Echoes in a Hollow Space

Random quote of the day:

“In relation to the late war, one question that every pacifist had a clear obligation to answer was: ‘What about the Jews? Are you prepared to see them exterminated? If not, how do you propose to save them without resorting to war?’ I must say that I have never heard, from any Western pacifist, an honest answer to this question, though I have heard plenty of evasions, usually of the ‘you’re another’ type.”

—George Orwell, “Reflections on Gandhi”

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“There are such things as false truths and honest lies.”

—Gypsy proverb



Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Lucy and Ethel, Justin Bieber, or the Kardashian Klan. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“We never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead—and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead and then they would be honest so much earlier.”

—Mark Twain, Autobiography

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Lucy and Ethel, Justin Bieber, or the Kardashian Klan. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

 

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

I have only ever taken one critique of my writing personally, and that was largely because it was meant personally. The critiquer mostly wanted to put me in my place and take revenge for an honest review I did of her Very Precious Novel. I told her that her writing was lovely, the characters in her book were interesting people I liked hanging out with, but I thought she’d done some chickenshit stuff with the plotting. Although I used, yanno, polite language, phrased things as positively as I could, trying to be supportive.

In turn, she said my novel was such utter dreck that she couldn’t make it past chapter 3 and didn’t want to waste anymore of her Very Precious Time actually finishing. Except, yanno, in semi-polite language. Though not very polite. Rather dismissive, in fact. Really hard not to take that personally.

Her novel went on to be published, mine did not, but mine got some positive response from agents. The ending was too controversial and “anti-market” but send the next novel along, and etc. Life took over and I wasn’t able to do any of that.

I admit to some perverse gratification when my critiquer’s novel was reviewed in Locus. They called her on the selfsame chickenshit plotting I had. Although the reviewer used, yanno, polite language. Though not as polite as mine. And I’d be lying if I said I was anything less than perversely gratified when the novel didn’t sell well.

Mostly, however, I take criticism like a grown woman. I ask people to read and critique my work because I want honest opinions so I can make it better. And I stay away from the perverse gratification as much as possible because I really do believe that negativity breeds negativity. It’s not healthy for me as a person or an artist to nurse grudges. They’re rather like hoarding useless junk. Too much of it in any one life and you wind up being one of those people buried alive and suffocated to death when a pile of old smelly junk falls on top of you.

No, envy and salacious glee at another person’s fail tend to choke the creative process. That needs to be as free-flowing as possible and if the artist encumbers herself with negative emotions she’ll stop moving altogether. I see it even more clearly now that I have so little time to do creative work, so little Me Time. An artist needs to be able to take those precious moments and run with them whenever they occur, wherever they lead.

And that includes being grateful for the time others spend reviewing and giving honest critiques of my work. I’m grateful for 99.9% of the reviews I’ve gotten. As you can probably tell from the opening of this post, I haven’t entirely succeeded on letting go of that one unfair one. I still grit my teeth when I see that person’s name. Fortunately, I don’t see it much anymore unless I masochistically google it. And I hardly ever do that. Hardly.

I don’t have time for that. I don’t have time for hoarding old newspapers of envy, scrap tin of grudge, and empty boxes of perverse gratification. I need to let go, lighten my load, and liberate myself completely from the junk preventing me from moving freely.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

I sometimes find myself fretting about my characters and disappointing my readers. Will they be disappointed, I ask myself, in a story where the freak protagonist remains a freak at the end, not magically transformed into someone more attuned to mainstream standards of beauty and social standing? Not young and strong and thin and accepted. A glorious transformation definitely takes place for this particular character I’m thinking about, but it’s all internal—with maybe a glimmer of hope at the end.

For me, as a reader, that’s all I ask: the potential for a better tomorrow. I’m not a fan of unrelieved realism and tragedy and probably would never write that kind of a story. When I was young, I thought it the only way to achieve High Art, but I don’t think that so much anymore. And I’m not so much interested in High Art, either. Just good writing.

This protagonist I’m thinking about is being punished for her sins. Not in the narrowly defined Judeo-Christian sense—as often marketed by fundamentalists and evangelicals. I don’t consider things like who is twanging who in whatever manner to be a sin, so long as everyone is a consenting adult. Sin is a word I reserve for things like murdering, cheating, manipulating, driving companies into bankruptcy, costing thousands of jobs, and the losing/looting of pension funds and properties. Fortunately, my protagonist is not a hedge fund manager or a corporate raider, so the reader may be able to find some sympathy for her.

