Jen Knox's Blog, page 24

On color theory & expression

Primary Colors: Red, yellow, and blue

Visual harmony: In general, complementary colors that please the eye (or are “easy on the eye” as the old saying goes).

Henry Matisse on color: “The chief function of color should be to serve expression. Color helps to express light, not the physical phenomenon…”

Apartment theory on color: Complementary colors are especially pleasing to the eye because different types of photoreceptor cells contribute to color vision and perceive different types of light in the color spectrum.

Summary: Most of us seek out harmony via visual cues. This is all very basic to a visual artist, but it makes me wonder about the art of writing. How do we play with aesthetics? How do we offer what is pleasing to the reader—not from a formulaic standpoint but from an artistic standpoint? Harmony in the story could be thought of as a happy ending, a strong plot line, a character that the reader can relate to, or simply the arranging of words in an elegant manner.

But what if the topic we’d like to discuss is not harmonious? What if it has sharp edges or dwells in pain or loss? What if our topic is gun violence or the feeling of loneliness? Does this disturb the harmony? I discussed this at Thurber House the other day while offering a workshop on how to “Write What Scares You.” My favorite topic. In it, I cited a brilliant interview in The Guardian with the author of A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara: ‘Don’t we read fiction exactly to be upset?’ is the title.

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I sometimes wonder if what we’re really trying to praise is not the subject matter

or the politics or even the aesthetics of the book, but the author’s ability, or even

just willingness, to be impolite, to be messy, to be extravagant on the page. A

novel can be perfect in its structure, in its logic, in its composure, but the most

memorable novels, the most electrifying, are the ones that understand the

necessity of imperfection, of ragged edges, of being distasteful, of making

mistakes, of being demanding of the reader.

This speaks to a deeper engagement, an idea I’ve been churning on a lot lately — that we must embrace everything to tell a good story. And perhaps to live a rich life. All the joy, magic, fear, and ugliness of the world (and the writer’s mind, ultimately) must be examined in a novel, for instance, to create the kind of experience that sticks with the reader.

A desire not to provoke, or to play it safe by doing what we think is trendy, is easy. But it will limit impact. This makes me appreciate writers like Yanagihara all the more.

To create a beautiful work of literature may mean we need to create images in the mind that are more than complementary. We don’t always need a structure that is easy on the mind, for instance, to invite the reader to dive deep into the story. We can write sentences that pop in the same way an artist uses a dash of bring yellow and a hint of gold at the edges of a deep russet-orange to grab a viewer’s eye as they recreate the beauty of a sunset.

The deeper emotional resonance and transcendence of storytelling is where what’s easy fails.

A well-depicted horizon line is sharp, jolting, causing a viewer to pause in such a way that we believe we could stare beyond the optical center of the image and into infinity. We see what is there, but we also see beyond. Similarly, in writing, perhaps we sometimes need sharp lines, the jolt of anger or fear, and the interruption from harmony, to truly tell the story we need to tell, to create contrast.

Stories that write the discord and do so in a way that jolts a reader while offering an artist’s grace and beauty are those I seek as a reader and aim to write.

Some people buy and sell only what’s easy on the eye or mind (see: multibillion-dollar self-help industry). But I sense that facing the sharp lines of life offers us more beauty than anything easy. Maybe in life as much as in art and literature.

Perhaps true harmony needs contrast. Just a thought.

Wishing you all a harmonious April. Below is a new meditation on accepting the gamut. You can also download it from Insight Timer or Aura.

xo Jen

ON TRUSTING THE JOURNEY: a meditation

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On my many mistakes

I ate way too many Hot Pockets in my twenties and, dare I admit, my thirties.

I’m paying for this one.

I currently have a bruise under my right eye from self-administered acupuncture.

