Trying Not To Be Stupid

[Moving stuff back from my abandoned WordPress blog.] 

Though Toni Morrison was not interviewed for Harper's Bazaar's Writing Through It: Five of our greatest novelists on what it takes to write something true, this felt its most important point:

In 2003, Charlie Rose interviewed Toni Morrison, and there’s a quote that sums up novel writing for me. “Are most of your characters winners or losers?” he asked. “Always winners. Even if they drop dead,” she replied. “They learned something very, very important—some critical thing they learned that they never would have known except for the novel. Their experiences are epiphanies. I think those are happy endings when you finally figure it out. And you know it. Maybe they don’t have a car, or maybe they don’t have the loved one or whatever, but this is a life of the mind and the spirit, and they win. They’re not stupid anymore.” I think that is why I will always read novels: to win at the life of the mind, to have an everyday epiphany, to build another story.

I would like my characters to be a little less stupid about something at the end - whether that something be factual, emotional, or philosophical, personal, or of the wider world.

SCH 3/26

 

 

Out and About August 7: The Photos

The view from Riverside Ave looking east

What is supposed to be the Moon

Looking west on University while waiting for the bus.

A sign of the times

Looking north on Reserve from University

Sunrise from the bus station

 

Arrival at St. Barnabas for Matins:

 

After Matins, a sunny morning

Walmart before 9 AM.

What a pain it is loading photos!

 

But here they are. 

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Exposition

 [Moving stuff back from my abandoned WordPress blog.] 

 Let me expose another weakness in my writing: interesting exposition.

That is why I wanted to give attention to Andrew Martin on How to Manage Exposition: Don’t Fear the Info Dump (Lterary Hub). If you read enough science fiction, you know about info dumps. My eyes glaze over and skim automatically. Even worse is when one reads a series to find earlier info dumps squeezed into the later volumes. 

Some points I gleaned from Mr. Martin's essay:

What fear of the dump translates to in practice is a broader resistance to the work of exposition in a story or novel. I’m not talking about a philosophical objection to backstory, the way Joy or Diane Williams reasonably might in work that is disorienting by design. Rather, it seems to be about something more fundamental—an anxiety that providing too much concentrated information about a character or situation is, on its face, artless, or worse, boring.

Like a lot of workshop-based neuroses, this is rooted in the experience of seeing something done badly, or doing it badly oneself, and hearing a teacher explain wearily why it should be otherwise. We all have our familiar writing hobbyhorses—me, I’m a stakes guy, sorry. There is of course a thing as too much backstory, and when a writer frontloads information before giving the reader a sense of why it has some kind of emotional or psychological value, it’s hard to expect them to keep reading. Historical fiction, fantasy, and science-fiction are particularly vulnerable to this problem, as the process of explaining a time period or world different from ours can stretch to nearly infinite dimensions if not checked. There’s also the dreaded shadow of “show don’t tell” hanging over all of this—boy do I wish I could talk to the guy who came up with that. You don’t show someone a story, dammit, you tell it.

And this:

As with finding a title for a novel or story, if no great option presents itself, the goal with exposition should be to do as little damage as possible. Tell us what we need to know, don’t go on for too long, get out of there. The better course of action, if at all possible, is to be stylish and elegant with your exposition, as one strives to be in all things. Mary Gaitskill is particularly good at this ideal combination of straightforwardness and pithiness. She’s not afraid to tell the reader things, but she maintains her poise while doing so. Her very recent New Yorker story “Something Familiar” contains a good example. The protagonist is recalling the very Gaitskillian jobs of her youth:

“Nude art model (poorly paid), waitress (she got fired), hostess (she wasn’t charming enough), whore (bingo.) That was another threshold she’d crossed with Carly; they had both started at the same place, a “house,” rather than outcall, which they’d agreed was too dangerous. They did it on an emergency basis, off and on for maybe five years. Neither took it seriously; it seemed of a piece with the pleasing artifice of clubs and magazines, an almost comical piece, more real and more absurd than dating. And safer, actually, on an emotional level; none of the men she met there could really hurt her.”

There’s a jaunty Nabokovian compression to the first sentence that draws us in, and the comparison of sex work to the “pleasing artifice” of clubs and magazines is a surprising turn that holds our interest. But the rest is simply informative, neither coy nor overly blunt. We’re learning important things about this character, filtered mildly through her consciousness. Gaitskill has the confidence to know that backstory is action, is story, if it’s done right.

And finally this:

...It was important to remember the principle that exposition shouldn’t feel any more rote than action or dialogue. Every sentence in a novel carries weight, provides an opportunity for the writer to display their sensibility.

Now, if I can find the time and the talent to do this with my own work!

sch 3/12 

 

The Deluge Is Upon Us

Monday was almost a complete write-off; another one of those lethargic days.

So, notes were collected and are now being published. 

8/10 

I decided against submitting but I found Strange Hymnal a beautiful site with very interesting writings. Please give it a look.

