Keeping the Well Full

This dashing young man is Ernest Hemingway as he looked during the 1920s when he was living in Paris, hopping from cafe to cafe to work on his writing. He's a man we would do well to emulate in many ways (well, aside from the whole multiple failed marriages, excessive alcohol consumption, and suicide thing). I read his memoir A Moveable Feast for book club last month and was surprised when I found little glints of wisdom that connected to my capstone projects. In this brief excerpt of his life, Hemingway recounts time he spent in Paris with his first wife Hadley, their son Bumby, and a host of other writers including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound. It's a very insightful book on the lives of many famous authors and their writing processes.

Aside from many entertaining side stories, Hemingway does delve into his writing process here and there. One point that struck me most was when he spoke of "never emptying the well" of your writing. He says, "I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day." I was dismayed upon reading this to discover that I often let my well run dry and then wondered why I had such a difficult time the next day.

You see, Hemingway is one of those authors who tried his best to write every day. I usually roll my eyes at that bit of advice. "Of course," I'd think, "It's easy for him to write every day when he's lounging around Paris with a bunch of other talented writers and nothing else to do with his time than sit in a cafe and work." But then again, here we are, in a department full of other talented writers, with specific instructions to write as best we can for one whole semester, and two incredible professors dedicated to reading what we write and helping us improve upon it.

Our atmosphere couldn't be any better suited to write every day. And with that in mind, Hemingway's advice seems particularly wise. Whenever I sit down to write and find myself on a roll, I stay writing for as long as I possibly can, because who knows when it will come this easy again? But whenever I do that, inevitably, the next few times I try to write, there's nothing left. I've exhausted my creative supply. I think there's something to be said for writing small chunks every day, so long as we leave ourselves something to go on tomorrow.

Hemingway had one last piece of extraordinary advice: he said that when he wasn't writing, he would read and read and read so that he wasn't constantly thinking of his own writing and letting the well run dry. If we truly want to keep our writing fresh, we need to be continually reading new authors (or old favorites) to replenish the well. Sometimes that's the extra creative boost we need to keep going.

Do you find that capstone is leaving your well dry? Do you agree with Hemingway that it's better to stop when you know where you're going to go next? How does the quantity and quality of what you read affect what kind of writing you produce?

Completeness in Poetry

Lately I’ve been thinking about the completeness of poems. This is largely because I have trouble knowing at what point the poem ends and the repetitive poetic rambling begins. I was reading some Czeslaw Milosz lately and came across this poem:

When The Moon

When the moon rises and women in flowery dresses are strolling,

I am struck by their eyes, eyelashes, and the whole arrangement of the world.

It seems to me that from such a strong mutual attraction

The ultimate truth should issue at last.

Very short, but also complete. I’m afraid that if I were the one writing it I would want to keep going just because it was so short, or build it up to the point where I would be saying the same thing four or five different times, but when I read it through, I can see that nothing needs to be added to it. It is thorough, deep, and complete. It works. But how do I know that?

I have observed that most, if not all, literary poems seem to have two layers going on. There’s the thought, and then there’s the illustration for that thought. I’ve seen it over and over again in my poems and in the poems I’m reading. Is that all that constitutes a complete poem, or is there something more?

As I revise my poems more while the semester winds down, the completeness of those poems is one of the things that I watch for the most, but defining “completeness” has been my hardest challenge. Over and over again I think one of my poems has reached a point of satisfactory completion, but then when I look at it a week later I’m frustrated to find that it isn’t quite enough, that I need to finish it somehow or add another layer, but I’m not sure what it is. Such is the fickle nature of my poetry. Am I the only one having this problem, or does anyone have any tips on how I can get it all together without going overboard?

Memories and Memoirs

I threw my previous ideas for this post out the window. I have to tell you what this memoir is doing to me.

Haphazardly I have been writing about a lot of characters around me without writing about myself. Why? I have a hard time with thinking that my story can be written by my hand. I have this fear that my recall will completely break a true moment.

