On writing « Fiction Daily

Archive for the ‘On writing’ Category

Watching for ‘Watchmen’

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

Yesterday I saw a New York Times article about the new film of Watchmen.

So a few words about Alan Moore and artists David Lloyd and David Gibbons are certainly in order today.

If you’ve not read Alan Moore, you’re in for a treat. Mr. Moore is a singular writer, whose commitment to his values are such that he refuses to take Hollywood money for the filmed versions of his works. He creates what are called graphic novels … we called them comic books, but Mr. Moore’s works helped define the genre.

What are those works?

Alan Moore, 2006, in England, where he lives

The best known are certainly V for Vendetta and Watchmen. I first became introduced to Mr. Moore’s works when I saw the film version of V. The film version was a great introduction … though purists would object. Indeed, Mr. Moore himself was so irritated he refused to have his name associated with it.

Yet it’s important to remember that many of us need simple elements to introduce us to greater ideas. For me, the gentle love story between V and Evey drew me into the larger idea of the tortured antihero protagonist, V. Otherwise, he may have seemed an antisocial creep.

His caring for Evey allows us to identify with him and trust him, even as he reveals his darker side and the depth of his dedication to free principles and ideals.

The larger context for their relationship is the bleak totalitarian society around them. These kinds of ideas can be too much to stomach without a simple, emotional, thread. (Same with Julia and Winston in Orwell’s 1984.)

V offers so much. Its main idea is that we allow ourselves to become trapped and imprisoned by authorities. We never question their hold on us; we never assert our full selves. These ideas apply not only to futuristic fiction worlds; they apply here and now.

Here’s a passage from the diary of an imprisoned woman named Valerie, written on a toilet paper roll

The other gay women here, Rita, died two weeks ago. I imagine I’ll die quite soon. It’s strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and I apologized to nobody.

I shall die here. Every last inch of me shall perish. Except one.

An inch. It’s small and it’s fragile and it’s the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.

(from V for Vendetta by Alan Moore with art by David Lloyd)

So now there’s a film of Watchmen, and many of us are skeptical. Still, though I haven’t been to a movie theater in nearly five years, I may consider a big screen for this one. To see Dr. Manhattan full sized would be a treat.

Posted in Computers & Technology, Events, On writing, Writers | No Comments »

Email Feng Shui

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

I committed myself to working yesterday … a Sunday! … and though the final accomplishment was minimal, its effect on my inner peace is dramatic.

Did I write a chapter on the novel? Did I complete a major feature article? Did I attain the elusive Crane pose in yoga?

Not remotely.

No, my big achievement was to go through the past six months’ worth of emails. Yes, I have held on to just about everything. My previous computer had about 10,000 emails on it … and that was probably one of the reasons I couldn’t use it any more. I came up with a system to back them up on my external hard drive, but then, they were basically inaccessible (I was using Outlook Express).

With this new computer I switched to Thunderbird … Hello Open Source Platform! … Though I’m a wash when it comes to modifying it for the most part, I did manage to add a few “buttons” such as “Previous!” and “Next!”

It took about 2 hours to go through about 3,000 emails, but today, I feel so relieved and unburdened.

It gives a lot of credence to the ideas of Feng Shui, which encourages a home that is free of clutter and unneeded items sitting on tables, undone business, broken items needing repair and dust.

Unfortunately that pretty much describes my home.

My friends know that once every year or so, I start at the attic and work my way down … clearing and cleaning every closet, drawer and bookcase. I haven’t done so in some time, and it’s sorely overdue.

Just from the small act of clearing and filing my emails, I already feel so much freer of mind … it confirms my belief that clearing the home and creating peaceful, intentional, surroundings … rather than wasting time … actually gains us time because we are so much more focused and free to do what really matters, with meaning.

Posted in Life in general, On writing | 4 Comments »

Language & Life

Monday, January 26th, 2009

Photo courtesy Medoc Mountain S.P.

It’s Monday across the world (well, most of it) and here in Fiction Dailyland we’re celebrating a hike to Medoc Mountain State Park on Saturday.

We left early morning in a slight rain and when we arrived at Medoc, it seemed a drizzle was waiting for us, but left only a few drops. The day remained overcast, but what an awesome day it was. We hiked the Bluff Trail which led us to an uncharted section of the park, likely the new acres added in the past few years by donation.

This area is used for horse trails and because it was January, and an overcast bleary day at that, we saw not a soul. Well, we saw some small souls — birds everywhere — and in this new part of the park, perhaps unused to seeing human creatures like us, they dipped down to explore us curiously.

