Tag Archives: creative writing blog

6 September 2010

Basking in Multi-Tasking

By thefallenmonkey

“Multi-tasking – Screwing everything up simultaneously.” – Anonymous

Well, let’s hope I don’t screw up everything…

I recently shifted to freelancing for my existing employer, so with the exception of one day a week, I can do my work from home.  Yes, that is quite awesome, and I’m not saying I’m not enjoying it.  What I’ve discovered, though, is how much more it stresses me out to not have that set schedule.  Do I get my work stuff out of the way first thing in the morning, or do I work on my manuscript when I’m still fresh?  Should I write my work blog first or save the writing energy for this one, and do either before or after folding the laundry and scrubbing the shower?  Should I tend to the Monkey or the manuscript?  My work email or my personal email or my Monkey email or my other personal email that I also need to use for work?  I literally have tabs open for everything at once and been starting something in one window and switching to tweak something in a different one before the first thing is done.  Though it’s stupidly minor, somehow it helps me to do all my personal/writing-related and work-related schtuff through separate browsers…then I can bookmark accordingly and not have it all staring me down at once.

Soon to be thrown into this loop is *hopefully* dipping my toe back into the classroom to substitute-teach once a week 🙂  And, as of Friday, I’ve accepted a position as Developmental Editor for a new publishing company (also work that will be done remotely)—so once I become certified, I’ll have other people’s fiction manuscripts thrown my way while I’m still trying to finish my own!  I absolutely embrace the opportunity, though, and think it will 1) be refreshing to step outside my own writing at those times it bogs me down, and 2) teach me so much that I can relate back to my own story.  I am super, super psyched about helping others fulfill their writing dreams in this new way.  You can be sure I’ll be keeping you posted on this blog how that goes…

So that’s my update.  I am suffering a massive professional split personality right now, and it’s that much more potent because these are all things I’m personally passionate about and for the most part incorporating into my own home.  So is this exciting that I’ve achieved the point where what I do is so much of who I am day-to-day, or am I going to go batty without the work-life division that helps maintain the work-life balance?  I think it can be the former as long as I keep myself disciplined yet remember it’s okay and necessary to put the work aside and walk away when I need to live.  I know how to prioritize, and I know how to accomplish things bit by bit.  Yeah, I think it’ll be a good thing.

But I don’t know, I’m too busy to think about it now, so I’ll schedule a time to think about it later…

“I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow.” – Scarlett O’Hara

Any of you have some tried-and-true time-management strategies that work well for you?

22 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in Monkey Miscellany

31 August 2010

If Truth Be Told…

By thefallenmonkey


Halfway through Sophie’s World, and it keeps prompting new thoughts.  Well, more accurately, the history of philosophy that it shares does.

Though dear Sophie and I have already progressed to the 18th century, Plato’s ancient allegory of the cave continues to flicker in my mind like the flame casting shadows onto the back of the cave wall.  If you aren’t familiar with the story, the basic idea is this: 

Visualize a cave with people seated with their backs to its opening.  They are therefore only able to see the back of the cave wall, which is dancing with the shadows of objects held behind the people and in front a fire.  The people are unable to turn around, thus only know the world from these vague shadows of what’s transpiring beyond them outside of the cave.  

In this myth, the actual objects (which would be seen in clearer detail if the people turned around to look at them directly) represent the world of ideas, whereas the shadows are only our perception of the material world.  Plato believed that true knowledge could not be gained through our senses, but, rather, our reason.  Thus, the enlightened ones who try to see beyond their physical world into the realm of ideas will see with clarity and truth.

So why do most of us keep our backs to the cave opening, staring into the darkness and shadows?  Is it because we choose not to see or aren’t able to?  When I think of this myth literally, I pretend that I’m the one to stand up and look around at what is creating the shadows.  My eyes having been adjusted to the dark all this time, I’d think they’d be pierced by the bright fire/daylight.  This then makes me think of the Emily Dickinson poem:

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

Methinks Miss Dickinson and Colonel Jessep share something in common—though Emily might agree we ordinary folk are entitled to the truth, neither believes we can handle it.  For that matter, how would everyone else in my cave respond if I suddenly told them what I saw?  Would they believe me?  Be shocked by it?  Deny it?

