Banging One's Head Against the Low Ceiling of Your Own Talent

Some days it’s easier to write than others.

About a week ago I woke up with the germ of an idea for a book I‘ve been working on. Nothing earthshaking, just an agreeable little plot twist that might have amused readers. By late that afternoon I’d come to realize either the idea initially had no legs, or it had lost its appeal in the hours between six in the morning and midnight. Or perhaps my mood changed, and what looked inviting early was simply dimmed.

This happens routinely. Writing is, for better or for worse, an emotional endeavor, one based on frustration and, often, undefinable blues. I know a few content writers, but their output so far has been limited. The ones with issues, with subcutaneous melancholy, with angst over yesterday and tomorrow, those writers full of fears and uncertainty about what the upcoming hours will bring, they seem to produce stuff by the reams. Not necessarily good stuff, mind you, just lots of stuff.

Georges Simenon once said that “writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness.”  If this is true (and I sometimes believe it is), then one must ask, why write? Normal people don’t have a need to tidy their thoughts so they can be wrestled upon a page and thrust, unwanted, upon others. Perhaps this is yet another addiction, albeit a marginally socially acceptable one.

Pondering such imponderables can rapidly escalate one’s discontent with the process. Is there anything as unglamorous as hunting and pecking at a keyboard all day in the hope something worthwhile will emerge?

Simon Brett, a bestselling writer, wrote in the quarterly Journal of the Society of Authors that, “When the writing’s going well, the author’s is the perfect life. When it’s going badly, there’s no one else to blame.” He believes that, “writers feed on themselves. It’s an emotional business. A new idea, a surge of energy that lasts a paragraph, a page, a chapter, can make you feel you’re producing the definitive work that is going to redefine the parameters of the novel as an art form. Yet within a sentence, when the right phrase won’t come, you can be in total despair and about to scrap the whole project.”

And then of course, writing is solitary work. There’s no feedback, no attaboy, no reason to doubt that only an overactive ego might claim that anything produced is worth reading. I know, for example, that in the last few years, I’ve stopped hounding most of my friends to read my stuff. This came after I realized the request was tantamount to asking they give their time to do something they might not enjoy. That’s how thoughts pattern themselves initially. Realistically, who knows, readers might enjoy my work, but this isn’t the concept to emerge first, if ever. (Which of course makes the blog an ideal vehicle. Bloggers don’t ask people to read them. They simply hurl their stuff against a virtual wall and rarely even know what sticks.)  

Additionally, writing is a day-at-a-time process that must begin anew each morning regardless of one’s outlook on life. Says Brett, “For most writers, any time spent away from the keyboard or pad of paper is basically cheating. You should be writing.”

But of course can’t write all the time. Brett quotes Michael Ratcliffe in a Times review of Graham Greene, “Writing itself, of course, is an ideal form of escape, unless you happen to be a writer, in which case there comes a time when you have to escape from writing, too.”
This is difficult for a lot of us. Our characters are more interesting than we are, their adventures more captivating, their dialogues wittier than anything we might have to say in ordinary conversation. Probably, they’re younger, more vital and better looking as well, and more attractive to the opposite sex. “Eventually,” writes Brett, “you’re going to have to get back to reality. Because, apart from sometimes being the most fun you can imagine, writing fiction is also the most exhausting activity you’re ever going to undertake.”

And another thing: There is no guarantee what was written with grand expectations today will be seen tomorrow in the same light. I can probably count on fingers and toes the pages written that, later, I still believe are as good as the day they were born. (This has other ramifications. Most writers see both the permanence and ephemerae or words, written and spoken. What I am told Tuesday may not hold Wednesday.)  
The trade is riddled with failure, and “authors who feel they’ve failed don’t have to look far for confirmation of that opinion,” says Brett. “Bestsellers lists are everywhere, bulging with the names of other writers. As if the living weren’t bad enough, you also have the genius of the dead to contend with. Cast your eye along your bookshelves. It doesn’t take long, looking at names like, Austen, Dumas, Tolstoy or Wodehouse, to feel your head banging against the low ceiling of your own talent.”
In spite of all this dire stuff, writing remains the art of hope. Most of us know one or two authors who’ve made it, who travel to the south of France yearly and get six-figure checks and the adulation of readers. We hope to transcend ourselves, to obtain with our creations what we can’t find personally. We look to be revealed while hiding in our tale.

I’m certain most writers would be willing to be left behind if only their works could forge ahead.

 

 

Too Many Books

So I’ve been sick the last few days. Nothing serious, but enough to get me to the doctor’s who tells me there’s something going around. I tell her that on top of the sniffling and sneezing and coughing and tearing eyes, my right elbow and forearm really have been hurting for the past few weeks. Tendonitis, she says, and asks, “What have you been doing lately?”

Writing, I say.

Ah. She says, that explains it.

It’s true. I’ve been spending between six and ten hours a day at the computer. In bed yesterday and debating on taking Theraflu or antihistamines, or both, I suddenly realized I was working on eight books at the same time. This is seriously taxing my ADD.

