Blathering.
Aug. 1st, 2009 04:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lariopeFor some time now I've been trying to decide what I want to do with this journal. It's simple and pretty, and I doubt very much that the flist here is often checked, and so I've been thinking that it might be a nice place to actually write about writing.
I often want to do that on my LJ, and I think when I began my LJ it's what I thought I was there to do. But honestly, LJ is the place where I stay in touch with my friends, and what I have to say about writing seems largely irrelevant.
And too, a great deal of what I have to say about writing... well, everyone's inner writer is different. And while I am ravenously interested in the process of other writers, I never want to post about my own. Partly that's because I feel like, who would care? Isn't it a bit self-involved to imagine that other people would care about how I write or why I make the decisions that I do when I'm writing? And partly because we ARE all so different, I never want my little musings to sound like pronouncements, which I feel they probably would.
For instance: today, while procrastinating, I started looking at some false starts that I made on various stories. And I found this rather interesting little diatribe that I began the day before I started writing fanfic.
I'm putting it under the cut for its general annoyingness.
In my life, I’ve never read a book that lacked story unless I was trying to impress someone, whether that someone was a professor, a friend, or a potential love-interest.
I always know I’m in trouble when I feel the urge to write in the margin: “the refrain is changing,” or some such nonsense that says I’m not swept away into a distant land but am planted firmly on earth, pen in hand, making notes to show how smart I am.
Story is the thread that binds me to myself. I would say to the world, but I sense that some of the power of story to me is its ability to un-bind me from the world, from the very real and concrete things that build the skeleton of my life. A coffee table. A microwave. My job.
If I am lost or confused or dissatisfied, there is likely a story to blame. Likewise, if I am unfocused, elsewhere, it is because I have temporarily taken leave of my senses, and have committed to the somehow acceptable form of madness that is choosing to be someone else for a while.
In general life, I do not recommend this. I have known people who voluntarily took a powder, and for them I tend to feel a bitter disdain. Life is mostly grunt work and the rewards for doing it well are brief and intense moments of real exultation that should not be enjoyed by people unwilling to shoulder the everyday burden of breathing in and out, driving to work, eating poorly and getting too little sleep, while being plagued by general anxiety, guilt and fear.
But those moments of joy? They pale in comparison to story. Story is a blessed madness that is allowed to everyone.
Here are a few of the myriad things that I have been: the mud at the Half-Day Bridge; a pack of matches, kept dry in the armpit of Beverly Marsh; a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
I have been a student at Hogwarts, a music box in Ming Dynasty China. I have been a sideshow freak and a Greek student in Vermont. I have time-traveled and been a time-traveler’s wife. I have witnessed the burning of Atlanta.
I have cheated, lied, killed, died, and can say with about as much conviction as Frey that I have had a root canal without anesthesia.
And yet, for all the horrors I have seen and participated in, most of my honor is derived from story. At my best, I have forged deep and lasting friendships, fought selflessly for truth and right, and experienced love far beyond my measly human capacity for it. And though I respect my formidable and honorable parents, it was at story’s knee that I developed my unwavering loyalty, perseverance, and whatever tricksy moral code I possess. It is from story that I have received hope like a flame inside me, guttering occasionally, sometimes expanding into a conflagration that threatens to consume me entirely, but most often banking down to the glowing embers of a fire that cannot be extinguished.
Years ago, during a particularly difficult stretch of time, I was asked by a professional in the matter whether I had ever considered suicide. “I wish I could,” I answered. “I’m sure it would make the world seem much easier, to imagine that this could end. But I can’t. I’m too damned hopeful.” And I meant it, every word. Maybe it’s that I’ve somehow internalized that terrible old cliché that “wherever a door closes, another opens,” or perhaps I have been deluded silly by my own hopeful nature, but whenever I’ve found that black expanse of hours, punctuated by need, having scraped up the last of my change from under the car seat and made a decision: food or cigarettes; when I'm lying restlessly in the dark, there has always been another spine to crack. That is hope.
And with it the question, tussled to death by graduate students: is story truth? We mean it in the lofty sense then, a kind of justification of our efforts, because if story is truth than we are the truth-bearers and all the poverty and pettiness are somehow in pursuit of something higher. We believe, and we must, that story is truth because it is the only way to live with ourselves when the student loan bill arrives, when we report for another day of ditch-digging--or worse, teaching English 101, the willful slaughter of beauty at best, truth at worst.
But now, years away from that deluded time, I’m at a loss. The bills have ended up paid, one way or another, and my job is at least a facsimile of what I had hoped it would be, so I am no longer required to pitch the party line. And by virtue of the fact that I haven’t written a word in five years, I’m no longer a card-carrying member of the truth-bearers, so my sense of worth is not quite as invested in the idea.
Not quite.
Well, I was right insofar as I was about to become, again, a card-carrying member of the self-aggrandizing. LOL.
But it's funny to me that this was what I wrote the day before fanfic and I took hold of one another in a death grip. It was almost as if I knew it was coming.
In any case, I've been thinking of sharing some false starts and how they came to be abandoned, and some thoughts on things I've written--what Hobgoblinn taught me to think of as fic postmortems.