It usually works out quite well for allergies, but I

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On Love, Desire & the Equinox

Old English lufu, Germanic origin; Indo-European root shared by Sanskrit lubhyati ‘desires’; Latin libet ‘it is pleasing’ —OxfordLanguages

I love reading a good book with a warm mug of tea nearby and my pup’s head resting on my feet. I love sharing dinner and a glass or two of unchilled sauvignon blanc with friends. I love anyone in the world who is trying to do good for others despite personal struggles. I love traveling to new places—any new places, from an Ohio small town to a bustling foreign city—because it awakens something. I love a simple but rich sushi roll, right down to the process of dipping the sticky rice into a small pot of soy sauce laced with wasabi. I love a good hike on a cool, cloudy day. I love the idea of possibility. I love the feeling after a good workout, or when I dance with my husband in our living room. I love Bill Withers and Betty White and Bob Ross, even though I never met them. I love the feel of a tough breeze on a warm day. I love the momentum of creative expression. I love connecting with others about philosophical questions, even though I am sure I will never find the answers.

Photo by Hush Naidoo Jade Photography

The etymology of LOVE seems to imply that desire is closely related, at least in the historical understanding of the word, but I wonder about the relationship between these words as they are defined today . . .

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On writing and publishing

We Arrive Uninvited took me ten years to write.

Okay, so that’s a dramatic writer thing to say.

We Arrive Uninvited took me ten years to write, BUT there were years, months, and days I never so much as looked at that manuscript. If I’m being entirely honest, it probably took me a year to write, but that year was spread out over ten because I was working. A lot.

Besides, I always found it much easier and more gratifying to write and share short stories than toil away at the novel because, well, the novel was hard. It required sustained focus and attention. It required something else that I’ve struggled with my entire life. Patience.

But I did it, which means anyone can (sans AI). But it’s incredibly hard work. As is understanding and navigating the world of book sales.

Before the novel was truly, truly complete, I began to send it out for consideration by THE publishing industry. I acquired an agent quickly, but she wanted me to turn the novel into a YA romance, which didn’t make any sense, so that relationship ended. I found another agent (a “bigger” agent), who loved the work but again wanted changes to the story (oddly enough in a very opposite way - “Get rid of the young narrator, and . . .”).

I stayed true to my vision and continued to tweak it. I destroyed the manuscript and rebuilt it. I did that multiple times.

Over the years, excerpts from the novel won awards and placed highly in adaptation contests, but there were many false starts. Ultimately, in 2021, the manuscript won two awards in one week. One was the Steel Toe Books Award for Prose and the other was the Winter Goose Publishing Award. The very same week, Tiny Fox Press asked for a phone conversation and another agent request was in my inbox. I declined Winter Goose and Tiny Fox because I’d heard from STB first, and I knew that they put out beautiful books (see above).

The book was finally going to be published. But the journey didn’t stop there.

Fast forward to late February 2023, and my book is slated for prerelease sale. There was a metadata error that caused a few blank copies of my book to be shipped, and I was feeling a bit raw. I received videos and pictures from friends and students with my blank book. It was kind of funny, but also not-so-funny. Soon thereafter, a F*x News style blogger that likes to critique small presses came after my publishers and tried to discredit not only them but many of the amazing authors they’ve published over the years.

I understand why others (see: me, five years ago) would lose their shit under these circumstances. To write a book, to dedicate years (or a year) means an author is emotionally attached. Such an author wants others to read their book. As many others as possible, in fact. And if anything might negatively impact that, it feels like a personal affront.

For non-writers, this might not seem logical, but writing is soul work. As such, many authors refer to their books as babies. I like to refer to mine, a little more accurately I think, as my ego baby. Because once the thing is packaged and complete, I know that my attachment no longer has anything to do with the divine process of creativity. Now it’s business. I can’t even tell you how much I want this baby to succeed, but that’s all ego. And when I step away from that, I see only a remarkable amount of gratitude for the ups and downs of this process.

From idea to publication.

From a practical perspective, I want to go on record as saying that it takes a lot of time to read manuscripts, and it costs money to publish books. It takes resources to edit. Most publishers get inundated with work, and small publishers are often the bridge between truly innovative/quality work and audiences. To find a small publisher today is to find a small team who believes in your work enough to invest in you, and invest is the keyword.

And invest, my small publisher had. They offered edits that were in alignment with my vision, they were careful not to try to change my voice to play to what I recently heard an ex-editor/agent refer to as what she said the big four publishing houses (she works for) target: “The lowest common denominator.”

Being a small publisher can be a true labor of love. This is why, when my book’s pre-release metadata was off, I never faulted my publishers. They responded to the mistake immediately and corrected it best they could. And, as my husband said when it happened, “They’re human.” So am I.

