Stuffing Our Eyeballs

In the world of writing, "hunkering down" is a term taken from a section of essays in The Writing Life published by The Washington Post about "writers on how they think and work." "Hunkering down," can mean getting serious about your craft, but it can turn writers into becoming isolationists, solo adventurers,lonely wanderers in the phantasmagorical world of language. A Scrooge-like, Grinch-y recluse then emerges from an hazy veil of flickering images that casts shadows on a cave wall created by some magic lantern.  "Hunkering down" tends to beget some idea that the dedicated writer's only world consists of "spiritual and artistically inspirational" landscapes shaped by a profundity of words, sentences, and paragraphs.

However, the craft of writing is initiated by the opposite experience. It comes from watchful observations of the outside world, interactions with and between people, the exploration of places and times that fall outside the boundaries of the familiar, and attentive awareness to surrounding conversations. Wendy Wasserstein, acclaimed playwright and author writes, "the joy of being on the road is having dinner alone" (The Writing Life, "Holiday at The Keyboard Inn"). Dinner is a time to become a student of other people's lives rather than live in the solitary world of the mind. It is a time to immerse oneself and to "listen carefully . . . to judge harshly the surrounding couples," and to speculate about their private lives.

There tends to be a notion that the "serious" writer is some irascible loner, such as William Faulkner or, more recently, Cormac McCarthy, although the latter is known more for his hermit-like persona rather than his Faulkneresque irascibility. "Hunkering down" conjures an image of the lonely writer hunched over a slaving hot keyboard. However, to be an authentic writer, one must engage in the outside world, and make time to put aside the remote, virtual world that exists only on the printed page. Otherwise, as Patricia Cornell writes in her essay, which is also included in The Writing Life, "If I stop seeing, hearing, touching,

there will be no story. I will be a writer with nothing to say—a violin with no music to play," which inadvertently rhymes and might be used as a kind of mantra to accompany a writer on the journey to a final destination. Or, as David McCullough, author of the critically acclaimed book-turned-mini-series John Adams, quotes, "What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in everything."

"Hunkering down" means, then, not only getting serious about the so-called writing life, but also never forgetting that real life is rich with meanings to write about. We must “stuff our eyeballs,” as Ray Bradbury says, with metaphors and symbols of the actualities of the surrounding landscape—living metaphors that only then “bid [writers] jump to run and trap them” with words that subsequently “stuff” the page with “compacted truths of a life” that echoes with the refrain, “Live forever!”

All quotes are taken from The Writing Life, edited by Marie Arana, 2003)

The Art of Shorthand

I conducted my interview today with the author of my choice, a woman who is a published writer and an academic at a local university. As many writers can be, she was somewhat difficult to get talking, although a bit surprising since she is a professor too. There was also a big hiccup because I couldn't get a digital recorder as I had thought I was going to be able to do in order to tape our conversation. Our conversation took about an hour and a half, with me scribbling furiously since I couldn't record the interview. Sure wish I knew shorthand. Que será será.

1. When did you start to write, seriously?

2. How would you characterize yourself as a writer? Your style,
your tone, specifically?

3. Through reading your books, I got the feeling that you got away
from writing and academia for a long time while you worked on
the railroad, although I'm sure that it still shaped who you were
a working class person—your world view, etc. How did you get
back into writing again after having been distanced from it in
many ways during your years on the rails?

4. You mention reading poetry as a sort of guiding force,
particularly Wallace Stevens. What other writers or writing
shaped you as a person and as a writer?

5. Wallace Stevens writes, "The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real. When it adheres to the unreal . . . its first effect may be extraordinary, that effect is the maximum effect that it will ever have." Does he express here what ultimately drives you to write non-fiction.

6. How did you first find an agent or a publisher? How difficult was
that, and what were some of the responses that you first got
when you submitted your work?

7. How do you balance the truths in your autobiographical writing
and your relationships with people whom you depict? What kind
of consideration do you take into account when writing about
some very personal details involving the people in your life?

8. What has been their reaction?

9. How do you want others to think of your writing? And how do
you think other might describe your writing? Does that please
you?

10. Your writing exudes a certain kind of critique of modern
American culture. What issues in American society do your feel
your work bring attention to?

11. What kind of response do you want to elicit through your
writing? From others, and from yourself, perhaps, too?

12. Autobiographical or memoir writing in many respects can
be more difficult because what you may find interesting and
intriguing, may sound like whining selfindulgence to others.
How do you decide what life events or epiphanies you can build
some kind of "arc" around, and which ones may be less
attractive to readers—despite the fact that they be significant to
you?

