people is an oddity too much. And by American Gods I was quite tired of that dictum. I thought in Sandman I had no objection to writing both odd events and odd people. Then I thought there are very few people in this world that are anything but odd when you get under their skin.

A comment from Jack on the io9 article Eight Reasons Why the Hero’s Journey Sucks, which sort of rebuts the premise of the article (good for you Jack!):

I mean you can take Neil Gaiman’s American Gods as a wonderful way of both using the Hero’s Journey and critiquing it at the same time. In the hands of a skilled writer these ideas and archetypes can be fresh and wonderful experiences. Perhaps it’s a limitation of the genre of Sci Fi and Fantasy that it requires stories to follow the same sorts of trajectories in order to give us a familiar path through and unfamiliar terrain. I don’t know… but the basic point is that Joseph Campbell’s cataloging of cultural similarities is not the root cause of bad Sci Fi writing, bad writers are.

And last, Philip Palmer (author of Debatable Space) talks about Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary’s work on Beowulf (which I have not seen yet):

And so I have to take my hat off to Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, for what they’ve done with their script for the Robert Zemeckis’ directed Beowulf. They turn a turgid yarn into a ripping yarn. And without taking any credit away from Avary, surely it was Gaiman’s influence that turned a macho blood-fest into a subtle dissection and critique of the nature of heroism? Quoting from memory: late in the story, Beowulf (Ray Winstone) says, ‘Men are the monsters now,’ beautifully turning a reactionary tale into a critique of war.

If you have others, feel free to contribute in the comments.

THE LIAR’S DIARY – Blog Day LitPark

Today is the day! Literary bloggers all over the place are pointing their sites to LitPark and Patry Francis’s book The Liar’s Diary.

Patry’s story struck home for me because my 4 year-old was diagnosed with cancer just last month (a week before Christmas). He had a little fibrous mass removed from his leg in early December. It was supposed to be nothing, but pathology had different ideas…

A whirlwind of tests followed, wedged in around Christmas. Then, another surgery on New Years Eve Day (of all things) to get clear margins around the site. Now, we’re a month out and it seems like years have passed. The second pathology came back clear and so we are not supposed to be worried. Just MRIs once a quarter for some time to come, just to be sure.

I cannot yet describe what this whole experience has been like. I’m not sure how long it will take to settle in and find its voice. Some day it will though and I will have more to say about it.

So, my heart goes out to Patry. Please show your support! Pick up a copy of Liar’s Diary today!

[Note: I accidentally set the original future post date for this entry to 2/1 not 1/29. Sigh...]

Novelists who publish their personal archives (the shit no one is supposed to see) should be beaten. Invariably, they are revealed to be nervous lumps of self-doubt and self-pity. This blog is frankly a ray of fucking sunshine compared to the flogging I give myself in private. It’s just awful really to think of all the dark and depressing crap that goes on in a novelist’s journals.

Orhan Pamuk, undaunted by the promise of ropes and razors and solipsism, has gone to the trouble of translating his own self-hatred from Turkish to English so that we may all enjoy his self-abuse. The book is called Other Colors, which aside from being a lame-ass title is actually a misnomer. There are no other colors in this book, just shades of gray. Lots and lots of particularly depressing shades of gray.

In the introduction, Pamuk refers to these bits as pieces of stories that have yet to make their way into his novels. I rather like that idea, but then why publish them at all? It’s a bit like Gabriel Garcia Marquez putting out his notebook of story ideas he never intends to get to or someone finding Hemingway’s stolen suitcase of crap stories and publishing an anthology. Is there really a point to this?

Anyway, here is a sample that I had the presence of mind to copy down while feeling sorry for myself:

Novels are held together by little pieces of daydreams that help us, from the moment we enter them, forget the tedious world we long to escape.

When I scribbled that down, it felt like something beautiful and right. Now it just looks like puffery.

Isabella of Magnificent Octopus has a nice roundup of some comments and criticisms of Other Colors, as well as a solid reader’s opinion of the work:

The book is depressing, but in my own defense as a reader I can recognize that while I don’t like the way the book made me feel, and though it made me roll my eyes more than once, it also made me consider some aspects I hadn’t before regarding what goes into the construction of Pamuk’s novels (I do have to wonder if Berlinski has read any) — what makes Pamuk a writer.

Suffice it to say: I far prefer Pamuk the novelist to Pamuk the essayist, but Other Colors is not to be dismissed out of hand.

Novelists are not like Cakes

Novels are not held together by daydreams and novelists are not like cakes. Novels are held together by blood. Novels are the works of men and women who struggle to filter the unbidden worlds and characters who come to mind and taunt us until there is no choice but to etch their stories into stone. It might feel good to talk about them in such flowing and glowing terms but that takes out so much of the bullshit that goes into creating them in the first place.

