There, There. It's All Right ....

I keep clicking. My perceptions of objective reality obviously need new settings.
http://make-everything-ok.com/

How to Die?

This article is about two deaths. Two men, both artists, and how they faced early death.

One in dissolution and despair. One in awareness and creation.

Isn't this article really about how to live?

NPR's Krulwich Wonders

Kids or Spouse?

A friend and I had just been discussing this question. We wondered how many other women question this. Of course, there's two sides to the question: kids and no spouse, or spouse and no kids. Either way, society often frowns.

I'm thinking a lot about cultural myths lately. Tradition dictates marriage and family. But in this as in all things, people should be free to choose -- and most importantly, society should support those choices. It's all too easy to feel guilty for wanting a non-traditional life.

Then I think about choices that are even more non-traditional, and I am once again humbled at the courage people have, who choose not to hide who they are: different sexual orientations, gender change, even (omg) atheists.

We are getting better, I think, as a society, but there's still so much intolerance, even hatred for those who don't abide by a perceived norm. But what is normal, and why? And who decides?

I think it's easier on everyone to stop insisting we have the right to tell others how to live, and ask instead for respect. Be kind. That's all.

http://www.arcamax.com/newspics/28/2805/280589.jpg

I know I'm a Writer Because ....

I've read the quotes. 'unhappy is the house where a writer lives' sorts of things. I don't know about unhappy, but a writer does live here.

I am not a person who writes. I am a writer.

I know this because my deepest, most soul-stirring or harrowing emotions are greeted with a rapturous: "Oh cool! Now if I can just get this into words, I can use it in a story!"

More Than Merely Literary Fiction

I still puzzle over what differentiates literary from genre.

"I know it when I see it" is so often the final definition. Character driven, high-minded, complex, many layered.

I love this definition: "Work of great sensibility and refinement, where it can take up to 500 pages for nothing to happen." from Frank Baron

In the end, it is, like almost everything in life, a spectrum. There are books that are genre, no question. There are books that are literary, equally without question.

But all along the way, there are books whose ideas, whose writing style, whose detailed evocation of place, mood,or character are so eloquent that, even though there is a romance, or a crime, or an alien invasion, they are also literary.

Over and over we read  that everything in the story must move the story forward. Every scene must fill at least two roles: establishing motivation, explaining necessary backstory, revealing character, and so on.

Perhaps part of the difference, then, is that in literary fiction, you have greater latitude in how much you reveal or the pace at which you move the story forward.

In literary fiction, you can have, as in "The Life of Pi", paragraphs of imagery and impressions that serve to create the mood of the story and the way in which the character views the world that in a genre book would be considered too slow. "Tighten it up" I hear an editor cry. "You'll lose your readers' interest."

And you would, if they were reading it as a detective story or a romance story. But when the book aspires to be something besides -- note - not more than -- science fiction or thriller; when the writer wants to draw you into a world or a state of mind; then you are entering the world of literary fiction.

And we are left again with personal preference. I might read it and see it as a literary fantasy. You might read it and see it as fantasy only.

This is part of why I favor the label Speculative Fiction. It allows the idea that elements of fantasy or science fiction are not the absolute arbiter of the story's classification. A space ship can carry the tragedy of Hamlet in its crew, and a mystery can encompass the eternal question of what it means to be human.

I could wish that we weren't so determined to make arbitrary distinctions. I realize that, like standardized testing in the schools, there are times we need to stick labels on things. But if we are interested in understanding what books have to offer, then we need to look past the labels publishers and booksellers require and accept a book on its individual nature.

Any time we break down barriers, we are enriching our world.

Rethinking Argument

We tend to make up our minds for emotional reasons. Then we identify with our conclusions, and find ourselves threatened or angry when someone tries to alter our conclusions. The more comfort we derive from our belief-based conclusion, the more fiercely we resist someone trying to change it.

Hence all the hostility amongst religions, or competing scientific theories.

We should be, at the very least, polite in our arguments -- and always have good, solid supporting evidence.

For politeness:  How to Argue on the Internet and Linguistic Politeness Research Group

For good, solid arguments :

http://www.smbc-comics.com/

Anger as Ink

What motivates us?

Compassion? Anger? Hate? Love?

What makes us want to keeping pushing, struggling to accomplish what needs to be done?

Life sets up more than sufficient obstacles. Just the every day work of surviving holds us in place, keeps us from reaching out too far towards what we want.

Other people hold us back. Not only out of spite or their needs, but simply because we are tied to them through so many types of bonds. But those bonds hold us to them, and thus back from what we want to become.

We set obstacles for ourselves: inertia, apathy, fear - oh yes, fear. The fear of failing, the fear of being laughed at - even the fear of succeeding.  I want this. But what if I get it and I don't like it after all? Then what have I?

