Thomas Wharton's Blog, page 6

The stories that tell us

Why do I think it’s important that we pay attention to the stories that tell us who we are, or the stories we tell ourselves? Because if we don’t notice the stories we’re in and begin to take charge of them ourselves, or find new ones that suit us better, then we remain controlled by other stories. We’re characters in them, but we’re not the authors. Someone or something else is narrating. Someone else is running the show, and we’re only playing a part.
I believe a lot of people, especially young people, are unhappy because they’re living inside a story that doesn’t suit them, and often they don’t even realize it. I grew up in a place and time in which one of the dominant stories was that boys should be tough and good at sports. I wasn’t. I didn’t enjoy competition and physical roughness. But the story said that’s how a boy should be, so I tried to be like that. It didn’t go well. Eventually I realized my interests and talents lay elsewhere. I found a new story. The story of the artist. The creative person. Like a lot of people who never felt that they fit in, that story suited me better. I don't know the ending of this story, and that's fine, too. It's an open-ended story that takes me to places I never imagined I might go.
More on this topic to come...

Image by T Wharton

Story Wars

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Battles. Wars. Causes. Crusades. Protests. Struggles over faith, politics, money, ideas. We're either in the middle of these battles or we hear about them on the news. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%;">There's another struggle that takes place all over our world on a daily basis, a struggle that might just be at the root of all of the others. But it’s a struggle that’s invisible to most of us most of the time. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%;">It’s the war between stories. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%;">Let’s say I’ve grown up with a story about how <i>your </i>people are my people’s enemies. If I’ve heard this story all my life I’m likely to believe in it without question. To believe that it is the way things really are. I’m not likely to even be aware that it’s a story. That is, a constructed narrative that selects certain details and omits others. A tale. A fiction. And you may live by a similar story, only in yours, my people are the bad guys. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%;">Some of these stories have been told to us since we were infants. About who we are and how the world is, and what's important. Or they’re stories we’ve told ourselves about the way things are. The way we are. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%;">We think and act by way of these stories. Every faith, creed, and political system, whatever else it is, is also a collection of well-polished stories. My own life history, my identity, is a collection of stories I call memories. We cling to our stories because they give the chaos of the world shape. They provide the security of meaning. They have the comfort of a beginning, a middle, and very often an end. Or the stories cling to us because we’ve told them to ourselves so many times they become our default script (I’m too fat. Life's not fair. I don't deserve to be happy.) </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%;">Inevitably, however, we’re bound to run up against other stories that tell the world differently from ours. The sharp edges of someone else’s story poke through the well-constructed walls of ours, threatening its integrity. And the conflict begins. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%;">We really need new stories on this planet. Including a story about how we live by stories, and how we might step outside them and see the world differently.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;">Illustration by T Wharton<br /><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img alt="StumbleUpon" src="http://www.stumbleupon.com/images/stu..." border="0" /><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com...' alt='' /></div>

Dreaming up a novel

When I started working on my second novel, Salamander, I didn’t have any idea of where the story was going to go, or what the story was in the first place. All I knew was that it was set in the 18thcentury, and the main character was a printer who was trying to print an infinite book.
I had to find my way slowly into the story, which involved many false trails and blind alleys. But I wanted it that way. I wanted to create a strange, dreamlike world, to suit the fantastical nature of the printer’s quest. So I didn’t want to know much about what was going to happen ahead of the actual writing. In effect, I wanted to be the story’s first reader. I wanted to be surprised as the book came to be.
But with a working method like this, I often got stuck. Sometimes for long periods of time. I’d get my characters to a certain point and then I wouldn’t know what to do with them next. At times like that, I turned to my collage book. This was a hardcover artist’s sketch book, full of blank pages. Whenever the novel ground to a halt, I would take images from the Internet, or cut them from an old, worn-out book about the 18th century, and move them around on one of the blank pages. My goal was to think about the scene I was working toward, but from a different perspective. A visual, fragmentary perspective, like a dream. 



Eventually, after moving the images around for a while, something would click. There’d be an “aha!” moment and I’d have the idea I was looking for. Then I would take glue and fix the collage in place. So the collage book became a record of these moments of inspiration. This book of collages, in a sense, is the novel, reflected through this dreamlike, associative logic of images.
My wife eventually discovered me making these collages and she wondered why I was wasting my time with scissors and glue when I was supposed to be working on the book. I told her that I was working on the book.