Me-then thinks perhaps stories are a way we writers try to help the medicine go down.  Hey, Plato’s allegory is a case in point, is it not?  Stories help us to better understand truths through visualization and creative “slant”—no, not lies, just not necessarily the facts either when it comes to fiction.  And I shouldn’t imply that it’s “sugar-coating”; indeed, stories well-told will intensify rather than dilute, expressed in engaging, vivid ways that make a reader receptive to even the grittier stuff.

Years ago, I attended a lecture  by Tim O’Brien in which he discussed his novel The Things They Carried.  Written in the first person and narrated by a character whose name was also Tim and who also fought in Vietnam, the book reads like it’s the author’s memoir.  O’Brien clarified, however, that while much of the novel is based on his real life, it is a novel.  Flip to the inside cover and see that it is denoted as a work of fiction (there are many semi-autobiographical narratives that are, which many don’t realize until Oprah exposes it mercilessly on her show…*ahem* A Million Little Pieces *cough*…Night is arguably another—and oh, hey, just look whose book club it’s in…).

Basically, O’Brien said he had to stray from writing the factual truth in order to tell the absolute Truth.  He likened it to catching your first fish; sure, it might be scrawny, but your excitement is massive.  In order to get someone else as excited about your catch as you are, you might stretch your hands further apart from the few inches of, “It was this big,” to the two-foot length of, “It was THIS BIG!!”  Describing a tiny bluegill as a giant catfish isn’t factually true, but your friend’s commensurate reaction is the Truth of what you actually felt.  Likewise, O’Brien believed that for anyone who didn’t experience Vietnam to feel remotely the way he felt when he was there, he needed to tell it differently.

So my question for YOU is this:  what Truths do you write or read about?  Which of your stories (or those you’ve read) do you think do a particularly effective job of helping the reader “handle the truth” and why?

23 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Essay, Memoir, Musings on Writing

26 August 2010

What Happens in a Meadow at Dusk?

By thefallenmonkey

“[L]ong before the child learns to talk properly—and long before it learns to think philosophically—the world will have become a habit.  A pity, if you ask me.”  – Sophie’s World

I’m currently reading a book that I’ve had sitting on my bookshelf for years.  I literally moved it across an ocean two years ago, and still it had sat mutely, patiently, until I finally plucked it out and cracked it open a few days ago:  Sophie’s World.  I’m only a quarter of the way through it, so will withhold offering a critique, but so far I’m enjoying the questions it raises—it’s essentially taking your own correspondence course in philosophy, without getting graded 🙂    Less than twenty pages in, I was struck by the above quotation…I hadn’t really reflected on how the world becomes a “habit” as we age:

“The world itself becomes a habit in no time at all.  It seems as if in the process of growing up we lose the ability to wonder about the world.  And in doing so, we lose something central—something philosophers try to restore.  For somewhere inside ourselves, something tells us that life is a huge mystery.  This is something we once experienced, long before we learned to think the thought.”

At this point, the “philosopher” instructing our protagonist, Sophie, has been pointing out how infants and young children look about at everything surrounding them with wonder, getting excited about even the little things we adults come to take for granted through familiarity.

I’m not going to wax philosophical on this, but what it did make me think about is how writers seem to be blessed with the ability to behold the world with that same wonder we did as children.  We have to, really, in order to continue creating our own little worlds. 

The writer is someone for whom a bus ride is not merely from Point A to Point B; rather, it’s an exercise in character study as we little voyeurs observe those in such close proximity that it almost seems weirder to pretend that they’re not there (as the masses do on the London Underground…the eye aversion is almost unbearable – and on sidewalks, too!  This Chi-town gal misses eye-contact *sigh*).  Anyways, we watch these people, speculate on where they’re going, where they’re coming from, what their whole backstory might be.  We get ideas in our noggins as to the perfect character to insert into our current tales or on which to base a whole new novel…all thanks to paying some attention to the real people right under our noses.