Yesterday, reflection and reading, including a used book I picked up in Durham recently.

The Language Experience contains essays by several writers, linguists and thinkers. While the book shows its age (it’s 1974, and whale songs are first being recorded), it shows remarkable longevity and truth.

The first section explores language as symbol … and begins by reminding us that language is like an iceberg … behind our seemingly simple utterances, formed by the larynx and ejected with our breath, are nearly unfathomable thought chains, reflecting incomprehensible complexity and intelligence.

Looking forward to reading these essays, which includes thoughts from George Orwell on developing a complete language system, Newspeak, for his seminal work, 1984.

The New York Times has an article on novelist Yu Hua, from China, whose two-volume work, Brothers, is stirring controversy at home and abroad, among writers and nationalists.

Posted in Book reviews, Life in general, On writing | No Comments »

Junk Culture, c. 1855

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING

Today, a slightly different look at language, within the context of culture.

A Christmas gift from my husband of a calendar named Forgotten English has given me much more food for thought. It features a word or phrase each day from past centuries of spoken and written English along with a story. It’s a project of Jeffrey Kacirk. (Love words? Visit his site here).

Last week, I came across an entry that just made me laugh.

Turns out that on a trip to see the British Museum in 1855, our beloved American author Nathaniel Hawthorne was not amused.

It is a hopeless — and to me generally a depressing — business to go through an immense, multifarious show like this glancing at a thousand things, and conscious of some little titillation of mind from them, but really taking in nothing and getting no good from anything.

The face is the world is accumulating too many materials for knowledge. We do not recognize for rubbish what is really rubbish, and under this head might be reckoned almost everything one sees in the British Museum. And as each generation leaves its fragments and potshards behind it, such will finally be the desperate conclusion of the learned.

How apt an observation, how modern. A reflection made more than 150 years ago. About an institution we might consider august and respected, the British Museum, which opened in 1759, almost 300 years ago.

Yet Mr. Hawthorne recognized something universal about us human beings. So crow-like are we; the shining glint of a button or piece of glass will draw us in, elicit desire for possession and generate all kinds of jealousy.

That’s what makes Mr. Hawthorne, with our greatest writers, a jewel, himself — he keenly understands our complex, yet juvenile, human natures and has the power to describe them with precision.

A NOTE FOR WORD LOVERS: If you enjoy scoffing at overused, meaningless phrases, then visit the 2009 List of Banished Words from Lake Superior State University.

The university publishes the list each year in an effort purge our language of its loafers, drifters and bums who aren’t pulling their weight.

Friend and Daily Reflector columnist Kim Grizzard gave the list her own signature review, and you can read it here.

High on the list this year? Green, maverick, bailout and others. Do check it out.

Posted in Figuratively Speaking, On writing, Writers | No Comments »

Scent of a word

Friday, December 19th, 2008

FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING

For some of us, words get under our skin.

(I guess that makes words hypodermic? And the condition hypodermia? Hypo from the Greek hupo, under, and dermic, true skin or dermis.)

See what I mean?

When I was in graduate school and reading lots of French books, I also learned a lot about my own language. Often I came across a translated word I’d never heard of before.

Such was the case with antimacassar.

Over time, I forgot the word … until one day recently, I remembered the word … but forgot it … at the same time.

It was madenning. I tried to Google search the word, to no avail.

My memory of the word was triggered, Proust-like, by the word macadam (or should that be maca-madeleine-adam?) which refers to a type of road material made of broken stones of equal size, used as a base beneath asphalt.

Then, out of the blue last week, I’m wrapping up a Scott Turow novel … and there it is!! My long-lost word! Antimacassar!

Antimacassar refers to a piece of cloth placed over the back of a chair to protect it from grease and dirt, or as ornament.

It derives from anti plus macassar … or Macassar oil … which was used in the past to give men flat, shiny hair, as was the style in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries … oh yes, and even today (Brylcreem anyone?).

It was found in Makassar, a place in the Indonesian islands of the South Pacific by Portuguese sailors.

Macassar comes from the fragrant ylang-ylang tree … absolutely one of my favorite scents … and when the ylang-ylang blossoms are macerated, or broken up, in coconut oil, we have macassar.

Now, like the reunited lovers at the conclusion of Jane Erye (or better yet, Wuthering Heights) I have at last found my forgotten word.

Which leads to the question: Does anyone else become so obsessed with words? Is this an illness of some kind?

NEXT WEEK: A special holiday edition of Fiction Daily!

