Tonight I was talking to a friend. We traded off in words and rants and advice, and I talked for a long while about why other people don't matter, why what they say or think or proclaim through a half-drunken haze doesn't matter. All the things you're supposed to say to someone who needs to hear them. But I've never been one for the right thing, the best thing to say or the best way to say it. I like tangents. They're interesting. I can't tell a joke to save my life. I always forget the punchline or the lead up, or I mix it up and have to start over again, or I mess up the timing, or I change it somehow without realizing it and it's not funny anymore. But stories? Stories I can do. They're interesting. They change. They evolve. They have tangents and different threads and things you don't pick up on til the fourth time through. So like usual, I messed up on the formulaic stuff. The platitudes and cliches fell apart as I started talking in a roundabout way about all the things you're supposed to say.
I talked about meaning and living in the moment and the search for happiness. I talked about how even the solution we have now is a stopgap until the next thing comes along - a better bandaid, a shinier distraction, a bigger book about life and fishing and writing and love and death and everything inbetween that we can spend years reading and deciphering and pretending to understand. That none of that even matters in the end anyway - not the pretending, the ignoring, the stopgaps, the eternal searching. It's all another something on the road to somewhere and we'll never figure it out. I made so many roundabout arguments, I barely could tell what points I'd made, even when I seemed to be making them.
I told her about a professor of mine, who stood at the front of the class and condemned us all for thinking we could ever be happy, that we could ever find meaning in our lives. He was a smaller man, stout and round faced but with a lively smile and a constant stream of words and advice and anecdotes and things things things you could easily get lost in if you didn't know how to listen. There was never a quiet moment once he took his spot at the front of the room. There was never a moment he didn't have us all listening and thinking, frantically making connections and wondering and finally, finally in a burst of clarity, understanding.
He abhorred technology. He laughed at us with our laptops and iPods and our pretty shiny things. He only used the microphone because the room was too large otherwise. He could have done without it. His voice would have carried. We all would have crowded in the usually empty front rows and listened intently. Every week he would come in and spread his papers, his notes across the front table. The podium stood to the side by the shiny new electronic projector, both unused. He would have pages upon pages of lecture notes written out - blocks of text, like a novel, that he would have in front of him. He never read from them, just glanced down periodically, as if to make sure he was still talking about the right thing. I think for him it all became the same thing. For him it was all the same topic, the same ideas, one big something that was everything for him. He would talk and talk rapidly while gesturing and pacing back and forth. He didn't have to prod us for answers. He said exactly the right things that led us to the connections on our own, and by the end of the semester we knew what to pay attention to, what to look at and where to draw from for our own ideas. He moved at such a speed that we had no choice but to follow along at an ever-increasing pace, otherwise we'd be left far behind in the dust. It was now or never, because there was no other chance to catch up. So we jumped into the fray and at the end of every class we walked out of it feeling dazed and depressed and enlightened. Every week it was a different reading and the same thing over again while somehow being completely different. When we looked back it was through different eyes, and just as soon we were looking forward again, casting darting glances at whatever our greedy gazes set their sights on. And then it was the next week, and the next, and all we could do was take it as it came, because it was what mattered.
The most important, the most empassioned thing that professor ever said in that class also happened to be the one thing that got shot to hell the next semester by a much duller professor who seemed to fumble his way through his lectures like he had no idea what he was talking about or why he was talking about it to a room full of students. But it stuck. It's imprinted in my mind, a great big stamp on my soul that says: "This. This is Important."
Our shiny toys, our new technology and music and ever more expensive lifestyle - it's not going to make us happy. It amuses us for a while. It keeps our attention and gives us something to focus on. But ultimately, it's a distraction from life, from the Real and the Meaningful - neither of which anybody really knows anything about. It's the interim, because we really have no idea what will make us happy. it's not just the technology. It's everything we think we are, everything we think we want. We think we can be happy, but we know, somehow, that we never will be. We will always want something more, because what we wanted in the first place was never going to make us happy anyway. We all want happiness, but we can't find it in others, and that's always the first place we look for the great big measuring stick of life. Wealth and poverty, smiles and frowns, success and failure. One extreme dichotomy after another, based on everyone else, on everything around us.
The truth is, none of that matters, and we know it. We all tell ourselves, "you're beautiful the way you are", "love yourself", "you don't need money to be happy". Pretty clothes and shiny new electronics and big houses with beautiful spouses aren't going to solve all of our problems. We don't even know what all of our problems are. We know that. But we fall into it anyway, because there are always things we wish we'd done differently, chances we'd taken or mistakes we could unmake. We always swear that next time, next time will be different, but we get there and it's the same, the same. Tomorrow is tomorrow. Tomorrow is never now.
