Jack Messenger's Blog, page 11
January 27, 2016
Write What You Know
Sometimes seemingly straightforward advice turns out to be more complex than we think. For instance, ‘Write what you know’ always sounds clear and simple. Who would disagree with it? Of course I should write what I know – how could I write what I don’t know? But what do I know?
[image error]‘Write what you know’ is actually a little depressing when you think about it. It excludes so much – alternative worlds, characters whom we’ve never met (many of whom we wouldn’t wish to meet), extreme experiences we can feel fortunate never to have undergone – all these things are excluded by ‘Write what you know’.
Or are they? I used to nod my head in agreement whenever I heard someone say ‘Write what you know’. Yet whenever I took their advice literally I soon realized it left me with virtually nothing to say! I have been blessed to have lived thus far a peaceful and unexceptional life. Little of it has been dramatic and much of it has lacked even the potential to be dramatic. If my own experience were all I had as raw material then I wouldn’t have much to write about.
Despite this, I feel emotionally rich. Much of that feeling has to do with personal relationships – good and bad – I’ve had over a lifetime. Overwhelmingly, however, what I know about life and people and experience has been learnt from art: principally wonderful fiction and wonderful theatre and wonderful films. I know much more than my own life, thank goodness, because I have been exposed to great storytelling in different media. Thanks to the tens of thousands of stories I have experienced, I know myself and other people a great deal better than would have otherwise been possible. It’s as if I have lived, not just my life, but hundreds of other lives as well. That’s a great gift for which I am very grateful. I know more than I know!
So I no longer take ‘Write what you know’ too seriously or too literally. In order to write, we need to live, and in order to live, we need to know the lives of others. The best way of doing that is via education, of course, and learning about the world, and also reading intelligent books or enjoying any of the other arts to which we are drawn. In these ways and many others we enter into ever wider circles of sympathetic engagement and understanding.
Our creative imaginations are nurtured by far more than the sum of our own direct experience. It’s up to us to feed them as much as we can and to be fearless in our imaginings. So write what you know, but remember: you know more than you think you know.
Now that I know and can write about.
January 20, 2016
Writing Goals
Like many people, I take the beginning of a new year as an opportunity to make plans and outline some goals for myself. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how I go about doing this and why I sometimes succeed and why I sometimes fail to achieve my goals.
It’s always dangerous to generalize from one’s own experience and say that what works for one person will also work for everyone else. However, I’ve found certain things useful and you might too – perhaps you’ve already found these things out for yourselves.
Big Goals
The big goals I set myself are the major ones for the year. Usually, I set about five or six. This year, for example, I’ve set the goals of publishing a small collection of short stories by the end of June, finishing writing a novel I discarded last year and finishing a brand new novel by the end of December. There are a couple more as well. I make a list of these goals and I write beneath them why it is I want to attain them – it’s important to know why we do the things we do, otherwise we can lose sight of ourselves in the doing of them. And when things get tough (as they surely will do from time to time), looking at our reasons reminds us why our goals are important and helps us persevere. That’s what I’ve found, anyway.
In addition to my reasons, I also write down what I need to do to achieve my goals – all the steps I need to take along the way. This helps break down daunting goals into achievable steps. So, for instance, publishing my short stories entails such things as uploading a front cover and putting a book page on my blog and website. As these tasks are completed, it feels good to be able to cross them off the list.
Little Goals
Little goals are all about the micro-management of my working day. As opposed to my big goals, my little daily goals are often ridiculously easy to achieve. I do this deliberately. I learned long ago that it feels much better to achieve something each day, no matter how humble, rather than fail at something too ambitious. Often, one or two little goals can be achieved quite quickly, leaving time to achieve a few more. When that happens it feels really good. It gives me permission to relax afterwards or even knock off early – I’ve done more than I set out to do, so why not? Rest is vital if we are to continue in our work.
This system really works for me. It’s amazing how quickly I can get things done. As a writer, for example, I do not set myself a huge word count each day. Ideally, I’d love to write a thousand or two thousand words each day, and sometimes I do. However, I set a target of around four hundred or five hundred words. That’s the number of words I believe I can reach reasonably easily. After that, if I’m still writing, every additional word is a bonus, so I finish my writing day feeling really good about myself: I haven’t failed to achieve my goals; I haven’t just achieved them. I’ve surpassed them! This is a simple trick I play on myself and I fall for it each time.
How do you plan your work? How successful are you in setting and achieving your goals? Do you have any good ideas the rest of us can try?
January 18, 2016
Cussing Creatively: A Guest Post by Sandra Lore
This is a lesson I missed a few decades ago maybe. Having grown up in a household where neither alcohol nor swearing was allowed, I didn’t learn how to do either activity well. I may have perfected both by now, or not. Meeting my father-in-law for the first time, I noticed how little he swore. I can remember his saying ‘damn’ once – referring to me as a ‘god damn intellectual’. No one before or since has described me that way. Of course, I loved my father-in-law for the rest of his days.
