Man Martin's Blog, page 230
March 9, 2011
Win a Free Copy of Paradise Dogs
You can win a free copy of PARADISE DOGS ("Hilarious," Kirkus, "A non-stop slapstick marathon," Publishers Weekly) Visit goodreads.com, register (if you haven't already) and type in Paradise Dogs in the search bar at the top of the page! Five lucky people will win a copy. Also, keep your eye on this blog for THE RETURN OF THE STOOPID CONTEST and your chance to win a copy of my award-winning first novel, DAYS OF THE ENDLESS CORVETTE.
March 8, 2011
March 2nd Follow Up
In my March 2nd Post, I wrote about a dream I'd had, mentioning in passing what a gifted interpretter of dreams my sister Helen is. Helen emailed me this interpretation and agreed that I could post it to my blog. If you compare it to the original post, I think you'll have to agree what incredible insight it shows. It has the quality of all true insights, that once stated, it seems self evident, "Of course that's what it means!" First, here is the dream as I remembered it:
I was walking beside Mur (my mother) down a slightly uneven cobbled path toward a professional greenhouse where we were going to buy some plants. The path was strewn with yellow straw, and the greenhouse was out of sight around the bend. We had just eaten some baked chicken, and were discussing where we would plant our purchases. I didn't actually see Mur's face, because naturally I wasn't looking at her, instead concentrating on watching my step along the path.
The text of Helen's email follows.
I have been thinking all week re your dream of Mur, and couldn't help but interpret. I adress the dream here because it parallels some of Lori's "Mary's house" themes.
In dreams, walking along a path represents one's personal life journey. Expressed in human terms, our human jouney inescabably represents a circuit -- from home and creator to Home and Creator.
In this dream, the garden house represents your fondest hopes and dreams reguarding your destination - for you, a rural life that would be "heaven." This theme is echoed as well by the dream's other rural references, the golden, straw-strewn path, baked chicken for dinner and your planned planting activities.
However, your life's path is uneven. You have to watch extremely carefully not to trip on the cobblestones; in this dream and for you, these literally represent "stumbling blocks." The dream does not reveal the nature of these for you; however personal experience tells us that each of us harbors these, that they are always unique and personal and that our daunting task is to overcome them.
Your anxiety re stumbling is so profound that it diverts your attention from your destination!, and even worse from the precious, beloved and longed for face of one who in this dream is lovingly attending to you, accompanying you and engaging with you in your human aspirations and activities.
So the dream is a dichotomy, between fondest hopes and stumbling blocks that impede your progress and lessen joy. I will go not further - I leave the rest to you!
Much love,
Helen
I was walking beside Mur (my mother) down a slightly uneven cobbled path toward a professional greenhouse where we were going to buy some plants. The path was strewn with yellow straw, and the greenhouse was out of sight around the bend. We had just eaten some baked chicken, and were discussing where we would plant our purchases. I didn't actually see Mur's face, because naturally I wasn't looking at her, instead concentrating on watching my step along the path.
The text of Helen's email follows.
I have been thinking all week re your dream of Mur, and couldn't help but interpret. I adress the dream here because it parallels some of Lori's "Mary's house" themes.
In dreams, walking along a path represents one's personal life journey. Expressed in human terms, our human jouney inescabably represents a circuit -- from home and creator to Home and Creator.
In this dream, the garden house represents your fondest hopes and dreams reguarding your destination - for you, a rural life that would be "heaven." This theme is echoed as well by the dream's other rural references, the golden, straw-strewn path, baked chicken for dinner and your planned planting activities.
However, your life's path is uneven. You have to watch extremely carefully not to trip on the cobblestones; in this dream and for you, these literally represent "stumbling blocks." The dream does not reveal the nature of these for you; however personal experience tells us that each of us harbors these, that they are always unique and personal and that our daunting task is to overcome them.