The trouble with editors 2

The trouble with editors, part 2:
Not every experience I’ve had with editors has been uniformly wonderful. Even when the editor is good at what she does, there are going to be tensions. The editor may ask for a change that you don’t agree with. Sometimes this can be a radical change. The process can quickly become a tug of war, or a butting of heads. I've gone through an editing that felt more like a mauling. Or a muzzling.
I’ve also worked with editors who clearly weren’t sympathetic to what I was doing, or even interested. Then there are the editors who may be very good at their job but who have no tact, or who are convinced their role is really more important than yours. They may have had valuable insights but they tell you what to do instead of making suggestions.
(I once asked an editor to tone down the peremptory tone of her comments. E.g., not “DO THIS,” but “try this.” She responded with an imperious letter in which she accused me of not approaching the work in a spirit of cooperation. We were going to be working together for the long haul, she said, and that’s why a spirit of mutual respect was so important, I had to let her do her job, etc. Some time later she abandoned the project without a word of explanation or apology. So much for mutual respect.)
When you’re new to writing and you work with an editor, it can be difficult to stand your ground when a change is requested that you don’t agree with. You may feel that if the editor has more experience than you, his opinion should carry the day. Ultimately I think it’s good to be in this situation because it forces you to think deeply about why you wrote what you did, and what it means, and what’s most important to you in a piece of writing. 
My favourite editors haven’t always been the easiest ones to work with, but they were always great readers. With a few words they could illuminate the way forward, or get to the heart of a scene you’d worked over so many times you’d lost sight of what it was really about.
I’ve worked as an editor myself. It’s been a valuable experience, negotiating this delicate partnership from the other side. Sometimes you can feel so strongly about someone else’s book, and get so deeply invested in it, that you start to think of it as a writer rather than as an editor. You attach to it as if it's your work. Then it can be difficult to maintain your distance when you see a major flaw, or a wonderful untapped potential in the story, and the author doesn’t see what you see.
Once I was on a panel about writing with Alberto Manguel, who offered the opinion that there is too much editing in the literary/publishing world. When editors (especially for big publishing houses) get at a manuscript, he suggested, they tend to shape it to suit trends and tastes and marketing strategies, and the result is that often what’s truly original and powerful in a writer’s voice can get smoothed over. Maybe those rough edges should be left alone. Another writer on the panel said to me later, “I agree in principle, but by the time I’ve got an entire novel drafted I’m so worn out and tired of it that I want someone to help me polish it.”

The trouble with editors

The Trouble with Editors
If you're a young writer working on a manuscript, you may think that once you've finished the writing, the next step is finding a publisher and then seeing your words in print. Let's say your book does get accepted by a publisher. Even then, your work is far from over. 
There's still the editor to please.
The trouble with editors is that they’re so often right. You thought your job was done, but the editor has found a problem, a flaw, a weakness. At first you’ll probably resent this. You may deny there’s a problem at all. But if the editor is good at what she does, you’ve learned to trust her judgement, and you’ll eventually come around to accepting that you still have some work to do. Maybe even a lot of work. You’ll probably even admit that deep down you knew there was a problem in the story or with the writing all along but you didn’t want to face it, and so you rationalized it away or pretended it wasn’t there.
That’s the trouble with editors. A good editor is first and foremost a good reader, and the best editors are careful, passionate, thoughtful readers who notice everything. They won’t let you get away with anything less than your best.
There are certainly times when I resist an editor’s suggestion or I try to find a compromise, and the usual result is that by going back to the manuscript and working it over, I discover something else entirely -- a new and better direction for the story that isn’t what either I or the editor had in mind.
As a writer I’ve worked with many different editors. Most have been superb readers and consummate professionals. I’ve had editors who were honest and meticulous about every last little detail, and some who were almost completely hands-off. Both experiences were valuable in their own way.
Next: more trouble with editors ...
 