13. You writing, by the nature of its genre is very personal.
How does "developing an authorial voice" in your writing differ
from your own personal voice. Or does it?

14. In your life you've made decisions that opened you up to
a larger community of people and experiences. What has that
done for you as a person and a writer?

15. Plot, characterization, setting, voice, tone: all these things
are used to describe writing and literature in general—but which
of these qualities do you feel is most imperative in bringing
writing to life?

16. You say in your book that you've always felt like you've
violated the "membership rules" of the communities around you.
You say, "not money, status, or happiness" is what you seek.How has writing helped your in your quest to find some
kind of niche?

17. You write a good bit about your partying, drug use,
alcohol use, and sexual preferences and experiences: Do you
feel that these unorthodox experiences and "altered states" of
mind contributed to your ability to "see beyond" the norm, as so
many authors have implied it does?

18. Self-abuse seems to be a thread that runs through some
of your writing, from wearing the hat with the silver wings that
calls attention to you in the rail yards and to the way you manage
your love life and substance abuse. What surprised you most
about yourself as your wrote about the search to find a sense
of place? or to be "a part of it all" (7) as you say in your
memoir?

19. How has your sobriety changed the way you approach
writing? Or has it?

20. On page 111 in the memoir, you write that you wanted to
become your own story, to find out who was the hero of your
own life. What was it that drove you to set your "hero's journey"
into motion? Is this part of that inner drive that some people are
born with—a need to search for and express some force of life?

21. When you look back on "your story," how did you
approach writing about it? What is your working method or
routine like? Describe it.

22. Can you read this passage on page 166? That is
beautiful, poetic language—is that kind of writing what became
your sober "high," because it's really heady, gorgeous prose.

23. Another theme that shows up in your writing is this idea of
"pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" (individualism) vs. the
uniting power of community. You write some in Railroad Noir
about the kind of entitlement and materialism that seem to
possess American youth today. How has that materialist
sentiment in society —and the dependence on social
technology to express oneself —changed the way that people
read and write today? Good thing or bad thing?

24. You write, back in your academic days that a literate
society was assumed, and after a few years as a writing teacher you "figured
out" how to these, shall I say, subliterate youth. How DO
you teach them?

25. On page 245, the last page of your memoir, Ellen, the
boatman says to you, "when you've come to the end of the trail, it
means you've lost it somewhere" . . . still feel this way? what
does that mean to you now?

Shakespeare— Jungle Spud or Killer Bee?

I seem to operate on only two modes: busy, buzzy bee or hairy, stinky sloth. I know; neither of those animals lead much of an appealing lifestyle.

In case you are wondering, a sloth is a very bizarre-looking creature that really isn't directly related to any other mammal. All of their closest connected relatives died out during the last Ice Age. Now they live only in the rain forests of South America, sleep 15—18 hours a day, and expend energy only when it becomes absolutely necessary. They mostly just hang their atrociously smelly and hairy bodies from the forest branches; sometimes even after they die, they can have been found still just hanging from a tree. In other words, they are lazy couch potatoes, although based on their habitat, perhaps it's more accurate to call them something like jungle spuds. (See sloth picture below: honestly, can you imagine trying to get anything done with fingernails like that?)

When I am in school taking a full load of classes, I am always reading, researching, and writing, and I stay in a constantly stimulated state. My brain is in overdrive, making connections, looking for answers, budgeting time for deadlines on projects and papers, while simultaneously working out what kind of frozen or boxed meal I can throw together for my neglected kids while I am working. I am as focused on my target as a killer bee.

However, when I am not in school, or I'm not taking a full schedule of classes, I turn into a sloth—a mangy, slovenly, lazy jungle spud. I take a shower every three days or so, don't shave my legs or armpits, and just kind of "hang." This worries me about my ability to be self-disciplined enough to be a productive writer. Most profiles I've read of successful authors indicate that the prosperous writer does not wait until some momentous synaptic-rattling jolt of inspiration strikes from the sky. Quite the contrary seems to be the case. The process of writing is often described as an ritualistic practice of tedious trial and error, false starts, and humiliating frustration. It got me thinking about whether Shakespeare had a compulsary writing routine. Did Homer, Dante, or Proust sequester themselves in some kind of regimented writing routine? Did Sun Tzu cordon off special time in his ancient Chinese Day Runner so he could scribble a few scrolls of rice paper on The Art of War? I suppose it's possible that Sumerian scribes got up early each morning, had a cup of joe, and then carved out special time to sit in front of the ol' clay tablet until the sundial moved a certain number of degrees, just to make sure they could grind out at least a few lines of cuneiform each day.