Your anxiety re stumbling is so profound that it diverts your attention from your destination!, and even worse from the precious, beloved and longed for face of one who in this dream is lovingly attending to you, accompanying you and engaging with you in your human aspirations and activities.
So the dream is a dichotomy, between fondest hopes and stumbling blocks that impede your progress and lessen joy. I will go not further - I leave the rest to you!
Much love,
Helen
March 7, 2011
Advice to Writers About to Give a Reading: DON'T
When my first novel DAYS OF THE ENDLESS CORVETTE (Still only $14.95 and a swell gift for all occasions) came out, and I realized I would have the opportunity to do public readings, I made up my mind. I wouldn't do readings. Instead, I decided to memorize a passage and recite it, perform it if you will.
I don't wear a costume or anything, I don't act out the parts or use puppets: I just recite the passage I would have read. With feeling.
There are several reasons to do this, but I'll start with the high-falutin' theoretical one. A public reading is a different medium than a book in print, and it requires a different approach. Anyone who attends a reading is perfectly capable of reading already, and the sight of an author standing at a podium reading aloud isn't all that exciting. That said, there are some who read from their works - Khadijah Queen springs to mind - who make a reading an enthralling experience. Others, who shall go nameless here, are a good deal less than thrilling. Reciting your work, especially if you've practiced it and considered your pauses, the moments you will raise and lower your voice, is a lot more fun for both audience and author. As an author, it gives you the wonderful experience of knowing how people respond to your work in the moment - provided you're looking at your listeners, and not at a page.
It's not as hard memorizing a passage as you might think. After working and reworking a novel, there are some passages I have fair to memorized before the thing even reaches a publisher.
I'm attaching a video recorded by my friend Mike Burr of a reading I did at the Wren's Nest in Atlanta, Georgia. It was at night and outside, and the lighting makes my head like a radioactive onion, but still you may get the idea. The first part of my reading, which involved a flip chart as a visual aid, unreadable on film, has been deleted.
I don't wear a costume or anything, I don't act out the parts or use puppets: I just recite the passage I would have read. With feeling.
There are several reasons to do this, but I'll start with the high-falutin' theoretical one. A public reading is a different medium than a book in print, and it requires a different approach. Anyone who attends a reading is perfectly capable of reading already, and the sight of an author standing at a podium reading aloud isn't all that exciting. That said, there are some who read from their works - Khadijah Queen springs to mind - who make a reading an enthralling experience. Others, who shall go nameless here, are a good deal less than thrilling. Reciting your work, especially if you've practiced it and considered your pauses, the moments you will raise and lower your voice, is a lot more fun for both audience and author. As an author, it gives you the wonderful experience of knowing how people respond to your work in the moment - provided you're looking at your listeners, and not at a page.
It's not as hard memorizing a passage as you might think. After working and reworking a novel, there are some passages I have fair to memorized before the thing even reaches a publisher.
I'm attaching a video recorded by my friend Mike Burr of a reading I did at the Wren's Nest in Atlanta, Georgia. It was at night and outside, and the lighting makes my head like a radioactive onion, but still you may get the idea. The first part of my reading, which involved a flip chart as a visual aid, unreadable on film, has been deleted.
March 6, 2011
Optimism
My wife always says "You're such an optimist!" It's not a compliment. Like last Spring when she tried to talk me out of buying seed corn to plant in our yard.
She's right; our yard doesn't get near enough sun, but I planted it anyway, and sure enough, we got about thirty ears. They weren't big, and some didn't have many kernels, but I scraped off about two cans' worth. So allowing for the time I spent planting, tending, and harvesting, and minus the original cost of the seeds, I figure I earned about .000001 cent an hour.
But my wife is right about me being an optimist. Take the time I took my daughters canoeing in the Okefenokee. We went down a back channel a friend of mine had told me about, which was so narrow you could touch either bank with your paddle. My daughters, who were ten and eight at the time, wondered if we'd get to see any alligators. They didn't need to wonder. The Okefenokee has gators like my backyard has squirrels. You have to look hard not to see one. Anyway, the area was amazingly beautiful, and we worked our way deeper and deeper into the swamp, up an isolated and prehistoric-looking channel with this big reptiles floating like dark green logs in water as dark as tobacco spit.