30 Novels, day 30: 21 more for the road

30 Novels, day 30: 21 more for the road

The image above is of a book called 21 Epic Novels, by Jessica Salmonson. In the mid-90's I was in Seattle promoting the American edition of my first novel. In a tiny shop in a mall I met a man named John Lathourakis, who ran a small printing and publishing business called Tabula Rasa Press. Jessica Salmonson's miniature collection of brief epics was one of his lovely creations. 
Mr. Lathourakis was a crafter of books as art objects, much like our own Gaspereau Press here in Canada. As soon as I saw this little book I had to have it, and I've had it displayed on my shelf ever since. Its grandiose title and Lilliputian dimensions remind me not to take myself too seriously. To remember that whatever else writing is, it's play. It's a game.
Here's one of Jessica Salmonson's novels in its entirety:
Epic Novel XThe Book That Devoured All the Objects in the House:
It flapped around in the most amazing fashion.

 



 

30 Novels, day 29: The reason a book stays with you

30 novels, day 29: The reason a book stays with you
The 30 days are almost over, and there are so many books I haven’t talked about yet that have mattered to me and stuck with me over the years. The Hardy Boys adventures. The Tarzan books. The stories of King Arthur, and Sherlock Holmes. The Odyssey. Lost in the Barrens. The Time Machine. Tay John. Merlin’s Ring. Phantastes. The Lord of the Rings. Dune. War and Peace. The Brothers Karamazov. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The Unlimited Dream Company. To the Lighthouse. Life: A User’s Manual. Little, Big. In the Skin of a Lion. The Writer’s Tale. The Prowler. Green Grass Running Water. No Fixed Address. 2666.
The list goes on.
Looking over these titles I see my own journey as a reader, from wide-eyed childhood to restless youth to ... whatever I am now. From a reader to a writer. From a smaller to a wider world. I see that there isn’t any common theme or subject matter. With every book I was looking for a story to draw me in and hold me, to entertain me, maybe comfort me, too. But I also wanted the book to mystify me, bother me, shake me up a little. Some books compelled me to read them, even if I didn't think I wanted to know what they had to tell me.
The great Robert Kroetsch once said that a writer isn’t someone with answers, a writer is someone who asks good questions. A particular book stays with me for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that I’m probably still asking myself the question that it first raised for me, and still searching for an answer.

30 novels, day 28: Just write one perfect sentence...

30 Novels, day 28:  Just write one perfect sentence...

No Great Mischief, by Alastair Macleod
(Warning: I will be revealing a key detail of the plot in what follows. If you haven’t read this novel, go read it, then come back.)
I’ve had the chance to see Alastair Macleod read from No Great Mischief several times. Each time he chose to read the same passage, but I didn’t mind hearing it again. As well as being one of Canada’s finest writers, Macleod is a wonderful reader of his own fiction. He doesn’t have a booming, commanding voice. He’d probably never be asked to do a TED talk. But when he reads you listen. His voice flows out, sentence after sentence, in mesmerizing cadences, as if he is half-crooning or chanting the words.
The scene Macleod read each time I was in the audience involves the parents and older brother of the narrator crossing the ice from the mainland to the small island where the father works as the lighthouse keeper. They don’t make it across. It’s a powerfully moving scene, but what brought the audience to tears every time was the following scene of the family’s dog, still guarding the island when the new lighthouse keeper arrives:
She was still there, waiting for her vanished people to rise out of the sea, when the new lightkeeper, “a man from the way of Pictou,” nudged the prow of his boat against the wharf on the island’s rocky shore. She came scrambling down the rocks to meet him, with her hackles raised and her teeth bared, protecting what she thought was hers and snarling in her certainty. And he reached into the prow of his boat for his twenty-two rifle and pumped four bullets into her loyal waiting heart. And later he caught her by the hind legs and threw her body into the sea.
I suppose that’s what happens when the sentences you’re reading are small  masterpieces in themselves. At a writing festival on the east coast some years ago I had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Alastair Macleod. I told him that I’d been teaching several of his stories in my writing classes, and that my students were very curious about his creative process. How did he put together these great stories? 
His answer stunned me. He said that he writes one sentence, and when he’s worked it over and polished it until it’s as perfect as he can make it, he goes on to the next sentence. And the next. Until he’s done.
I’d never heard of a working method like this. Sounds simple and yet impossible. How do you write a short story, or a novel? Just write one perfect sentence after another until you’re finished. It’s no wonder why decades have gone by between each of Macleod’s books. Whenever I re-read No Great Mischief I’m reminded to pay careful attention to my own sentences as I write, to read them aloud and listen to them. Is there any music in them?

30 Novels, day 27: Pride, Prejudice, and Gastrointestinal Distress

30 Novels, day 27: Pride, Prejudice, and Gastrointestinal Distress

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

“I should infinitely prefer a book.” -- Mary Bennet.