We notice subtleties, the body language that suggests insecurities or the butterfly that carries so many metaphors aloft the breezes of its wings.  We notice with a painter’s eye that the clouds aren’t just white and that the sofa is illuminated differently when the sun shines in from that late-afternoon angle.  We notice the people who smile to themselves when they think no one’s looking and that a tree can look sad, hopeful, or maternal.  We notice what a gust of fresh air feels like in our lungs, through our hair, and the new story ideas that the sensation can conjure.

We can describe what happens in a meadow at dusk.

We behold the world with wonder, and the beauty is that not only are we richer for it, but we have the calling that compels us to write it down so that others might experience the world through our eyes and look at it as though for the first time through their own.  There is not always beauty in this awareness; in fact, we may reveal the darker sides of humanity and tell gritty, disturbing stories without that happy ending.  But what there will always be is Truth – I’m talking the capital ‘T’ truth so long as we write, to the best of our abilities, what it is we wonder at through our genuine voices.  That is what makes a story authentic and universal, for something has told us that “life is a huge mystery,” and now that we can think the thought, we can write it.

14 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in Descriptive Language, Essay, Musings on Writing

21 August 2010

The Shotgun-Shack Story: Nowhere to Hide

By thefallenmonkey

The-Breakfast-Club-movies-21223076-1558-800

I’ve been sitting on a topic for a while that a recent blog post on Lethal Inheritance  has spurred me to finally write.  In Tahlia’s post, “Is writing the second novel easier than the first?“, she discusses how she has started writing her second book while her first manuscript awaits publishing.  She mentions ways in which this second story line differs from the first:

“[I]t takes place almost entirely in one set of adjoining suites in a castle, whereas Lethal Inheritance’s scenery is always changing. Thirdly, it’s character, relationship and emotion driven, rather than action driven. For me, that’s a harder brief, and that’s why I’m not sure at this stage if I can make it work.”

To which I responded:

“What I’ve been working on to date falls in that [same] category; there are not dramatic changes in setting or adrenaline-rushing action as it’s very concentrated on the psychological/emotional variations in my protagonist as she questions identity and her perceptions of reality.”

I proceeded to say that, though this is the type of story I’m personally drawn to, I realize it doesn’t necessarily have the mass-market appeal that would get it snatched up for publication.  And that’s okay—I am definitely writing the story I want to write; I started rereading it from the beginning yesterday and am all the more convinced of that.

So, today I’m dedicating this post to those incredible stories out there that capture our attention without catering to the modern-day ADD bred by MTV-esque rapid editing and car chases and explosions.  I’m not saying I’m not likewise entertained by the action-packed tales, just that they are not the only ones capable of, in fact, entertaining.

I attended a writing seminar last year in which a panel of agents, publishers, and authors spoke on the craft of writing in conjunction with getting published.  Someone in the audience had asked about commercial versus literary fiction, and an author responded that “commercial” fiction is story-driven whereas “literary” fiction prioritizes language and ideas—it is read for the beauty of the words and provocation of thought.  She attested that many authors try to combine both.

This got me thinking, then, about the more character-driven stories that I enjoy.  Where films go, I noticed a trend in my collection of one-setting movies; indeed, some partake in just one room.  Think about that!  One room.  If a film or novel can captivate you all the way through by virtue of situation and dialogue without having to change settings, that is a brilliantly written manuscript, in my opinion.

Don’t believe me?  Try watching Rear Window, 12 Angry Men, Rope, or, hey, even The Breakfast Club—all of which take place in a single room (with the exception of maybe a minute or two outside)—and tell me that you aren’t entertained.  These are carried by characterization and dialogue, just like other favorites of mine:  Before Sunrise and its sequel Before Sunset (which both admittedly change settings, but the respective cities of Vienna and Paris are just backdrops to the characters’ ongoing conversation), The Anniversary Party (an ensemble cast in a Hollywood couple’s home), and Gosford Park (in the vein of the Agatha Christie books I loved as a kid that transpire in a single setting—a mansion in And Then There Were None and a train in Murder on the Orient Express).  And it doesn’t take dramatic, in-your-face action and cutting from setting to setting to get the blood rushing, as not only evidenced by these mysteries and the two aforementioned Hitchcock films (Rear Window and Rope), but in haunting thrillers like Dead Calm and The Others as well…which coincidentally both star Nicole Kidman, the first taking place on a sailboat and the second in yet another old English mansion.

