Joseph Grammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "value"
Making Yourself Indispensable
A lot of my problems with fiction and fiction writing come from the idea that stories are inessential. As soon as I write this sentence I can see that's not true -- stories are the shapes we use to govern our lives, to explain ourselves and our histories and our families and our countries -- but a lot of people don't recognize that. And because they don't recognize that, they might not want to pay $15.95 for a sheaf of bound paper that tells a story.
But this is blaming the audience. It's very nice to think that the world's readership is ignorant or unappreciative of "art," but, as people from Isaac Bashevis Singer to David Foster Wallace have said, it might be because the available art is shitty. (I replaced their more eloquent words with the word "shitty.")
In short, my fear that most writing is inessential is true. I mean, I'm writing this on the Internet for Christ's sake. Do I need to convince anyone over the age of two how much bullshit drifts around here? So most writing sucks. Mine included, obviously -- maybe twenty to thirty humans truly care about what I say, and I haven't said much of anything yet. But what does it mean to make yourself "indispensable" in writing? To make sentences that are so good, at least some portion of the audience feels like they can't do without them? Does that even exist?
It did when I was little, and when I was a teenager. For me, the Redwall fantasy series was like the coolest and best thing that ever existed, and I would be horrified if someone didn't praise its numerous virtues and unquestionable perfection. I hung on every word and wrote 400-page fanfictions about Brian Jacques' weird, peppy animal stories. (I realize I was not a normal child.) Later, as I got older I gravitated to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, which is about to become probably like six-hundred movies (the final book of course being split into 694 separate films to maximize revenue). Then in college, I literally tried to find the meaning of life inside Gravity's Rainbow. I failed, obviously, but the mere fact that I tried is friggin' insane. Granted, I was whacked out on various hallucinogens and twenty years old, but still. I cared a lot about it, is the point. So those words had meaning to me. And where did that go?
When I really think about it, I've actually found quite a few "indispensable" books. When I was traveling for work and just beginning my road to relative sanity, Infinite Jest gave me a roadmap for support groups and mental health. When I felt like all literature was meaningless and dead, I found Azar Nafisi's Republic of Imagination, which single-handedly restored my faith in the value of stories. And there was even a book I never read, but which my now-fiancee did, and whose title I don't even know (I think it's Overcoming Perfectionism), but which changed my whole brain's perspective on controlling life and making it "perfect." So those words are indispensable.
There's Why People Die By Suicide by Thomas Joiner. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin. The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño. Under the Net by Iris Murdoch. Etc. These books became part of me, changed my ideas about the world and about storytelling, and made me grow as a person. That's why they're necessary for me, and it took writing this right now to understand that. These are indispensable books because they changed me. They didn't change everyone who read them, I'm sure, and probably not even most. But for whatever reason, these books clicked with me, and I'm grateful for that.
Now, how do I do that in reverse? I.e., provide someone else the same experience Redwall gave me as a kid? How do I change someone so they feel my brittle little sentences are indispensable? (Sorry for using that word so much.)
Well, be honest, for one. We've all heard someone say, "Fiction is lies that tell truth," so I mean that deeper, soul-level honesty, not where Tribeca is in relation to Canal Street (hint: it's below). But Iris Murdoch said authenticity is different from truth, and I agree with that. Meaning, I can't just spew my inner feelings onto the page and pray you like it. I have to search for some larger "truth," something real in the world beyond my own skull, which tends to involve other people. We can say, then, that indispensable fiction honestly portrays relationships, whether between a married couple or a physicist and a barkeep or sixteen dogs named Henry or a woman and the wilds of Afghanistan. It looks at the boundaries between at least one Self and at least one Other ... even that weird David Markson book where a woman is left completely alone in the world (which I haven't even read, so I don't know if it's indispensable).
Takeaway 1: write honestly about relationships among people, places, and things, and search for Truth while knowing you may never reach it ... this means you need to involve more than one character
What else? Well, Azar Nafisi says every great book hinges on a decision, a choice, and I agree. So have characters make, uh, choices. Check out the aforementioned The Republic of Imagination if you want more info, but basically, she believes the "core" of a book revolves around a central choice. This decision might relate to your book's central theme, or it might not -- I don't really know yet. But my guess is that the central choice literally expresses your main thesis or theme, which leads me to my next point ...
Takeaway 2: let your characters make choices, and identify which choice is the central one of your book. (e.g., in Huck Finn, it's Huck ripping up his letter to his aunt and refusing to turn in Jim.)
Have opinions on things. I learned this surprisingly only recently, like yesterday, but for a long time I felt I needed to take a journalistic or naturalistic approach to writing, because I was so afraid of "pushing" the reader towards a certain idea or conclusion. But fuck that. Have a stance on something, and trust that your reader is intelligent enough to agree with or refute your argument. If you think America should close down all of its overseas military bases because it's essentially a capitalist colonial power, then say so. People might throw verbal or physical rocks at you, but that's the risk you always take when you open your mouth.
Note: this is a relative of the maxim to "not be boring" in fiction, and in all writing. So find a viewpoint. But also I want to say don't be preachy, because that's just irritating. We have what we in the business like to call a spectrum: total cowardly silence on one end, healthy expression of belief in the middle, and raging fundamentalist dick on the other end. Be in the middle. (That's my opinion as an avowed moderate.)
Takeaway 3: have actual opinions on things (and share them)
I realize these rules are not super-global, since in a nonfiction psychology book you might not have "characters," but oh well.