In crowds and public places I often find myself agreeing with Mary. And one of the books I infinitely prefer is this one. The fact remains, though, that there are certain aspects of life as a physical being which Austen, because of the time she lived in, never touches on. Her characters have to be brilliant from the neck up because she can’t say much about the rest of them from the neck on down.

I was reminded very keenly of this on a trip I took to England some years ago to promote my second novel, Salamander. I went by train from London to Bath, to read at a literary festival there. Much of the eighteenth-century city is preserved in Bath, and reminders of Jane Austen are everywhere (she lived in Bath for several years and her characters often visit the city). During the festival I met many wonderful people and was accosted by only one of those insufferable British know-it-alls, who felt it necessary to point out to me that I had gotten the date of a battle wrong in my book.

In Bath I was asked to be on a panel for a British television show about books. I reluctantly agreed. I knew it was a great opportunity for me to promote my book, but the thought of being in front of a camera has always terrified me.

The taping was done at the august Jane Austen Centre, which made me all the more nervous. When the show began, two other authors and myself were seated on a dais in front of cameras and a distressingly large audience.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m not good at traveling and I tend to have gastrointestinal issues after I’ve been through too many airports and slept in too many hotels, not just in tropical countries but even in temperate zones. So far on this trip to England the situation hadn’t been too bad. But as I sat down, tired out from a long book tour and extremely nervous, I realized that a terrible attack of the trots was coming on. And not just any trots. These trots threatened to become mad gallops on the thundering stallion of uttermost physical necessity.

For the next 45 minutes I sat and squirmed and crossed my legs repeatedly and gave short, feeble answers to questions, while within me churned what Nabokov in Pale Fire referred to in his usual elegant way as a “liquid hell.” Somehow, I don’t know how, I held on. All I knew was that there was no way I was going down in Jane Austen history as the Canadian author who filled his drawers on British television. (The producers very kindly sent me a video of the show after I got home to Canada -- mercifully it wouldn’t play in my VCR). I wondered, did Jane Austen ever suffer such moments of absurd torment? She probably did. Who hasn't? Maybe that's why she liked to stay at home. Maybe that's why Mr Darcy is so disagreeable in the first few pages of the book.

The instant the show wrapped I was off the dais and hurtling desperately in the direction of the nearest washroom. I’m afraid I may have been rude to a nice woman who tried to halt my progress to tell me she really liked my book and would I sign it -- not now sorry can’t -- Maybe that’s why I haven’t been invited back.

How I would’ve preferred to spend that afternoon alone in a hotel room with a cup of soothing tea and a book. With Mary, and Elizabeth, and Mr Darcy, and Mr and Mrs Bennet.

30 Novels, day 26: Mortification

30 Novels, day 26: Call Me Humiliated

When my first novel, Icefields, was nominated for the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize in 1995, I traveled to Harare, Zimbabwe for the award ceremony. The nominated writers were treated to a week of dinners and activities and field trips to nature preserves. One day they sent us all out separately to various schools around the city to read to the students. I was taken to an all-girls academy that was so British in look and atmosphere that I thought I’d somehow been transported to England.

The auditorium where I was going to read was filled with at least a hundred schoolgirls in uniform, and suddenly I was more nervous than I had been for a long time in front of an audience. Could there be a tougher crowd to impress than a roomful of teenaged girls?

I read the scene from my novel in which a young woman dies tragically in a mountain-climbing accident. I think I got their attention with that. They seemed to be ... well, riveted. This was going quite well, I thought. Then it was question time, and one of the first questions was: “What are some of your favourite books?”

I started listing a few of the books I loved, The Lord of the Rings, War and Peace, Ulysses. This is really going to impress them, I thought. And then I added, “Oh, yes, and I can’t forget Moby-Dick.”

At the mention of that title, a quiet titter started somewhere in the back of the auditorium and spread, until it rippled across the entire room and swelled to full-fledged laughter. The laughter of a crowd of densely-packed, forcibly-detained teenagers at some doofus who’d just inadvertently said a dirty word. I felt myself flush crimson.

“Yeah,” I chuckled, struggling to recover some poise. “It’s a pretty ridiculous title. But it’s a wonderful book. Trust me. You should read it.”

I hope a few of them took my advice. And if you haven’t read it, you should.