In speaking on setting, the visual examples of this most readily come to my mind through film, but the success in capturing even a viewer’s attention in this case comes down to the writing.  The writer scripts the dialogue and envisions the setting and behavior of the characters—in film, the director then works to capture this audiovisually.  Yet in a novel, it is all on the writer to convey these elements entirely in words.

Stripping away the attractive actors, elaborate sets, and soundtracks does not render mere words dull, nor is a single/minimal-setting book a bore.  If that were the case, where would that leave the classic works of authors like Austen or Bronte, whose stories don’t deviate far from the character’s homes.  Think of the chill sent down the spine by novellas like Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw or Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher (houses), the adrenaline and fury aboard Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (boat), or the intimate existential conversation in Salinger’s Franny & Zoe (the entire second part moves only from the bathroom to the living room) or Boethius’s 6th-century The Consolation of Philosophy (a prisoner speaks with Fortune in his cell).

What is it about the single-setting that so fascinates me?  I suppose it’s in part the appreciation I feel for the effectiveness of story-telling that doesn’t rely on bells and whistles.  And it’s the great experiment of what happens when you isolate people in a room—throw in a dash of tension, stir, and bring to a boil.  It becomes a study of humanity when characters aren’t able to escape each other or even themselves:

There is much heart, soul-seeking, and thrill to be had within four walls.  A writer can most certainly pull it off, though the impact can only be as strong as the writing itself in bringing it from the corners of a room to the corners of the mind.

How about you, readers and writers—do you gravitate toward the story-driven or character-driven?  What are some examples that successfully combine both?

23 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Character, Conflict, Descriptive Language, Dialogue, Essay, Figurative Language, Musings on Writing, Novel, Setting, Short Story

18 August 2010

Show Me, Show Me, Show Me How You Do That Meme

By thefallenmonkey

These have been busy days causing much blog-neglecting, so for now I shall finally snag the writing activity from Corra McFeydon’s A Lit Major’s Notebook blog as I told her I would.  I had also told her I had a Spotlight Award waiting for her when her blog was up and running again, which is still out there for the offering, though I know she will graciously not accept 😉

This is in keeping with some of the writing prompts I follow that allow for brevity…it’s like an ink-blot test, really, offering insight through metaphorical self-perception:

– If I were a season, I’d be autumn.
– If I were a month, I’d be October.
– If I were a day of the week, I’d be Thursday.
– If I were a time of day, I’d be 23:00.
– If I were a planet, I’d be Saturn. (I like a good accessory).
– If I were a direction, I’d be West.
– If I were a tree, I’d have the perfect branch to sit and imagine on. (and there’d be a monkey in me)
– If I were a flower, I’d be dried jasmine blooming at the bottom of a tea cup.
– If I were a fruit, I’d be a tomato.
– If I were a land animal, I’d be a cat, sleeping in a sunny window.
– If I were a sea animal, I’d be manatee, fooling sailors that I’m a mermaid.
– If I were a bird, I’d be a mockingbird.
– If I were a piece of furniture, I’d be a chaise lounge.
– If I were a liquid, I’d be red wine.
– If I were a stone, I’d be sedimentary.
– If I were a tool, I’d be a level.
– If I were a kind of weather, I’d be alternating showers and sunshine, UK-style.
– If I were a musical instrument, I’d be a piano.
– If I were a color, I’d be burnt sienna (consult your Crayola box).
– If I were a facial expression, I’d be a raised eyebrow.
– If I were an emotion, I’d be anxiety.
– If I were a sound, I’d be fingers tapping on a keyboard/piano keys in inspiration or a flat surface in impatience.
– If I were an element, I’d have an even atomic number.
– If I were a car, I’d be a Volkswagen.
– If I were a food, I’d be cheese.
– If I were a place, I’d be lined in dark wood paneling and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, flickering in candlelight.
– If I were a flavor, I’d be spicy.
– If I were a scent, I’d be spicy 🙂
– If I were an object, it would be fun to be unidentified and flying, too.
– If I were a body part, I’d be the eyes.
– If I were a song, I’d be “Just Like Heaven” by The Cure.
– If I were a pair of shoes, I’d be black ballet flats.
– If I were transportation, I’d be my own two feet.
– If I were a fairy tale, I wouldn’t want any contemporary retellings of me to star J-Lo.
– If I were a holiday, I’d be spent traveling.

