Recently in The Writing Life Category

I'm reading St. Augustine's Confessions as the non-biblical text in my own personal study and I came across this fantastic quote from Book I, which seems to smack writers squarely in the forehead:

When a man seeking for the reputation of eloquence stands before a human judge while a thronging multitude surrounds him, inveighs against his enemy with the most fierce hatred, he takes most vigilant heed that his tongue slips not into grammatical error, but takes no heed lest through the fury of his spirit he cut off a man from his fellow-men.

— St. Augustine
Confessions

Expect me to quote him more as I get through the entire work.

The plan was to workshop our poems today. I took No Sense (I edited it slightly and just posted the results). We did mine very near the end of class and only had, literally, two minutes to read it and respond to it. We spent too long yammering over everyone else's poems.

I had to smile. I know everyone who has been in a workshop knows that one guy (or gal) that smiles at everyone's confusion and exclaims, rather arrogantly, that they intended for it to be that way.

I was that guy today. Only I wasn't that guy. Well...it's sorta...complicated.

Here's the thing: I expect you to come to my work with a little background. If I make a statement like: "An idea. / Political, religious, or otherwise" I expect you to think of an idea. I'm not going to give it to you. I don't give handouts because I don't expect (or want, for that matter) that from the work I go to. I expect you to bring your baggage, your knowledge (or somebody else's for that matter...but some knowledge, got by hook or crook, if need be, but knowledge nonetheless), your prejudices, your wisdom and your short-sightedness. I expect you to bring those things with you because you'll be keeping me company. I have all those too.

The main thing that seemed to detract from this poem was that you had to think about it. That the concepts were abstract (guilty) and that there wasn't a concrete image to go with each abstract idea (guilty). That for the poem to work, the reader had to bring their own stuff to it, apply it to the poem, test it, and see if it's true (guilty).

Which was the whole idea. So on that level, I say: [licks finger and marks a point in the air] "score." But I understand the other side, too. I understand that a poem often must contain within itself the path to get the reader to the same place you are--without making assumptions about the reader, their background, or what they bring to the poem. "No Sense" is a map without street markings. You have to know where you are already before you can use the map to get where I'm taking you.

Is there, or is there not an idea, political or religious, worth killing for?

Is there, or is there not an idea, political or religious, worth buying?

Is there, or is there not an idea, political or religious, worth putting faith in?

Should you, or should you not give up on that idea because "a man's got to do something?"

I can't answer that and neither can the poem. In the end, the only way for this poem to work is if the reader brings themselves wholly into the work and applies their own ideas. That was the point. That was the intent. On that score, I think I was successful.

I don't expect you to come to my work empty-handed and I won't leave you that way.

Is our writing supposed to be a stew or a soup?

Stew is hearty, meaty goodness. It's seasoned and thick. Starches from the potatoes mix with the vegetables and the beef gets tender only after many hours of cooking. The longer you cook it, the better. It stands up well to being re-heated and tastes almost as good the second or third time as it did the first.

Soup is, by nature, lighter and less filling. It's mostly broth. Maybe some noodles or a few pieces of this and that. Maybe thick, like stew, but often thin, like broth. Soup doesn't always stand up to re-heating like stew does. It's usually best the first time around. While it might have some bits of meat, that's not the focus of the dish. It's not a meal in a bowl, but an appetizer, or the center of a light lunch.

Some authors write stew, some soup.

Which are you?

Is it acceptable to write material that is praised for its artistic achievement when obtaining that requires using techniques that go "over the head" of people who don't see reading as consumption of art, but as enjoyment?

Do we shoot the wounded so they won't be slowing us down?

If Art's purpose is to efficiently communicate ideas and abstract concepts that can't be communicated with the same fidelity and efficiency in any other form, and an artist creates work that doesn't effectively communicate, but (intentionally or unintentionally) obfuscates, is it really Art?

Does making a distinction between Art and Entertainment have any real, practical meaning?

Isn't the creation and consumption of Art one of the most Democratic and timeless of all human activities?

No matter the socio-political situation of the consumers of Art, democracy reigns when it comes to the consumption of Art. Even when Art's form and function was mandated by the Church, there was still an element of democracy in the consumers of Art deciding who gets to keep doing it and who doesn't.

There is no Arts Dictator who can force us to consume a kind of Art we don't like. Especially if that Art and our entertainment overlap. Neither can we put in place a non-democratic form of arts consumerism that supplants an individual's right to accept our Arts offering or to reject it.

We can't make people like and accept our work, or ourselves (for artists, the two are interminably intertwined), even if they should like it because—and of course we would know—it's better for them than that other drivel.

The painful part of this whole process is that the best we can do is do the best we can do. Then we put our work out in the marketplace and watch it succeed or fail on its own merits.

Sometimes our work isn't accepted. Sometimes we are not accepted.

So we try again.

I've been going back over some of the old posts and organizing things a little better now that I've converted the site over to MovableType 4. I ran across this little piece of creative non-fiction that I wrote as a posting on the school's bulletin board in our discussion of Herman Melville's story "Bartleby the Scrivener". I have to say, it's a work of pure brilliance! Or, something:

An Analysis of Melville's 'Bartleby the Scrivener'

I felt like I should fish it out of obscurity because I liked it so much. Sometimes, you just end up having a love affair with your own words...

I feel like I've been writing fiction for a long time. Not counting that time when I went to the lake with my grandparents and started working on a mystery novel when I was all of nine or ten, I've been concentrating on writing fiction for the last six or eight years. I would take my Underwood portable typewriter with me when I worked at the factory. Got some strange looks from folks, as I'm sure you can imagine. The life of a writer is a perfect fit for my personality and who I feel like I am.

