The Job
The LitCrawl was a blast. Thanks to all who made it. That piece I read was a specimen taken from my work in progress, and I can't be certain it'll make the final cut, so I'm glad y'all had the chance to hear it. For those of you who missed the earlier short piece I had on this site a few weeks ago (The Numbers Game), the good news is that it's going to be part of the forthcoming anthology, San Francisco Noir 2, due out in the Fall of '08. In the interest of keeping the blood flowing through these virtual pages, I've enclosed a piece I wrote over the summer. The good folks at The Cult invited me to teach a six-week writing intensive (which I dragged out to eight), and at the end of the course, I felt compelled to say a few words of thanks to the students as well as round up a few stray ideas I had about the craft, which had not found an appropriate home in any of the preceeding lessons. I thought I'd share this particular sign-off with you here, and urge you to take a look at some of the workshops they're offering.</I>
In Closing, "Do the job."
27 June 2007
from Master's Program at Chuck Palahniuk's The Cult
First, I should chime to what so many have said but I've been saving, and that's a bigtime mondo thanks to Mark "VigPup." The other writers and I are guests here, but this forum is yours. You are the pulsing blood of this thing in ways beyond measure and to say, "I couldn't have done it without you" is only the beginning of the truth. You were born to do this. Thanks, very much.
Everyone else, first... I appreciate the many offers of support that came following my allusions of life taking a downturn. Forgive the melancholy. I'll spare you the specifics, less for personal reasons and more because they're boring and only pertinent to me. My life isn't harder than anybody else's. As I once told a friend of mine, I don't regret making the choices I made in order to become a writer, but I'm reminded of the consequences of those choices with greater and greater poignancy as I get older. There are some days when I feel less like a writer than other days, and sometimes those days come in very large blocks, when the repercussions of the literary life make their presence known in rapid succession.
If, for any reason, you're compelled to re-read the above paragraph, just replace it all with blah blah blah and it might make more sense.
As for offers of pints should I darken your particular zip code, I'll happily take everyone up on their respective company, but I'm buying.
If there's one point and one point only from these last two months that I feel compelled to reiterate, it's this:
The purest way to convey emotion in a story is to elicit that emotion from your reader.
Everything we've discussed, and everything else you've learned from other workshops and reading other writers, as well as everything you will continue to learn, should ultimately steer you toward that goal of craftsmanship, of painstakingly creating a character in a story which elicits an emotional reaction from your reader.
Are you angry? Does something perpetually piss you off and drive you to write? Good. Don't tell your reader how angry you are. Make your reader angry. Sad? In love? Heartbroken? Ecstatic? Don't tell this to your reader. They don't know you and won't give your life but a fraction of the thought they give their own. Instead, make your reader sad. Give them a character they can fall in love with (we've all been there). Break their hearts or make them laugh. That's far harder to do with a story, but it will ultimately distinguish you as a writer, as opposed to the screaming narcissistic "poet" at Cafe du Snob's Open Mike Night (you know, "poets," those coffee house clowns without a shade of understanding of rhyme, meter, structure and couldn't name ten great poets on a bet and think it all begins and ends with Bukowski) or the pretentious, self-righteous "literary" author who pens static, puffy stories of self-realization (because we all care...really) and mistakes obscure references and open-ended finishes for intelligence and nuance.
There are a few other scattered points on the craft that never found their way into any particular topic, either because they weren't pertinent or had somehow digressed into a rant (for you young'uns, rants become more common as you get older... they're outgrowths of "get off my lawn" or "turn that crap down"). Here's a few I thought worth including at the eleventh hour:
I got a PM asking me, "when do you know you're good?" The best I could come up with was, when you know that you're not good enough. When everybody around you is telling you that you're good, that you're great, but you know, with complete conviction, that you could be better. That's when you're good. The trick is, being good means never believing you've achieved it. Red Pen, Black Pen.
There are those cynical pinheads who will tell you that all the stories have been told, that there's no reason to bother trying to come up with anything new. Worse, there's that whole school of "there are only thirty-six plots" or variations on the number.
The only x-amount (finite number) of plots/all-stories-are-the-same ideology is bullshit. I believe there are a finite number of ideas to be explored in fiction, but those finite ideas are finite because of their potential for endless exploration. Some themes are universal, which is why we are drawn to them. To be universal does not mean to be the same. We all have had the experience of falling in love for the first time; each of our experiences will vary radically, with plenty of similarity but even greater differences. Each of us have a unique experience of falling in love, but the experience itself is universal.
Knowing the difference between what is the same and what is universal is how artists continue to be unique. Learning the difference.... that's the job.
Those who believe in the finite plot/it's-all-the-same bullshit are the same people who wonder why the likes of us read books more than once. Non-writers often ask me, "How can you read a book more than once? You already know how it's going to end, don't you?"
To which I respond, "How can you bother having sex more than once? You already know how it's going to end, don't you?"
