The Writing Life: August 2007 Archives

I can't seem to get it together lately. I'm fairly sure that someone has hacked into my computers and installed an obfuscator that takes my writing and jumbles it all up until it makes no sense. No matter how much time I spend trying to sort it all back out the way I had it, the obfuscator messes it up again. Nothing I write makes any sense. I get fed up with a paragraph and just delete it; for no other reason than I can't stand to look at it. It might not be all that bad a sentence, but it looks bad to me, so it gets the axe. My prose is contrived and, well, dead. I try beating it to a pulp to force it into something that I can feel comfortable with and it disgusts me all the more.

It has been a rough summer; I'll admit that right off. Lots to do, what with re-roofing the house, taking a week-long family vacation, and just the normal summer "stuff" that eats up all your time and energy. And it's roughly the same temperature here as on the surface of Venus, so that really takes the life out of you. Lack of sleep because of insomnia, lack of energy because the nonsense work at my "real job" (I say that very tongue-in-cheek) is so frustrating that it's making me, literally, insane with dishevelment.

And there's no end in sight. At least, none that I can see. For all I know, my writing days are all behind me. I could have already written my best work and I might be incapable of writing a novel—or any more short stories, for that matter. My employer may continue to ignore me until they need something (and I need it NOW...never mind that it's taken me two months to get around to you; I have that luxury and you don't…deal with it) and let me wander around aimlessly until such time as I again become a valuable contributor to the team effort.

In some ways, having encouragement is a bad thing. If people read your fiction in a magazine, you feel pressure to not let them down with the next story. You feel like, if your next story isn't as strong as the last one, that people will feel like they've been sold a bill of goods and you're not living up to their expectations. The more encouragement you get, the more pressure you feel to be excellent.

I've tried, nay, I've sweat blood trying to slack off and give only a percentage of what I'm capable of. I always find myself going the extra mile, though, even if I don't want to. I say I'm going to just give up and, within five minutes, I'm right back at it, plugging away as hard as ever.

Only a small percentage of writers ever "make it" as professionals. There's so many great writers out there already and who are you, with your silly little stories? The ghosts of great writers look down their nose at you from their position of Lofty Literary Writer. The fact that you are also an "award-winning author" makes no difference, though it seems it should.

The resolution for this schizophrenic pity-party? Only this:

I'm not a bona-fide art aficionado. I only know enough about art to make me dangerous. But I know what I like when I see it. The uppity, intellectual crowd can scoff at my low-born tastes as much as they like.

I like Thomas Hart Benton. I've been aware of him as an artist since childhood because he was born just south of where my wife grew up. In this part of the country, most people are aware of him, either from school, or from his murals in the Missouri State Capitol. It would take too long to discuss all the reasons why I identify with his artistic sensibilities so much.

I came across an essay he wrote about the Indiana murals on the University of Indiana's website. Although he was referring to painting, this paragraph could apply equally to writers:

Only knowledge which is deeply and profoundly a part of one can be communicated through the logical conventions of a form. Such knowledge is found, not on the intellectual fringe of life, or in the illusions of cloistered sensibilities, but in life itself where the drive of a people is felt and shared. The artist who would represent a civilization must be a part of it. We can give only that which is within ourselves.

— Thomas Hart Benton

As writers (especially if we're mixing it up with the literati by studying writing in a university setting) we might be sorely tempted to be out on the "intellectual fringe" because, let's be honest, it's just more fun to be a rebel than it is to do something truly productive and within the mainstream. Benton had the same problem in his day. While teaching at the Kansas City Art Institute, one of Benton's students was Jackson Pollock. Yes, that Jackson Pollock. The dribbled paint guy (oh, but it takes more skill than you allow to dribble paint with such elegance!). Critics cite Pollock as surpassing Benton by leaps and bounds. Here is where I and the critics diverge.

Benton is, in my completely uninformed and worthless opinion, one of America's greatest painters. Although he studied in Paris, as all the great painters have done (it must be a right-of-passage thing for artists; like publishing houses in New York, it just Has To Be That Way or you're only pretending), Benton came back to his roots, the Midwest (and no, Ohio, you are not included—you might have been the Midwest at the time of the Louisiana Purchase, but that was a few years ago), and painted it. His paintings are extravagant epics that show people as they really were (in the '20s and '30s). His work is plastered across murals where the Common Man can stand and adventure through them.

What did Jackson Pollock ever do for the Common Man? Zippo. Nada. He was and is the Emperor's New Clothes of Art.

As writers, we often flirt with our own New Clothes. We purposely seek out ways to differentiate ourselves from Everyone Else just to be noticed. We become utterly selfish in our desire to glorify ourselves, rather than hone our empathy for the real people that inform our characters and their world. Thomas Hart Benton spent his whole life trying to create art that reflected and appealed to the Everyday Joe, rather than pander to the reflecting-pool-shallowness of the "intellectual fringe." His work has a depth to it that could only come from having a heartfelt conviction that the real Life of Art lay in real people. His empathy for their plight is evident in almost all his work.

As an artist, Thomas Hart Benton is one of my most important influences.