The Bitter Quill

I’m rereading Lolita right now. I do this every couple of years, because in my opinion Lolita is the best book ever written. I’ve borrowed a copy of The Annotated Lolita from one of my friends, and it’s fantastic. I now know what all those French words mean. Of course, I’ve sort of been borrowing it for the last couple of months, because I’ve got this darn graduate school thing keeping me from reading as much as I’d like. (Except for papers with titles like “Learning and Applying Contextual Constraints in Sentence Comprehension,” I’m reading plenty of those.) So, anyway, I’m trying to hurry up and finish Lolita, because my friend wants it back, and I turn the page, and right there, on page 265, is exactly what I was I trying to say about why we feel betrayed by false memoirs. Except, of course, Nabokov has said it much better than me. (Don’t you hate how Nabokov always does that?)

So here it is. From Lolita:

“I have often noticed that we are inclined to endow our friends with the stability of type that literary characters acquire in the reader’s mind. No matter how many times we reopen King Lear, never shall we find the good king banging his tankard in high revelry, all woes forgotten, at a jolly reunion with all three daughters and their lapdogs. Never will Emma rally, revived by the sympathetic salts in Flaubert’s father’s timely tear. Whatever revolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical and conventional pattern we have fixed for them. Thus X will never compose the immortal music that would clash with the second-rate symphonies he has accustomed us to. Y will never commit murder. Under no circumstances can Z ever betray us. We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular person the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical. We would prefer not to have known at all our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has seen.”

Of course, as a writer, I’m fine with the hot-dog stand operator writing poetry, as long as his stuff doesn’t get published before mine.

I’ve been thinking about Cyn’s recent post about how she writes her life, on her blog and in her fiction. It seems like most of my life goes undocumented. Most of my life doesn’t seem to warrant documenting, however. Does the world really need to know about my compulsive visits to the grocery store or about my altercations with bookstore security personnel? (Don’t worry. Nothing was hurt but my ego.)

Perhaps it’s a lack of writerly confidence. To write fiction, or such types of nonfiction as memoir, seems to require a combination of narcissism and bravery. I think I have the narcissism part covered well enough. I find that I enjoy few people’s company as well as my own.

I also have some bravery. The thing some writers seem to fear the most is a rejection letter, and perhaps I do too. I admit I’ve sent very little material out, but that’s usually because I have none ready. Besides, rejection is better than no response at all. At least that way you know you’re not still sitting at the bottom of the slush pile.

There’s a second kind of bravery, though. The kind that’s willing to present one’s ruminations on the mundane details of life to an audience. Some writers, particularly humorists, have made lucrative careers off of daily minutia. However, it takes a certain kind of confidence to foist such rambles onto the public. I seem to lack that type of bravery (but perhaps it’s just in my closet next to the vacuum I never use).

Fortunately, I don’t believe my affliction is permanent. I’m sure one day the little details of life that have been hiding in the shadows will come forth. Until then, I have the details of biology to write about, and I doubt I will ever exhaust them.

Recently, guest editor and all-around awesome chica, Gillian Neff, wrote the following:
I know writing is pretty much always a painful process, so I suppose my point in this little public blood-letting is tell those of you who DO have ideas to go with it, despite the pain.

It struck me as funny when I read it; not because the pain of creation is a funny thing (although some times it can be), but because when I was thinking about what to write here this week, pain was also on my mind. Perhaps the creative process is not unlike menstrual cycles; we all sync up if we spend too much time together. (Yes, Bitter boys; that means you too.)
I recently re-read something I wrote…indeed something that I wrote not that long ago, a month at most…and I found I had little-to-no emotional connection to it.

Well..that’s not entirely true. I want people to enjoy it or to be moved or inspired by it, to be upset or troubled or angered or even disgusted by it; anything but bored or disinterested. But that’s not emotion, that’s just ego. What it is I don’t feel, what is suddenly missing, is the passion I had while I was in the midst of it. Gone is my concern for the characters, vanished my empathy for the challenges they face, my familiarity with the landscape in which they exist entirely dissipated. I suffered with them, suffered through them - battling not only their own demons but my own fears of the dreaded white space, writerly inadequacy and easy distraction just to get their story told. And now that it’s told, I shrug my shoulder in their direction and move on to something else. I know that I did write it, but I remember very little of the actual process. In some cases, I’m hard pressed to believe the words on the page are my words - so far removed are they from my current frame of mind.