Eight, you ask.

Yes.

How did that happen?

I have no idea.

My crime novel Thirst is out, but I spend at least an hour a day hyping it on Goodreads, Amazon, Book Bubs and other websites designed to promote ebooks.

Dope is the sequel to Thirst. Colin Marsh investigates why so many addicts are suddenly overdosing. Bikers, politicians, dealers and hit men… I’ve just started writing it and I’m not totally sure where it’s going. I know I like the characters. They’ve got legs; I always enjoy it when characters get a life of their own. That happens with books.

Two novels just came back from the copy editors.

Lurid Tales, Desperate People will be going out to agents within a week or so. It deals with the repercussions of a woman’s half-million-dollar elective surgeries on her neighbors. What happens when mousy Marcia returns a transformed woman after a month in India’s best plastic surgery hospital? By the way, it’s funny. Really. I wrote it and sometimes I laugh aloud when I reread it…

Montparnasse will also be going to the agents soon. This is the story of a young American couple honeymooning in Paris in 1919, when the Montparnasse neighborhood was the epicenter of Western culture. Modigliani, Renoir, Cocteau, Brancusi, and opium addiction. And Landru, France’s first documented serial killer is lurking in the shadows.

L’Amérique  is the first book in a trilogy about a French family’s decision to move to America in the mid-1950s. That one is finished too and needs only a last read-over.

The First Few Years is the working title of the second book in the trilogy. I have about 200 pages written.

The Few and the Fortunate—IVS Volunteers from Asia to the Andes. This is a book I was commissioned to write about International Volunteer Services, the precursor to the Peace Corp. More than 100 former IVS volunteers contributed stories about their years in the field. Anyone interested in development issue should read this. It’s at the designers and should be out within a month or two.   

Lastly, I am going to do a revival of one of my earlier books, The IFO Report. I figure if Auntie Mame and Cabaret can be revived every few years, why not a book?

And of course there are a couple of ideas percolating. I try to stay away from those. 

Eight is enough.

And Still More on Writers

I know writers who write well. I also know writers whose works are, at least to me, barely readable. I know broke writers and wealthy writers, writers of novels, historical romances, science fiction and fantasy. I know a poet or two, and song writers and journalists, and flash writers whose stories are never more than a few lines at most.

Writing, I believe, is nothing more than a craft. We work with words rather than, say, wood. We learn the basic rules and apply them.

Grammar is important, as are sentence structure and clarity. We find ways not to overburden the prose and after a while we come to realize that very good writing often depends on what is not written or even alluded to. Good writing promises and delivers. Bad writing promises and does not.

Excellent writing, which is much rarer, has windows and doors that allow the reader to become part of the story being told. Excellent writing invites you into the house, serves tea and madeleines, and then, as you’re inspecting the art work on the walls, it delivers the knockout punch. You don’t see the punch coming, nor do you feel it. You simply and suddenly find yourself knocked flat on your butt, almost breathless, certainly stunned, and grateful for it.    

It’s only after you know most of the guiding principles of your craft that you can begin to take liberties, and you’ll do this at great risks.

I once had the pleasure of meeting Hunter Thompson, the creator and best purveyor of gonzo journalism. Thompson, despite his massive success, would say he never felt totally comfortable bending the rules of reporting. He did it anyway because he had to. The traditional media, he thought, was largely spineless, uninspired, and seldom really interested in reporting facts. Thompson believed the only way to write and to pass on the passion he felt was to put himself inexorably in the epicenter of his story. He would become part and parcel of the tale, grab its audience by the scruff of neck and drag the readers—sometime as they kicked and screamed—into his writing.

He appeared to be an easy read but wasn’t. What occasionally seemed like the ravings of a deranged man was actually wonderfully composed and powerful prose. He stirred a new generation of writers, none of whom to date have even come close to achieving his level of sagacity.

At the other end of the spectrum are good writers who have dumbed themselves down to please a greater readership. That’s an art as well, though perhaps a less satisfying one.

Me, I’m nowhere near the level where I can go off the beaten track and establish anything totally my own. I still ape writers better than I am, and I still struggle with some of the most basic rules.

That’s okay. I’ll get there or maybe not.

Progress, not perfection.   