There is no question that man's ability to convey concepts and ideas to each other through complex languages preserved in pictures, symbols, and eventually, scripted language greatly contributed to the unique evolutionary development of human beings. It is what drastically differentiates us from lower animal orders. Archeologists and anthropologists have uncovered an amazing amount of information that was produced by ancient peoples, and these scholars believe that the earliest forms of communication, cave paintings, were not just decoration. They were representative of the transfer of important information and part of a ritualistic practice of some kind. So, here we are, back at ritualistic writing practices again.

I suppose writing does take take disciplined practice; hell, it is work. It had to have been quite a challenge for the ancients to develop alphabetical systems and methods of putting all those ideas down in perpetuity. When one looks at the work that it took to develop writing from scratch, today's authors have it easy—at least they don't need to undertake the monumental task of developing a way to capture language in order to share documented information with other humans. Most contemporary writers simply tap away on the ready-made symbols that decorate those little plastic keys on the computer.

Thinking about all this makes me realize how very little scholars actually know about the individuals who first revolutionized the way humans communicate or what kind of "writing methods" they used. Even within the Early Modern era this remains true. For example, although historians know a good deal about Shakespeare, there are still a lot of questions left unanswered about how and where he went about forming, drafting, and penning the prolific number of works that he produced. But I'll bet one thing's for sure: Shakespeare was no jungle spud.

I guess this means if I want to "bee" a successful writer, I'm going to have to shower, shave, and, of course, write on a routine basis.

"The Lady and the Leg"

In "Reading Like A Writer," Francine Prose devotes an entire chapter to extolling the virtues of Anton Chekov's "profound and beautiful . . . involving" stories that made bearable her wretched bus commute between work and home. Clearly the woman savored the time she spent nibbling greasy sugar cookies and sipping soda whilst reading Chekov's work, but I agree with the "disgruntled student" who also got sick of Fran's mooning over this Russian—there are plenty of other authors who can inspire budding writers just as well as Chekov. I realize that I've made it clear that Prose's prose doesn't click with me, so if Chekhov is one of her favorite writers, then it is doubtful he will do much for me. However, seeing as though I have, I don't think, ever read any Chekhov, I will not prejudge his writing as a way to project my rejection of Fran on to Chekhov. Yet even his compatriot, Vladmir Nabokov (Lolita), is alleged to have called Chekov's writing a "medley of dreadful prosaisms, ready-made epithets, [and] repetitions" (James Woods essay, What Chekhov Meant By Life).

This discrepancy in "taste" (ironically, I also care neither for sugar cookies nor sodas) between Fran and me brings up another important issue that is quite apparent in relief against our increasingly multicultural society. I refer to the idea that the master canon of Western literature seems to be the standard by which all writers must ascribe. The "profundity" of Chekhov's writing as described by Fran seems to emanate from his astute social observations about the intricate ways people connect with one another; however, the methods and modes through which humans interrelate can vary enormously between cultures. Social interactions differ to such a noticeable extent that it is not at all an exaggeration to say that the "norm" in one culture may be completely inconceivable in another. Thus, I submit, the level of importance of one author in a particular culture can also be rendered completely negligible in another. Fran's take on authorial imitation is not revolutionary or original; it is a technique that can be a valuable as a writing tool, but only as long as the aspiring scribe is imitating a writer whose work he or she admires.

I could go on nitpicking at Fran, but in the interests of appearing fair and open-minded, I will give props to her chapter entitled "Details." In that chapter she recounts a story that a one-legged lady tells about how she lost her leg. For the first time in Reading Like A Writer, Prose offers up something that holds my interest. I think the reason is because Frannie seems to finally use her own authentic observations and interactions with others as an example of good storytelling and characterization. The story of the lady and the leg is humorous and horrifying at once, and the details in this one paragraph tale leave a far greater impression on me than the rest of her entire book.

So, Fran adores Chekhov's "The Lady and the Dog." Fine. She can choose to use him as a model for her own work. I'll partake of the "The Lady and the Leg."