It’s not just this recent piece, either. In the end, I’m like this with everything I write. In the most extreme cases, I’ll take something up to read it immediately after writing it down, and find myself surprised by the content on the page. However, the mighty afflatus is rarely this strong, and I more often than not I struggle with the mere putting down of words - wrestling with willful protagonists and unwilling syllables until I’m clutching at my head and pressing my eyes as though the mounting tension in my brain could be translated into the right words, the key to the great, unfolding mystery, if only I could massage them out. When in this state, even when I’m not actively writing, I’m continually considering and composing. (I’m useless to talk to during these times; all social (and oftimes professioanl) functions go on autopilot so that the story can work itself out.) In the thick of it, I am all afire. And yet, even after all this, I will later find my the fruits of my labor surprising, sometimes alien to me. How is it that these things can consume me so completely one moment - then have no meaning to me the next?

Let’s leave the obvious answer of “madness” out of it for a moment. My working theory (and the one I’m sticking to) is that this process is the necessary stretching, sweating, swearing & tearing of creation (whole lives - indeed, whole realities - don’t come into being simply, but sanguinary). And, like the more standard sort of births, that we are eventually permitted to be aware that there was pain, but not to remember the pain itself so that we’ll keep on going - willing to bear it again.

Which, I suppose, is a kind of madness in itself.

I don’t believe I could stand to be in that heightened state perpetually; although I do believe there are people who can and do. Whethere they’re the geniuses or the burnouts I don’t rightly know. Does this separation happen to anyone else - or is it just my own brand of crazy?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s contribution comes from special guest Gillian Neff, who is some sort of big muckety-muck editor for some fancy-pants cancer research journal. Her red pen is fearsome indeed! Thank you so much, Gillian.

People who know me are always surprised that I don’t write fiction. I read fiction constantly. I’m a relatively creative person, and I am absolutely fascinated with words and lingual history (I am obsessed enough that I have occasionally considered getting the first few lines of the Beowulf Manuscript tattooed on me). A good turn of phrase, whether written or spoken, is enough to give someone my life-long admiration, and I consider written wit as high an art as a Giotto fresco. I know my grammar rules and have a good feel for the flow of language. I have done plenty of editing, and I flatter myself that I’m fairly good at it, based on the number of my friends/coworkers who have turned to me for help on numerous occasions.

Yet I, myself, do not write.

Certain teachers and friends of mine, particularly our Esteemed Host, have attempted to rectify this by inspiring me with kind words and advice. Several times I have sat down in front of the computer and started putting down words. Sometimes the words came easily, and sometimes it felt more like trying to convince a cat to take a shower – futile and sort of bloody. But in either case, I discovered the same thing.

I have absolutely nothing to say.

I am utterly, completely, and 100% devoid of inspiration. Sometimes I’ll get short scenes in my head that I like, or snatches of sentences. However, it’s never enough to craft into anything so long as even a one-page story. And if I try to massage it into a longer form, I find that it feels trite and contrived.

This is a point of much frustration to me. Despite being a person of an otherwise creative nature, it’s like there’s a black hole in my brain where plot would come from. I’ve tried brainstorming exercises and role-playing, I’ve tried just writing and seeing where it goes, I’ve tried expanding on my germs of words and ideas, but still — nothing that hasn’t been done a billion times previously leaps to the fore. Yes, I know the old saw about there being only 100 plots or somesuch, but some people are able to take those same plots and graft their own, new ideas over the old, synthesizing them into something new and interesting people would actually care to read. I missed that gene, or that training, or whatever it is that gives you that ability.

I know writing is pretty much always a painful process, so I suppose my point in this little public blood-letting is tell those of you who DO have ideas to go with it, despite the pain. Let the ideas fill you and inspire you and drive you. Run with those little plots and themes as far and fast as you can. Writing really is a gift, and it deserves free reign. So go, write your little hearts out, and I’ll just wait here with my red pen for when you’re done.