I have no idea how far we would have gotten because it began to rain.
At first we just kept going, telling the girls a few drops would cool us down, then the rain started in earnest. The channel was so narrow, we couldn't turn around but had to back-paddle all the way to the main swamp. By that time it was coming down in torrents and lightning had started. My daughters were terrified, and instantly ducked down inside the canoe, but I had to keep paddling to get us back. The water was coming down so fast, the canoe begin to fill up.
I don't know if you've paddled a canoe full of water, but I know from experience the more water a canoe holds, the unsteadier it gets. So as I'm paddling with all my might, water sluicing down my body, my daughters cowering against the gunwales, and lightning crashing overhead, the canoe is threatening to capsize with every stroke.
My daughters were too scared to say anything more than, "Da-a-ddy!" and I shouted back to them the most reassuring thought I could think of at the time.
And that was the thought that kept hope alive, kept me paddling, and helped us get back to camp safely – that thought that if we did tip over, we wouldn't have to worry about alligators because they'd have too much sense to get in the water during a lightning storm.
Which is why my wife says I'm an optimist. No matter how bad things get, I always figure they're not as bad as they could be, and if they are as bad as they could be, if they can't get any worse, then at least all of the alligators will be on shore.
She's right; our yard doesn't get near enough sun, but I planted it anyway, and sure enough, we got about thirty ears. They weren't big, and some didn't have many kernels, but I scraped off about two cans' worth. So allowing for the time I spent planting, tending, and harvesting, and minus the original cost of the seeds, I figure I earned about .000001 cent an hour.
But my wife is right about me being an optimist. Take the time I took my daughters canoeing in the Okefenokee. We went down a back channel a friend of mine had told me about, which was so narrow you could touch either bank with your paddle. My daughters, who were ten and eight at the time, wondered if we'd get to see any alligators. They didn't need to wonder. The Okefenokee has gators like my backyard has squirrels. You have to look hard not to see one. Anyway, the area was amazingly beautiful, and we worked our way deeper and deeper into the swamp, up an isolated and prehistoric-looking channel with this big reptiles floating like dark green logs in water as dark as tobacco spit.
I have no idea how far we would have gotten because it began to rain.
At first we just kept going, telling the girls a few drops would cool us down, then the rain started in earnest. The channel was so narrow, we couldn't turn around but had to back-paddle all the way to the main swamp. By that time it was coming down in torrents and lightning had started. My daughters were terrified, and instantly ducked down inside the canoe, but I had to keep paddling to get us back. The water was coming down so fast, the canoe begin to fill up.
I don't know if you've paddled a canoe full of water, but I know from experience the more water a canoe holds, the unsteadier it gets. So as I'm paddling with all my might, water sluicing down my body, my daughters cowering against the gunwales, and lightning crashing overhead, the canoe is threatening to capsize with every stroke.
My daughters were too scared to say anything more than, "Da-a-ddy!" and I shouted back to them the most reassuring thought I could think of at the time.
And that was the thought that kept hope alive, kept me paddling, and helped us get back to camp safely – that thought that if we did tip over, we wouldn't have to worry about alligators because they'd have too much sense to get in the water during a lightning storm.
Which is why my wife says I'm an optimist. No matter how bad things get, I always figure they're not as bad as they could be, and if they are as bad as they could be, if they can't get any worse, then at least all of the alligators will be on shore.
March 5, 2011
Is a Writer a Doctor, Prophet, or Magician?
What is a writer? If you happen to be a writer yourself, this is a question you'd better consider. Chekhov, no small potatoes in the Lit Biz, is on the side of writer as doctor. Not surprising, I guess, since Chekhov was a doctor. If he'd been a accountant, he'd probably have a different story. But he wasn't an accounant, he was a doctor. Here's what he said, "Only a doctor can know what value my knowledge of science has been to me... It seems to me that as a doctor I have described the sicknesses of the soul correctly."