While I cannot deny that my ego baby means a lot, I’ve learned over the years to let the book go once it’s shipped or published, or shared. Yes, I will market it (see above & below), and I will spread the word. I will open its pages and read it at bookstores. Perhaps you’ll even catch me clutching my ego baby to my chest and rocking it from time to time (she is beautiful). But I know that this is not the creative process.

As of now, it is still humans who tell stories. And humans usher stories into the world. As long as we remain human, there will be emotions and a swirl of possible mistakes. But we do our best, and it’s a beautiful dance.

We Arrive Uninvited is slated to release this week. My publishers have put in tremendous work to help develop the manuscript. They have invested in the story and packaged it with care.

To this writer’s mind, true storytelling comes from a place of purity and grace and is an almost-spiritual offering to the world. We can’t forget this beauty or its magnitude, but we also can’t contain it.

I’ll end this by saying, ego baby or not, I wrote a good story, and I’m proud. I’m grateful for those who invested in me. And I invite you to buy many copies and tell me when you do, or ignore the book completely. I can’t do too much about it either way. Meanwhile, I’ll be writing.

xo

Jen

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On temporary enlightenment

My father told me about a time in his thirties when he felt what can only be described as enlightenment. His thoughts were organized and his awareness was heightened. He was working at a hospital and found himself in highly technical conversations with doctors about medical procedures he’d never studied. He said he no longer felt anxiety or worry and could grasp any concept presented immediately. He understood how everything fell into place, and he said it—life itself, for all its seeming vastness and riddles—made sense.

This state of heightened awareness lasted for an entire week, then came the day that he woke up to find himself feeling exactly as he had before. A smart man still, sure, but as hazy and baffled by world events as ever, as eager to prove himself and no longer able to discuss highly technical medical procedures in-depth, even if he had studied them. He was an orderly at the time and hoped to take art classes. He had no great ambitions. He was a bit neurotic. He was human.

When he told me this story, it reminded me of the first book I read that I couldn’t get out of my head. I remember finishing Flowers for Algernon at around eight years old in the basement of our home, where it was dark but quiet unless the drier was rumbling. I remember crying when Charlie returned to his original self (spoiler: Charlie was a character whose intelligence was heightened after participating in a science experiment, but his intelligent persona became callous and cold. Ultimately, the study proved to not be sustainable and Charlie returned to his original state).

I asked my father if he felt as though he’d become callous and cold when he felt his extreme intelligence and awareness, like Charlie, but he assured me he hadn’t. His state was one that sounded more like a teaser of what many self-help and spiritual leaders call enlightenment. So naturally, I wanted to know more. How could I achieve this? What’s the formula? What was he doing, wearing, consuming?

My father said that it “just happened.” But that answer wasn’t good enough for me.

The human brain is a delicate and strange thing. As is the human body. It’s a miracle of a machine, and yet so vulnerable. As I think about the potential of AI taking so much extraneous processing out of the equation of thought (or at least necessary thought), I wonder if states of clarity will be more or less accessible. Perhaps someone at the hospital had spiked my father’s hashish with a mild hallucinogen that week (sorry, Dad), or perhaps he has an allergen that he only managed to avoid that one week of his life. Or maybe he truly got a taste of enlightenment.

Whatever it was, no matter how many questions I asked, I couldn’t get him to give me a formula, so I have none to offer you, but while my father used the words “aware” and “clear,” he never said he’d sought that state. In fact, he hadn’t mentioned any emotions during that time. There was no “gotcha!” feeling, or extreme relief.

Imagine what pure clarity, if only for a day, might mean. I like to think it would mean great relief. No “Why am I here?” questions. While I contribute to the world of personal development in all my work (arguably), I do think there’s an argument for pausing the search for enlightenment (or even just clarity), just for today. Just like there’s an argument for easing off the quest for perfection in writing or any craft.

Accepting fully our foibles and limitations as individual humans on this planet is a radical thing. But maybe pausing the search will also allow us to remember that if something like total clarity arrives in our lives, it’s highly unlikely it will have happened because we sought it out. It’s the search, after all, that may keep us from seeing and feeling our potential as humans.   