I want to write about my parent's divorce two years ago. I want to do it justice, but the experience is so laced in shadows that I know it's going to be walking through the fire to get there. It has been enough time and I am through with the sympathy and apologies and identity of it. I'm just Monica. And Monica wants to do this thing justice.

Memories and memoirs. They have a mind of their own. I am in the middle of writing a story about my three favorite children in the entire world, and yet in cohort we found the first draft to be strangely sad. The would - be happy details are laced with the same shadows that I recognize well. Turns out, I was with these children the summer of the thickening of the battle at home. The children are light and full of hope and love, and they were healing to me. The deep, intense love that I have for them is intensified by my circumstances away from them. It was subtle yet not clear. I didn't even know I was doing that. In critiquing my first draft, I found my divorce story. All I have to do is include what was actually happening in my life, include the incredible summer with the children, and the story has meaning.

If you are writing memoir and are extremely uncomfortable with it, you probably aren't writing from your heart. Because your heart knows you, and you are the main character. So look between the lines of your drafts and find what you are missing by putting yourself in it. The story may be writing itself and you're just missing it. Dare to commit to your story. It is just plain tough to revisit something that shaped you and then turn around and portray it in a satisfying way. But it's YOUR memory, and it's YOUR memoir.

Hougen says that if you haven't been moved to tears at least once while delving into your memoir, you probably did not dig deep enough. Hougen says that this process of writing is framing a memory and making it into a piece of art. It may be very painful but I am so ready to "frame" this part of my life. God is springing hope in me that this is a way of finding rest for my soul.

What has been happening in your memoirs?

The Cheese

Sorry this is so late - intense week.

Never before have I read a poem that rhymed that I truly liked.

This bothers me, in a way, because I know pieces of the past are important.

Maybe I'm all caught up in modern writing, but I think it's a shame if I get to the point where I can't appreciate the word pictures that authors of other times have painted. What would words be now without their history? A couple of weeks ago, however, I came across T.S. Eliot and fell in love with his lovely poems (and they even rhymed). Without further ado, this is the beginning portion of Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." You should Google it and read the entire thing, though.

"Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question...

Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that fall from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep."

Curious snapshots of things, huh? I've been thinking a lot lately about what makes writing cheesy or not. Why would I not be drawn to rhymes? We covered this in Aesthetics, a class on the philosophy of beauty and art that I took last year, and questioned whether culture or an individual's personal preferences place stamps of tacky on prose and poetry. I ended up coming to the conclusion that it was a little of both. But isn't this how everything is in life? Style, media, slang. A reflection of the modern time that is ever changing. If you Google any word and click "Images," you will immediately get a thousand pictures of what modern society thinks of any one thing. For instance, if you Google "clowns," you'll get all sorts of horrifying images. But clowns weren't always viewed as terrifying. Horror movies made it that way.

Think about a painting of the sea. A cliff with soft, green grass looms strikingly over calm water and under a windless sky. A lighthouse, white and red, sits quaintly on a rock in the grey waves. Charming, right? But what makes this scene so lovely and old fashioned? Is it because you truly think it is? Or because culture has told you that vintage is "in" and old-fashioned things are to be treasured? I have a feeling that those who lived in the time period before lighthouses would look at that painting and think Yuck, you ruined it. It would be like someone painting a picture of a beautiful field and then sticking a 3M building in the middle of it or a dumpster or something. But, then again, maybe you would find that beautiful. 

My question is, what do you think makes certain pieces of writing "good" and "literary"? Is this different from what you find attractive and appealing? Or do the two coincide? How have we come to the conclusion that certain types of writing are cheap and second-rate? 

Listen to Your Broccoli

Over break, I read Anne Lamott's Bird by Birds. I felt like I was coming late to a book that so many of my peers read as freshman in Writer's Style, but at least I was coming late to something good. Anne Lamott gave me permission to be myself, to write badly, and most of all, try to find my broccoli.

"You need your broccoli in order to write well," I read aloud to my sister, pretending to be disappointed (these "trees" aren't exactly my favorite vegetable). If I could become a better writer by acquiring a taste for food I can usually only eat raw, drenched in no less than half its weight in ranch dressing, I would do it in a second. But that isn't the broccoli Lamott is referring to.