Is that how you see yourself as a writer - a diagnostician? Chekhov doesn't say you have to cure mankind's ills; in fact, he is dismissive of the attempt. But you have to be - says Chekhov - a man or woman of science, at least insofar as your allegiance to objective truth. "A writer," he says elsewhere, "is not a confectioner, not a dealer in cosmetics, not an entertainer; he is a man bound under compulsion, by the realization of his duty and by his conscience... A writer must be as objective as a chemist."
That business about being bound by compulsion, duty, and conscience, brings to mind another potential role for a writer, that of prophet. This is how Flannery O'Connor sees herself, "I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil. I have also found that what I write is read by an audience which puts little stock either in grace or the devil. You discover your audience at the same time and in the same way that you discover your subject, but it is an added blow."
"Added blow," what a typical O'Connorism. She does a lot of bellyaching, doesn't she? But you can't blame her. Prophets don't sign up for the job, and, like O'Connor, usually don't especially like it once they get it. Nor do people much care for prophets. O'Connor points out her audience doesn't "put stock" in her subject matter, but that's how it is if you're a prophet. Cassandra heads the list of prophets who didn't get listened to, but she's not unusual. Greek mythology is pretty much a collection of stories with Tieresias or somebody saying, "Take my word for it Oedipus, the less you know about Mom, the better," or "Pandora, everything will be just fine, but don't open that box," and then Oedipus, or Achilles, or Pandora or whoever going ahead and doing just what they were going to do anyway. It's the same in the Bible. Do a word search for "prophet" and nearby you'll find a phrase like "didn't listen," as in the people didn't listen, the pharoah didn't listen, the king didn't listen. That's why those Bible prophets seem so angry all the time. That's why Jeremiah delivered Jeremiads. That's why John the Baptist was such a nutcase. Not being listened to gets old.
Neither prophets nor diagnosticians accomplish very much, O'Connor and Chekhov would be the first ones to admit. I join them in being leery of writers who imagine their words will right the world's wrongs. How can I do that? Hell, I can't even spell very good.
Nor, evidently, do I know how to use an adverb.
Before we talk about the writer as magician, there is at least one other way a writer can see himself. James Joyce's motto as writer was "non serviam," "I will not serve," the defiant statement that earned Lucifer damnation. Joyce refuses to write either to delight a reader or out of duty to a higher principle. Maybe this is why Joyce's reputation for smuttiness so far outweighs any objectionable content in his work. A lot of Ulysses gives the impression, not because it's so salacious, but that it seems to gratify no one but the author, that Joyce is playing with himself. I didn't include Joyce's vision of the author in the title for this blog because three alternatives is rhetorically more pleasing than four, and because I was loathe to posit the writer as masturbator
Now on to the last alternative, which, since I saved it for last, you might have guessed is the one I subscribe to. Not that you shouldn't see yourself as a doctor or prophet is that's your thing. See yourself as a lawyer or an Indian chief, if you like. It was a free country last time I checked.
My friend Mike Burr's father loves magicians. This is irritating to Mike Burr. Mike's dad will call up, having just seen Criss Angel, MindFreak - Burr the Elder's favorite - on TV and give Mike a blow-by-blow description of every transformed rabbit, vanished elephant, and correctly identified three of clubs. The only thing on earth Mike finds more tedious than watching magic, is hearing it described over the phone. After the narration of these miracles, Mike's dad unfailingly asks, "How do you think he does it?"
That's what I want to be. A magician.
I'm not in bad company here. Nabokov says fiction was invented by the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf, "the magic of art was in the shadow of the wolf that he deliberately invented, his dream of the wolf; then the story of his tricks made a good story. When he perished at last, the story told about him acquired a good lesson in the dark around the camp fire. But he was the little magician. He was the inventor.