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I’m writing a blog right now about the writing and publishing industry in active response to many things that have happened over the last few weeks. This blog will come out about the same time as my book, and whew do I have a lot to say.

On stillness

“In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.” -Pico Iyer

Still. This is the best word to describe my week. After a tumultuous and busy February, my pulse dips as I sit cross-legged on a red couch and take shallow breaths.

Four days ago, my mother had surgery to remove a benign tumor that was pressing against her brainstem. After checking her in for surgery at 6 a.m., I waited in one room after another for twelve hours, only taking breaks to walk around or grab a quick bite to eat.

I’d brought a book, my computer, work, editing, writing projects, and more, but as I waited, I realized I could only truly focus on the task at hand. Sit. Shift. Wait.

Mom’s healing well. I’m watching her sleep, wondering if I should wake her up to take her pill. She has a mean headache, and the left side of her head and face are bruised, but whenever she wakes up she makes a joke about how exciting the day will be—she’s going to have beef broth and a handful of peanut butter Puffins—before falling back asleep. A few minutes later, her phone dings, and she sleepily asks who Ted Lasso is. When I shrug, she dozes off yet again.

I feel useless in a way. We’re in her house now, and she’s cozy. She’s no longer hooked up to IVs and machines, but the waiting feels the same. I can’t do much (aside from writing this blog, to be fair). There are no dry-humored nurses to trade glances with when my mom jokes and the silence is oddly confrontational. More so than meditation.

This confrontation is augmented by the two sets of green eyes perpetually fixed on me. Mom’s overweight cats might be wondering when the action is going to happen. Or, maybe like me, they’re just still. And I’m just still enough to notice them for once. We watch each other for a while.

Caretaking, even if only for a few days or weeks, can be confrontational because it forces us to remove ourselves from deadlines and, therefore, time. Without time, there’s no striving. All the doing is on pause. It demands presence and alertness, much in the way illness does, only without the distraction of pain.

So here I am. I clean. I fetch pills. I answer questions. But mostly, I just sit. And time doesn’t really matter. The to-dos don’t consume.

Sounds boring, right? It’s not.

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On expansion

There are life events (the external journey), and there is our perception (the internal journey). To reconcile the two, well . . . let’s unpack that.

In Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality by Frank Wilczek, there is a concept that the best way to view the internal and external worlds is to explore the idea that they are one and the same. The author won the Nobel Prize for Physics, and he sets up his book beautifully in his preface by saying “There’s a lot to unlearn as well as a lot to learn on the journey to deep understanding.”

He discusses the way a child begins to learn about the world by compartmentalizing and assigning meaning, watching and recording patterns, then ultimately making predictions based on those patterns. This system is how humans have studied nature and, ultimately, other humans’ behaviors in order to create their internal worlds. As we grow, our patterns and histories then take on varied meanings and interweave with emotions to create stories (memories) and even philosophies.

I personally believe that anyone stands to benefit from exploring their life story (commoditizing it … well, that’s for another blog), and I want to explore this question in more depth through the lens of exploring both what happened and what we felt/thought/saw (not necessarily the same thing).

To reconcile the inner and outer, we need to ask how much of our story and our perspective can be traced to the internal world alone. How much truly happens to us? How do we remember and measure our lives against expectations (ours or others)?

As I am exploring my own life story with as much honest detachment as I can, I am realizing that the way I saw the world at various times in my life truly did create my reality by creating my aims within it. Not everything was a response to lack or pain. So much of the change that occurred in my reality boiled down to my burgeoning ability to hold a vision of something more, despite conditions.

In his book, Wilczek introduces the cosmic distance ladder, which refers to how Astronomers calculate the distance to astronomical objects from our planet, intergalactic to extragalactic. The “ladder” essentially means the method in which we measure distances from Earth to, say the sun, will only work to a certain point. As we expand our reach, conditions change, and we need a new way to measure. And this holds true for successive increments of distance. What works for one sequence of measurement will only work to a certain point.

The way our internal journey shows up on the page (or in any self-analysis) may amount to our personal “rungs” of expanding perspective.

There come times in our lives when, regardless of what’s happening externally, there’s a shift in the way we see what’s happening around us and the tools/skills we need to utilize change. That job we hate suddenly doesn’t become so bad when we take more initiative, or that dream we had seems less important now that we’ve clarified our mission. We must step on a rung to get to the next.