Big Think Interview With Anne Lamott

Big Think Interview With Anne Lamott | Anne Lamott | Big Think
Please see my August 31st post for more about Anne Lamott

Professional Writing 2: One Bird at a Time

At the risk of cutting my nose off to spite my face, as the old saying goes, I have to say I've felt uninspired to write a blog entry about anything in Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer, which is required reading in my Professional Writing seminar. Frannie may be a brilliant writer herself (I've never read anything of hers other than this book), but she ain't doing a great job of inspiring me or giving me much insight about writing. Her book is replete with examples from great literature about how to write character, dialogue, voice, etc., but her "mockingbird" just doesn't sing for me. I think the point of her book is that if we take cues from reading the "masters," our own writing will benefit. I would just like to suggest that it doesn't take an entire book to point that out. But maybe I'm just being cynical and difficult.

That said, I believe what "inspires" one person may do nothing for someone else, and this must be what is going in my relationship with Francine. I personally prefer Anne Lamott's book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Not only is it full of good anecdotes about the "writing life," but it also is a great read: humorous, humble, and honest. I like her ideas about starting "small" and how to turn writing frustrations into writing epiphanies. The metaphor captured in the title of her book is a reference to the fact that writing is a process that, to extend the metaphor even further, can really leave one's feathers in a ruffle. She tells one anecdote from her childhood about her 10-year-old brother who'd had a month to write a report on birds. On the day before it was due, he was panicked because he had not written a single word and writing the report seemed like an impossible task. Lamott writes, "my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.' " That is a small example of how Lamott does such an incredible job of making what she has to say about writing feel as though she is talking to each of her readers on a personal level, as though she is sitting there next me saying, "Bird by bird, Christi. Just take it bird by bird." That sentiment is also a fine way to approach life as well, I think.

I very highly encourage checking out this interview with Lamott at this link below. You'll get a sense of her self-deprecating humor, struggles, and insight into what it means to be a writer. Click here to link http://bigthink.com/ideas/19807 to the interview with Lamott, or see my September 2 entry for embedded video.

Keeping a Roof Over One's Head

I remain hopeful about the future for writers in the 21st-century marketplace. While it is true that circulation for magazines, newspapers, and other traditionally printed publications are on the decline, new opportunities for writers in the electronic arena are growing. Web-based written, streaming, and downloadable content is needed for an array of electronic media, and these prospects are not just limited to the internet. Writers will be needed to produce mobile and/or wireless applications, video games, and marketing copy for increasingly e-savvy consumers. In addition, it is very likely that as future computerized and digitized technologies evolve, developers will need writers to produce technical and creative content for these new and innovative avenues of media distribution. However, edgey, sophisticated multimedia delivery paradigms will also force a demand for writers with multiple skills. Writers will need to have not only a concise, engaging command of language, but also an understanding of various technical design tools as well.

The Bureau of Labor Statistic (BLS.gov) seems to confirm that a shift in writers' and editors' roles is taking place in the current job market. As is the case with most industries in the current "Great Recession," news, entertainment, and technology firms have increasingly demanded a higher rate of employee productivity in the workplace. This means many employees take on more responsibility with less compensation than in years past. According to the New Hour's 2004 report on America's future job market, higher productivity expectations may also increase the number of jobs employers try to migrate to computerization. Unless a job requires genuine "face time" with other humans, the need for certain positions may become expendable. Luckily, most writers possess critical and analytical talents for communicating complex information that simply cannot be programmed into a computer-generated commodity. However, the fields of publishing and writing have always been rather competitive, and the BLS projects that competition will be particularly stiff in the coming years as "organizations move their publication focus from a print to an online presence and as the publishing industry continues to contract." The U.S. Labor Department suggests that "writers and editors who have adapted to the new media and are comfortable writing for and working with a variety of electronic and digital tools will have an advantage in finding new work."

The consumption of the e-book format is also on the rise, and the market more has become more user-friendly and affordable for writers who wish to self-publish their work. However, being published does not necessarily provide the assurance that a sole living can be made as a writer. The BLS reports that the average income for writers is between $36,000 and $60,000 a year, depending on the industry and organization for which the writer works. Yet, as an old journalism professor of mine used to tell all of his students, "you'll probably never get rich writing, but if you write well, you've got a better shot of at least keeping a roof over your head."

[artwork: "Tech Thoughts" blog at http://billmullins.wordpress.com]