Writers

And while we're talking about writers, I'll tell you that I know a lot of them--novelists; tech folks who put out those incredibly complex computer manuals; and others who write and edit the legislation of the land. There are a screenwriter or two, a playwright specializing in children's theater, a couple of poets. I know one splendid young woman whose books are so amazing and beautiful that she should be a household name but isn't. One good friend is the British author of historical romances that have sold in the millions.  There are Pulitzer Prize winners from the old days at The Washington Post, and a science fiction author who has won the top prizes in the genre. I even know one lady who writes dirty limericks, though the buyers' market for that is pretty slim. The most widely distributed—if not read—of them all, though, is probably the author of the safety warning found on every can of Duron paint manufactured and sold throughout the North American hemisphere.
Some write by the pound, others specialize in haiku-like brevity. Every writer I know follows some rite of creation. The woman whose fiction I so admire sits among orchids, wearing earplugs. A few must be hungry; one has to just have been fed. A novelist friend can only write in his bathrobe. It is old and needs replacing, but he is persuaded that his talents will vanish if the bathrobe disappears. When he washes it—he does so twice a year—he will stand by the washing machine until the cycles are done. He dries it outside because he wants the terrycloth to benefit from the sun's Vitamin D. My friend C does a set of calisthenics, running in place, followed by deep breathing and stretching exercises before hitting the keyboard. Interestingly enough, none of the writers I know smoke, though a lot drink and do other drugs.
All in all, writing is the height of self-centeredness. One of my books comes in at 389 pages, and contains 112,742 words. Another novel I recently finished is set in Paris just after World War I. It is 456 pages long after editing.
I look at such numbers and think of the conceit necessary to produce a book. I am amazed by the fact that I believe, really believe, readers might spend several hours over several days wandering through a world I invented and peopled. Who the hell do I think I am? A writer, I guess.

It's All Fiction

You read it here first, and it’s pithy enough to be remembered. Writing, by being interpretive, can’t be anything but an invention, not matter how well-researched or objective.

I came by this realization recently at a used book store in Philadelphia. More than ten thousand books, many with obsessive footnoting and references to other, earlier works. Now certainly, had I been willing to do some research, I could have found the referenced works and inspected their footnotes, which would have led me to more fanatical and neurotic explorations... ad nauseam. But every single word written by all the authors and their sources were their words, the ones they thought best described the situation. And no two writers will ever see the exact same thing and describe it in the same manner. What is a bright fall day for me is the beginning of a dismal winter for you. So it’s all fiction.

And think of this: What, if the research assumed to be correct is wrong? More fiction. So what we have is a basic fact: every biography, investigative or history book, every scientific tome and learned volume purporting to tell us anything at all, is basically a work of fiction. We cannot write, or paint or sculpt absolutes.

To me, this is magnificently entertaining because I like subjectivity. I am much more interested in how things are perceived than how they really are, and anyway, I have a pretty strong suspicion that no one has a clue as to what really is. We just like to think we do...

How amazing. Rene Magritte was right. It wasn’t a pipe at all, just one man’s idea of what a pipe is supposed to look like. That makes my day.

 

www.sagnier.com

NEWSFLASH!! I have a new website, www.sagnier.com, and to paraphrase a memorable Seinfeld quote, it’s real, and it’s spectacular.

 

The new site is important because it really does represent what I do and have done, where I come from, what my influences have been, and, hopefully, where I’m heading. It has all sorts of modern (to a Luddite like me) gizmos, such as a 45-second embedded video of me expounding on how I write; there are links to writers I admire, to my family--I am the least creative of a truly classically creative bunch--and to avocations outside of writing and reading. Music, for example, and bands I’ve played and recorded with. There are photos, quotes, excerpts from books I’ve done, and even a couple of laudatory comments about my écritures.

 

I should add here that a secondary yet important function of this website is to allay the terminal embarrassment I have suffered from my prior website, a thing I banged together about 15 years ago and have never, ever, updated. The old website has been banished to the Great Ether Out There, and hopefully will never be downloaded or seen again.

 

My friend and writing colleague Vicki VanArsdale put it together. Yes, that is her real name, without the space between the Van and Arsdale, and I suspect that at some point in the future, someone will want to buy her name and put it on a brand of cosmetics, or maybe a line of baked goods and brownies. Should you need help putting a site together, check hers out at www.vickivanarsdale.com. This is a shameless plug for a talented lady and I am not ill at ease making it. Vicki and I were in close email contact during the entire creative process. I provided as much data as possible, and we both dug around the net to find additional bits of info that would enliven the site. Plans are to make it a flowing thing, easily up-datable and as full of information as possible; in other words, it will be an ongoing work-in-progress.

 

I particularly enjoyed putting together the list of favored writers, and it struck me as I was drafting it that I’ll never be able to voice my thanks to such luminaries as John Updike, Vance Bourjaily, Honoré de Balzac or Earl Thompson. Thompson, in particular, was a major influence. I read his Garden of Sands, Tattoo and Devil to Pay trilogy at least six times. The story of Jack MacDeramid, a boy growing up in the Dustbowl and coming of age in New York, should be--but sadly is not--a classic. Thompson never garnered the fame of a Capote or Mailer, and his later life is shrouded in mystery. He was 47 when he died in Sausalito, and though he’s almost forgotten now and his books are out of print, they’re well worth finding.

 

I’m hoping the site will encourage some readers to look into the works of writers no longer in fashion. Few people, at least in the States, are familiar with Francois Villon, a poet of the Middle Ages who vanished mysteriously when he was 32. Or Guy de Maupassant, reputed to have invented the short story and still occasionally reviled for having the temerity to write La Maison Teyllier, the tale of a small-town brothel and its amiable workers and clients.  