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Ultimately, I’ve come to realize that there is no ease of living, not that I can tell. The more people I meet and the more stories I hear, the more I believe this. But there is an ability to reevaluate where we are and where we want to go. We can reach the cosmos, after all, if we are willing to understand that what’s worked in the past is just enough to get us here.

Reconciling the inner and outer journeys may mean not only observing what’s around us but also questioning our assumptions as we look back, trying to find those moments or times when the way we measured our lives changed completely. For me, these times seemed to materialize when least expected. Panic attacks arrived when things were peaceful. Growth came when things were most difficult.

It is often mysterious. But one thing examining our internal journey can offer is an invitation to expansion that is only possible when we consider that what we see is not all there is.

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On EI & writing a novel

Not long ago, I did just that. I apologized to a small restaurant staff on behalf of a family member. She’d arrived at breakfast late and looked exasperated the moment she sat down. Despite smiles and niceties directed her way, this family member treated both our server and our fellow tablemate rudely. As time passed, she became increasingly impatient, and I couldn’t figure out why.

I had to respond, but how?

"Compassion is . . . a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity." -Pema Chödrön

While I teach things like emotional intelligence and situational control at Ohio State, understanding theories can only equip us with so much. It’s never particularly easy to respond to an emotionally heated situation when we’re caught up in the moment, especially when initial attempts fail. The best we can do is find enough patience to take a step back and allow our limbic brain to finish its song & dance before responding.

A simple choice to pause, to force a sliver of hardwon patience, allows us the ability to cultivate compassion, but what good does that do? Training ourselves to take this pause takes time, but when we can pull it off this moment offers processing time and often a much more desirable outcome. It also offers us perspective. After all, when we take the time to remember that we too sometimes lose our cool illogically, we can better relate to extreme behaviors and not react.

Okay, okay, so emotional awareness (or “intelligence”) is a thing we can develop, and this can help us in the day-to-day, but what does this have to do with writing? I remember a teacher once telling me that the lessons we need to learn in life are the lessons we need to learn on the page—our limits and weaknesses show up in our work the same way they show up in our lives.

For me, this is and always has been a lack of patience. A desire to ignore the value of the pause.

As a young/new writer, I knew this: emotions are the currency of creativity. Without anger, I don’t think I’d have written a single creative word. Without sadness, I wouldn’t write empathetic characters. Without joy, I couldn’t offer those glimpses of hope.

That said, anger does a shit job of revision. Other terrible revision partners include grief, sadness, worry, romance, and elation. Revision, especially in longer work, takes emotional calibration. It takes more than a pause. And to write a novel takes a shitton of pauses. It takes months and sometimes years to create the same processing, perspective and desirable outcome one might be able to manage when dealing with an unhinged tablemate.

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My first novel, We Arrive Uninvited, was a seedling in 2013. I wrote some of the scenes that remain today way back then, and I caught the emotional resonance of the entirety of the novel in that first year, maybe even the first days, of writing. I thought it was complete in 2015. I thought it was complete in 2017. I thought it was complete in 2020. It was completed in 2021, and it is just now about to emerge to either fanfare or a tepid response—who knows? But what I know is this: it is ready. It’s fully cooked. It is my best work, and I’m proud. Prouder than I would’ve been in 2015, 2017, or 2020. I know it’s ready because I can see myself at the table with my family, watching chaos ensure the same way I can see myself at the computer, saving “_FINAL” again and again.

And I can see what happens when I allow the pause.

The last server to come to our table and find herself berated was angry. She snapped at my tablemate and then made eye contact with me alone as she spoke to her. I nodded and told her to bring us the bill as the voice next to me continued to complain about the lack of quality service.

Thanks to the pause, I reached out to the upset party and placed my hand gently on her arm. She was too upset to register my touch with anything more than an increased annoyance, so I asked her if she was okay.

I told her the meal seemed complete, but maybe we could pick up the discussion another time, or continue it at my house. She left, and I got the bill. I apologized to the staff on behalf of my family member, and they seemed surprised.