I have a penchant for complex and not completely sympathetic characters, though. Sometimes that works out, sometimes not. They don’t always act with shining heroism and at times are a bit unstable. Or shitheads. Readers don’t always like them. That’s my fault some of the time (all the time?), because I haven’t written them with sufficient courage. I haven’t had the nerve or the foresight to take an unattractive character (or character trait) to its logical extension. I’ve tried to hedge my bets, gambling that I can charm my way past the unlikeable bits with no diminishment of heroism. I’m afraid to let the reader actively dislike the character even for a short time. You can’t really do that, I don’t think. When someone is being a shithead, you have to let them be one. You do run the risk of alienating some readers, of them putting the story down and never going back, but if you’ve set the story up right, they may stick with you for the rest of the ride to see how things work out.

Or maybe it’s a question of doing the best writing you can, the most interesting characters, and letting them find their audience. A risky stratagem, given the vagaries of the market, but the only honest way I know of approaching this. In real life human beings are often contradictory, selfish, stupid, and yet they’re not bad people. They have the potential for redemption. Those are the people I’m interested in seeing in fiction, too. Oh yeah, a good shiny-smiled hero or heroine is fun to read sometimes, but most of the time I like yellow-toothed protagonists better.

And maybe this, too, is a question of skill. Perhaps the reader can accept their contradictions, their mean streaks, their lashing out if the skill of execution is right. I know I’ve read characters like that and not thrown the book across the room. Take, for example, Chess Putnam in Stacia Kane’s wonderful Downside Ghosts series. Chess is a complete mess, makes stupid and self-destructive decisions, is her own worst enemy—and yet I love her and love reading about her even when I’m cringing hard at what she does. I keep pulling for her to snatch her backside out of the fires she throws it into time and again. She isn’t every reader’s cup of tea, but she’s mine, and wonderfully flawed and makes for compelling reading. So, the point is not to make characters that will be acceptable to every reader, but to make the writing compelling enough that readers can still find something to hold onto. Have I learned that lesson yet? I don’t know—or I know that I haven’t pulled it off all the time. I’m still working on it.

You can’t please all readers all the time. That I know for true. Some will accept the well-written shithead, some never will. That’s a matter of taste. As for the writer writing these complex people, it’s a matter of writing and revising and revising and revising and finding the balance.

Yes, that’s the truth, and the answer to my question, I suppose.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

 

“It is a mistake to trust a man with an honest face.  After all, that may be the only honest part of him.

—Old Vaquero saying

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Quote of the day:

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

—James D. Nicoll


Writingness of the day: Epiphanies are good things. I like them. I realized through a recent review (thanks—you know who you are) that sometimes I confuse tension with conflict. It seems glaringly obvious to me now, but the obvious isn't always obvious when you're sitting too close to the screen.

This conflict/tension confusion isn't a problem in my novels so much. They pretty much have the classic A must do B or C will happen structure, or A must overcome B in order to prevent/attain C, etc. But this is definitely a problem in my short fiction. My stories always seem more about, "Some characters are hanging out in an interesting setting and something gets them all scared/unhappy/excited/smiley, and then everybody goes home."

Not quite that bad, but almost. It's rare that I have that problem-solving kind of structure. There are perfectly fine short stories out there that don't have a problem-solving structure, some that I love with a muchness, but the thing is: I haven't written any of them. I don't feel bad about that, except in a generic way, a sense that I should feel bad and do something about it. I'd like to write better stories. I'd like to sell some short fiction. But short stories aren't my passion. And therein may lie the real reason I suck at them.

Not all things are for all people. Not every novelist can or wants to write short stories. That's just a fact of life. I'm not entitled to write good short stories just by the fact of being a writer. They aren't my passion. Short stories must be worked for, sacrificed for, and they require different muscles than novels. I probably could learn a lot trying to develop those muscles, but I'm not sure I will ever burn hot enough to write good short stories.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying I don't care, but I don't feel mopey about this, it isn't an "I stink" low self-esteem moment, it's just something I'm being honest about with myself and whoever else might be listening.

Last night I drove east on Washington Boulevard near the Culver City-L.A. border and passed a mini-mall on the corner of Washington and Rosabell. Normally, the marquee outside this mini-mall holds a white plastic neon-lit rectangle prominently featuring the name of a cut-rate dental office. Last night, the front and back panels of this rectangle had been removed, leaving only a framework with vertical bars of neon lights spaced like the bars in a cell door. They were lit, pumping out bright white light, a neon prison. Perfectly framed behind this prison of light was the full moon. She looked a sad, weary sister behind that artificial brightness. Once she'd been the brightest light in the night sky, now she'd been overwhelmed by the human need for attention-getting.

I found myself thinking how much I related to that forlorn moon.