 

The website put me in touch with my past. My late sister, Florence Aboulker, was a noted French novelist and feminist. My surviving sister, Isabelle, writes children’s operas that are produced all over the world; my late uncle was a friend of the composers Ravel and Poulenc, and possibly the best interpreter of their works. Researching the website allowed me to find them again, and for that I’m grateful.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Smarts

I've never considered myself particularly smart. I have a head full of largely useless information (what's a reluctant flyer? Know about the divine proportion? Who is Исаак Озимов?) but I've never had the conventional shrewdness that knows how to make money, produce worthwhile investments that work, or purchase properties that accrue in value. In fact, as I've stated in earlier blogs, my motto is "Buy high, sell low." I'm often good at starting projects but find it difficult to finish them; my initiatives have a pretty high burn-out rate. I have never mastered the piano, learned to ride a unicycle, climbed a real mountain or learned to speak Esperanto.

My ambitions have been relatively limited: I’ve always wanted to write. Then I wanted to get read, and achieve a small measure of fame. Now, I’d like to not worry overly about money, or health, both of which in my case are shaky.  So basically, I don't think I'm dumb, far from it. I’ve come to accept (and happily so) that what I have is an often unfocused curiosity, perhaps an inquisitiveness that is simply focused on the wrong thing. I write about stuff few people want to read about and have been told more than once that I don’t see the forest for the trees.

What I find interesting seldom is, to most people. Have you ever considered, for example, the speed at which we process remembered information and segue from one thought to another? This has fascinated me for as long as I can remember. For what it's worth, according to Johns Hopkins University, the speed of one thought broaching another is around 300 milliseconds, which is how long it took a volunteer to begin to understand a pictured object. Add to that another 250 to 450 milliseconds to fully comprehend what it was. Total speed of thought: between 550 and 750 milliseconds.

More interesting, even, is how our minds (or at least mine) begin by pondering the recipe for Grandma's pineapple upside down cake and, in mere flashes of time, go through a series of steps and thoughts without our volition to end up contemplating Stalin’s politics, and whether the Beatles' Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds lyrics were drafted when John was stoned or indeed did have something to do with Julian Lennon's favorite schoolmate.

How do we do this, and why? What possible reason can be found for this aimless leapfrogging of notions, one after the either, with no apparent rhyme or logic? Practitioners of kundalini yoga would tell you that thoughts freed of intellect represent the first step towards a liberation of the being. Buddhists might echo this in their own way with the concept of ‘mindfulness’ which, if I understand it correctly (no guarantees there) is a very brief state of awareness that exists just before conceptualization. In other words, we enter this state before we focus our mind on an issue or thing, before we objectify it and segregate it from the rest of existence.

This, I think, is good. It does not necessarily lead to productive inspirations, useful notions or wisdom of any type. In fact, it may do the exact opposite by creating a small, formless universe where our brain gets a chance to rest, to have fun, to flex its neuronal muscles. Or perhaps it's just a sign that I am suffering from a pleasant form of Attention Deficit Disorder.

There's a story told, possibly apocryphal, of Albert Einstein and a lesser known physicist talking at a cocktail party. In the middle of their conversation, the physicist whips out a small notebook and scribbles a few words, then turns to the already famous scientists and says, "You really should carry a notebook as I do, Professor. I use it to note down good ideas I may have during the day." Einstein looks at his colleague sadly, shakes his head. "It wouldn't work for me," he replies,  “in my entire life I've only had one or two good ideas."

So that's it. I'm like Einstein.

 

 

WTF, Part II

Looking back, what is particularly galling are the wrong decisions made when no other options seemed worthwhile.  I had met my first wife while working for a well-known newspaper that frowned on married couples working together. Her career was farther along than mine, so she stayed and I quit--another decision of doubtful wisdom. At the end, our marriage turned disastrous. I was broke, unemployed and moved out to live in a rented room; it made perfect sense to give up my equity in a DC townhouse I had jointly purchased and helped rebuild from the ground up. Back then the only concern of any importance was to get my freedom back, and a four-story home in a doubtful part of town seemed a small sacrifice. That same house is now worth more $2.5 million dollars and in a sought after location. I’m not sure who owns it anymore but once every other year or so, I drive by. I forget how many minor injuries I sustained while rehabbing the place, but I do know I almost took a finger off while making baseboards on a router.  A bit of my blood will be there forever.

The past fades away, details lose clarity and get paler as time stagger by. For several years I traveled to faraway places that were both exotic and impoverished. Colors remain: I remember waking up in Nepal to a sky so blue it hurt the eye, while in Mali the horizon was washed and pale. In Bangladesh the road from Dhaka to Chittagong was a mosaic broken by floods and droughts. In Thailand, a man knocked on my hotel door and presented me a book full of photos of available women, all of whom, he said, were his sisters. I demurred, which I am pretty sure was the right choice.