“I apologize as much as I can on behalf of another person,” I said. But as soon as I said it, I knew it only did so much. We can’t apologize or make up for the acts of another. Nor can we repair anything another human has done, but we can recognize that we are so often just a few upsets and a few pauses away from acting much in the same way they did, especially if we haven’t learned and trained to take that step back.

That simple step that so few people take. And to be fair, I am only just beginning to learn this lesson myself in both writing and life.

On Creative Emotional Intelligence

Here’s a sample video on Creative EI for a longer course. The exercise is simple, but I find it rather useful.

On humility and humiliation

A writing student recently told me that she was avoiding writing because she didn't want to be humiliated.

“You won’t be humiliated,” I wanted to say.

But the words would’ve been insincere. Audre Lorde said our silence will not protect us, but silence sure can feel like a snuggly place to hide.

To put one’s interior journey “out there” in the public arena, whether fictionalized or not, can often mean a certain level of humiliation. In fact, even sharing art with good friends is an act of incredible bravery. Things will get messed up. Things will get messy. One’s fears of humiliation most certainly could come to fruition.

Humiliation: from late Latin humiliat or ‘made humble.’ The original meaning was ‘bring low’

If we think of the root of humiliation, it is only possible if the way we identify or would like to identify is challenged by another. And yet, is to be ‘made humble’ necessarily a bad thing? Could it be seen, instead, as a gift to the world that supersedes any external goals attached to one’s art?

A willingness to be humiliated is the great superpower of the public artist, and a willingness to be humiliated, to be humbled, is to truly live.

To me, literary publications feel great but, here too, they come with profound humility. I believe the best possible quote to describe a writing life (or any artistic life) comes from A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles when the narrator is describing what is referred to as the “Confederacy of the Humbled.”

"Knowing beauty, influence, fame, and privilege to be borrowed rather than bestowed, they are not easily impressed. They are not quick to envy or take offense. They certainly do not scour the papers in search of their own names. They remain committed to living among their peers, but they greet adulation with caution, ambition with sympathy, and condescension with an inward smile."

I post blogs that will no doubt have errors and issues. I share work I might change my mind about later. Thoughts evolve and change and lose context. Ideas can be good one day and bad the next. But how do we find the confidence and trust to share our ideas anyway?

To put one’s voice out there in the world is to set oneself up for humility, which might come with a fleeting sense of humiliation. As a proud member of the “Confederacy of the Humbled,” I just wanted to share that I wholeheartedly believe that it’s all worth it.

Some say the secret is to take ourselves and our work less seriously. But perhaps the point is to dive into the humiliat and learn to live expansively and share our thoughts anyway.

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*Speaking of all this, if you’re not sick of my words yet, read about ASCENSION from the perspective of a table busser at a horrible little diner in Ohio. #truestory

**My next post will be On Patience & Writing

On ChatGPT

Similar to the way cats and dogs mature at a rate seven times that of humans, I feel as though I’ve matured (to the threshold and beyond) about three times as quickly as most well-adapted people. The fact that I feel about 120 years old is just another side note in this joyous adventure of being a human in the world, and it might explain the following thoughts.

I was an early adopter of technology. I worked an average of three jobs leading up to and throughout college, and one of those was helping Google create algorithms in the early 2010s by manually accepting/rejecting search results. In other words, my moonlighting gig was pretty much what led to ChatGPT-like and other AI programs. That’s right, folks, I am part of the problem (or gift?) of AI.

But look, I had to eat then, and I was poor.

So fast-forward to 2023 and, as a professor and writer, I am not a fan of what I helped create. I told ChatGPT to write me a story of 1,000 words about a young girl who finds empowerment, and it came up with a story that fit Freytag’s bill with a beginning, middle and end. AI dusted off its hands after about 90 seconds and stood back to examine my reaction. I shrugged, but inside … Well, I was a mixture of emotion.

While the story itself was not great literature, it was about on par with a beginning writer’s attempts at their first or second or tenth short story. It had the elements, but it lacked soul. And it also lacked polish. While I think AI will graduate to achieve more polish, I do wonder if its writing will ever have soul.

Thoughts?

Examining this subject in a different light, I also want to address the tech from an educator’s standpoint. (This might get me fired, so it’ll be for subscribers only.)

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