pondering the deep questions

 journal, novels, shadow bound, writing life  6 Responses »
Oct 182008
 

Oy vey. The start of this novel really is problematic. I would cry "What was I thinking?" except I suspect the answer is that I wasn't thinking. Or rather, I was thinking too much, and not finding the answers I needed, and therefore reduced to feeling my way. I'm hoping that once I sort out the opening chapters, it will start to flow a little more smoothly. At least the retaliative catch-up strike is proceeding apace, yesterday's virus notwithstanding.

Right now, the television is blaring about Kath & Kim — The American Version, the circularity of which makes me cringe. I have never understood the American urge to take a successful tv show, staff it with American writers, cast and crew, and reshoot it. Is it meant to be an homage? Is it meant to sanitise American television of anything non-American? Is it related to the publishing trend Justine was talking about a couple of days back? Do other countries do this and I'm simply not aware of it?

And why oh why does Australian tv feel the need to air our original series back to back with the American remake?

I grow old, I grow old
I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled

simple != easy

 journal, writing life  6 Responses »
Aug 142008
 

A real human is somebody who feels and who expresses his or her feelings. This may sound easy. It isn't.

A lot of people think or believe or know what they feel — but that's thinking or believing or knowing: not feeling. And being real is feeling — not just knowing or believing or thinking.

Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but it's very difficult to learn to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you're a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.

To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

As for communicating nobody-but-yourself to others, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn't real can possibly imagine. Why?

Because nothing is quite as easy as just being just like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time — and whenever we do it, we are not real.

If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you've loved just once with a nobody-but-yourself heart, you'll be very lucky indeed.

And so my advice to all young people who wish to become real is: do something easy, like dreaming of freedom — unless you're ready to commit yourself to feel and work and fight till you die.

ee cummings, "A Poet's Advice"

not waving, drowning

 asides, shadow queen, writing life  2 Responses »
Jun 082008
 

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that I hate the copy-edited manuscript, and copyediting, and if I never quibble with myself again over where a comma should sit, or how best to conjugate a precise verb in a particular instance, it will be far too soon.

In the meantime, have a quote I love:

Carving is easy, you just go down to the skin and stop.Michelangelo

poor (zombie) mudpuddle

 journal  2 Responses »
Jun 062008
 

Publicity photos taken (and because I didn't get a chance to clean the make-up off pre-surgery, I found mascara in my ear this morning), and home from the surgery, which thankfully I slept through (the upside to being sensitive to drugs is that a dose which should make you drowsy in fact puts you straight to sleep), with half my face bandaged like some kind of new-made zombie.

I am miles and days and weeks behind on the copyedits, so in the meantime, have one of my favourite poems:

I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough
to make every hour holy.
I am too small in the world, and yet not tiny enough
just to stand before you like a thing,
dark and shrewd.
I want my will, and I want to be with my will
as it moves towards deed;
and in those quiet, somehow hesitating times,
when something is approaching,
I want to be with those who are wise
or else alone.
I want always to be a mirror that reflects your whole being,
and never to be too blind or too old
to hold your heavy, swaying image.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere do I want to remain folded,
because where I am bent and folded, there I am lie.
And I want my meaning
true for you. I want to describe myself
like a painting that I studied
closely for a long, long time,
like a word I finally understood,
like the pitcher of water I use every day ,
like the face of my mother,
like a ship
that carried me
through the deadliest storm of all.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours

none too bright

 journal, writing life  1 Response »
Oct 272007
 

Richard Steinberg at StoryTellersUnplugged has a great article on why writers write:

The thirty-seven writers in my address book (along with me) are a pretty diverse bunch. We live in five countries spread across two hemispheres, to say nothing of a bunch of us scattered throughout AmeriCanada. The youngest is nineteen, the oldest ninety-three. Male and female, rich and poor, gifted and self-taught; frighteningly wealthy, piteously poor, and all stages in between.

And we’re all not too bright.

cutting to the bone, and the cleaning lady

 journal, pre-crash  Comments Off
Jul 182007
 

In a comment to my last post, Liz pointed out a couple of fantastic articles.