When I quit the traveling job--in hindsight, perhaps another poor decision--I had just published a novel and was sure I was on my way to literary glory. A friend of mine and I spent an afternoon going from bookstore to bookstore and sneaking my oeuvre into the shops windows. The book got favorable reviews and was optioned for film by a director who, two years earlier, had won an Oscar. I thought of buying a white suit like Tom Wolfe, but luckily didn’t.  The deal never materialized and a month later I saw a bookstore employee tearing the covers of a stack of my novels. When I asked him what he was doing, he said this was standard operating procedure for books that didn’t sell. The covers were sent back to the publishers--less postage than the entire book--for refunds, and this way the books could not be resold. What the f---?

In the past few months I have felt as if a lot of the wrong decisions have come back not to haunt but to snicker. The pace of life slows but the days go by a lot faster, and choices made decades ago echo brightly. I occasionally have the sense that I am getting both transparent and immaterial, as if I could stand in traffic and it would go through me. I’m not tempted to test this newfound notion, and I don’t know if it’s a byproduct of cancerous facts or cancerous thoughts. I do know that I am tired of the drama that surrounds the disease, and that I am tired of being tired.

In light of this general weariness, it’s been important in the past few weeks to keep at least some facets of life on the lighter side.  I am rereading Wodehouse; at one in the morning of a sleepless night, nothing can best Jeeves shimmering in and rescuing the hapless Bertie.  I’ve been trying to write humorous stuff as well since my proximity to McLean, Virginia, is rife with possibilities.  This little town near the Potomac River has one of the highest per capita income in the country. There are 18-year-olds driving Aston Martins here, and a man with a terribly bad wig prances along in a half-a-million dollar Ferrari.  Beemers are poor-people cars and, not that long ago, an Asian couple tried to build a replica of Versailles about two miles from my house.  They went bankrupt and the place is now deeply discounted and for sale for $15 million. The funny thing is, someone, undoubtedly, will buy it.

Right now, I’m worried about the cicadas. They’ve waited 17 years to make an appearance in my neighborhood and they’re late; they should have been here a couple of weeks ago. The last time they came I was still married, still working for the UN, and taking care of my aging father.  It seems like a moment ago. What happened?

WTF Part 1

Three or four times a day I stop moving, stand stock still and ask, “What happened?” It’s not a metaphorical question but a real expression of wonder. “What happened?” How did I end up living in the suburbs of Washington DC in a post-Korean War bungalow that originally sold for $22,000? How did I end up by myself in the United States of America after spending the first few years of my life quite contentedly in Paris, France?  How is it that none of the plans worked out as they were supposed to and that the immediate future, if not bleak, appears at best unpromising?

I’m not the only one asking questions. Many friends I’ve surveyed whose ages range from very early 40s to mid-60s seem to be struggling with this existential angst. The stuff that has happened in one brief lifetime is staggering, almost too much too handle for a lot of folks in my age range. I grew up without computers, with a single corded phone in the kitchen, with daily shopping for foodstuff. The apartment where I lived in Paris had no television or refrigerator. There was a small icebox that was replenished daily by a delivery from the iceman and there were times when we were hungry and ate soup made from yesterday’s bread.

When I first came to the US, my parents bought a house in nearby Maryland. There was no air conditioning; fans barely stirred the air in summer and in winter a central oil burning furnace tried to keep away the chill. Gasoline cost thirty-five cents a gallon and my first car was a 1953 Buick Roadmaster, a monster of an automobile with a giant visor over the windshield. The tiny refrigerator my mother was so proud of had two aluminum ice trays with levers to crack the ice and one of the bigger household sin was using the ice and not refilling the trays.

I’ve had the amazingly good fortune of living here. I’ve written books, had songs recorded, and played my music on stage. I’ve written for some of the nation’s best newspapers and magazines, interviewed a host of luminaries that have included Margaret Meade, Lou Reed and Jesse Owens. I’ve been almost killed three times, and am waging my second bout against cancer. I’ve been married and divorced twice and now live by myself with a cat in a house I will soon have to sell. What happened?

The career, not too meticulously planned, involved leaving a well-paying but increasingly stultifying job with a UN organization, and picking up my writing where I’d left it a few years before.  I’d published three books to pretty good reviews and anticipated little difficulties writing more. I was wrong. The proposals I sent out to my agent were met with less than enthusiastic response. The market had changed, and we were on the edge of the on-line publication phenomena. No one, it seemed, was particularly interested in the fiction I had to offer. Nor was there a great demand for an Addiction for Dummies book I was sure would find a home.  Other projects began with great excitement and either did not have the necessary legs or simply stagnated.

When the recession hit in 2008 I was caught unaware. Not the most brilliant businessmen--I have come to terms with the fact that my knowledge of finances rests on buying high and selling low--I had too many properties whose values dropped like stones into a bottomless pond. No one wanted to buy my lovely wooded lots in Southern Virginia, or the land I owned on the Chesapeake Bay, or the assisted-living apartment originally purchased as a hedge against inflation.  And still no books sales.