Posted in Figuratively Speaking, On writing | 1 Comment »

The Rest is … Alex Ross

Monday, December 15th, 2008

Now that everyone is taking stock of the best books of 2008, I’m just getting around to reading one of the best books of 2007.

The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century, by Alex Ross.

As soon as I ordered it last January I wanted to open it, but in that old-school, protestant way, I put it off, reminding myself that I was reading two books by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, one or two by Jack Kerouac, a couple of French novels, not to mention Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book (for the past two years).

Well, yesterday, I reminded myself that I had actually finished many of those books (though not the ones by the Dalai Lama; I have a bookcase full).

So why not just read it. And so I got started.

The Rest is Noise is a look at so-called “classical” music of the 20th century. It begins with Gustave Mahler, Richard Strauss (hint: he’s not the waltz guy) and Arnold Schoenberg and explores the music as it emerged from the times, and the writers — their personal relationships, how their work was received (or rejected), even their own personal struggles. Schoenberg, for instance, comes across as quite sensitive, concerned about the depths of poetry and even subject to personal depression, when I always thought of this abstract, whole-tone scale composer as emotionless.

From the opening words of the preface, Alex Ross rushes out of the gate with excellent, studied and meaningful writing. What a pleasure!! He really cares!!

Not only does he care, but Ross approaches topics in a modern way. If you’ve ever tried to read dry, fusty non-fiction … especially music critiques … then you know how easy it is to bore the reader to death.

It’s always been my personal approach in writing to invite the reader in, to invite the reader to care. And so with Alex Ross. He wants us to follow him; he’s not just showing off.

Though he could. It’s clear Mr. Ross not only adores music, but he understands how it works. With just enough description of chords, scales and harmonics, he allows us to see why music is daring, but he doesn’t overwhelm us with details.

If you’ve read the New Yorker, you know Mr. Ross as the magazine’s music writer. Not that he needs any qualifiers after this book!! (and not, frankly, that I hold TNY-er in esteem any longer, after that Obama parody cover, and an article last year trashing the Dalai Lama. Who trashes the Dalai Lama???)

So music lovers, treat yourself this holiday season to The Rest is Noise. And get ready to listen.

FD will return with Figuratively Speaking Friday.

Posted in Book reviews, HH Dalai Lama, Music, On writing, Press | No Comments »

Deadlines today

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

Oh dear … time is running out in Fiction Dailyland for a number of assignments … there are dogs to be walked and fed … phone calls to return … I hope to return tomorrow for Figuratively Speaking Friday.

Posted in Life in general, On writing | No Comments »

Ode to Joy

Thursday, November 13th, 2008

TECH THURSDAY

A report earlier this week was music to my ears: Researchers in Maryland have discovered that the body physically responds to music. The study was reported by the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore researchers during the Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association in New Orleans this week.

The study’s results appear on the university’s Web site.

Music serves as my rock, my foundation, my steady ship. But in the past say two years or so, it’s become something else: my sanctuary. When I need to get away from everything, I’ve learned that hearing Claude Debussy is taking a plane ride into tranquility.

Turns out, I’m not the only one. The study showed that when people listened to music they perceived as pleasant, it caused tissue in the inner lining of their blood vessels to dilate (or expand) and increase blood flow. A 2005 study found a similar response to laughter.

“We had previously demonstrated that positive emotions, such as laughter, were good for vascular health. So, a logical question was whether other emotions, such as those evoked by music, have a similar effect,” says principal investigator Michael Miller, M.D., director of preventive cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center and associate professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

The relaxation of the blood vessel lining was considerable — up to 26 percent. Ironically, when the study subjects listened to music they perceived as unpleasant (in this case, heavy metal), their blood vessels’ inner lining was constricted by up to 6 percent.

In a personal way, this was vindication for my reliance on music. Turns out I’m not just loafing when I sit in bed listening to Pascal Rouge’s Suite Bergamasque. Or, when I’m cleaning the house listening to Madonna (honestly, that’s my favorite de-stressor).

In my senior college year, I took several upper-level French literature courses, and became heavily involved with our campus’s Anti-Apartheid movement. My days were packed and I routinely closed down the Undergraduate Library at 2 a.m., returning the next day at 8 a.m.

My one joy every day was listening to Joe Jackson’s Night and Day. Every afternoon when I took a break, I’d play it straight through. Day side to Night side.

I have that album on my iPod, with the same scratch on “Slow Song” that’s been there for 26 years. Those songs give me intense joy, and I always thought Joe Jackson’s masterpiece somehow made me feel … better.

Now I have the science to prove it.