My biggest motivation seems to be anger. Initially at other people, then at the fool I am, but also at myself for believing I cannot do what I've set out to accomplish. For believing what others want me to believe rather than admitting, or even allowing hope of admitting what I know to be true about myself.

Anger is what forces me to realize that I am my own worst enemy. I cannot rest until I cause problems for myself, and then, when I've made enough of a mess, I can finally recognize it and start to clean it up.

The price is high. It is not a good way to accomplish your goals - alienating people, deliberately making problems for yourself. But if it increases the pressure enough that an explosion, however small, happens, then I suppose it's worth it. Anything to get out of despair and back into action.

Hopefully someday action will come without such finagling. Leaving a trail of self-destruction is not the best way to get out of a swamp and onto solid ground.

But to be angry at all is, for me, an amazing thing. It means I am finally learning that I don't have to bow my head and take blame for what others impose on me. I am not stuck. I can break out.

So anger becomes the ink to my pen. I can write, because I have to prove I am not incapable, not stupid, not such a fool as life, and the habits I've learned in life make me believe I am.

Having once done so, well, there's a whole world of new problems to face. But at least anger gives the energy to meet the challenge.

Damn Good Writing

A writer writes good words. Some authors, even successful ones, can't do that, but they have An Idea that trumps their lack of facility with words.

A good writer has both ideas and words.

A Damn Good Writer writes with the passion of someone who's just been fired and is pouring out their rage onto an email that, hopefully, will never be sent. Or a lover who is alight with the glory of that first love-making. Or a parent whose child has died. Or a child who didn't get what they wanted for christmas.

Raw emotion. Blazing, searing, terrifying, elating: the feelings that pull us out of ourselves, out of thought and reason.

A Damn Good Writer not only can write those emotions, they can then take them and craft them to distill the essence of those emotions into clear, accessible prose.

And when A Damn Good Writer does this, the words burn on the page.

We cannot all be writers. Even fewer can be good writers. But to be a Damn Good Writer - that is the hope and the despair of longing.

Cracked, and Writing is Despair - when it's not elation

I was doing my morning's routine of reading comics, then blogs. Science, philosophy; and there's a few writing ones I like to follow. Though for writing I mostly use Twitter - a random idea jumps out and says "Here! This is what you've been needing to think about!" For which I am truly, truly grateful.

Anyways, on one of the philosophy blogs I followed a link and discovered that  the book I've been working one for the last year is, apparently, a cheap flimsy watered-down version of the sort of novels some very famous (in the right circles) (which I obviously don't inhabit)  (which is another point of despair) person has been writing for many years now.

All my hundreds of hours of research, my hundreds of hours of writing, my in progress hundreds of hours of editing - for what?

And I am sunk once again in inescapable gloom.

What's the point? I know I am not unique, that no one is unique, that every story has been told thousands of thousand of times... but I was feeling pretty good about my book up to that moment.

I used to be a very stable person. Not without upheavals, but generally rational, reasonable, and not prone to gloom.

Since becoming a writer, my life is the proverbial roller-coaster. And not with slow steady swings from elation to despair.

Oh no. That would be too easy. Like a toddler with a light switch my brain leaps from extreme to extreme, within the same bleeding sentence.

So then I find this: http://www.cracked.com/blog/how-to-become-author-in-5-incredibly-difficult-steps/

I don't know how I hadn't seen it before. Cracked is a wonderful place for researched information in a quirky, irreverent style.

Being able to laugh, even though being reminded yet again (and I didn't need the reminder - I never forget) that I am not in the tiniest bit unique, made me feel better.

And I will write today. How could I not? It is who I am, for good or ill.

Poetry

The previous post, Creativity, was a reworking of what had originally been a comment for another blogger. He has said he likes my long comments; this excessively prolix one was the result of several days pondering, and the fact that he'd been writing poetry. Poetry and I have a love/ hate relationship.

Jane Austen, in Persuasion: “[ it is ] the misfortune of poetry to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it sparingly.”

And yet, this line, once read, has reverberated in my mind for many long years:

'Oh Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?’  Percy Bysshe Shelley 'Ode to the West Wind'.

Art is personal. The perfect words, the unexpected music, the sudden image can come close to your heart and forever after influence your thoughts.

Art can be used to manipulate: not just to enhance emotional reactions, but to control your mind. Think propaganda. 

It behooves us to be aware of our own reactions, and recognize that we are being manipulated. That doesn't mean don't let yourself sink completely into the emotions. No, enjoy the art and your reactions,and all the pleasures that brings. But know that you are making the choice, and recognize when to pull back.

As a writer, I must add, analyzing any work of art only increases its impact. To see the skill, the carefully chosen word, the subtle harmonic shift, the delicate brush stroke... knowing how the effect was achieved only enriches the experience.r