I went back to school, got a degree to become a substance abuse counselor, and spent an unpaid year as an intern in a rehab specializing in medical personnel who’d misused controlled substances. Five years later I was working in a methadone clinic. Mostly, I sat behind a sheet of bulletproof glass, handling soiled dollar bills passed through a thin slot, and buzzing methadone users into a nurse’s office. There was minimal counseling; this was first and foremost a money-making venture, and make money it did.  A dose of methadone bought wholesesale and in bulk costs approximately twenty-eight cents and sells for five dollars. There was little effort to free the clients of their methadone dependency. Some people had been coming to one clinic or another for more than a dozen year and had no desire to change habits. I met strippers, war heroes, roofers, prostitutes, housewives and bikers. I got severely depressed and, a year later, I was burned out and eventually fired.

Still no book sales.   What happened? Or, more succinctly, WTF?

Writing About People, Places & Things

So after writing some 500 blogs on varying subjects—some with a modicum of wisdom and others not—I recently culled what I thought were the best hundred or so entries and created a collection titled Writings About People, Places & Things. I edited the thing, formatted it to the demanding specifications required by Amazon’s Kindle, bought a photo and created a cover, and on Thursday lofted the thing into the ebook universe. It’s available at http:/tinyurl.com/alg3nyy.

I did this partially because I believe some of the writing is worth keeping, and largely because in a couple of days I will go in for the fourth surgical procedure to arrest a cancer that apparently does not wish to be arrested. Though I am trying to enter this latest foray with a positive attitude, I have to admit the whole thing is getting old. I was initially diagnosed more than 18 months ago, declared cancer-free and then not-so-much cancer-free two times following a battery of follow-up tests. This, I know, is often the way cancer works, and it has left me, scared, depressed, and resigned.

The one positive aspect of this situation is that I have been writing more than ever.  I have three uncompleted projects that need attention and I am determined to finish them within the year. I plan to demand St. Martin’s Press shower me with dollars and an international book tour, but if the editors there do not consider the works worthy (inconceivable, I know, but the world is a strange and unfair place) I will self-publish.

If you are reading this blog, do me a favor: please download or sample Writings About People, Places & Things on your Kindle, Nook, PC, or pad. Write a review and help me foster some interest among readers. I’d really appreciate it.  Thanks!

Writing, Part Whatever

For the past several years, I've been working on a novel set in Paris in 1919. I'am now on the fourth rewrite and I've trimmed more than 100 pages. I've tried very hard to heed the advice of Jane Feather,  a friend whose works regularly appear on the New York Times' best-seller list, and that of her husband, Jim, a noted editor. "Do not," they told me, "assume that what interests you, interests others."

This is the sort of advice most writers don't hear enough, or, if they do hear it, fail to heed; it is counter-intuitive and runs against the grain. After all didn't we get into this wretched and thankless trade precisely because we were captivated by the oddities of history,  emotions, or a combination thereof? Me, I am and have always been an avid fan collector of facts no one knows. I'm trying to become a member of the UK's highly reclusive Useless Information Society and I have every volume put out by Don Voorhees, master of the esoteric. (Example: The Rhode Island School of Design hockey team is called the Nads. Their team cheer is "Go Nads!") I am the quintessential garbage head, and I say this with a measure of pride.

The book with which  I've been struggling encompasses the lives of several artists whom I assumed are household names--Picasso, Modigliani, Satie, Renoir, Cocteau among them--and whose lives and works changed the course of art in the Western world.  Who wouldn't be fascinated by the fact that Cocteau was an opium addict? That Modigliani regularly smoked hashish and lived for weeks on sardines and bread? That his pregnant fiancée Jeanne Hébuterne committed suicide shortly after his death? Hmmm. Pretty much no one, it turns out. What I imagined would pique the readers' interests brought an oh hum reaction from agents who read the book, and I'm pretty certain some of them were so young they might not even have heard of Modigliani or Cocteau.

Well then, what about my fascinating serial killer character, Henri Désiré Landru, who between 1915 and 1919 murdered 10 women and a boy? He was one of the last people whose execution was with the guillotine, and he never owned up to his crimes.  In popular literature, Landru was know as the French Bluebeard and to this day there are some who believe he confessed all in a written declaration just recently discovered . Remarkable, right?

Not so much. "I don't do serial killers," wrote one agent whose specialty includes novels set in Europe between the wars.  ("Well, you should" was my imagined and unspoken response.)

Bearing the Feathers' advice in mind, I took to my book with a vengeance, wielding a pen sharpened not to edit but to slice.

The staggering statistics of World War I (the deadliest conflict in history. Total number of  deaths: 16 million.  Of casualties: 30 million. Cost? $186 billion.)?  Gone. I took them out. The secret life of Pablo Picasso? Trashed and on the cutting room floor.  The internal dialogue of most of my characters?  Deemed unnecessary and made to vanish. The number of ancillary cast I wrote about simply because they interested me? Reduced by half.