Oh yeah, and if I were a song, I’d also most certainly want you to rock out to me (men, apply that guyliner):

10 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Character, Writing Elements, Writing Prompts

6 August 2010

The FaMo Awards

By thefallenmonkey

Gah!  I’m so delinquent in my blog-posting/reading…as I explained this morning on Twitter, “the sloth in the next cage died, so am filling in for it at the last minute. Have been very convincing in my role.”

For what that’s worth.

And shame on me further because I have yet to formally thank the lovely Lisa Reece-Lane and Agatha of the Milk Fever and Here Be Dragons blogs, respectively, for humoring a primate with blog awards!  My very first ones, so I’m screeching and throwing poop around my cage like it’s confetti.

Following my blog post on rules, ironically, here are a few more that I am more than delighted to adhere to in accepting these honors (along with the gown I shall be wearing to the award ceremony):

1. Thank those who loved you enough to bestow this gift.
2. Share seven (7) things about yourself.
3. Bestow this honor onto 10 newly discovered or followed bloggers–in no particular order–who are fantastic in some way. (The You’re Going Places award only obligates me to 5, but I’ll honor the original Spotlight reqs)
4. Drop by and let the 10 chosen friends know you love them.

Okay, so to follow my thank-you above, here are 7 random things about me:

1.  I am the youngest of 4 and the proud auntie of 2 nieces and 6 nephews.  Being 7 to 10 years younger than my siblings, let’s just say I fought my way into this world as an “unexpected” gift from God.

2.  Though it’s rare in females, I’m color-blind.  Well, color “weak” as the eye doctor says every time I fail one of those gol’ damn color  tests.

3.  Although I love animals (I am, after all, a monkey), I am not a pet person. At all. But if I had to align myself with either the infamous Dog People or Cat People in a finger-snapping gang face-off of “West Side Story” proportions, I would probably go Cat.

4.  While not advanced and hardly ever getting the chance anymore, I love playing the piano.

5.  The only physical features that I’m genuinely insecure about are my feet.

6.  I suspect that I have an old soul, but cannot determine its age (though, considering my bunions and the flannel granny cap I wear in bed on winter nights—very much to my husband’s chagrin—I estimate it’s at least 80).

7.  My mind is a reservoir of meaningless pop cultural free-association-of-thought.  For example, on command, I can sing/hum theme songs to old TV shows (with a concentration in ’80s sitcoms). My college roommates discovered this ability in our dorm cafeteria—nothing stumped me, but after something like 2 hours I stopped in frustration that I could only recall ONE of the themes for “Lost in Space” (the later color episodes had a different song than the earlier B&W seasons, you see, but I’m pleased to announce that I eventually did remember the other one and will sing it at your wedding if you book me far enough in advance).

Though not all necessarily “newly discovered,” I will now bestow the honors to 10 of my consistent blogger friends (I’ll split the 2 awards 50/50):

Receiving the Spotlight Award:

The Spotlight Award

1. To extend my thanks further, Here Be Dragons.  This blog is a constant source of empathy and inspiration for me as a writer.

2.  Nicki Elson’s Not-So-Deep Thoughts.  A newly-published author’s witty musings on writing and the 1980s—as her little sister, I couldn’t be prouder!

3. Real Bloggers United.  A diverse new collaboration of bloggers to which I try to contribute on a monthly basis and encourage you all to do the same!

4.  Courage 2 Create.  An insightful writer embodying refreshing humility and kindness.

5.  Aphorism of the Day.  Though he humbly goes by “nothingprofound,” his bite-sized pearls of wisdom give a busy life pause for meaningful thought.

Receiving the You’re Going Places Award:

You're Going Places Award

6. In keeping with the spirit of #1, Milk Fever.  Lisa is a rising newly-published author, and her posts crack me up.

7.  Though she already has heaps of ’em, there’s a reason:  Bowl of Oranges.  Our gal Lua never fails to share spot-on reflections related to the journey of a writer.