As one hears almost daily, ‘It’s a whole new world out there.’ Being ‘affluent’ like everyone else we know, we watch cable TV from time to time – well, most evenings. I believe they insist on a certain amount of profanity with each series. Mostly it’s the F-word, but there are other ‘naughty’ words interspersed here and there – it’s surprising any real dialogue takes place. No need for dialogue, I guess, when mostly a bedroom set is used. I feel like a voyeur, so that may be what I’m cultivating – voyeurism. Yikes!
I’ve noticed with the current tele-novella that there’s precious little dialogue going on with the exception of the profane expletives. Various facial expressions take over, or long beseeching looks go on – and on. I guess the actors don’t have to learn many lines – but they’ve got to be athletic and supple in bed and able to cuss.
Anyhow, David Sedaris has a funny bit about characters in line at an airport. Actually, it’s very funny. The kid ahead of him in line (obviously a new teenage father, with dreadlocks) has Motha Fokka printed on his t-shirt. Yes, it sounds like you-know-what, but someone can’t spell too well.
Listening to this bit in route to Christmas dinner with the family, I still had the words on my mind after arrival. So, I used them in some appropriate place or another which I’ve now forgotten. My 17-year-old grandson appreciated me more for a moment, but my own kids and daughters-in-law were shocked – at least it looked like that to me. Like a child who gets attention, I managed to use the words several more times during the day. (Call it a disadvantaged childhood or something!)
Like a child (once again), I slipped something terrible into our once-every-five-years New Year’s Day brunch. At our urging, friends brought their three-and-a-half year-old granddaughter along. She was present at the table when I exclaimed, ‘Holy shit!’ Don’t remember the context of that one either. Our guests’ mouths dropped – of course they didn’t know what to say. Our youngest guest laughed out loud – she knew full well that was a word she couldn’t use. She didn’t let it go at that. She kept looking at me and giggling just like you’d expect a three-and-a-half year-old kid to do.
That’s probably the last time her grandparents will let little Alice in the door. I’m still embarrassed about the whole thing. After all, I managed to raise our children (which took several years and sometimes still goes on) without cussing. What’s with this advanced age business? Am I letting it all hang out as some folks with dementia seem to do?
Alice’s grandparents told me yesterday (after I had apologized profusely for my indiscretion) that the subject under discussion that night at dinner after having eaten brunch here on New Year’s Day was ‘buggers’. To eat or not to eat?
I have no more to say. I’m going to overcome my transgressions in the New Year. Holy shit! Which is worse? Eating buggers or proclaiming shit? I’ll stop both. What a new year’s resolution!
[image error]Sandra Brian Lore had a typical small-town and suburban life outside Chicago until she was given the chance to discover the larger world accompanying her husband Mark abroad where they lived on four continents during their 32 years in the US Foreign Service. Born and raised in Illinois, she studied at Northwestern University and graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1962. She and her husband have retired in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where she writes, fiddles Irish music and volunteers for various good causes.
January 8, 2016
Where am I?
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I am hoping someone somewhere can help me solve a minor personal mystery.
The past was not often recorded in my family. There was seldom any money available for cameras and, even when there was, nobody had any interest in taking snapshots. Thus, very few photographs exist of me as a child. Indeed, very few photographs exist of me at all. Perhaps that is why I have so little recollection of my childhood, and why the earliest thing I can recall is of something that happened at the relatively ripe old age of four or five.
I possess three or four photographs of my childhood years. They are all in faded monochrome and I have no idea who is the photographer – given my family’s circumstances and attitudes, it seems unlikely that any of them are responsible, but who knows?
Some things I think I do know. I believe all these pictures were taken in Canada in the early 1960s. At least one is in Saskatoon, where we used to live. The photo here is also in Canada and I think it is Québec City. Isn’t that rather magnificent, ethereal building behind me the Chateau Frontenac?
I presume that the chateau meant nothing to me at the time. Now, however, I cannot look at this picture without hearing the dreamlike music that Dimitri Tiomkin wrote for the film I Confess (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1953). Thus, I ‘remember’ this day as a child via a beloved film made ten years earlier, before I was born, and of which I knew nothing at the time. Strange things happen with the passing of the years.
When I look at this picture, I see a stranger who is also in some sense myself. He squints out at me, eyes narrowed against the sunlight, front teeth already betraying signs of future dental problems about which nothing was done, his hair hacked about in a careless fringe.
The mystery is this: I’d like to know where I stood on that summer day all those years ago. It looks like a park. Is it the Parc Félix-Leclerc, the Jardins des Gouverneurs, the Monument de la Foi, Montmorency Park or somewhere else? What is that spire visible over my left shoulder? And what would I have been looking at beyond the camera?
I’m hoping the truth really is out there and some kind Québécois will be able to enlighten me.
This post is dedicated to Presto, a courageous and precious friend who has crossed the meadow ahead of us.
January 6, 2016
Lily Pond, Great Dixter by Bruce Alexander Wright
The vibrant greens and blues and the Vlaminck-style brushwork combine beautifully in this joyous exploration of light and shadow – just what’s needed on a cold day in January.
January 2, 2016
2015 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog. I’ve only been blogging for five months and am still finding my feet, so I’m pleased with these statistics.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,400 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 40 trips to carry that many people.
