Echoes in a Hollow Space

Random quote of the day:

“Either you have to quit for good or you have to tough it out. That’s the choice. You have to be patient.”

—Deborah Eisenberg, interview, The Paris Review, Spring 2013, No. 204

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:

 

“I’ve been rejected by every record company there was ten times.  I think people in life quit things too early.”

—John Mellenkamp, Biography

 

 

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.

Random quote of the day:

 

“Pain is temporary.  It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place.  If I quit, however, it lasts forever.”

—Lance Armstrong, “Back in the Saddle—An Essay”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Random quote of the day:

 

“It’s hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender.”

—Leonard Cohen, “The Stranger Song”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Random quote of the day:


“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use in being a damn fool about it."

—W. C. Fields, quoted in Reader’s Digest, September 1949





(Thank you, geniusofevil.)
(Who is not a damn fool.)
(Or a quitter.)
(By God.)





( Illustrated version. )


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.

Every time I try to write literary fiction, I think of that old Barbra Streisand movie, The Owl and the Pussycat, from back in her still-Brooklyn phase when she was less Important and still hilarious.

I don't know if the movie holds up any more because I saw it a lifetime ago, but one of the characters is an unpublished writer named Felix (played by George Segal) who has been writing the same novel for years, never trying anything else because he's struggling to "make it right." I'm not saying literary writers are all like this, but Felix is Very Serious About His Art, and feels Very Misunderstood. Thinking of Felix helps me avoid certain pitfalls of the writing life—and frankly, to be proud that I'm a genre whore.

In the movie, after much cajoling, Felix finally agrees to read his masterpiece to Streisand's character, Doris, an actress and occasional prostitute. He never gets beyond the opening line, to much hilarity all the way around. Her acting out of that opening line for him so he can visualize the metaphor, and his reaction to it, has stayed with me since forever.

It's all about living inside your head, taking yourself too seriously, lacking perspective. The movie is also about accepting yourself for who you really are and not being ashamed of that, which is a good thing. But there's a subtext that also makes me cringe and has also stayed with me since forever: "If you've tried to live out your dream and it goes nowhere, give up."

I think about that one a lot, too, and to this day I'm not sure if it's ever right to give up on your dreams. You may be that geriatric dreamer out there still plugging away, but as long as you're still trying, you're still living. You may never get the golden ring, you may not wind up on the top of the heap, or even stuck in the middle or squashed on the bottom. You may have to modify your dreams, "modestify" them into some form you can live with, but giving them up entirely seems a bit like saying, "That part of my soul looks a little tawdry. I think I'll cut it out and throw it away. No one will notice I've patched it with naugahyde."

Live your dreams. They are who you truly are.

This subject is in the air today. It occurred to me in discussions with others (and in the shower) that the one time I had a really long pause in writing, about four or five years, it was because I'd put myself in an all-business footing. I was a Serious Writing Artiste and I needed to think Serious Writing Thoughts and do Serious Work and be Serious About the Business of Writing. I couldn't read a piece of fiction without over-analyzing it, and I stopped reading fiction. I concentrated so hard on my seriousness and what other people expected from me and my writing, that I choked my muse. It got so bad that for the first time in my life since I've had consciousness I stopped telling myself stories as I fell asleep at night.

I felt damned lost, I tell you.

I took up other art forms—sculpture, textile arts, jewelry making, drawing—and although I love all these things, that just didn't fill that cavern inside me. But they did teach me to have fun again. That cold motherf**ker, Seriousness, unwound inside me. I rediscovered my sense of play in the creative process. It took all those four or five years, but I started telling myself stories again as I fell asleep. Then I started reading fiction again. Then I started writing again. Fanfic at first, but very soon after that, I was telling my own stories again.

This should be fun, people. Yes, we need to take the business aspect seriously and be professional, but it needs to be fun, too. Or we really do run the risk of choking that lovely trickster, our muse. And maybe this time, the little s**t won't come back to play again. He's a darling little s**t, but he does run to Temperament.

This is what I keep telling myself, anyway.