Weariness seems to be common among the Bitter Quill contributors. Perhaps it’s related to the desire for winter hibernation. Perhaps it’s the demands of our day jobs. Or perhaps it’s Bitter Quill’s demanding editor—although I hear he’s pretty tired too.

Whatever it is, the result is a feeling of exhaustion that has managed to put me behind on several deadlines. Fortunately, I have kind editors (who also happen to live too far to easily do me physical harm). Knowing that my editors are willing to allow me some leeway, I have decided to take as much of a vacation as I can.

Like Star, I’ve decided to make some time for reading. I’ve even managed to finish one of those books I was stuck in: James Herriot’s Every Living Thing. Of course, I still have to chip away at my projects, but perhaps I’ll be able to do so with a renewed sense of energy.

Today I’m the world’s grumpiest ingrate. I say to the world, “I want to write!” And the world says, “By all means, Ms. Foster, then write.” To which I reply, “But world, I also want to have a roof over my head and a place to sleep and food to eat.” And the world says, “I see your point. However, if you seek for them, you will find people who will pay for what you have written.” And so they do. And so often I count myself fortunate that every day I am afforded the opportunity to take my dreams, my craft, and what I (perhaps overdramtically) like to think of as my vocation, and put it to practical use. Between 9-5 I write in the business world. Years ago it was technical documentation and evaluations, these days it’s more official missives and marketing materials; bland work, largely uninspiring, but it does pay the bills. Then, in my morning and evening hours I get to write on things about which I am passionate, and submit them to be read by international audiences and for the occassional bit of pocket cash. That’s no shabby deal.

But every so often, I fall prey to..what? Exhaustion? Frustration? The inevitable writer’s block? I find myself berefet of stories, without inner intrigues or outre ideas, & I become convinced that I lack the time to explore them even if I had. I am nothing…a hack, useless, another wannabe who turns to the web because she’d never find validation in more professional quarters. But, (my inner monolouge insists) this wouldn’t be the case if I weren’t so busy depleteing my energies writing in support of other people’s agendas. Clearly my authorial genius is only being hampered by my inability to pursue my own projects. If only I had all the time in the world, I’d be spending my entire day in pajamas, writing the fifth book in my best-selling series of shockingly original, alternate historical, sci-fi horror, novels; and when I needed a break, I would dust my Pulitzer Prizes with the piles of spare cash I had around after being awared the “Genius Grant.”

Thankfully - this kind of brooding doesn’t go on long. A few hours, perhaps - a few days at the most. Eventually, I remind myself that I spent a year unemployed (thanks alot, Dot Com “Boom”) and instead of dedicating myself to my writing, I squandered it fretting over how I was clearly never going to work again and slaying Kobolds and other beasites in Everquest. And just yesterday, I spent several hours watching a The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy marathon.

So, my lack of MacArthur Fellowship nominations isn’t just a question of time. It’s also about dedication. And effort. And perhaps unplugging the consumer electronics.

However, I do think I suffer from writing exhaustion from time to time, because no matter how badly I would like writing to be the way I win my bread and butter, when I am sitting here wrestling with deadlines…particular deadlines induced my an outside source…what is almost always joy can occasionally feel very much like, well, work. And when your main escape is suddenly you job, it becomes desirable to look elsewhere for creative and mental release.

I’m disgruntled because I am, for myself, between personal projects. The last was done with a partner for a contest (which just had it’s voting deadline extended…which has me all the more aggravated since it still leaves it somehow…unfinished until the contest is done) and I have no definable goal on what to work on next. It is easy to blame my creative inertia on burnout, but that’s simply not fair. If my creative juices need to break and recharge that’s fine; I don’t begrudge them that need. (After all, there are reasons for vacations.) I just need to refocus my energies so I’m recharging them by reading and observing and digesting input from the world around me and not simply by stamping my foot and pointing fingers and denying responsibilty.

“Do or do not,” Yoda said. Never once did he say “Whine.”