We repeat the experience of a good story because it's just that, an experience, and any good experience is something we want to repeat. If you sit in front of the tube and watch some mindless reality crap for two hours, you are only different at the end of it in that you're two hours older with a few less neurons and dendrites to spare.
Walk to work, visit a friend, go drinking, fall in love, get your heart broken, change a flat tire in a rainstorm... these are experiences. As we age, our experiences accumulate and help shape us. The best fiction is something that we experience, and the power of the written word is that it can be a defining experience for us, just as much as any event that occurs in our real lives. Don't believe me? Ask someone who's been around for a while about the first time they read On the Road or saw Hitchcock's Psycho in its original theatrical run.
Stories are important. They make us human. We are hard wired for story telling, and stories are as responsible for our evolution as was fire and the invention of the wheel. Ancient cultures survived because of codes and beliefs conveyed via stories, tales that each generation passed on to the next, forming a collective memory that held a people together. Because the memories were preserved, newer generations could learn from the old and they could thus progress. Without storytelling, we'd all still be living in rocks and hunting with sticks, and not getting any better at it because we wouldn't be cave-painting our hunting stories for the others to learn from.
Anyone who says they think fiction is frivolous is at best a hypocrite and at worst a liar. Ever wonder why those people who refuse to read novels don't apply the same standard to the rest of their entertainment? Why do they listen to any music at all? Shouldn't they only listen to talk radio? Do they go to the movies or watch television? Do they watch nothing but documentaries? Somehow, I doubt it. Yet, for some reason, they regard fiction as frivolous. At the same time, they indulge in fiction day in and day out.
Every time we talk about our weekend- the camping trip, the sexual conquest, the ball game, anything- the facts are filtered through our own beautifully imperfect inner lenses. Anyone who believes otherwise, I invite to spend a day at their local courthouse. Observe a few trials and watch people on the witness stand and you'll see just how imperfect, how wholly inaccurate a person can be with "just the facts" under laboratory conditions. Between the facts and the filters is the truth, and truth is what the best fiction writers aim for. That's the job.
The privilege has been mine.
Semper fi,
-Craig
The LitCrawl was a blast. Thanks to all who made it. That piece I read was a specimen taken from my work in progress, and I can't be certain it'll make the final cut, so I'm glad y'all had the chance to hear it. For those of you who missed the earlier short piece I had on this site a few weeks ago (The Numbers Game), the good news is that it's going to be part of the forthcoming anthology, San Francisco Noir 2, due out in the Fall of '08. In the interest of keeping the blood flowing through these virtual pages, I've enclosed a piece I wrote over the summer. The good folks at The Cult invited me to teach a six-week writing intensive (which I dragged out to eight), and at the end of the course, I felt compelled to say a few words of thanks to the students as well as round up a few stray ideas I had about the craft, which had not found an appropriate home in any of the preceeding lessons. I thought I'd share this particular sign-off with you here, and urge you to take a look at some of the workshops they're offering.</I>
In Closing, "Do the job."
27 June 2007
from Master's Program at Chuck Palahniuk's The Cult
First, I should chime to what so many have said but I've been saving, and that's a bigtime mondo thanks to Mark "VigPup." The other writers and I are guests here, but this forum is yours. You are the pulsing blood of this thing in ways beyond measure and to say, "I couldn't have done it without you" is only the beginning of the truth. You were born to do this. Thanks, very much.
Everyone else, first... I appreciate the many offers of support that came following my allusions of life taking a downturn. Forgive the melancholy. I'll spare you the specifics, less for personal reasons and more because they're boring and only pertinent to me. My life isn't harder than anybody else's. As I once told a friend of mine, I don't regret making the choices I made in order to become a writer, but I'm reminded of the consequences of those choices with greater and greater poignancy as I get older. There are some days when I feel less like a writer than other days, and sometimes those days come in very large blocks, when the repercussions of the literary life make their presence known in rapid succession.
If, for any reason, you're compelled to re-read the above paragraph, just replace it all with blah blah blah and it might make more sense.
As for offers of pints should I darken your particular zip code, I'll happily take everyone up on their respective company, but I'm buying.
If there's one point and one point only from these last two months that I feel compelled to reiterate, it's this:
The purest way to convey emotion in a story is to elicit that emotion from your reader.
Everything we've discussed, and everything else you've learned from other workshops and reading other writers, as well as everything you will continue to learn, should ultimately steer you toward that goal of craftsmanship, of painstakingly creating a character in a story which elicits an emotional reaction from your reader.