We're stuck in this limbo between our yesterdays and our tomorrows, and we don't know what to do with it. There's nothing to reach back for, and we don't know where to go anymore. We keep trying to move on, to make progress. We walk down that road, but it's not going anywhere because we built it, and around that bend the cement stops. We want to be there, on the other side of that gap, so sure that beyond lies happiness and enlightenment and meaning, Truth and the Real and all those things we dreamed about for so long. Between the reaching back and the reaching forwards, we've lost what's left, around us. This.
Because this is what really matters. Right here, right now. This moment is all we have. All of us have the choice to do with it what we will. Ignore it. Cherish it. Make the most of it. Pretend it never happened, that it's not happening as we speak. Live it, with every fibre of your being. Make this moment your meaning, your happiness. Because we have it, one thing among all others that we can claim as our own. This is us. This moment is what we are, what makes us what we are. Maybe it's indefinable, maybe it has so many meanings tacked on that it doesn't mean anything at all. But now. This. Here. You. Me. This is what it's really all about.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
fifteen minutes of fiction (but probably not fame)
A couple years back I found this writing exercise called 15 Minute Fic. There's a prompt word every week. Just a single word, something random. You sit down and look at the word, and then you immediately have 15 minutes - and only fifteen minutes - to write. It's the sort of thing that gets the words flowing, because you only have a short time to get something written. You have to think it up on-the-spot, and go with it. Take that one prompt word and turn it into something bigger, something more.
Me being me - that is, more suited to the short story or vignette form rather than the long winded novel - I was thrilled to have a concrete formula. Fifteen minutes. A prompt. An excuse to go where the words take you, instead of fighting to form a story a certain way. What can you do in fifteen minutes but take it as it comes, write as it goes?
After days and days of no writing - no paper journalling, no online journalling, nothing - I decided to take pen to paper (or rather, fingers to keyboard) and revisit this old model that I liked so much. I wrote. It was awful. Well, maybe it wasn't. I've written worse. But it was something, and that counts, at least. I think I'm going to continue writing from at least one fifteen minute prompt once a day, when I can.
In summary: I created another blog, Scribbly Scrawls, where I'll post all my rough stuff. First post is up over there already.
Me being me - that is, more suited to the short story or vignette form rather than the long winded novel - I was thrilled to have a concrete formula. Fifteen minutes. A prompt. An excuse to go where the words take you, instead of fighting to form a story a certain way. What can you do in fifteen minutes but take it as it comes, write as it goes?
After days and days of no writing - no paper journalling, no online journalling, nothing - I decided to take pen to paper (or rather, fingers to keyboard) and revisit this old model that I liked so much. I wrote. It was awful. Well, maybe it wasn't. I've written worse. But it was something, and that counts, at least. I think I'm going to continue writing from at least one fifteen minute prompt once a day, when I can.
In summary: I created another blog, Scribbly Scrawls, where I'll post all my rough stuff. First post is up over there already.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Midnight ramblings: On "Stranger Than Fiction"
10 years of writer's block on the part of his author has left Harold Crick to develop into his own character, living his life without the interruption of his author's presence.
When the author returns to continue her story, it seems, quite literally, that her character has developed into something quite his own. He has emerged from the pages of her manuscript, and is literally so alive that he has become real. Without ever meaning to, the author has created a person - not just an idea on paper to be pushed and prodded in this or that direction, but a real, live person who is living his life quite fine on his own, even if it is a bit routine and boring. All of a sudden, the author isn't creating a character and a life and a plot line, but she is telling the story of a real man, and every line she types has real consequences for him.
Indeed, how many times have you sat down to write, with a certain plot line, a path for the story to follow in mind? And how many times have your characters seemingly decided something else? That, no, they aren't going to get on the bus and go to work that day (where you planned on a ridiculously boring seminar, and a series of repetitive, dull conversations at the water cooler), but that they will get off the bus one stop early, and somehow find their way into a back alley. They'll save a woman being mugged and fall in love, witness a violent crime and either have to go into witness protection under a ridiculous alias or help catch the guy, or they might even become involved in the underhanded dealings of the local organised crime ring. Honestly, complain your characters, anything but another boring seminar at that stupid office, because if they have to have one more stupid conversation at that stupid water cooler, they'll jump out their window. Seriously.