Needless to say, I will NOT be offended if you skip them. I think I'm working up to starting a longer story, and I think that all this introspection is probably just my way of talking myself into it.
Carry on.
I often want to do that on my LJ, and I think when I began my LJ it's what I thought I was there to do. But honestly, LJ is the place where I stay in touch with my friends, and what I have to say about writing seems largely irrelevant.
And too, a great deal of what I have to say about writing... well, everyone's inner writer is different. And while I am ravenously interested in the process of other writers, I never want to post about my own. Partly that's because I feel like, who would care? Isn't it a bit self-involved to imagine that other people would care about how I write or why I make the decisions that I do when I'm writing? And partly because we ARE all so different, I never want my little musings to sound like pronouncements, which I feel they probably would.
For instance: today, while procrastinating, I started looking at some false starts that I made on various stories. And I found this rather interesting little diatribe that I began the day before I started writing fanfic.
I'm putting it under the cut for its general annoyingness.
In my life, I’ve never read a book that lacked story unless I was trying to impress someone, whether that someone was a professor, a friend, or a potential love-interest.
I always know I’m in trouble when I feel the urge to write in the margin: “the refrain is changing,” or some such nonsense that says I’m not swept away into a distant land but am planted firmly on earth, pen in hand, making notes to show how smart I am.
Story is the thread that binds me to myself. I would say to the world, but I sense that some of the power of story to me is its ability to un-bind me from the world, from the very real and concrete things that build the skeleton of my life. A coffee table. A microwave. My job.
If I am lost or confused or dissatisfied, there is likely a story to blame. Likewise, if I am unfocused, elsewhere, it is because I have temporarily taken leave of my senses, and have committed to the somehow acceptable form of madness that is choosing to be someone else for a while.
In general life, I do not recommend this. I have known people who voluntarily took a powder, and for them I tend to feel a bitter disdain. Life is mostly grunt work and the rewards for doing it well are brief and intense moments of real exultation that should not be enjoyed by people unwilling to shoulder the everyday burden of breathing in and out, driving to work, eating poorly and getting too little sleep, while being plagued by general anxiety, guilt and fear.
But those moments of joy? They pale in comparison to story. Story is a blessed madness that is allowed to everyone.
Here are a few of the myriad things that I have been: the mud at the Half-Day Bridge; a pack of matches, kept dry in the armpit of Beverly Marsh; a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
I have been a student at Hogwarts, a music box in Ming Dynasty China. I have been a sideshow freak and a Greek student in Vermont. I have time-traveled and been a time-traveler’s wife. I have witnessed the burning of Atlanta.
I have cheated, lied, killed, died, and can say with about as much conviction as Frey that I have had a root canal without anesthesia.
And yet, for all the horrors I have seen and participated in, most of my honor is derived from story. At my best, I have forged deep and lasting friendships, fought selflessly for truth and right, and experienced love far beyond my measly human capacity for it. And though I respect my formidable and honorable parents, it was at story’s knee that I developed my unwavering loyalty, perseverance, and whatever tricksy moral code I possess. It is from story that I have received hope like a flame inside me, guttering occasionally, sometimes expanding into a conflagration that threatens to consume me entirely, but most often banking down to the glowing embers of a fire that cannot be extinguished.
Years ago, during a particularly difficult stretch of time, I was asked by a professional in the matter whether I had ever considered suicide. “I wish I could,” I answered. “I’m sure it would make the world seem much easier, to imagine that this could end. But I can’t. I’m too damned hopeful.” And I meant it, every word. Maybe it’s that I’ve somehow internalized that terrible old cliché that “wherever a door closes, another opens,” or perhaps I have been deluded silly by my own hopeful nature, but whenever I’ve found that black expanse of hours, punctuated by need, having scraped up the last of my change from under the car seat and made a decision: food or cigarettes; when I'm lying restlessly in the dark, there has always been another spine to crack. That is hope.
And with it the question, tussled to death by graduate students: is story truth? We mean it in the lofty sense then, a kind of justification of our efforts, because if story is truth than we are the truth-bearers and all the poverty and pettiness are somehow in pursuit of something higher. We believe, and we must, that story is truth because it is the only way to live with ourselves when the student loan bill arrives, when we report for another day of ditch-digging--or worse, teaching English 101, the willful slaughter of beauty at best, truth at worst.
But now, years away from that deluded time, I’m at a loss. The bills have ended up paid, one way or another, and my job is at least a facsimile of what I had hoped it would be, so I am no longer required to pitch the party line. And by virtue of the fact that I haven’t written a word in five years, I’m no longer a card-carrying member of the truth-bearers, so my sense of worth is not quite as invested in the idea.
Not quite.
Well, I was right insofar as I was about to become, again, a card-carrying member of the self-aggrandizing. LOL.
But it's funny to me that this was what I wrote the day before fanfic and I took hold of one another in a death grip. It was almost as if I knew it was coming.
In any case, I've been thinking of sharing some false starts and how they came to be abandoned, and some thoughts on things I've written--what Hobgoblinn taught me to think of as fic postmortems.
Needless to say, I will NOT be offended if you skip them. I think I'm working up to starting a longer story, and I think that all this introspection is probably just my way of talking myself into it.
Carry on.