Let's also be clear that I'm not pretending to be a wise sage who is vouchsafing knowledge to a less informed populace. I wrote this as much for me as anyone else out here on the existential planes of the Internet. But still, I hope it helps.
Peace!
But this is blaming the audience. It's very nice to think that the world's readership is ignorant or unappreciative of "art," but, as people from Isaac Bashevis Singer to David Foster Wallace have said, it might be because the available art is shitty. (I replaced their more eloquent words with the word "shitty.")
In short, my fear that most writing is inessential is true. I mean, I'm writing this on the Internet for Christ's sake. Do I need to convince anyone over the age of two how much bullshit drifts around here? So most writing sucks. Mine included, obviously -- maybe twenty to thirty humans truly care about what I say, and I haven't said much of anything yet. But what does it mean to make yourself "indispensable" in writing? To make sentences that are so good, at least some portion of the audience feels like they can't do without them? Does that even exist?
It did when I was little, and when I was a teenager. For me, the Redwall fantasy series was like the coolest and best thing that ever existed, and I would be horrified if someone didn't praise its numerous virtues and unquestionable perfection. I hung on every word and wrote 400-page fanfictions about Brian Jacques' weird, peppy animal stories. (I realize I was not a normal child.) Later, as I got older I gravitated to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, which is about to become probably like six-hundred movies (the final book of course being split into 694 separate films to maximize revenue). Then in college, I literally tried to find the meaning of life inside Gravity's Rainbow. I failed, obviously, but the mere fact that I tried is friggin' insane. Granted, I was whacked out on various hallucinogens and twenty years old, but still. I cared a lot about it, is the point. So those words had meaning to me. And where did that go?
When I really think about it, I've actually found quite a few "indispensable" books. When I was traveling for work and just beginning my road to relative sanity, Infinite Jest gave me a roadmap for support groups and mental health. When I felt like all literature was meaningless and dead, I found Azar Nafisi's Republic of Imagination, which single-handedly restored my faith in the value of stories. And there was even a book I never read, but which my now-fiancee did, and whose title I don't even know (I think it's Overcoming Perfectionism), but which changed my whole brain's perspective on controlling life and making it "perfect." So those words are indispensable.
There's Why People Die By Suicide by Thomas Joiner. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin. The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño. Under the Net by Iris Murdoch. Etc. These books became part of me, changed my ideas about the world and about storytelling, and made me grow as a person. That's why they're necessary for me, and it took writing this right now to understand that. These are indispensable books because they changed me. They didn't change everyone who read them, I'm sure, and probably not even most. But for whatever reason, these books clicked with me, and I'm grateful for that.
Now, how do I do that in reverse? I.e., provide someone else the same experience Redwall gave me as a kid? How do I change someone so they feel my brittle little sentences are indispensable? (Sorry for using that word so much.)
Well, be honest, for one. We've all heard someone say, "Fiction is lies that tell truth," so I mean that deeper, soul-level honesty, not where Tribeca is in relation to Canal Street (hint: it's below). But Iris Murdoch said authenticity is different from truth, and I agree with that. Meaning, I can't just spew my inner feelings onto the page and pray you like it. I have to search for some larger "truth," something real in the world beyond my own skull, which tends to involve other people. We can say, then, that indispensable fiction honestly portrays relationships, whether between a married couple or a physicist and a barkeep or sixteen dogs named Henry or a woman and the wilds of Afghanistan. It looks at the boundaries between at least one Self and at least one Other ... even that weird David Markson book where a woman is left completely alone in the world (which I haven't even read, so I don't know if it's indispensable).
Takeaway 1: write honestly about relationships among people, places, and things, and search for Truth while knowing you may never reach it ... this means you need to involve more than one character
What else? Well, Azar Nafisi says every great book hinges on a decision, a choice, and I agree. So have characters make, uh, choices. Check out the aforementioned The Republic of Imagination if you want more info, but basically, she believes the "core" of a book revolves around a central choice. This decision might relate to your book's central theme, or it might not -- I don't really know yet. But my guess is that the central choice literally expresses your main thesis or theme, which leads me to my next point ...
Takeaway 2: let your characters make choices, and identify which choice is the central one of your book. (e.g., in Huck Finn, it's Huck ripping up his letter to his aunt and refusing to turn in Jim.)
Have opinions on things. I learned this surprisingly only recently, like yesterday, but for a long time I felt I needed to take a journalistic or naturalistic approach to writing, because I was so afraid of "pushing" the reader towards a certain idea or conclusion. But fuck that. Have a stance on something, and trust that your reader is intelligent enough to agree with or refute your argument. If you think America should close down all of its overseas military bases because it's essentially a capitalist colonial power, then say so. People might throw verbal or physical rocks at you, but that's the risk you always take when you open your mouth.
Note: this is a relative of the maxim to "not be boring" in fiction, and in all writing. So find a viewpoint. But also I want to say don't be preachy, because that's just irritating. We have what we in the business like to call a spectrum: total cowardly silence on one end, healthy expression of belief in the middle, and raging fundamentalist dick on the other end. Be in the middle. (That's my opinion as an avowed moderate.)
Takeaway 3: have actual opinions on things (and share them)
I realize these rules are not super-global, since in a nonfiction psychology book you might not have "characters," but oh well.
Let's also be clear that I'm not pretending to be a wise sage who is vouchsafing knowledge to a less informed populace. I wrote this as much for me as anyone else out here on the existential planes of the Internet. But still, I hope it helps.
Peace!