Are you angry? Does something perpetually piss you off and drive you to write? Good. Don't tell your reader how angry you are. Make your reader angry. Sad? In love? Heartbroken? Ecstatic? Don't tell this to your reader. They don't know you and won't give your life but a fraction of the thought they give their own. Instead, make your reader sad. Give them a character they can fall in love with (we've all been there). Break their hearts or make them laugh. That's far harder to do with a story, but it will ultimately distinguish you as a writer, as opposed to the screaming narcissistic "poet" at Cafe du Snob's Open Mike Night (you know, "poets," those coffee house clowns without a shade of understanding of rhyme, meter, structure and couldn't name ten great poets on a bet and think it all begins and ends with Bukowski) or the pretentious, self-righteous "literary" author who pens static, puffy stories of self-realization (because we all care...really) and mistakes obscure references and open-ended finishes for intelligence and nuance.
There are a few other scattered points on the craft that never found their way into any particular topic, either because they weren't pertinent or had somehow digressed into a rant (for you young'uns, rants become more common as you get older... they're outgrowths of "get off my lawn" or "turn that crap down"). Here's a few I thought worth including at the eleventh hour:
I got a PM asking me, "when do you know you're good?" The best I could come up with was, when you know that you're not good enough. When everybody around you is telling you that you're good, that you're great, but you know, with complete conviction, that you could be better. That's when you're good. The trick is, being good means never believing you've achieved it. Red Pen, Black Pen.
There are those cynical pinheads who will tell you that all the stories have been told, that there's no reason to bother trying to come up with anything new. Worse, there's that whole school of "there are only thirty-six plots" or variations on the number.
The only x-amount (finite number) of plots/all-stories-are-the-same ideology is bullshit. I believe there are a finite number of ideas to be explored in fiction, but those finite ideas are finite because of their potential for endless exploration. Some themes are universal, which is why we are drawn to them. To be universal does not mean to be the same. We all have had the experience of falling in love for the first time; each of our experiences will vary radically, with plenty of similarity but even greater differences. Each of us have a unique experience of falling in love, but the experience itself is universal.
Knowing the difference between what is the same and what is universal is how artists continue to be unique. Learning the difference.... that's the job.
Those who believe in the finite plot/it's-all-the-same bullshit are the same people who wonder why the likes of us read books more than once. Non-writers often ask me, "How can you read a book more than once? You already know how it's going to end, don't you?"
To which I respond, "How can you bother having sex more than once? You already know how it's going to end, don't you?"
We repeat the experience of a good story because it's just that, an experience, and any good experience is something we want to repeat. If you sit in front of the tube and watch some mindless reality crap for two hours, you are only different at the end of it in that you're two hours older with a few less neurons and dendrites to spare.
Walk to work, visit a friend, go drinking, fall in love, get your heart broken, change a flat tire in a rainstorm... these are experiences. As we age, our experiences accumulate and help shape us. The best fiction is something that we experience, and the power of the written word is that it can be a defining experience for us, just as much as any event that occurs in our real lives. Don't believe me? Ask someone who's been around for a while about the first time they read On the Road or saw Hitchcock's Psycho in its original theatrical run.
Stories are important. They make us human. We are hard wired for story telling, and stories are as responsible for our evolution as was fire and the invention of the wheel. Ancient cultures survived because of codes and beliefs conveyed via stories, tales that each generation passed on to the next, forming a collective memory that held a people together. Because the memories were preserved, newer generations could learn from the old and they could thus progress. Without storytelling, we'd all still be living in rocks and hunting with sticks, and not getting any better at it because we wouldn't be cave-painting our hunting stories for the others to learn from.
Anyone who says they think fiction is frivolous is at best a hypocrite and at worst a liar. Ever wonder why those people who refuse to read novels don't apply the same standard to the rest of their entertainment? Why do they listen to any music at all? Shouldn't they only listen to talk radio? Do they go to the movies or watch television? Do they watch nothing but documentaries? Somehow, I doubt it. Yet, for some reason, they regard fiction as frivolous. At the same time, they indulge in fiction day in and day out.
Every time we talk about our weekend- the camping trip, the sexual conquest, the ball game, anything- the facts are filtered through our own beautifully imperfect inner lenses. Anyone who believes otherwise, I invite to spend a day at their local courthouse. Observe a few trials and watch people on the witness stand and you'll see just how imperfect, how wholly inaccurate a person can be with "just the facts" under laboratory conditions. Between the facts and the filters is the truth, and truth is what the best fiction writers aim for. That's the job.
The privilege has been mine.
Semper fi,
-Craig
Commentary:
-In the process, I am so terrified of becoming that ''self-righteous 'literary' author" that I often paralyze my progress. I think I'm learning, though, and focusing on some zen ways of getting through my writing anxieties.
-The same self-criticism keeps me from ever believing my writing is good, despite what - as you alluded to above - others may tell me. In fact, though, I tend to just write and write without letting others read my words, so that my processes and products are influenced by expected perceptions.
-I agree with you about the importance of narrative and storytelling. It's definitely one of the most coherent ways we have of unifying the self. At the same time, my story seems to veer far from storytelling and narrative progress...dwelling instead in conceptual interplay and flat character sketches.
Conclusion: ...we shall see...
Addendum: The above conclusion is not an attempt at the aforementioned open-ended finish, just the truth.