TOMORROW: Figuratively Speaking Friday

Posted in Computers & Technology, Life in general, Music, On writing | No Comments »

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

A study of two novels
The Gold Bug Variations
and Darconville’s Cat

Why these two novels? They capture the elusive qualities that for me, take a novel beyond its words and make it a sublime window on humankind. One succeeds; one fails.

First, the failure.

Darconville’s Cat, by Alexander Theroux. I was so excited to find this book!! A great title, a tormented, intelligent narrator, a nontraditional structure. A cat in the title!! The plot, however, took the novel south and I kept reading, disappointed, nearly to the end.

Critics didn’t necessarily pan the book, nor have readers. Some sing its praises. Still, I felt betrayal, because of the books shabby plot, its superficial, cliched and sexist approach.

The narrator is a writing teacher at a Virginia girl’s school. Who falls in love with a student. Who is crushed when she leaves him.

First rule: Please, unless you’re Paul Auster, do not write about writers!!

After several solid chapters, once his girlfriend leaves him, the narrator falls into a funk, and so does the novel. In meandering chapters, the narrator vents, as you might say; expectorates in several thousand words.

The biggest indication that this book has failed? The fate of the beloved cat of the title is completely unresolved … in the middle of a rant, the narrator mentions that the animal ran away. There is no emotion, no sense of grieving or loss, not even a speed bump for the feline.

If you’re going to put a cat in the title, then you better be prepared to make it mean something.

Now, the success.

The Gold Bug Variations, by Richard Powers. Another novel written in a nontraditional form. Richard Powers is a fascinating writer. He studied physics, then instead of going off to calculate quantum projections, realized he wanted to write. He has worked as a computer programmer in addition to his writing.

His 2006 book The Echo Maker was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.

The plot focuses on a trio of DNA researchers, but as the name implies, Bach’s Goldberg Variations are also involved … music and its power over us. Like the great book (I’ve never finished) Godel, Escher and Bach, the Gold Bug Variations incorporates themes of all stripes — love, passion, science, melody, human striving and failure.

The framework, however, is striking for its unexpectedness. Anyone can write a love story set on a college campus (or a Virginia girl’s school). But who can pitch a love story among DNA researchers, with a beloved music-loving older scientist in the mix to give it heart?

In the end, despite the science, The Gold Bug Variations captures what it is to be human, to love and to hope, to search and to discover.

Do I feel touched by Mr. Powers’ work? Absolutely. Do I feel betrayed by Mr. Theroux’s? Yes.

Novels are profoundly complex, emotional creations. Until a writer can be humble, we cannot succeed. I believe Mr. Powers brings that humility to his work, and that’s what gives it life.

Posted in Book reviews, On writing, Writers | 2 Comments »

Behind the Curtain, a Window

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

Yesterday, after a long time away from my own creative writing, I found I had caught up with pressing obligations and still possessed several daylight hours.

Suddenly free, I cleared my desk and started a project I was to have begun some time ago: Profiles of some of my novel characters.

I started with the narrator, Delia. The novel is in first person, but I wrote the study in third person. What a change. Immediately I knew things about this character I hadn’t before, such as how she appeared to other people, what they noticed about her. I discovered more about her sister, Antonia, and their relationship to each other.

Taking this character into a study allowed me to open a curtain on her, to describe her in a way I couldn’t within the context of the novel.

What also surprised me was the joy of writing again. Since high school, writing has been something of an obsession, though I never thought I was particularly “good” at it. In college, all of those papers drove me insane, especially the French ones which I had to write every week. I remember how I wouldn’t start on them until midnight or later, and each paper was a guaranteed all-nighter.

Strangely, at 21 years old, on an airplane coming home from a year’s study in France, a sense of identity crystallized within me. I looked over the New York skyline and knew I was a writer. I had no idea what that meant, of course, only that I was going to write about things. I imagined at the time I’d write poetry about them. (How romantic. You’re breaking my heart.)

Followed were several years of figuring out what being a writer actually meant: At times I confused writing with drinking, a not uncommon pitfall. By the time I figured it out, I also realized no one would ever really understand what I did, why, or all the outside elements of my life that would never make sense to the world. That’s still true to some extent.

I never imagined how much I’d have to give up to be a writer — so much of life I miss, hunched over this desk, the jobs I’d like to have had, such as to be a botanist, or a lawyer, or a veterinarian.

In the end, it’s like the proverbial moth to the flame, or the homing pigeon coming back to the rooftop. Writing is simply where I live, and when I’m away from it, I’m miserable.

Omar Khayyam courtesy of Okon Life

Posted in On writing | No Comments »

Fiction Daily