Submissions: 

Plain Tales from The Flatlands to Split/Lip Press, Slant Books, and Boudin Novelette Chapbook Contest.

The Unintended Consequences of Art to Sequestrum 

8/11: 

“After Making Landfall” rejected:

Thank you for your fiction submission to Unbound Ink. Although it isn’t the right fit for our journal at this time, we truly appreciated the opportunity to read it. We wish you all the best in finding a home for your work, and welcome future submissions to our literary magazine.

All the best,
Rosanne and Allison
Co-editors, Unbound Ink  

I made it to Matins, retrieved my phone, and headed out to do some grocery shopping. Only the deluge started. I got smokes and got home soaked, even with an umbrella. It was supposed to be a light rain.

I made it to Payless later in the afternoon. 

8/12:

J  was to come over for lunch. I broke the date. I had been raining hard off and on since yesterday. I woke twice n the night to the sound of pouring rain.

I did need to go out to the Sheriff's for my year check in, that I was not being a threat to the peace and safety of Delwawre County, Indiana. That was the most harrowing bus ride I have ever had. Some streets were flooded, the DIY warehouse's parking lot had about two feet of water covering it, and several routes had detours.

I got the photos off the camera and have posts that will be appearing over the coming days of photography.

I  ate dinner at Savage's Ale House. Maybe I ate too much, but it is still bothering me. Not that the sandwich was not wonderful.

I went to sleep early, but that lasted only four hours.

8/13:

Up early to a gloomy day. No rain, but no sun. Have had enough. Going to make a groundhog and wait to do more. I do not feel like writing.

 

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Does It Matter That Prestige Lit Is Dead?

[Moving stuff back from my abandoned WordPress blog.] 

 I have tried my hand at many things related to writing. I like science fiction, and I love detective stories. I wanted to try my hand at flash fiction because I thought it might help me write better short stories. Most of what I write is experiments with genre, even if I am more inclined to write what is, to my mind, literary fiction. But I am not interested in prestige fiction. I think prestige cuts off fiction from readers. That also lets me rationalize that my talents do not rise to a level necessary for prestigiousness.

What prompts these statements from me is Dennis Wilson Wise's review essay Prestige Fiction Is Dead (Los Angeles Review of Books).

In the final analysis, anyone still committed to the novel’s specialness—probably most folks reading this article—is bound to consider Novel Competition thoroughly depressing. But Brier is a historian, not a prophet. He has no answers, no grand solutions, for the novel’s lost pride of place. The prestige competition is over, he says; there’s just “less to be gained by denying it now.” And that rings true. Although winning a Pulitzer Prize or a National Book Award can still make one’s literary career, we no longer expect our literary lions to become public intellectuals. Once upon a time, authors like Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut, and Susan Sontag were recognizable faces on the television circuit. Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine any novelist finding that same prominence.

That paragraph made me wonder if we are not settling into the same patterns in literature as we are in politics: pre-WWII divisions have returned. I knew Truman Capote and Norman Mailer from television long before I read their work. But how much did the public know about Booth Tarkington, Sinclair Lewis, J.P. Marquand, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pearl S. Buck, or Eugene O'Neill during their heyday? Consider my list contains three winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, a long-running best-selling author, and four winners of the Pulitzer Prize. The only writer who did not win any awards for his writing was F. Scott Fitzgerald. Who is read today by the general reader? Fitzgerald. Prestige is the eye of the beholder; literary fame is ephermal.

But from my list, who is not a good writer? I would suggest none. They may be stuck in their time (Tarkington and Marquant and Lewis seem most likely to suffer from this fault), but they wrote to the best of their talents. I found The Good Earth a surprise for not being boring. I think Fitzgerald probably did not rise to the challenges of his talents, but they are better talents than I have, and what would America be without The Great Gatsby? If I recognize humanity in their work, then I think it is worth reading.

That means to me that we write not to make a television appearance or be lauded in The New York Review of Books. It means we write as best we can to connect with humanity.

Sam Kahn's What Has Gone Wrong With Fiction in Our Era? A Laundry List (Castalia) includes much that makes what I have written foolish, certainly off the main stream. But then I am far from the main stream of American publishing. Nor do I have an MFA. I am a writer with nothing to lose and, at my age, little to gain.

I feel more in line with Damien Cowger of New Ohio Review Recommends…

And there I end today's sermon.

sch 3/12 

 

Fire Up Dwtwn Muncie: The Photos (Better late than never)

 

The Downtown Farm Stand for pizza, the best in Muncie!

I was trying to give a sense of the crowd size, I hope it worked. It makes me think I should get over to Anderson for one of their festivals for comparison purposes.

 

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Indianapolis Writers Reading Their Work

  [Moving stuff back from my abandoned WordPress blog.]

We should not forget there are writers living and publishing in Indiana. Yes, they will be out of Indianapolis, for the most part. Let us support them, regardless of genre!

From MirrorIndy (a local news source) comes ASMR: Soft-spoken storytime with Indy authors 

sch 3/12