Borrowing the word broccoli from an old joke she likes to tell her students, broccoli instead refers to intuition. But we have intuition trained out of us, she says, when we are still young. When children report the truth they see in the world, adults mock them, try to change their views, or lie to them. Is it any wonder that the little voice inside our head is ignored before we get terribly old?

Anne Lamott says we need to get that intuition--our broccoli--back. To turn off that rational voice that quenches our creativity and rejects what deep down, we believe is true. Save your inner editor for later, after you have a draft--it's better to write what comes to you, and worry about fixing it later.

I promptly tried to listen to my broccoli with my next two attempts at tackling projects, but my results were mixed. The first time I let come what came, I wound up with a rewrite of a story that was accompanied by enough practical back story to give me a good base as I continue to dive deeper into who my characters are and where they come from. The second time, I saw some painfully bad stuff coming, but let it come anyway to see where it would go. Maybe it was my time rush, but that draft--a brand new draft of a different story--went down a path I absolutely hated. There is almost nothing in it that I want to keep, so it feels rather wasted.

What happened? What was the difference? Do we as writers just need to give ourselves permission to do terrible work and then go for the risk? Is sifting through the good and bad that comes out of us a natural part of writing more relaxed?

I'm curious to see how much you let intuition and/or simple permission to write whatever comes affect your work. Do you listen to YOUR broccoli?

Less than Perfect

Sorry this post is late; my computer has been out sick, but I got it back today. Yay!

So lately, Capstone has really been dragging for me. Finding the drive to write--and write something engaging and fresh--feels like trying to walk when still coming out of anesthesia. If you've never felt that, basically, you don't walk at all. You can't really feel what's beneath you, and you have to watch your legs to make sure you're actually standing. There seems to be an air bubble in your skull instead of your brain, and all sounds seem to echo hollowly.

I think I need to get my hands on some decent fiction. But in the mean time, I took a cursory glance over Anne Lamott's book Bird by Bird and came across a chapter entitled "Perfectionism." I know that this is a problem of mine, especially after reading the first couple sentences (please excuse the possibly offensive word, though by now maybe we're all used to them).

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft.... Besides, perfectionism will ruin your writing, blocking inventiveness and playfulness and life force.... Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.

I had never thought before that I could be the cause of my own writer's block. I do like my first drafts to be as neat as possible, the stiff, polished child who sits in her chair with her little white dress, each lock of hair a perfect ringlet, to be presented to my editing side. Sure, she might whine a little, but if she doesn't behave well enough, she won't even be written. I think I need to learn to be okay with writing drafts that run rampant through the house (or the world) with torn jeans, or no pants at all, screaming and rubbing muddy fingers all over their faces. Then, if I can't catch them, at least I'd know that I tried, but that I don't have to regret their existence. Besides, according to Lamott, mess is a sign of life being lived.

Am I the only one who has problems with this? Does anyone else have problems accepting messy drafts? What about just plain messy ideas, ones that might like, but don't want to massage enough to turn into a draft? Do you think of free writing like this: just a chance to let out something messy, somewhat-good or terribly-mangled?

Planning and Timelines

The order of a story can make or break the entire tale. Think about how different The Lord of the Rings would have been if we started at Mordor, Frodo holding the ring over the lava, instead of in the Shire with happy hobbits and bright green grass. The timeline of a short story is obviously much more compressed than that of such an epic saga, but the principle still applies. Where do you start? Where do you end? And what do you let the reader see in between?

I read “The Zealous Mourner” by Marly Swick about a week ago. I read very consciously, trying to figure out exactly what he was doing that intrigued me so much, that kept me reading. Finally, I came down to timing. The story is about a woman who has survived breast cancer but had to undergo a double mastectomy. The story begins after the surgery, after her previous marriage failed, and in the middle of a struggling marriage. I love that the story was so involved even before it began!

I think I struggle with starting a story with complicated events and characters already in play. I think part of this is simply that I need to really take the time to spend concentrated effort learning the large complexities and minor details of my character’s lives. I’m not talking about that their favorite food is macaroni and cheese with ketchup, I’m talking about the big stuff, the stuff that has shaped them years and years ago.