The more I edited, the more it struck me that I'd been writing by the pound, adding pages simply because it made the book heavier and more self-important. Also, I wanted readers to know how smart I was, how deeply I'd researched my subject. This book was no longer entertainment, it was a cry of,  "By-God-I'm-going-to-educate-you-Philistines. By the time you finish reading this opus, you'll realize you wasted your college years on a liberal arts education!"

In other words, I lost track of what I was writing--a story meant to entertain readers, if I'm lucky engross them, and, perhaps, provide an ah ha moment or two.

The agreement between writer and reader is a simple one. I'll give you the years it took me to research, write, edit and market the book. You give me a brief span of your attention, perhaps a bunch of minutes strung together while riding the subway. Allow me an afternoon or two at the beach, an hour at bedtime.

I know you're not asking for an education;  you're giving me the opportunity to entertain you. If I fail to do that, well, that's my fault, not yours. 

The Rewrite

For the past three weeks I have defeated the Butfirst Disease (see 8/28/12 blog) and actually done some serious work editing a book I wrote a few years ago. I know my skills and my limitations, and I can honestly say it's a good read with a strong story line, characters you can love or not, a great location--Paris in 1919--and a couple of interesting subplots. I'm about two-thirds through and I've chopped more than a hundred pages. The original came in at 437, and I hope to end up with about 325.

First I did the obvious: I got rid of as many words ending in ly as I could. Depending on adverbs is like hiring cheap labor. The job will get done, but badly.  I followed this with a 'search and destroy' for the word that, possibly the most useless of all four-letter words. Then I looked for passive sentences and made them active whenever possible. Finally, I counted the number of times I used the word 'seemed.' I took all of them out save three or four out, because things either are or are not. If they seem to be, it means they're actually something else.

Like many writers, I've had to create my characters from an amalgam of both the real and the imagined. In doing so, I gave them particular appearances, demeanors and quirks, thought patterns, personalities, issues and secrets.  And, like many writers, I thought I had to share all this information with the readers: How else would the legions who will make this an enduring best-seller know what and who I'm writing about? This need to over-describe was a mistake.  It slowed the book down tremendously without adding an iota of interest. It pains me to say this, but it was boring. In writing, for the most part, you don't need the warts and goiters.

I also thought: Do readers, for example, have to know in excruciating details about the great influenza pandemic of 1918, and the deaths of a lead character's parents? In my mind, they did. Who wouldn't be fascinated by such a wave of death? Twenty to 40 millions killed in the greatest and most devastating epidemic in world history, with 28 percent of all Americans infected! Personally, I love having such information at hand; I  thrive on dropping significant factoids during a lull in dinner conversation, which may or may not explain the rolling eyes of my exasperated friends.  Me, I like this stuff. Others, maybe not so much.

I did this repeatedly throughout the book, using the lives of my protagonists and heroes to illustrate historical details I found interesting but which had no play whatsoever in the book's plot. 

Call it the James Michener syndrome. It worked back when JM was putting out his 900-page epics, possibly because (1) there were fewer distractions to readers--phones, emails, television, tweets, texts, etc., and (2)  many people now want some sort of instant gratification, even when reading (it's my sense that the need for instant gratification has hit the reading public. That's why we read writers like Lee Childs whose characters don't evince much thought or philosophizing and are constantly engaged in some form of action--hitting, killing and maiming, for the most part.)

The other stuff I'm getting rid of involves what I call characterial introspection. How often do we need to know what the character is thinking, and to what depth?

I believed it was necessary to the plot's development to have in black and white all the concepts, notions, and rationalizations needed for my people to act. What I didn't realize is that this sort of exposition is mortally dull to the reader, and a facile way for the writer to avoid doing the work that must be done.

What all this means, in the end, is that the reader has to be allowed a place in the book. I'll lose him if I crowd him by over-writing. In fact, ideally, the reader is lured into the work and becomes a character. A Joyce, Harris, Balzac, Hugo knows that when creating a universe, there has to be a door to let the reader in.  That's great writing.

I still have a lot of work to do...