So I am giving myself permission to get out of my own head for a while. I am making time for reading and for going out and new experiences. And hopefully, after a week or so I will feel refreshed I recall the stories I want to tell, what it is I want to say. If I don’t know after two weeks, then too bad; I will still watch fewer marathons and start enforcing regular, dedicated writing time - and just figure out what I’m saying while I’m going along. It may not stop me from me a hack, but it will make me happy to rediscover my own stories and revisit my words - even if no one every pays me for them and no one reads them but me.

I say to the world, “I should have been more specific. I want a multi-volume book deal.” And the world says, “Sorry, honey. We love you, but you still have to pay your dues.”

I must confess, I haven’t managed to finish reading a single book since the start of the year. I did start four books, which I am reading in small pieces, but it irks me that so far I haven’t managed to finish one. Instead, I am trapped in the middle of:

• Dubliners, by James Joyce.
• Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond.
• The Science Book, edited by Peter Tallack.
• Every Living Thing, by James Herriot.

Part of the reason I haven’t finished any of these is that I need what everyone else does: more time. I especially need more time—a nearly infinite amount, it seems—to catch up on my science reading. Every day there are new research articles, news stories, and blog commentaries to read.

Although keeping up is the biggest reading challenge, achieving balance is of equal importance. That balance can be lost if one dwells to long on the list of must-reads. Reading nothing but specialized or technical writing is a subtle danger.

Don’t get me wrong, such work is certainly real writing and real reading, but technical writing is often limited in the way it manipulates words. This narrowness occurs in part because medical, technical, and science writers always (or should always) strive for simplicity. It also happens because these writers are experts in a subject area rather than experts in a content area.

When reading creative writing, one has greater opportunity to find masterful writers who use techniques and words that aren’t commonly found in medical, technical, and science writing. Reading work that is more overtly creative allows a writer to re-immerse herself in the craft. Such reading replenishes the writing toolbox. Those words and techniques that aren’t common in specialized writing may still be useful later on, but you can’t use them if you don’t have them at the ready. The best writer is one who has a full toolbox, who knows how and when to use her tools, and who also knows how and when not to use them.

As for me, maybe I’ll have finished reading something by December. I’ll let you know.

I’m telling one of my friends about the latest crisis in my love life, and he says, “Is this the kind of thing you write about?” It’s not that my social dilemmas are that dramatic, it’s just that my phrasing struck him as writerly.

I write everything that happens to me, or at least everything that hits me hard enough to leave a mark. Some things don’t make it to paper (or computer screen), but I write them in my head. When I lie in bed at night, I take the things that bother me and I find words for them. The more something bothers, the more I rewrite it, until I can capture it with words. I tell and retell things. I make them funny. I find the words for what happened and how I felt. Writing my life, I’m in control of it.

I’m not sure when I started this. In college, I started my blog one dismal summer in Buffalo. In high school, my best friend and I went out for coffee every night, and I told him the stories of everything that happened to me, and it made things okay. In junior high school, I wrote truly awful poetry. Maybe I’ve always written and re-written my life, just like I’ve always wanted to be a writer.

This is what makes me think that I’ll always be somewhat of a writer, no matter how much my “career” goals change. I have to write. It’s something I just do, it’s the way I live. If I get stranded on a desert island with nothing to write with and no one to talk to, I’ll be making up stories about how much it sucks to live on coconuts and seaweed. It’s just who I am.

Spring may be the time when a young man’s fancy turns to love…but marketing men and women the world over have bottom lines to look out for, and Big Business can’t be troubled to wait on a young man’s folly. This is why all around us shop windows look like Cupid stumbled into them to vomit paper heart and lace doilies after a long night drinking ouzo with his Roman twin, Eros, card box boxes filled with flavors chocolatiers can’t sell the rest of the year are dusted off and slapped onto drugstore shelves, and diamond companies are working overtime to make sure you know that affection should be purchased with compressed carbon and the sweat of exploited workers; sure signs that the commercially mandated celebration of romantic love, St. Valentine’s Day, is growing ever near.