8.  Write in Berlin.  I *heart* this gal’s wit and sharp perspectives as a writer and Berliner.  Her advertising eye always makes for an engaging interplay of images and text.

9.  In Media Res.  Filled with humor and honesty, Milo is a lesson in imagination and perseverance in publication.

10.  Lethal Inheritance.  A richly informative guide on writing and the quest for publication by YA fantasy lit author, Tahlia.

*phew*  I’m pooped (in the figurative sense, not the literal with regard to my nasty monkey habits).  I’m off for the evening and hoping to catch up on all of your blogs this weekend, as well as those of newer commenters who I’m very pleased to meet and looking forward to following as well!

20 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Monkey Miscellany

30 July 2010

Writer Rules. I mean, Writers Rule!

By thefallenmonkey

I recently read a post on the Here Be Dragons blog entitled, “Are We Having Fun Yet?” in which the author, Agatha, shares a refreshing, honest rant over the agony that can be refining a manuscript into its final draft.  She references Stephen King’s book On Writing (which many keep recommending and my slack-ass has yet to read) and specifically addresses a few writing rules that are compounding her frustration, such as how to approach that infamous first chapter (i.e., beginning at the beginning of the action to hook the reader rather than leading in with too much description of setting) and the debatable requirement that there be tension on every single page.

This got me thinking about all the RULES we new writers are trying so diligently to follow to not only write that novel, but also craft it into something marketable so it has a shot at getting published.  We scour the blogosphere for the sage wisdom of literary agents and published authors, and we look to our most beloved books for guidance.  It goes without saying that the pressure this places on us is tremendous, especially when we look back to the precious first drafts we wrote from our hearts and realize they are violating rules left and right…

Suddenly the Adverb becomes our arch nemesis, and we’re playing Whack-a-Mole against any dialogue tags other than Said.

A few months back, The Guardian (inspired by Elmore Leonard’s The 10 Rules of Writing) published the article “Ten Rules for Writing Fiction,” in which they surveyed 29 renowned authors for their own list of dos and don’ts.  This was a fascinating read for me.  At first, it overwhelmed me, because of course as I scanned down the screen I was tripping over everything that I apparently do wrong…and yet, the more author lists that I read, the more I noticed how varied their perspectives were.  For being a list of “rules,” it if anything taught me there is no consistent formula set in stone.

While there are no doubt sound universal suggestions out there we should adhere to, I think we also need to find solace in the fact that there couldn’t possibly be a one-size-fits all approach to writing a good book.  We are all unique and have something different to bring to the table, and that’s something that should be celebrated in our writing as well.  I particularly like how Ollin Morales (Courage 2 Create blog) phrased it in his comment on Agatha’s post:

“I’d rather write a book that I love and everybody hates, than one that everybody loves and I hate.”

True dat.  And I also commend the truth Corra McFeydon just shared in her A Lit Major’s Notebook blog, a post appropriately titled, “The Truth.”  It is here that Corra, also in the process of writing a novel, admits that she does not desire to be a professional writer because, right now at least, it’s killing her spirit in what she loved about writing in the first place.  Seeking to break free from the rules and schedules that constrict her, she asserts:

“That’s why my novel will be written when the spirit hits me — as a product of my intensity, my laughter, and my free spirit — even though apparently that’s not how to be successful.”

I began this project for me, and if it remains just for myself after I’ve at least given it a shot at going elsewhere, so be it if I’m happy with the end product.  But even abiding by our own expectations entails discipline as we make time for our writing and edit it until it becomes the best version of itself.  I think most of the rules I’m opting to follow these days are self-imposed based on my own standards (which are quite high—I’m an English teacher after all, and grade myself constantly ;)).

That being said, one external rule I’m trying to stick to is the advised first-time-author word count of 100,000—not in my first draft that I’m wrapping up presently, but when I go back through to polish up.  Yet another blog post I recently read that I really appreciate for its straightforward guidance on how to cut, let’s say, 19,000 words for a final manuscript is, well, “How to Cut 19,000 Words” from the ‘Lethal Inheritance’ blog—Tahlia Newland tells us how she did just that when her agent asked her trim down her YA fantasy novel of same name.  I was at first absolutely psyched out that cutting words meant cutting entire paragraphs and chapters—and sometimes it does and perhaps will, but it’s reassuring to know that it can be achieved on a sentence/word level as well, an edit so subtle you’d hardly miss a thing.