Critics

Lately I've been doing a lot of reading on Suzanne Valadon and Maurice Utrillo. Both were highly talented artists whose works are found in the best museums and beyond purchase by anyone but the wealthiest collectors. They lived in Montmartre, a Parisian neighborhood known for it's Bohemian allure, almost all their lives. Both were splendid drunks, and Suzanne was Maurice's mother. She died in 1938; he died in 1953. Maurice never found out who his father was, and if Suzanne knew (she was known for the assortment of lovers she maintained over the decades) she never let on, though it is possible that Maurice was sired by the painter Renoir. I suppose you could say the son and mother had a strange relationship, but that's not what I want to write about, since all relationships are strange in one way or another.
No, what I'm interested in is the critics' fashion of parsing an artist's work--and by artist I mean a writer, dancer, musician, sculptor, the whole gamut of people who cannot but be creative--into meaninglessness.
Look at a painting; read a book. What happens? Your imagination, and the writer or painter's creation work together to form an alliance. This pact moves you--you feel joy, sadness, revulsion on occasion, pity perhaps, even lust or envy. You and the artist form a symbiotic entente cordiale. He or she presents their work for your consideration, with the understanding that the artist is powerless over the audience. You, the audience, are willing to make a gift of time to the work. You read, you listen, you watch. In the end, both parties are affected by each other's willingness to devote a small period of life to pleasuring the other. An artist without an audience ceases to exist, and with no art there are no spectators.
The critics want to take this process over by dictating their views--which are assuredly more learned and educated than yours or mine ever will be. An author, critiquing Valadon's Nude Girl Sitting on a Cushion, wrote: "...Valadon's intense characterization is translated through the deliberate distortion of certain forms, the importance of which is enhanced by their unexpected size... Most of the time the children's alienation is expressed through reductive images whose effectiveness is enhanced through their simplicity."
I have no idea what this means. Obviously the critic and I are not looking at the same work. I see a small pencil and chalk drawing of a young dispirited nude. It's an evocative work, and I suppose I resent the critic's muddying of what is, all in all, a very basic piece of art.
For the past few years I've spent a lot of time reading autobiographies of some noted painters, and I have yet to find one describing his or her work in the same language as that of the critics. I wish those who write or broadcast opinions on the quality of things such as art, literary works, and society as a whole would do their own thing instead of parsing the works of others. That seems like a waste of time, a second-hand way of relating to creativity without adding any creativity of one's own. Or maybe it's just that I don't like critics, or for that matter anyone who tries to make something creative into something incomprehensible.

Writers Past

A few decades ago, I was convinced being a writer was largely a matter of appearance and attitude. Tweed jackets, briar pipes, alcohol--a lot of alcohol and occasionally some other drugs--a vaguely supercilious manner that barely dissimulated my great pain and anguish. I worked on an aged Royal manual typewriter bought at a pawnshop, was convinced of my genius and talent, and, best of all, owned a complete set of Harvard Classics. Back then (I've since sold them) the books, trimmed with gold leaf and bound in leather, were my proudest possessions.
The Harvard Classics, 51 volumes in all, were known as Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf. Eliot was the President of Harvard University when the collection was first published in 1909, and he believed a well-bred gentleman could achieve a respectable education by reading this compendium of every major literary figure, philosophy, religion, folklore, and historical subject through the twentieth century. A few years later, Eliot created a separate 20-volume selection entitled the Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction. I owned that as well.
What's interesting about Eliot's 51-volumes of disparate selections is that many of them, exactly a century later, have sunken into whatever Stygian obscurity ill-fated writing goes to when it dies. Who nowadays has read Volume 18, Modern English Drama, featuring Sheridan's School for Scandal, and All For Love by Dryden? Personally, I never got through Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Skeptics and Atheists by George Berkeley. Nor did I read the second volume of Elizabethan Drama, which includes The Shoemaker's Holiday (Thomas Dekker), Philaster (Beaumont and Fletcher), The Alchemist (Ben Jonson), or A New Way to Pay Old Debts (Philip Massinger).

In all fairness, there were truly important works in both collections, books every one should read, or at least skim--Aristotle to Dickens, Maupassant to Herodotus. Thousands of non-Harvard students read the Classics in their entirety and were the better for it. In time, Eliot's idea spawned other collections. After the Classics came Great Books of the Western World in 1952, and since then a host of other tomes have promised instant erudition for the common man.

I remember trying my luck with the 20 volumes of fiction, where I found--among other works--such deathless titles as Pepita Jimenez by Juan Valera, A Happy Boy by Bjornstjerne Bjornson and Skipper Worse by Alexander Kielland.
I mention all this because it's my belief that the majority of writing, like any other endeavor, is merely the product of its time. Some may survive, most does not.
Not that long ago a young man by the name of David Foster Wallace committed suicide at his home in California. Wallace, 46 at the time of his death, was the Great White Hope of modern American Lit. His work found its way into the New Yorker, Harpers, Atlantic and a host of other publications. Reporting on his death, the New York Times said, "the world of contemporary American fiction [has] lost its most intellectually ambitious writer."
When it first came out in 1996, I remember picking up what would become his best known work, Infinite Jest, with both hands--literally. It is a very heavy volume, 1,079 pages, footnote-filled, complex and, to me, eminently unreadable. Proust by way of Joyce with here and there some Kerouac and ee cummings; a touch of Howl and a whiff of Hunter Thompson.
Following Wallace's death, The New Yorker published a ludicrously over-long article on his career, followed by one of his short stories, Wiggle Room. The piece opens with a 400-line-long paragraph. For the second time, I gave up trying to read Wallace's prose.
So I wondered, who decided this guy was great? I canvassed my friends. Some had heard of Wallace, most had not. One had gotten to page 27 of Infinite Jest and dropped the book back into the library bin. Not one person I spoke with had actually read the work in its entirety.
So it stands to reason that one of two things is true, and both possibilities are frightening: the New York publishing world is putting one over on us. Either that, or all my friends are dolts.