"There are three points of view from which a writer can be considered; he may be considered as a storyteller, as a teacher, and as an enchanter. A major writer combines these three-storyteller, teacher, enchanter-but it is the enchanter in him that predominates... Finally and above all, a great writer is always a great enchanter, it is here we come to the really exciting part when we try to grasp the individual magic of his genius and to study the style, the imagery, the pattern of his novels or his poems."
Right on, Nabokov. Hell, I don't tell the truth. I tell lies. That's what I want: to so enchant you with my make-believe, not even my make-believe world, but the audacity of make-believe itself, that after I've made the elephant stand on the soap bubble, then turned it into a dove that flew away before your eyes, and, yes, shared some news along the way of the human condition because that's the material I have to work with, though the human condition is old news indeed, and being able to diagnose is in no way being able to cure, and at last when I have pulled out the three of clubs you'd selected at the outset from my deck of card, with a triumphant flourish and a "is this the card you chose?" you will not just be entertained, nor instructed, nor diagnosed, you will drop your jaw in stupefaction and say, "How did he do it?"
That's what I want.
Hocus-pocus. Ala-kazam.
Is that how you see yourself as a writer - a diagnostician? Chekhov doesn't say you have to cure mankind's ills; in fact, he is dismissive of the attempt. But you have to be - says Chekhov - a man or woman of science, at least insofar as your allegiance to objective truth. "A writer," he says elsewhere, "is not a confectioner, not a dealer in cosmetics, not an entertainer; he is a man bound under compulsion, by the realization of his duty and by his conscience... A writer must be as objective as a chemist."
That business about being bound by compulsion, duty, and conscience, brings to mind another potential role for a writer, that of prophet. This is how Flannery O'Connor sees herself, "I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil. I have also found that what I write is read by an audience which puts little stock either in grace or the devil. You discover your audience at the same time and in the same way that you discover your subject, but it is an added blow."
"Added blow," what a typical O'Connorism. She does a lot of bellyaching, doesn't she? But you can't blame her. Prophets don't sign up for the job, and, like O'Connor, usually don't especially like it once they get it. Nor do people much care for prophets. O'Connor points out her audience doesn't "put stock" in her subject matter, but that's how it is if you're a prophet. Cassandra heads the list of prophets who didn't get listened to, but she's not unusual. Greek mythology is pretty much a collection of stories with Tieresias or somebody saying, "Take my word for it Oedipus, the less you know about Mom, the better," or "Pandora, everything will be just fine, but don't open that box," and then Oedipus, or Achilles, or Pandora or whoever going ahead and doing just what they were going to do anyway. It's the same in the Bible. Do a word search for "prophet" and nearby you'll find a phrase like "didn't listen," as in the people didn't listen, the pharoah didn't listen, the king didn't listen. That's why those Bible prophets seem so angry all the time. That's why Jeremiah delivered Jeremiads. That's why John the Baptist was such a nutcase. Not being listened to gets old.
Neither prophets nor diagnosticians accomplish very much, O'Connor and Chekhov would be the first ones to admit. I join them in being leery of writers who imagine their words will right the world's wrongs. How can I do that? Hell, I can't even spell very good.
Nor, evidently, do I know how to use an adverb.
Before we talk about the writer as magician, there is at least one other way a writer can see himself. James Joyce's motto as writer was "non serviam," "I will not serve," the defiant statement that earned Lucifer damnation. Joyce refuses to write either to delight a reader or out of duty to a higher principle. Maybe this is why Joyce's reputation for smuttiness so far outweighs any objectionable content in his work. A lot of Ulysses gives the impression, not because it's so salacious, but that it seems to gratify no one but the author, that Joyce is playing with himself. I didn't include Joyce's vision of the author in the title for this blog because three alternatives is rhetorically more pleasing than four, and because I was loathe to posit the writer as masturbator
Now on to the last alternative, which, since I saved it for last, you might have guessed is the one I subscribe to. Not that you shouldn't see yourself as a doctor or prophet is that's your thing. See yourself as a lawyer or an Indian chief, if you like. It was a free country last time I checked.