One is Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier, who are the writers in residence on Inside A Dog at the moment, talking about writing together, and cutting close enough to the bone:

It helps a ton to have another writer in the house. I don’t know how them solo writers do it. … Sometimes it’s like being a cheering section, sometimes it’s more about challenging the other when they’re being lazy, and sometimes it’s just pointing out little things, like the bit of celery that’s stuck between Justine’s teeth right now.

The other is a transcript of a fascinating interview with Sue Woolfe, author of a book I adored, Leaning Towards Infinity, on her new book and the process of the creative mind:

I don't think you can demand things of that part of the mind that really are to do with the real world, the actual world. You've got to let anything emerge and you've got to say okay, I do trust it, it will, in the end, be okay but I've got to let anything emerge. You can't go saying, oh I can't think that thought because that doesn't accord with my status in the world, or even what I believe in the world. You have to let the thoughts emerge of their own accord whatever they're like and that's why the shame, to come back to your earlier question. Because when you stop writing or thinking in this way and you walk away and you're in the actual world again and you're being the person you are, suddenly you think back to the wild things you were thinking and you feel oh, that's not the right way to think at all.

joss on women

 journal, pre-crash  3 Responses »
May 212007
 

Joss Whedon on the gender inequality

How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence — is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.

…All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once. If you can’t think of what to do, there is this handy link. Even just learning enough about a subject so you can speak against an opponent eloquently makes you an unusual personage. Start with that.

Read the entire essay.

 Posted by at 9:58 am  Tagged with:

psa

 journal, pre-crash  8 Responses »
Feb 102007
 

Dear members of the public:

There are a range of emotional responses when dealing with the walking wounded public service staff. You can be anything from friendly, to civil, to inattentive, to dismissive, to cantankerous, to downright rude.1 Friendly is always good, and you can't fail with friendly. But if you're feeling low and can't summon friendly, then go with civil and inattentive. That's fine by me. We are not, after all, bosom buddies. And I'm more interested in getting on with my work than chatting about your dog, anyway.

But for those who choose the nasty end of the spectrum, please to remember this: If we treated you in the same manner you routinely treat us, you would complain. Loud and long.

Me, I'm pretty tolerant. And I know what side my bread is buttered. So if you're rude, I will not be rude back. If you get some power kick out of watching me hold in my temper because I can't afford to lose my low-paying job, good for you. Enjoy that while you can.

But in that case please to remember this: Postal workers are not the only service staff capable of a sudden snap. I've quit higher-paying jobs for an ideal, so I'm fully capable of being irrational. Pull your head in. Before I climb over this desk and smack you down. I have staplers, heavy implements like telephones and computer monitors, and sharp scissors on this side of the bench. You have a table full of tatty magazines not even capable of delivering a paper cut.

Nolove
Me

ETA: See, I go and publish my rant, and what is the quote which greets me when I'm done? Seneca. Be silent as to services you have rendered, but speak of favours you have received. *chastised (but only a bit)*

  1. Yes, this list is heavily skewed toward the nasty end of the spectrum. Funny, that. [↩]

synchronicity, part the… i've lost count

 journal, pre-crash, shadow queen  2 Responses »
Jan 292007
 

The quote which met me when I logged in today:

I always work intuitively without much knowledge of where I'm going. I find that if I insist too strongly from the outset it won't take on the life that a novel needs to have. I find that by writing in the dark and coming up with a big messy first draft and reshape and rework I stand the best chance of coming up with a book that's a little smarter than I am. That may be useful to others struggling with novels. There's always a point during the writing when the book falls apart, which is a difficult period and no fun, but what actually happens is the novel is outgrowing my idea and taking on a life of its own. All novelists are heroes. Blessings on your efforts.

— Michael Cunningham

I would like to believe that the reason the novel is fighting me is because it's outgrown my ideas and taken on a life of its own.

However, in point of fact, I rather suspect the novel has a broken back. And I've just gone and pressed on the break in the spinal chord, and that's why it's flailing around and being generally uncooperative.

Time will tell, I suppose. The problem with novels is you have to finish them and gain a little distance before you can judge them. And the finishing part takes so durn long…

Onwards and upwards, as they say.

 Posted by at 6:45 pm  Tagged with:
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