I didn't realize there were so many discussions on LJ today about quitting and failure and moving on. I was having a talk with myself over lunch in-between bouts of writing and it was about this very subject. When I logged on after lunch, I was surprised to find everyone else dovetailing my thoughts. I started to write an essay in someone else's space about this subject and decided I'd fill up my own space instead.

The thing is, I'm constantly asking myself if I want to quit. I try never to use the word "should" because should is almost always a pejorative—somebody else trying to impose their judgment on someone else's behavior. "You should do this" is tantamount to saying "This is the way I do it and anything else is unacceptable." So I try never to tell myself or anyone else that they should quit if such and such a circumstance doesn't come about in so and so amount of time—or whatever. (And if I ever do, you should let me know about it.)

But I do ask myself if I want to quit.

So far, the answer has always been no, and probably always will be. I need the writing. But do I need the validation of publication? That's a separate issue, although until the last few years I thought I did need that validation in order to be "a real writer." I'm not even close to being through with striving for publication, but something of an epiphany has happened inside me in the last year. I don't need the dream of publication as I once did to make me feel "real."

What makes me feel real is to keep pushing my own boundaries as a writer, to take on writing challenges I think are beyond me and push through to the end, come what may. Sometimes that works out, sometimes it doesn't. I'm not going to kid you and say that failing at something that's challenging feels any better than failing at any other sort of thing. There is no consolation for me in, "But at least you took some risks!" Failure hurts. But I'm not afraid of failure, not any more. Failure does hurt, will probably always hurt—but fear of failure is the surest way I know to choke down the Muse. Once you choke the Muse, you're done—you might as well quit. And I'm not ready to go there. I'm going to keep taking chances and pushing myself into strange and difficult terrain even if no one in the publishing business ever gives a damn.

It's what I do, it's what I have to do. It's what I love to do.


Random quote of the day:

"Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It takes places every day."

—Michael Bishop, "The Door Gunner"

With all the brouhahaing on LJ over whether or not to quit writing, I thought this quote popped out of the random quote file at a rather ironic time:

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no use in being a damned fool about it."

—W. C. Fields

Although I love Fields, irony and synchronicity, I much prefer the quote from Octavia Butler posted by norilana a few days back:

"One of the things I just told the class was not to worry about things like talent and inspiration and luck because the real ability that you need in writing is the ability to persist, to learn from your mistakes and keep working, even though you're being rejected all over the place."

—Octavia Butler

Vera also referred her readers to the interview which contained that quote (and many others equally inspiring).

I guess, by Fields's standard (and others), I'm a damned fool because although I have nothing to show for years of writing except hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, a few honorable mentions, and several attaboy letters, I have no intention of giving up. I have to write. I will always write as long as I have brain cells left to write with.

I do seriously consider giving up the quest to get published. I've been doing quite a lot of that lately. But giving that up presents problems, too. There's that whole "writing in a vacuum" issue. I'm not really looking for money and glory and fame—I'm looking for readers. I suppose fame is a corollary of gaining readers, but it's not my motivator. I just want people to read my stuff; I just want to tell cranking good yarns that make people keep turning the pages.

There is the whole self-publishing route, but that's not really viable, it seems to me, without a reputation ahead of time. It means, for the most part, trading laboring in obscurity and having your friends read your manuscripts to having a garage full of unsaleable books and forcing your friends to buy those. Kind of like Girl Scout cookies or those awful chocolate bars your friends are always asking you to buy so their kids' school can buy new trombones for the marching band or the troop can head off to Camp Weegeesqueegee in the summertime.

So, I keep trying the traditional publishing route. I keep my expectations low, and I think—if it ever comes to that and I do give up on the traditional publication game—that I'm going to slap my stuff up on a website somewhere. That way nobody's forced to buy inedible chocolate or cardboard cookies.

True, no youngsters will benefit from the free inedible writing...except maybe my inner child. And she's always been a damned fool. That's not likely to change.

P.S. I loved this quote, too, from Ms. Butler:

"When young writers want to know the "secret," I'll generally say there isn't any. You have to find your own secrets."