The Conditions are Never Right

For Pamuk, writing a novel is not possible without this child-like sense of innocence and freedom. He’s goes on to describe his recent legal and political problems and how they pressured him into being a “serious” person, something he is not. This depressed him greatly and kept him from getting into the work he so desperately wanted to do.

An imaginative novelist’s greatest virtue is his ability to forget the world in the way a child does, to be irresponsible and delight in it, to play around with the rules of the known world – but at the same time to see past his freewheeling flights of fancy to the deep responsibility of later allowing readers to lose themselves in the story.

Again, I wrote this quote down because I was feeling sad about my own state of novelistic affairs. I’d just written a long bit of pity and gloom (see my last post) and even though it was sunny outside I was feeling rather like the four horsemen were waiting to escort me to dinner. So here comes Orhan looking all shimmery and sweet.

Novelist’s have virtues! Well, no, not really.

The novelist’s ability to shirk the responsibility of the world is hardly their greatest virtue. It’s what keeps them from doing their work. It is the perfect excuse, a bottomless well of procrastination from which buckets of shame and stupidity are drawn each day by would-be writers from all over the world – including Nobel Laureates.

The conditions for writing a novel are never right, so get over it. You have to toss out all of that crap and just get on with it.

Believing that there is some beautiful world over the horizon will only lead you to a greater fall when/if you finally arrive in the Elysian Fields of Publication. Just ask a Nobel Laureate. Have you ever heard of one who was fucking happy that they’d won? They either refuse to show up for the ceremony, delivering their acceptance speech by video, or crab about the future of their work.

So in the end what do we have? Lost loves, lonely days and nights, an essay about how great/sad his dad was, more writing about not writing. Dude! Get thee back to your novel post-haste!

Really, what bullshit.

Mirror, Mirror

Some writers might take a book like Other Colors and use it as justification for their endless moping about:

“See, look at Orhan Pamuk, sweetie! He won the Nobel Prize and a miserable bastard too!”

I’ll admit it. I’m guilty of this sin. Multiple offenses too. And yet, this time I see something very different.

I see a reflection of myself and I don’t like what I see. I don’t like the idea of putting down hundreds of thousands of words in pursuit of my own self-immolation. I love writing. I love the ideas and joy of creating new characters. I love the entire process front to back.

I’ll be damned if I’ll allow anyone to get between me and my work again, especially if I am the one putting up the roadblocks.

Mark Terry isn’t starting a meme, but it feels like one anyway…

The Book Brahmins Questions:

Shelf Awareness, a newsletter I get, generally has a section on Fridays where they interview “Book Brahmins” (and no, I find the reference a bit vague) and ask the same questions. Today, for instance, they interview Douglas Preston (whose book is in the mail, any day now…). Since no one seems to be requesting I become the next Book Brahmin, I thought I’d appoint myself and answer them anyway.

[Via: This Writing Life]

Ok, so here are the questions with my answers. (italics indicate my own level of self-importance today)

On your nightstand now:

Hotel de Dream by Edmund White but I have no idea why (although it seems interesting).

Favorite books when you were a child:

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I preferred this book (and still do) to LOTR because it is a walkabout with little purpose other than pure fun.

Your top five authors:

Henry Miller, Julian Barnes, P.G. Wodehouse, W. Somerset Maugham, Paul Theroux. How is that for a screwed up list?

(Funny, Mark listed Ross Thomas. I just finished reading Briarpatch. Good plot though Thomas let his characters get sort of fuzzy in the last quarter of the book.)

Book you’ve faked reading:

The Bible (seriously)

Book you are an evangelist for:

The Courage to Write by Ralph Keyes (if you are struggling with your writing, get it today)

Book you’ve bought for the cover:

Atomised by Michel Houellebecq (UK edition) and I still have it.

Book that changed your life:

It’s cheap to say this, but every book does in some way or another. I’m far to malleable about these things. However, my initial reaction was Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. I carried a dog-eared copy around with me for a long time. However, I also had a very powerful reaction to Zen and the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel and The Piano Shop on the Left Bank by Thad Carhart. Basically, those sort of seeking life out and finding it quite different from what you expected.

Favorite line from a book:

“I hate computers for any number of reasons, but I despise them most for what they’ve done to my friend the typewriter.” – David Sedaris Me Talk Pretty One Day

This is one you can pin up on your wall and it always gets a laugh.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling. I’m not going to justify it. I just loved that book.

There are a lot of folks talking about AB’s new book. I read the somewhat short version in the LRB (or was it the TLS). Very funny.

The Uncommon Reader:

I picked up Alan Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader at the library last Saturday. I opened it up when I got home intending to just dip in. Yeah, right. A couple hours later I finished the book with a happy sigh. It’s a slim, quick read, a novella, and utterly delightful.

[via: So Many Books]