Sunday, December 05, 2004

Writing for myself again

This latest story is not working out as I had hoped. Our female protagonist has stumbled on a nest of self-satisfaction and peace after what were turbulent times (which I have to fill in retroactively); she would rather sit and read a good novel in a coffee shop than tear her hair out and kick her myriad childhood dolls across the barren linoleum floor, or something like that. The real problem with this story is it lacks the mountian of effort put into it that might force me to not throw it away.

I've never boon of the school of thought that supports fiction writing as an outline-filled, reflective procedure. Maybe I'm just undisciplined, but I've always wanted to be smacked in the face by an idea so compelling that I'd run home or wherever there is a writing apparatus, skip classes, ignore phone calls, forget to eat and drink and sleep and bathe, weear my fingers down to nubs on non-ergonomic typewriters, hyped up on pep pills night after night watching the manuscript coming to life, developing like a zygote in a million different ways, spilling down page after page and triumph after triumph. That is what I've romanticized writing as, not as a mechanical appending of plot points and character arcs, but as a mandala: starting from that focused kernel and imposing itself on the field of perception. That kind of writing has the elements of the preconscious: a kind of flow through the writer rather than from the writer; the kind of spontaneity that combines what is loosest and freest and unstructured in prose and most whimsical and imaginative and evocative in poetry.

It may be hokey, as I realize, but that kind of state is a goal of mine, to be attained at least a few times in life. I've tried to help my hyper-inspired state along: with nights of drinking and night-walking, trips as spontaneous as possible, long meandering bicycle rides, wall-climbing, long meandering conversations, experience of slums and banks and trees, snow and fog and back-breaking labour. It has not come to full fruition, but if it does, if my mind can yield up to me feverish dream imagery for days at a time, I will be able to say that my existence had some (however torturously small) purpose: to take what existence has soaked into me and, in the words of Allen Ginsberg, "[trap] the archangel of the soul between two visual images and [join] the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus".

Consider: "every new human came from a bottleneck where two madly sophistcated complexes trillions of cells in number pulled their combined resources into making one cell. I have trained myself to realize that I am not special, which is certainly true on the cosmic and societal level. But the study of Biology always re-affirms my appreciation of my immensity."

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Being my writer was my lifelong ambition until circa grade 12, when I realized something very important: I don't have the attention span. I used to write compulsively as a child, creating these grand fantasy worlds for myself, but I would invariably abandon the manuscript halfway through. Sometimes my characters still nag me at night, begging for completion, but I don't think it will happen.

1:20 PM  
Blogger A. D. said...

I had the exact same thing. I had such ambitions: huge Tolkenesque worlds with their own metaphysics, creation stories, genealogies, wars, failures, tragedies. I really admire Tolkien because he actually managed to go through with it. And all those other authors.

Nowadays, my writing is much more shoe-gazer-esque. This is why I keep saying that children are the best source of creativity. We're educated, but we're drones.

Sigh.

4:06 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great work!
[url=http://xwicsfjj.com/fqzw/qbxs.html]My homepage[/url] | [url=http://haucwhxd.com/qkhp/waoc.html]Cool site[/url]

4:51 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well done!
My homepage | Please visit

4:51 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well done!
http://xwicsfjj.com/fqzw/qbxs.html | http://cbnbdjpn.com/yngt/heeq.html

4:51 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home