            The order of the story allowed for current, major events but also reflection and effect from previous ones. Even though the cause was in the past, before the first words of the story, it was captivating to see the effects play out right now. So, to write a well-ordered story, I must first learn everything that has happened—past, present and future.

            But of course, there’s always the argument about writing without a plan and letting whatever happens happen, letting the characters tell their own story rather than you planning it out. I can see the benefits of both, as well as the draw backs. How do you decide how to order a story? Do you know everything before you begin or do you just “let it happen”? What works for you?

Belz & Stein & abstractions.

I've been reading poetry by Aaron Belz of late. I'll be honest and say that most of it makes very little sense to me. I feel that either I am too concrete, too uneducated, or too impatient to understand it. I wish that someone would explain him to me the way someone once explained Gertrude Stein to me, and modern art to me, if those things can really be explained at all.

Take Gertrude Stein. Her famous collection of bits of poems, "Tender Buttons," is nothing if not disorienting. An example:

A BOX. 

A picture of an actual box seemed
far too literal.

Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle. So then the order is that a white way of being round is something suggesting a pin and is it disappointing, it is not, it is so rudimentary to be analysed and see a fine substance strangely, it is so earnest to have a green point not to red but to point again. 

(This and more like it can be found here. I really like the one called "A Shawl.")

Read it aloud to yourself if you like. The rhythm and even the grammar feels right. Yet somehow I feel like I'm dreaming in a place where sentences don't have proper subjects and nobody teaches Comp II... This poem is satisfying, but I'm more inclined to want to "tie the poem to a chair with a rope / and torture a confession out of it" (Billy Collins--I think of this all the time.--Rest of poem here.)

What helped me not to go crazy with the "Tender Buttons" was someone pointing out that I needed to relax and let it speak on its own terms. Which, let's be honest, are a completely different race than the Comp II marathon. These poems mean something, but it's a feeling, a sort of making-the-camera-unfocused-on-purpose. Once I was able to stop wringing meaning out of them, they were more enjoyable.

Then we come to Aaron Belz. His poems, when I feel like I am following them, are entertaining. Otherwise, the ideas are so disparate that I literally start to fall asleep. (I hope you don't ever find and read this, Aaron Belz. I'm sure it's not a reflection on you.) I just wish I would be told how to approach them, because I don't think my method is working. I think it speaks to the importance of knowing audience, context, genre, author. We can't separate writing from its context in any significant way. Even Gertrude Stein's poems use words in unexpected ways because we already have expectations. The words she's trying to break down can only be used because they already exist. But it helps to know both the words, and her goal, ahead of time.

I'm not sure what my conclusion is in all this. I know I'm moving on to poets that I understand better. I think we need deep meaning in our lives, communication that actually comes across. I think the postmodern art movement (loosely speaking) comes out of a fear of speaking big truths and possibly saying them wrongly or insincerely. In our effort not to make trivialities out of large truths, we focus in tightly on small things, on disillusionment, and not the bigger truth that's big enough to contain us all. 

But I also think there's a place for having fun and enjoying the ride, because all entertainment has some kind of meaning. Here's one of my favorite, most lucid poems by Mr. Belz:

The Love-Hat Relationship 

I have been thinking about the love-hat relationship.

It is the relationship based on love of one another's hats.

The problem with the love-hat relationship is that it is superficial.

You don't necessarily even know the other person.

Also it is too dependent on whether the other person

is even wearing the favored hat. We all enjoy hats,

but they're not something to build an entire relationship on.

My advice to young people is to like hats but not love them.

Try having like-hat relationships with one another.

See if you can find something interesting about

the personality of the person whose hat you like.

For more, and other fun stuff, visit his website here: belz.net/ 

Midrash and Pesher

My first two pieces for capstone were straight up memoir. I had thought about writing a third memoir piece, just to stay with the flow of things. I've had some crazy dreams at night throughout my life, so I thought this might make for a good topic. I was told by a psychology professor and by professor Hougen that dreams might be a tricky undertaking, so I put it on the shelf for a while. This left me feeling bankrupt of an inspired idea. I'm sure you can relate, especially at this point of capstone, that it is really difficult to write without inspiration.