But sometimes stories come out of me that I don't know what to do with.

The story that won me Editor's Choice at Relief Journal is still a mystery to me. I don't know where that story came from. I read it again when I got that issue in the mail and although I recognized the words I had written, in some ways it didn't feel like it was mine. At that point, it really wasn't. It had grown up and gone out into the big, bad world on its own. It had become its own "thing," wholly separate from its creator.
I wrote a story the other day and had planned to submit it to a contest. I let a few trusted readers look at it, though, and they confirmed my own suspicions: it's not really a literary story. It's pretty conventional—conventional narration, conventional dialogue, conventional emotional arc… More of a mass-market piece than a "literary" work. I know, labels shouldn't really matter. "Literary" is just an arbitrary adjective to describe work that tries (whether it succeeds or not isn't so much the issue) to go beyond the conventional and explore areas of human experience in new (and sometimes fresh) ways. This story doesn't really do that. It's just a plain-ol' short story.

I wrestle violently with the ogre of wanting to be A Writer That Matters. I set for myself a lifetime goal: to have something I've written be anthologized in a college textbook. It's an ambitious goal; I look through the authors that have stories in the various literary anthologies I have collected over the past several years and I doubt whether I have what it takes to play in that league.

But maybe that's short-sighted. I really would like to make a full-time living as a fiction writer so I can get out of web development entirely. Most of the writers in those anthologies, while respected for their craft, are not John Grishams. They probably have no desire to be. I think there's a lot to be said for focussing on the purity of your art at the expense of commercial viability. But somewhere, there's a tight-rope to walk. Somewhere, there's a line you spend time jumping back and forth across so you can be respected for your art while allowing yourself to be commercially viable so you can continue to do your art.

One of the things I've considered doing, in addition to writing short stories and novels, is to get into writing screenplays. A couple screenplays could give me the income I need to keep writing the more "artistic" works. I've been toying with the idea of writing a screenplay for quite a long time. I think it fits my personality very well because screenplays are a shorter, more concentrated form of story-telling. My writing also tends to be very visual. I doubt I would have a lot trouble transitioning the same skills I've learned writing fiction to the more visual medium of film-making. It's also a market that doesn't have as bleak an outlook as that of fiction in print.

At any rate, I'm not giving up on this latest short story. I'm a little disappointed in myself that it's not more "literary" than it is, but I feel like it's a story that has some mass-market potential because it's much more accessible than a lot of stuff I've written lately.

If nothing else, I'll just have to say to myself: "you did the best you could, so be happy with that."

Unfortunately, I rarely am.

I may have broken the months-long logjam this weekend. I'd hate to jinx it by talking about it, but I was finally able to get in three or four hours of uninterrupted writing on Saturday. There was a lot going on in the house, so I don't know how it happened (I usually get frustrated with the constant interruption and just give up). But there was three or four hours of pecking away on the late '40s Underwood typewriter on a short story for a competition.

If I can get this finished and submitted in the next several days, I might have gotten enough momentum built up to get back to the novel in earnest.

I know they say that you have to write whether you feel like it or not if you expect to accomplish anything as a writer. That may, in fact, be true. But it does feel good to just flat-out write. It feels wonderful to find out you're at the end of the page and pop another sheet into the typewriter and after several hours, it feels even better to start typing page numbers with more than one digit!

Wish me luck…

I've been digging into the depths of Delta Blues lately. While I like some of the electrified blues that came from Chicago in the 1950's and '60s (what most people think of when they think of "the blues"), the more pure form known as Delta Blues has always drawn me in more than than the blues' later, urbanized, cousin. I've been scouring the ‘net looking for early recordings of the greats of Delta Blues like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson, Leadbelly, and Mississippi Fred McDowell (who was actually from Tennessee). These scratchy, primitive recordings from the 1920's and '30s give a window into that time and a connection to the bluesmen and their world that I know nothing about but am interested in anyway.

I can't identify with that world because I wasn't born in 1900 in the Jim Crow South. I haven't experienced segregation, mistreatment by the white world, and I don't despair for my life and want nothing more than to cross the river Jordan to that home over yonder. I'm drawn to the melancholy of those mumbled, sometimes nonsensical tunes because of their authenticity. Music that is truly authentic is hard to find these days. It's all polished and commercial and devoid of life. Delta Blues is simple, all about the hardships of everyday people, and truly authentic to the human experience.

In my opinion, that's the part writers skip when they craft their own art. Authenticity is almost impossible to manufacture. If you don't seek out authenticity in human nature on your own, outside of your writing, how can you expect to understand and therefore capture it when you sit down to create a world outside of your experience? I think surrounding yourself with authentic forms of artistic expression can infuse you with that intangible part of creating an artistic work that you just can't explain. You can't quantify what makes something honest and transparent and what makes writing feel glossy and plastic-wrapped. You just know it when you see it.

For me, Delta Blues is one thing that connects me to authentic human beings outside my normal circle of acquaintances. For an introduction to what I'm talking about, try subscribing to the Delta Blues Museum's podcast. You'll either know what I'm talking about when you listen to Fred McDowell sing his mournful rendition of "Woke Up This Morning With My Mind On Jesus" or you won't. If you do, then you're on your way. If you don't, then you've got some digging to do to find that expression of authenticity that you can relate to so it can make you a better human being and hopefully, a better writer.

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.