My friend Mike Burr's father loves magicians. This is irritating to Mike Burr. Mike's dad will call up, having just seen Criss Angel, MindFreak - Burr the Elder's favorite - on TV and give Mike a blow-by-blow description of every transformed rabbit, vanished elephant, and correctly identified three of clubs. The only thing on earth Mike finds more tedious than watching magic, is hearing it described over the phone. After the narration of these miracles, Mike's dad unfailingly asks, "How do you think he does it?"
That's what I want to be. A magician.
I'm not in bad company here. Nabokov says fiction was invented by the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf, "the magic of art was in the shadow of the wolf that he deliberately invented, his dream of the wolf; then the story of his tricks made a good story. When he perished at last, the story told about him acquired a good lesson in the dark around the camp fire. But he was the little magician. He was the inventor.
"There are three points of view from which a writer can be considered; he may be considered as a storyteller, as a teacher, and as an enchanter. A major writer combines these three-storyteller, teacher, enchanter-but it is the enchanter in him that predominates... Finally and above all, a great writer is always a great enchanter, it is here we come to the really exciting part when we try to grasp the individual magic of his genius and to study the style, the imagery, the pattern of his novels or his poems."
Right on, Nabokov. Hell, I don't tell the truth. I tell lies. That's what I want: to so enchant you with my make-believe, not even my make-believe world, but the audacity of make-believe itself, that after I've made the elephant stand on the soap bubble, then turned it into a dove that flew away before your eyes, and, yes, shared some news along the way of the human condition because that's the material I have to work with, though the human condition is old news indeed, and being able to diagnose is in no way being able to cure, and at last when I have pulled out the three of clubs you'd selected at the outset from my deck of card, with a triumphant flourish and a "is this the card you chose?" you will not just be entertained, nor instructed, nor diagnosed, you will drop your jaw in stupefaction and say, "How did he do it?"
That's what I want.
Hocus-pocus. Ala-kazam.
March 4, 2011
It Never Gets Old
It never gets old.We started our seeds in the basement last week. I've got the plants sitting on unused pegboard laid across a couple of saw horses. Beneath that is a space heater to warm the soil to 68 degrees. It's a really ambitious planting: eighteen tomato plants, three cucumbers, nine okras, plus peppers and eggplants.
Wednesday they started coming up. It is so damn cool I can't stand it.
Why is that?
Maybe it's because I'm only fifty-two. That means I've seen – at most – this particular phenomenon forty-some times, so it gets to me because it's still unfamilar. But if that were the case, it seems like the more I saw it, the less it would excite me. But it's the other way around. Each year first sight of those new green shoots is cooler than the year before.
It just never gets old.
March 3, 2011
Be More Cold and the Double Exclamation Mark
A few posts back, I mentioned Chekhov's advice on description - picking a few choice details and letting them do the work, rather than a paragraph of purple prose. Another piece of advice had to do with creating emotion.
"When you describe the miserable and unfortunate," Chekhov writes, "and want to make the reader feel pity, try to be somewhat colder — that seems to give a kind of background to another's grief, against which it stands out more clearly. Whereas in your story the characters cry and you sigh. Yes, be more cold.... The more objective you are, the stronger will be the impression you make."
When we read the phrase "miserable and unfortunate," we may think he's referring only to poor people, and maybe he was, but his advice works for any emotion.
The thing is, as writers our job is not to label an emotion, but to evoke it in the reader. Very young, and very inexperienced writers sometimes try to get an emotional response with double and triple exclamation and question marks. They figure if they shout at the reader, it'll spark at response. If that sort of thing worked, I'd do it all the time, wouldn't you??? We quickly learn to drop corny punctuation emphasis, but letting go of corny verbal emphasis comes a lot harder. And just as bad as gushing over your victim is what John Gardner calls frigidity treating the suffering of your character as if it were a joke. Maybe this comes from a conscious over-balance in the direction of Chekhov's coldness; frigidity after all is just extreme coldness.