And so, instead of your story following the mundane life of an office paper pusher, you find yourself writing a romance, comedy, intrigue, mystery, or maybe a crime drama. And, once again, you have to scrap your plans and simply write where your characters take you. Honestly, you think, don't those characters know their place? You are, after all, the omnipotent author, and they are just pawns in your master plans.
Oh, how terribly, terribly mistaken are we.
As authors, our goal is to write a good story. To write something that will capture our readers, to shock, inspire, or even enlighten them. And, for those who are professional writers, to hopefully sell more books so you can afford the coffee/tea/caffeine-laden beverage of choice that keeps you (and us hobby-writers, too) going on those late nights.
Often, though, we don't realise that a good story isn't created by a good author with, say, a great vocabulary or a moderate understanding of literary theory. A good story, while in its early stages, is already there, dormant in our minds, and all we writers really do is let it out. We breath life into it by putting pen to paper, by typing out the words on dusty old typewriters or sticky computer keyboards. We are but the messengers. We are the parents to fiercely independent children, and while we help shape their beginnings, we must let them develop into their own.
To truly write, we must let our stories go where they need to go, let our characters experience all they need to experience (and then some). In the end, they will always come back to us, teeming with tales of adventure and romance and intrigue, telling us to finish their story, to write it all down and let it be heard, please! We may think of ourselves as creators of worlds and kingdoms and characters and lives, but really, we don't control anything.
We simply tell the story.
That being said, go! Watch the film Stranger than Fiction. Seriously. If you understand even the tiniest nuance of writing, you will like it. And I know, the whole melding of fiction and reality, the defining labels of what makes reality real, creepy-ass goings on... but really. The power of literature, people, come on!
When the author returns to continue her story, it seems, quite literally, that her character has developed into something quite his own. He has emerged from the pages of her manuscript, and is literally so alive that he has become real. Without ever meaning to, the author has created a person - not just an idea on paper to be pushed and prodded in this or that direction, but a real, live person who is living his life quite fine on his own, even if it is a bit routine and boring. All of a sudden, the author isn't creating a character and a life and a plot line, but she is telling the story of a real man, and every line she types has real consequences for him.
Indeed, how many times have you sat down to write, with a certain plot line, a path for the story to follow in mind? And how many times have your characters seemingly decided something else? That, no, they aren't going to get on the bus and go to work that day (where you planned on a ridiculously boring seminar, and a series of repetitive, dull conversations at the water cooler), but that they will get off the bus one stop early, and somehow find their way into a back alley. They'll save a woman being mugged and fall in love, witness a violent crime and either have to go into witness protection under a ridiculous alias or help catch the guy, or they might even become involved in the underhanded dealings of the local organised crime ring. Honestly, complain your characters, anything but another boring seminar at that stupid office, because if they have to have one more stupid conversation at that stupid water cooler, they'll jump out their window. Seriously.
And so, instead of your story following the mundane life of an office paper pusher, you find yourself writing a romance, comedy, intrigue, mystery, or maybe a crime drama. And, once again, you have to scrap your plans and simply write where your characters take you. Honestly, you think, don't those characters know their place? You are, after all, the omnipotent author, and they are just pawns in your master plans.
Oh, how terribly, terribly mistaken are we.
As authors, our goal is to write a good story. To write something that will capture our readers, to shock, inspire, or even enlighten them. And, for those who are professional writers, to hopefully sell more books so you can afford the coffee/tea/caffeine-laden beverage of choice that keeps you (and us hobby-writers, too) going on those late nights.
Often, though, we don't realise that a good story isn't created by a good author with, say, a great vocabulary or a moderate understanding of literary theory. A good story, while in its early stages, is already there, dormant in our minds, and all we writers really do is let it out. We breath life into it by putting pen to paper, by typing out the words on dusty old typewriters or sticky computer keyboards. We are but the messengers. We are the parents to fiercely independent children, and while we help shape their beginnings, we must let them develop into their own.
To truly write, we must let our stories go where they need to go, let our characters experience all they need to experience (and then some). In the end, they will always come back to us, teeming with tales of adventure and romance and intrigue, telling us to finish their story, to write it all down and let it be heard, please! We may think of ourselves as creators of worlds and kingdoms and characters and lives, but really, we don't control anything.
We simply tell the story.
That being said, go! Watch the film Stranger than Fiction. Seriously. If you understand even the tiniest nuance of writing, you will like it. And I know, the whole melding of fiction and reality, the defining labels of what makes reality real, creepy-ass goings on... but really. The power of literature, people, come on!
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