(no subject)

[sanpaku_backup]

So, and this is embarrassing, I tried to write a novel once. Of course it wasn't a novel; it was essentially me writing down what had happened to me in 1993 (see previous posts), because I couldn't get my mind around it. The problem with reading novelists like Kundera and Roth is that they appear to give you license to simply mine your love life for Literature. And I've always found the desire to read and the desire to write inseparable in my mind. I don't know why, but I can't read a novel without thinking about how I would write one.

But reading The Counterlife (and you should all read this if you want to know exactly what I'm talking about right now) brings back to the surface another old sensation that comes from reading more than writing: whatever you want to say has been said before, by someone else, with a lot more style than you think you could ever manage on your own. So you end up with a bricoleur mindset in which you take a page here and a page there from all these different sources to try to prove a point. But when you try to create art out of that, you just end up with an extended argument with sockpuppets for your own amusement.

So this was why my attempt at a novel was so horrific. I kind of knew even as I was writing it that it should be burned as soon as I finished it because I just needed to get these preoccupations out of my head before I found something else to do. And at some point it did actually start getting to where I could see a pretty good structure begin to emerge, where maybe I could make situations and people that were independent of me, as it were. But in the meantime I was also putting away the feeling-deeply furniture in the name of being an Adult, and a dissertation started to seem so much more relevant, and I put all the novel papers in a box. (I do still have the box.)

Another related point is what kind of satisfaction that writing actually brings you. Certainly you try to create as a way to salve whatever it is within yourself that needs to feel accomplished or take pride in a craft, but the thing is that I did write the dissertation, but I don't feel like I actually accomplished anything meaningful to me with it. It's funny to talk to a couple of my writerly friends over the past day or so, who each have more than one published book to their name. Right now I think to myself that I would kill to be a published writer, but each of them spoke of not it not really meaning that much right now in making them feel a sense of self-worth. (Don Marquis's little parable of Pete the Parrot comes to mind; I had the fun of reading it to Sara at 12:30 in the morning last night.)

The idea of squeezing art out of misery, though, is sometimes all that makes the misery bearable. And as you may have noticed, I'm writing here again, which only means one thing So I'm back to having all kinds of ideas in my mind about what to do with all the emotional furniture now that it's out here. Worse than ideas, little experimental scenarios are starting to be born. So, poor reader, fair warning and all that.

Comments

[flw.livejournal.com]

I am going to make up an odd rule for you. You don't get to decide if your writing is horrific or not. Write it, and don't edit it. We hear all the time, "writing is editing". And we have this notion that writing has to be hard, damn hard, god damn it! You gotta die for that thing, because that's you on the page, god damnit! You gotta kill, kill that novel, damn it! Now give me a drink. Thanks, Raymond Carver, and by the way, Fuck You.

That's my Judy Blume joke of the day.

Thanks Raymond Carver, and by the way, Fuck You!

by Judy Blume

You can't edit it, until you have something. You need something to edit. The people who give that advice are giving it based on the assumption that you have 1200 pages written out longhand, or you've come to the end of your disk drive. You can't edit nothing. You can't kill darlings that aren't there. So write it, and You are not in a position to decide if it is horrible or not. Maybe you have to wait fifteen years... No joke, I know I would have to wait fifteen years before looking at something from 1993 in a rational way. Maybe you shouldn't edit your own stuff too.

That's a little secret they never let you in on. Many great books were edited by editors. People other than the people who wrote them. Another pair of eyes. In order to get an editor you have to have something to edit. I would say avoid the "Drunken Martyr" School of Iowa Paradigm. You're already too self-critical. And that seems to be the predominant school of thought.

I don't know. Why are you asking me? Why do you always pile this on me? Huh? I have my own problems.

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

I know this is a longstanding position of yours. But see, I know you well enough to know that the first thing that comes out of your mouth is often quite brilliant and insightful. Whereas I tend to stammer incoherently, both verbally and in writing. So for you to even be able to see the point I was making and respond to it, I had to revise this stupid LJ post, four paragraphs, for about an hour! That's how long it takes for me to write even the simplest thing because I do revise endlessly and that's all that makes it something worth responding to.

I actually like editing, is the thing, more than writing. If I have any natural gifts they're in that bricolage direction I was talking about before. I see editing as the art of taking a basic idea and making a lot of implicit connections in it have their full flower, and I think it's a good craft in its own right. So you're the kind of person who writes songs, and I'm the kind of person who puts them into CD mixes. Not that I don't want to write songs, but I know I wouldn't really be as original at it as you, so I'll let you write them.

So recall that you weren't that impressed with the raw guts of the novel either (and I know that you can be absolutely withering about other people's lack of talent, so don't tell me about deciding if it's horrible). I may well take out that box because it's been about 15 years. I think you were doing the same thing with your journals not long ago. The point is that we mine events and edit and revise them as much as we create them, so to me that doesn't stop just once I have some verbiage. I am not going to be some kind of polymath genius who gets things right the first time; it's hard work to get it to even be presentable. Which is a way of putting it off, I know, I know...

Hey, you're not my only reader? Unless you are...

punchline!

[librarygrrl.livejournal.com]

yeah. he is.

[flw.livejournal.com]

You are missing my point entirely. I am not saying don't edit. I am saying edit the five hundred page monstrosity. Don't sit there endlessly second guessing yourself. It doesn't work. Those people that say it works are WRONG. They think they're right, but they aren't. They are WRONG. They are just assholes who are trying to stop you from writing. I am right, believe me. You have to have something to edit. Get 500 pages of stammering incoherence before you even start to edit it. Don't write a paragraph and then revise it, and reread it, and reread it, and revise it, and really "dig in" to that first sentence.

If you want to do that while you are writing, then rewrite it right after you write it the first time. Like this:

Sleep all day, just waiting for the sun to set, I hang my clothes up on the line. When I die, I'll hang my head beside the willow tree. When I'm dead is when I'll be free. That's stupid. I'm stupid. God I suck. Light me on fire. Kill me. Kill me. I suck. I sleep all day. I am waiting for the sun to set. When will the sun set? None of that. I'll have none of that.

"None of that, I'll have none of that," she said.

She? Who the fuck is she? I'll tell you who she is just as soon as I figure it out myself. We're out on the banks of the Wompompanoosett River now waiting for something appropriate to happen. Seems like people are always doing things like that in novels.

I am not joking here. This is what all those people who talk about editing and revising start out doing. No joke! They write hundreds... and hundreds... and thousands of pages of this stuff before they even settle in on what it is that they actually want to say. And it doesn't ever come out elegant and beautiful on the first try. But they just churn it out. And it isn't hard. It doesn't have to be hard for anyone. Especially YOU. It is important to edit, but not when you don't have anything to edit.

And there's this martyr's notion that you have to bludgeon yourself for your art. Nonsense. Don't be a martyr. Even Kafka didn't torture himself. It's true!

Bring it.

[solipsiae.livejournal.com]

This sounds like a good development, to me.

Re: Bring it.

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

Yeah, now that I opened my trap, I have to actually do something, right.

srsly...

[librarygrrl.livejournal.com]

"little experimental scenarios..."

You are SUCH a tease.

Re: srsly...

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

You say that like it's a bad thing.

I should definitely not cop to artistic aspersions to the wife of a writer...