I was listening to a John Piper sermon during break. He said some comment about Thomas that I barely remember, but it caught me off guard. I started thinking about how Thomas is always referred to as the "doubting" apostle, but I think his doubt has so much more meat to it than we give him credit. Yeah, Jesus said it's better believe without seeing, but think about it for a minute. Thomas put his whole life in Jesus' hands and loved him deeply. Then he watched all of his hope be crucified. This is depressing. Why would he risk hoping again? So that's what I wrote about.

For a model, I started reading Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy & Fairy Tale, by Frederick Buechner, and it is so great! When I originally wrote the piece, it was for my blog and very straight forward, but I thought maybe I should dabble with pesher and midrash and see if that fit. Here are some great words from Beuchner about Pilate and his question "What is truth?":

"He is Pontius Pilate, of course. He is the procurator of Judea. On the day that he asks his famous question, there are other things too that he has seen and done. He makes his first major decision before he has even has his breakfast. While still in his pajamas, he walks downstairs to the bar closet where he keeps extra cigarettes, takes the two and a half cartons that he finds there and puts them out with the trash. There is the remains of a pack in the pocket of his dinner jacket and some loose ones lying around the house in various cigarette boxes. All of these he carefully destroys, slitting them open with his thumbnail and flushing the tobacco down the toilet. After dinner the evening before, the talk turned to politics, and he was up for hours, talking and smoking, so that when he awoke, his tongue felt hot and dry, his whole chest raw inside like a wound. He knows about the surgeon general's warning. He has seen the usual photographs of a smoker's lungs. He has been a three-pack-a-day man for better or worse than thirty years so his prebreakfast decision is a decision for life against death, and he sees it as his death that he slits open with his thumbnail and flushes away."

Beuchner gives me a lot to live up to. I hate most of my first draft and want to cut out huge chunks. When writing, it's like there is so much that we throw up out there on the surface and then we have to cut away over and over to get to the nitty gritty to offer the audience a microscopic pearl. It's going to take me some serious time. It doesn't matter if my hours are complete for capstone. What matters is whether or not I actually cultivate something of quality. And truth be told, that's probably going to take longer than any of us have got this quad. But it's all about the journey, right?

Wells vs. Puddles

Over break, I delved for the first time into my memoir piece. It was heavy, like lifting a sack of potatoes at mid-arm level up several flights of stairs. I found content in that creative cave of my mind...although, it was not what I was expecting. Professor McCann told me once that you’ve found something golden in material when two things happen: you are substantially surprised at what came out, or you literally have tears because of it. They could be of joy, of being moved, of the memories that you’re reliving being closer than your hands, right in front of your eyes.

So, the major challenge that I’ve had with my piece so far is avoiding sentiment, yet expressing deep emotion. I have to think twice as hard. The deep pool of stuff to draw from seems to translate as a little puddle on paper, in print. How do I draw from it and convey its depth when someone picks up the narrative and reads it? How do I find that point where the words become a powerful, yet quiet train that goes straight through the noise of the surrounding circumstances and places and right to the sound proof cavern that houses deep thought?

One thing that I have discovered that I rely on is very loud, screaming diction. Sometimes it’s needed. Most of the time, however, it is the gentle, quiet imagery that is the most powerful. Annie Dillard, Rachel Richardson (a southern poet I discovered), and Michael McGriff all have a way with word choice that I marvel at. A gimmick that I have relied upon in the past with my writing is the images tend to be a smoke and mirrors trick; sometimes I don’t even know what I’m saying.

Hello, I’m Celinda, and I’m a screaming diction junkie. (Hiiiii, Celinda).

Don’t get me wrong; I’m drawn to stark, somewhat gritty imagery. But the trick is to use it in a way that is calm, quiet, and tailored to the moment and line of the piece. I hope to work on this for the unraveling of my longer prose piece, as well as my poetry.