Don’t get me wrong, as cynical as I am (and boy, am I): I enjoy the hype and hoopla around this sugary-sweet day of days. Why? Simply put, I’m a fan of love. I think it should be lauded and celebrated and, when applicable, wrapped in a shell of dark, luscious chocolate. Love, in its many forms, is what drives us. It has been credited with starting wars, performing medical miracles, inspiring great works of art and causing the human body to perform outstanding feats of strength. And, more importantly to those of you reading here, love sells. From Paris and Helen to Bridget Jones and her infamous diaries, the word has loved love stories and, Aphrodite bless ‘em; they’re willing to pay to read them (and possibly shell out even more moolah to secure the movie rights).

The trouble is - how does one write an effective love story? I’ve heard it said that you shouldn’t write about being in love when you’re in love - because frankly, it’s hard enough for people who care about you and who are personally invested in your happiness to have to hear you wax lyrically rhapsodic about the electric thrill when your fingertips brush, or how you spend nights awake trying to determine the specific shades of gold that fleck the depths of your lover’s eyes; so you better believe that your readers aren’t going to have the patience for characters who do the same. Love, although many-splendored and all we need, is possibly the most difficult emotion to demonstrate in a way that is convincing, memorable and doesn’t read like the inside of a Hallmark card.

I think part of the challenge comes from the fact that although love can feel larger-than-life and all-encompassing, what it really comes down to is a series of individual moments in time - where a single act or decision has made all the difference. Right now, I am sitting at my desk, listening to a random selection of songs with the word “love” in the title, while I try to recall the literary moments where love was demonstrated in a single act or moment that have really stuck with me:

• The recognition of Odysseus by Argos (for me, infinitely more touching that the subsequent reunion between he and Penelope).
• Both Camille’s casting off of Armand and his impassioned public payment for her services
• Ever tender recrimination Heloise penned to Abelard
• The discovery of some cowboy couture (I admit, I’m cheating. I’m only familiar with the movie version, so I don’t know if this moment appears in Annie Proulx’s short story. All I know is that it darn near broke me).

Let us, for the moment, ignore the fact that the demonstrations of literary love that have stuck with me most strongly are those that focus on loss and sacrifice rather than flowers and sunshine (I can only assume its my psyche’s way of balancing out the fact I have a disturbing amount of Burt Bacharach in my music collection) and see what clues these vignettes might offer us about the powerful portrayal of love. One thing that strikes me particularly about this group is that - with the exception of Armand’s impassioned outburst - these are solitary moments; times when the lovers’ interaction, if it happens at all, happens indirectly. Does this mean love between two characters is better demonstrated through what they do when they are separated than by paragraphs describing the longing looks, sweet words and familiar caresses that pass between them when they are together? Or is it just a sign that I’m a bitter old maid who should stick to eating her dusty, after-season chocolates while the lucky-in-love write the great love stories? How do you get your characters to talk about the tender trap; and what love stories have had the greatest effect on you? (And please, nobody say Romeo and Juliet, or I may have to beat you with a copy of the Riverside Shakespeare. Tragic tale of the young, misguided, and foolish? Sure. Greatest love story of all time? No way.) I look forward to learning from your answers. Till then, I’ll be doing some in-home karaoke to Love Will Keep Us Together by Captain and Tennille.

What the hell are we doing here?

Presumably, if you’re reading this blog, you love to write, or at very least you have a passing infatuation with the written word. Great. So write! But why try to publish? Why not just write for fun, make photocopies of your stories and hand them around to your friends and family?

The writing industry — especially the world of fiction — is like a giant tank of flaming acid filled with editors and agents and your competition, and also chainsaw-wielding mutant barracudas. Sure, there may be treasure on the bottom of the tank, but is getting there really worth it? Why are we struggling against the stream (of flaming acid!) to (if we’re lucky!) get paid not very much for a lot of really painful, difficult work? It’s like trying to make it in Hollywood as an actor or actress, except the parties aren’t as much fun and it’s harder to sleep your way to the top.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not quitting. I’ve committed myself to this insane course of action with a vitriolic fervor. But then, I’m notorious for launching myself at ridiculously impractical projects with a mad gleam in my eye and froth on my lips. The mere specter of a chance of hope of success is enough to drive me, foaming and gibbering, at my target. But I know that the chances of victory are small, and the odds of being disappointed, again and again and again, are great.

OK, I’m crazy. So what’s your excuse?