Let's look at three examples of the same scene. The first one is not cold enough.
Dr. Gogol put the X-Ray on the screen and showed Jim the horrible black smear in his lung, the smear that was his death sentence. Jim looked at his trembling hands. "I can't believe it, I just can't believe it." It was so wrong, so unjust. How could God take away someone's life who was so young and had so much to live for? The universe was so unfair.
Now one that's too frigid.
Dr. Gogol put the X-Ray on the screen and showed Jim the place where a tumor was even then eating up his lung like a fat boy eating potato chips. Jim burst into tears, crying like a baby with a full diaper.
The full diaper line I stole directly from Gardner's example. You can't do better than Gardner. Now one where I'm going to strive for the coldness Chekhov recommends.
Dr. Gogol put the X-Ray on the screen, showing the black mark in Jim's lung. He was patient and clear explaining words like malign and metastasize, etiology and inoperable. It was important that Jim understand because sometimes these things were hard to absorb. It would have been better if Jim's wife had been there, to listen and to drive him home afterwards, but she had recently left him.
Okay, I loaded the deck a little bit, throwing in the line about the wife in the last example, but you get the idea. And frankly, the last example still needs re-writing to make it work. The reason writers fall back onto gushing or frigidity is because it's so damn hard doing it Chekhov's way. A puppy dying is sad, but the sentence "The puppy died" isn't. The writer has to build enough objective detail and narrative into the puppy's death to make us care about an animal we know full well isn't real in the first place. And that takes effort and imagination. It takes work. It would be so much easier if we could just use a few more exclamation marks.
The puppy died!!!
The puppy died!!!!!
The puppy died!!??!
Stupid puppy.
"When you describe the miserable and unfortunate," Chekhov writes, "and want to make the reader feel pity, try to be somewhat colder — that seems to give a kind of background to another's grief, against which it stands out more clearly. Whereas in your story the characters cry and you sigh. Yes, be more cold.... The more objective you are, the stronger will be the impression you make."
When we read the phrase "miserable and unfortunate," we may think he's referring only to poor people, and maybe he was, but his advice works for any emotion.
The thing is, as writers our job is not to label an emotion, but to evoke it in the reader. Very young, and very inexperienced writers sometimes try to get an emotional response with double and triple exclamation and question marks. They figure if they shout at the reader, it'll spark at response. If that sort of thing worked, I'd do it all the time, wouldn't you??? We quickly learn to drop corny punctuation emphasis, but letting go of corny verbal emphasis comes a lot harder. And just as bad as gushing over your victim is what John Gardner calls frigidity treating the suffering of your character as if it were a joke. Maybe this comes from a conscious over-balance in the direction of Chekhov's coldness; frigidity after all is just extreme coldness.
Let's look at three examples of the same scene. The first one is not cold enough.
Dr. Gogol put the X-Ray on the screen and showed Jim the horrible black smear in his lung, the smear that was his death sentence. Jim looked at his trembling hands. "I can't believe it, I just can't believe it." It was so wrong, so unjust. How could God take away someone's life who was so young and had so much to live for? The universe was so unfair.
Now one that's too frigid.
Dr. Gogol put the X-Ray on the screen and showed Jim the place where a tumor was even then eating up his lung like a fat boy eating potato chips. Jim burst into tears, crying like a baby with a full diaper.
The full diaper line I stole directly from Gardner's example. You can't do better than Gardner. Now one where I'm going to strive for the coldness Chekhov recommends.
Dr. Gogol put the X-Ray on the screen, showing the black mark in Jim's lung. He was patient and clear explaining words like malign and metastasize, etiology and inoperable. It was important that Jim understand because sometimes these things were hard to absorb. It would have been better if Jim's wife had been there, to listen and to drive him home afterwards, but she had recently left him.