I’m curious:  Which writing rules do YOU swear by?  And which rules do you think are totally bogus?

Argh.  Can you even imagine Jane Austen sweating it out like this?  I can’t imagine she was slapped in the face by rules at every turn, as we are at every page we flip and link we click.  But then again…

35 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in Essay, Musings on Editing, Musings on Writing, Novel

2 April 2010

On Imagination

By thefallenmonkey

[I see that YouTube has removed this video for whatever reason, so please refer to this post’s comment sections for a transcript of Will Smith’s monologue in the film Six Degrees of Separation.]

It only took me about 15 years to finally view the film Six Degrees of Separation for the first time last night.  What an evening of captivation that made for…you could say it quite captured my imagination.  As far as what “imagination” itself is, the film (an adaptation of John Guare’s stage play of same name) is frank in its perspectives on the concept in the above scene, which gives me pause to reflect on how this can apply to one’s writing.

“The imagination has been so debased that the imagination…being imaginative, rather than being the linchpin of our existence, now stands as a synonym for something outside ourselves.”

To many, “fiction” and “creative writing” may connote creating new, original worlds comprised of new, original creatures that lift us out of our reality.  Admittedly, I often characterize my choice of reading fiction over nonfiction as my “escape” from my everyday.  Yet, to be fair, my disbelief can only be suspended so far—at some point, I need to be able to see something recognizable within the text if I am to relate to it and learn from it and thereby stay engaged with it.

I remember making a pop-up book for a grad school assignment (yes, grad as in graduate school, not grade school!) that asked us to create a visual representation of our “reading life.”  I fashioned my book such that, with every turn of the page, a different symbol would pop up (that’s no easy feat to engineer, by the way…it took ages) that depicted one particular function reading serves in my life.  Among other things, I had an airplane to represent that idea of escape, a telescope for seeing beyond my immediate frame of reference, and a staff of music notes for the musicality or harmony books can provide through their themes or lyrical style.  And yet…

“Why has imagination become a synonym for style?  I believe the imagination is the passport that we create to help take us into the real world.  I believe the imagination is merely another phrase for what is most uniquely us.”

One symbol I also distinctly recall inserting into the pages of my pop-up book was a mirror.  As I explained to my peers during my presentation, reading is a way of holding a mirror in front of myself because it may either convey or conflict with my perspectives, and in that confrontation, there is reflection, be it validating my beliefs or modifying them through the acquisition of new knowledge or ways of thinking.  It tells me something about myself, and I in turn form my interpretations of plot, character, etc. in terms of what I know from my own life experience and attitudes.  And while I’m certainly infusing certain personal meaning into what I write, I do hope that it strikes a chord with other readers’ lives such that they derive their own meaning.

I’ve felt the sting of insecurity before over incorporating aspects that are true to my life in my stories, as though that meant I was being unoriginal—after all, if I am truly creative, shouldn’t it all stem purely out of my imagination?  Consolingly, I have since reached understanding that it’s actually the moment we stop seeing ourselves in our writing that we’ve stopped being imaginative.

This brings to mind something I just read today by Josh Hanagarne (a newly published author) on his World’s Strongest Librarian blog.  With regard to his new novel, The Knot, Josh says:

“I am this book.  This book means everything to me.  It is pure me, […] easily the most personal thing I am able to share with you.”

I think when it’s all said and done, whether we get published or not, we should all be able to feel this way about what we’ve written.  So, in closing, I offer you this line from the film:

“To face ourselves – that’s the hard thing.  The imagination…that’s God’s gift to make the act of self-examination bearable.”

As writers, to what extent are our stories a means of self-examination?  Where do you see yourself in your characters, your truths in their “fictitious” circumstances and dialogue?  Do you find that the writing process is therapeutic in making your analysis of self “bearable”?  Might it do the same for your readers?

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