Word Bender

Yeah, so I’m writing a novel. Little ol’ me. Even before I bailed on art school last autumn, I had an idea coalescing in my head. It was like a bunch of little pieces of imagination that I’d had over the years suddenly all started sticking to one another in a rational shape, telling me that they didn’t want to be a bunch of short stories, they wanted to be The Story—a book. Remember, at the time I was still in art school, so busy that I had to look at my schedule to see when I could bathe and eat. But now I’m not, that’s the crucial difference between this fall and last. Now I’m not only able to write, I’m supposed to write. And since I can never do anything by halves…

I’ve had it in my head that I wouldn’t “know how” to write a novel until after I got out of school, that I should wait and be educated before messing with the big leagues. Somehow I keep forgetting that I’m not a clueless, overambitious 18-year-old, but a nearly-thirty woman with plenty of experience. So I said to hell with it, I’ll start next spring. Then I saw a flyer in the Williams (English) building at school, advertising National Novel Writing Month. I couldn’t help but check out something that outrageous.

And it is outrageous. The idea is, you start with zero words on midnight, November first, and end at midnight, November 30th with a novel of at least 50,000 words. You submit it to their website in time, their computer scrambles it for security and checks the word count, and if you make it, you basically get to brag for the rest of your life. Sure, it’s insane. But so? I have the idea, I have the requisite self-overestimation (to get me started) and touchy pride (to keep me going). Sure, the novel I write will need massive editing, to say the least. But I’ll have written a novel. Take that, infidels!

Happy birthday, Oscar!

“Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.”

Checkov’s Molotov

As I was  heading towards Landis Green on the FSU campus today, I saw a maintenance man using a piece of machinery to clean the Gilchrist dorm wall. Sitting over by the sidewalk, by itself, was a gas can. It was very red against the green grass. Its blue-rag-stuffed nozzle pointed engagingly towards passers-by, like a dog poking its nose through a fence. In the movies, whenever you spy a gas can, you can be sure that Something Will Burn. Or else why show the fuel? As I walked on, I pictured the obvious—myself taking the container, shaking gas all over something, and setting it on fire. I had no real will to do this, only impersonal curiosity. And my mind just as predictably recoiled, negating the thought with a tired reflex.

The bored automation of my response startled me.  In my life, have I ever done anything truly destructive? I think of myself not only as terribly experienced, but also plenty open-minded. But I suddenly perceived an experience that not only have I never really engaged in , but from which I actively shrank. Destruction bad, preservation good. Why? I saw my desire to preserve everything for the numbing superstition that it was, just another sad compulsive leftover of my New Age upbringing. There are some unhealthy people in that spirituality, people that frantically fear the dark, who try to rid themselves and their lives of all traces of it—as if that were possible. I don’t think I’ve ever feared the darkness, I’ve only feared the fact that I didn’t fear it. I feared what it meant about me. And I’ve overcompensated.

I’ve always had an active conscience. If I see a bug in my house, I kill it—but I feel bad. I hate crumpling paper and throwing it away; I want to recycle it. I’ve even gone back into a store to retrieve a band-aid that fell off, so nobody would see it on the floor and want to puke. I’m well aware of how absurd that is. But I guess I’ve not let myself realize yet what a fucking prison I’m in, to be so inhibited from making a negative impact on the world. And I understand that’s how people felt after the PC ’90′s, which is why Bush got such a following—government-sanctioned destructiveness, both political and social, probably felt liberating for a while. Kill life, waste resources, disgust people. Doing so, thoughtlessly, would render me into the kind of person I most hate. But if I hate them for their disrespect of life, and then choke my life off trying not to be like them, what have I accomplished?

But you see, I didn’t snatch the gas can up, pour it over Landis Green, and dance around the bonfire like a “Fight Club” fanatic.  I went home and wrote a blog entry about my thoughts. Maybe it’s enough that I saw something a little differently. I was conscious enough to catch my thinking and change it, open up to a new idea. But what if that isn’t enough? Do I strike the lighter next time?

Don’t Let the Door Hit You, Guys…

It’s been six looooonnnnng years, hasn’t it?

Why I Write

I believe meaning is a spectrum, ranging from things with inherent meaning at one end, to the other end with things that only have the meaning that we give them. I think this spectrum is always changing. What we give meaning to changes moment by moment, and what has inherent meaning changes glacially slow, or perhaps not at all. As human beings, we are too changeable to see very far towards the inherent-meaning end of the spectrum; but we also crave stability, so living at the completely-mutable end is too uncomfortable for us, and feels like madness.

The range of possible meanings, for the countless number of things that every human being has ever perceived, is as close to infinite as most of us can comprehend. But why do some symbolisms, some labels, some interpretations stick, and others don’t?  I have always loved to ponder why things may have happened, what they could possibly cause to happen. And I’m fascinated with hearing why people believe what they do. Do they just accept what meanings and explanations they’re told?  Or is there another factor?

Literature isn’t just the “who, what, when, where, and how”, of course. And it’s not necessarily just the why, in terms of psychological motivation, societal influence, or upbringing. If those were the only variables human beings faced, we’d probably have it all under control, for better or worse. But there’s something else in us, some wayward thing that constantly surprises us. That’s what I’m interested in as a writer.

Stories have to mean something to matter. They have to have a point and a purpose, if only to please us with their language. But the best stories get us close to realizing something that we can’t quite put our finger on. They may not quite express the inexpressible, but they show us the direction where it lies.

I can’t say what the highest goals for a writer should be. They’ll be different depending on what meaning the writer ascribes to their work. But just as all art is religious art, in that it is an expression of what the artist believes in and finds significant; so storytelling is just about what the storyteller finds important, and a demonstration and exploration of the meanings it has. And writers are simply storytellers who feel their stories are important enough to share.