In the Throes of Process

Today I began writing. This is a milestone not because words were produced but because I smiled afterwards. Here are my thoughts today:

1) I must establish tone.

2) I will force myself to make the first pass through a continuous chunk (not sure how big it will be yet) about story and tone and leave pacing for a revision.

3) I have a sense of theme but that is not enough. I need to figure out what themes are going to work together and how. I know what I want to say but what is my vocabulary for doing so?

This is a mysterious enterprise, but I am excited to be underway.

Inspiration Strikes

Over the past few months, I have mentally explored the proposition of writing something careful and focused. I will not go so far as to say that I have given genesis to the idea of a "book", or "story", or anything particular, in fact. But, I believe the writing process would be good for me.

I suppose there is a preconception with writing that the person writing does it to fulfill external desires (communication, sharing, etc...). I cannot speak for others, but in this case, I would say that is not true. I believe that I need the writing process to give myself an understanding of what has happened to me in the last ten years. How did I come to this conclusion? I think it was Joanna Newsom who first planted the idea in my head that writing can be an intensely introspective activity; she described a song she wrote as an attempt to make sense of certain events.

Although I do not think it is adequate to invoke the saying, "art imitates life", it may be a start. If art is expected to retain truth, than I believe art approximates life. They are a continuum, but it should not be forgotten that life is the primary and must necessarily be the anchor to art, just as the sun is primary to the moon and anchors it interminably.

This means that although the process of writing may be difficult, the concept of good writing is exceedingly simple. You must simply write reality. All formalism is but the hope of some shortcut that must necessarily be a compromise, or a beautiful distraction.

I could itemize the times in my life that I have come across grand statements that I thought needed to be made, but these statements would make for terrible reading because they were all cast under a common illusion - that the order of the universe allows us to remove or change one thing and expect all else to remain unharmed. That is a lazy way of writing. Good writing does not tolerate shortcuts. Words cannot - in essence - say more than the content of the words, and a story likewise cannot say more than the content of the story.

As I undertake the process of writing, my hope is not to complete some certain thing, but rather to understand the material I will write. Perhaps it seems counterintuitive, but I believe that I will be more likely to complete whatever is required by the content if I rather pursue the goal of understanding. But I digress. All is conjecture, and it is a destructive enterprise to try to outguess the future. Time will tell all in the clearest voice.

The Shadow of the Wind, part 1

It has occurred to me on numerous occasions that Radiohead produce better album art - and more consistently - than any other band I know. For this feat, we have Stanley Donwood to thank, who is Radiohead's perennial visual artist/associate. Years ago, when I was obsessed with Radiohead (let's say, 2002), Mr. Donwood produced a written work that you might call a story and that took the form of a thin book. Now, most of the productive output of the people in or associated with Radiohead is hard to nail down (I think I am being complimentary to say this), but Mr. Donwood's "Catacombs of Terror!" had a basic formula. Were it to be stocked in your local Barnes and Noble, you'd find it under mystery, but this mystery was suffused with intentionally-inelegant plotting and a peculiarly affected ("lo-fi"?) writing style and was marketed as a rip-off of third-rate pulp thrillers of the past. I cannot vouch for that comparison, but Donwood's style was idiosyncratic enough (and carefully attuned enough) that I doubt that simple comparison does the novel justice.

Lately I have been reading "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, and in the process of doing so, have had a hell of a time un-knotting my mixed and myriad feelings towards it. There are some things I can say for sure:

1) The pacing is outstanding, as mystery novels must usually be to be a success.

2) The literary references to Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the reviews are legitimate and truly bound into the tapestry of the text and specifically, Zafon's imagination. The references to Borges are topical (a labyrinth of books, temporal mirroring and incongruity) and 400 pages in, I would judge them to be irrelevant. I can't speak for Eco, having not read any of his works.

3) Zafon writes good scenes and good dialogue, and has a way with evoking place and time without trying hard. However, he places all of this between filler that is often boring, obvious, cliche.

4) If Zafon is capable of writing a female character that is not one-dimensional, he does not explore the talent here.

It took me until tonight to realize that the reason I have been overwhelmingly willing to cut him slack on #3 and #4 is that the clunky characteristics of the book are reminiscent of Catacombs of Terror!, a book where these characteristics are taken to be ironic (or at least intentionally absurd). I believe my mind has mapped this absurdity/irony onto The Shadow of the Wind, and therefore I respond to it as a compelling story told with the author winking at the reader. Ironically, this level of formalism that glosses over the entire story - a construct that I have to believe I alone see - may be the most Borgesian thing about the book.

So, to review, a second-rate book written as an affected tribute to third-rate stories has convinced me that this first-rate book with several notable drawbacks is actually something close to sublime. Wish me luck in the last 100 pages.

Impressions from Colorado

I recently went on a skiing trip to Colorado, a trip that I can say had two highlights: skiing, and the drive home.

Skiing sort of speaks for itself and you could do worse than simply to say that it costs a lot of money and it is money well spent if you get up on the mountain and can manage to enjoy it. We had lots of mountain weather variety (snow, sun, wind) and lots of friends around to ski with, which at one or two points congealed into a borderline-transcendental experience. I had a lot of fun doing dangerous things (never a good combination) like flying through the woods on narrow paths, which I have promised myself I will not do again with such indiscretion. For someone who is neither a speed nor adrenaline junkie, skiing really brought both out in me.

I suppose you could say that I like to be the driver when leaving home and the passenger when returning. Most people will say that the drive home is a drag and a chore, which the act of driving itself can be, but there are few things I like better than the chance to meditate on the events of the vacation during a drive home. This trip afforded lots of time, ample back-seat room, appropriate homebound weather (rolling storms in the distance, a variety of overcast tones), good music (thank you, Brian Eno, Great Lake Swimmers, and Junior Boys) and good reading material (The Crossing). (It cannot be denied that I surely know what I like, and I have expended much thought and energy refining the process of achieving it.)

I have been especially struck lately by the way McCarthy's novels of the Southwest, filled with so much desolation and violence, only increase my affection for the land. The Crossing is my new favorite of his stories (not bad for a book I couldn't finish the first time I tried), although it would be hard not to admit that Blood Meridian contains a much stronger and tightly cohesive vision. More importantly, though, the protagonist in The Crossing contains a more closely observed moral character. I cannot relate to the Kid in Blood Meridian in the slightest, but I am with Billy every page of The Crossing. I believe I will reread it again and again in the future.