I must explain that I was extremely sleep-deprived yesterday. Boyfriend of Ms. 207 upstairs was on an real rip-snortin' tear Thursday night-early Friday morning. The two of them, but mostly him, woke me up every half hour between 11 p.m. and 1:30 a.m. I have to get up at 6 for work, so you can imagine I was a wee bit tired. It was one of those situations where just as I drifted back to sleep, another noise eruption broke out and I'd be awake again. It culminated with them having loud, raucous, bed-thumping, screaming vocalization sex at 1:30. Before that, just before one, Boyfriend had cranked up the stereo and was singing at the top of his lungs (off-key). I guess he was anticipating the loud, raucous sex to come. But one good thing about that loud, raucous sex (from my POV, anyway) is that once it occurred I knew I'd probably get some sleep because, well, the darling young things would most likely be going to sleep themselves soon after. Indeed, that's what happened.

So, there I was exhausted and blue Friday evening, feeling a kinship with the dimmed moon imprisoned by the human need for exhibitionism. It had been an ugly, busy week at work, too, and I'd been ill with some stomach virus early in the week. I'm in the culmination phase of my novel, writing the finale chapters, and although that's going pretty well and I see the dim light at the end of the tunnel, the latest chapter I posted on the writing workshop (27-28 out of 32+epilogue) did not do particularly well. I got only one critique in over a week. I'd been doing well on the workshop before this current posting, had good luck with my posts for the last two years, but natural attrition has caused some critters to drop away, and at a certain point nobody new is going to sign on for critiques of the advanced chapters of a novel. My friend Jon says not to take it personally, and he's absolutely right, but it's hard not to take it personally. Finally, two friends took pity on me and there were two more posted critiques waiting for me Friday morning, but I was already in a massive funk by then. Aided, I'm sure, by only 4-1/2 to 5 hours sleep. I was on the point of pulling everything off the workshop and slinking into a hole somewhere to hide.

But I've learned not to make significant decisions when I'm depressed and sleep-deprived. I'm still in a bit of a funk, but the questions I'm asking myself today are somewhat different. Like: why the hell do I even bother to write?

You know, there are head answers to that question, and there are soul answers to that question. You could probably generate some of the head answers yourself:

o I write because it's a great means of self-expression.
o I write to explore universal truths.
o I write because it's a fun exercise of my imagination.
o I write to see my dreams and fantasies come alive on the page.

Etc., etc., fill in the blanks. All of those head answers--and whatever other ones I or you could come up with—are true, as far as they go. But they are all, essentially, irrelevant—they don't, at least for me, get to the heart of things. Because there's only one true answer, the soul answer: I write because I have no choice.

I would write even if no one was reading (and most times I think no one truly is). I believe there are writers who can say, "Enough," and move on to something else, but I'm not one of them. I've tried, and was utterly miserable each time. It was like having a writhing itch I couldn't reach, and it didn't go away until I started writing again. Once I even stopped writing for four or five years: the longest, most miserable years of my life. I said "Uncle" that time and never went to that place again, because I realized there is something in this particular form of artistic expression that I must do. It's my essence, ingrained in the whorls of my soul.

Trust me, I know how melodramatic that sounds. But it's also true. There's no rule guaranteeing that the truth isn't also melodramatic. Or maybe I've just never learned to express it in better terms. At any rate, if I ask my soul why I write maybe I can try to be honest:

o I write because I want someone to pat me on the head and say, "Good girl."

That's fairly honest, but only partially true. I wrote in a vacuum for years and it still did the trick for me. It's only recently that the need for attention has become part of the equation. And I can easily foresee a time when I might go back into the vacuum because this need to be noticed may never be fulfilled. I'll write anyway. I have to.

o I write because my father was a consummate storyteller. I never pleased him otherwise, and although he's been dead for over twenty years, I'm still trying to please him.

Okay, a bit more honest. That was certainly a strong component in why I originally chose this art form. I do visual art, too, always have, but it's never filled me up like writing—and I'm sure the Freudian answer would be: Daddy. But at a certain point I realized I was no longer writing to please Daddy. I woke up one day and knew I had crossed that Rubicon; moved into a new world, a new way of doing things, left the old rules behind. I do this for me now, and that's a good evolution. I lost my dad when I was fairly young and before I'd had a chance to truly differentiate myself from my parents. I think I've achieved that now—and that's always a healthy thing.

o I write because it's the only thing that patches the holes in my soul.

Yeah, that's a true reason. I've had my dark times, my New Moon phases, I will again, but the work is always the remedy, even if the work is sometimes the cause of the darkness. I always turn back to it—for me, not for anyone else—and it always does the trick, like nothing else can.

So I guess I'm like the full moon after all. I may be trapped sometimes in a prison of artificial light, made weak by the need for attention-getting—but last night in my exhaustion and depression, I forgot the other lesson of the full moon. That once I moved further down the street, the moon was still there, no longer behind those bars. And if I travel out of the city and its wash of artificial light, away from the distractions and visual noise, the moon still shines, alone in a dark sky.