Okay, I loaded the deck a little bit, throwing in the line about the wife in the last example, but you get the idea. And frankly, the last example still needs re-writing to make it work. The reason writers fall back onto gushing or frigidity is because it's so damn hard doing it Chekhov's way. A puppy dying is sad, but the sentence "The puppy died" isn't. The writer has to build enough objective detail and narrative into the puppy's death to make us care about an animal we know full well isn't real in the first place. And that takes effort and imagination. It takes work. It would be so much easier if we could just use a few more exclamation marks.
The puppy died!!!
The puppy died!!!!!
The puppy died!!??!
Stupid puppy.
March 2, 2011
Dreaming About Mur
For some idle reason I decided last night to remember my dream when I woke up this morning. I have dreams every night, but unless I make a small effort of will, I usually forget.
Last night I dreamed about Mur, which is what we called my mother. Mur died - can it be as long as that - nine years ago. I dream about her very often, but never really about her. She's never really the focal point of the dream, she's just in it.
In last night's dream, I was walking beside Mur down a slightly uneven cobbled path toward a professional greenhouse where we were going to buy some plants. The path was strewn with yellow straw, and the greenhouse was out of sight around the bend. We had just eaten some baked chicken, and were discussing where we would plant our purchases. I didn't actually see Mur's face, because naturally I wasn't looking at her, instead concentrating on watching my step along the path.
My sister Helen is very gifted at dream interpretation, but it doesn't take her talent for me to see how each of these elements was suggested to my unconcious. The path Mur and I were walking exactly resembles the path to the henhouse in my backyard. It winds around a hill planted with knock out roses and lantana, which is Nancy's and my pride and joy when it comes to bloom in the Spring. Just recently I started some vegetable seeds in the basement, so my mind is much occupied by all things horticultural. As far as the baked chicken, Nancy had made bar-be-que ribs last night, and I was still pleasantly full. As for Mur's being there, well, what can I say? The dream was pure wish fulfillment.
To walk outside, on the very cusp of Spring, before our beautiful yard bursts into color, thinking of where I will put all my tomato and okra plants, and having my own beloved Mur there, unseen, beside me.
Last night I dreamed about Mur, which is what we called my mother. Mur died - can it be as long as that - nine years ago. I dream about her very often, but never really about her. She's never really the focal point of the dream, she's just in it.
In last night's dream, I was walking beside Mur down a slightly uneven cobbled path toward a professional greenhouse where we were going to buy some plants. The path was strewn with yellow straw, and the greenhouse was out of sight around the bend. We had just eaten some baked chicken, and were discussing where we would plant our purchases. I didn't actually see Mur's face, because naturally I wasn't looking at her, instead concentrating on watching my step along the path.
My sister Helen is very gifted at dream interpretation, but it doesn't take her talent for me to see how each of these elements was suggested to my unconcious. The path Mur and I were walking exactly resembles the path to the henhouse in my backyard. It winds around a hill planted with knock out roses and lantana, which is Nancy's and my pride and joy when it comes to bloom in the Spring. Just recently I started some vegetable seeds in the basement, so my mind is much occupied by all things horticultural. As far as the baked chicken, Nancy had made bar-be-que ribs last night, and I was still pleasantly full. As for Mur's being there, well, what can I say? The dream was pure wish fulfillment.
To walk outside, on the very cusp of Spring, before our beautiful yard bursts into color, thinking of where I will put all my tomato and okra plants, and having my own beloved Mur there, unseen, beside me.
February 28, 2011
If I Had a Hammer... Uh, On Second Thought, Bad Idea
I had to replace the door frame on our utility room. In the course of removing the old frame, I managed to destroy not one, but two hammers yanking out stubborn nails. The wooden one isn't so surprising I guess, but the metal one really stunned me. I didn't even know that was possible.
