Letter To A Young Writer

I want to share here this letter that writer Colum McCann posted lately to The Story Blog, in which he offers his advice to young writers. I'm posting it here because:

1/It offers brilliant, no-nonsense advice.

2/He's one of my contemporary favourte writers.

3/I could do with some writing advice right now - as could no doubt you, fellow aspiring writers tuning in...  Honestly, we can never have too much of it....

4/It is also a lovely nod to Rilke's 'Letters To A Young Poet' which contains some of the most beautiful lines of advice ever written about writing. 

Every sentiment of this is reflective of McCann's own writing style which is bold, unique,  poetic and powerful.  (I had the good fortune of meeting him once, and after asking him a question about his book, he immediately responded off-the-bat 'Are you a writer yourself?' to which I was pleasantly surprised, chuffed even, and still am. Well, if you're going to get recognition from anybody, lovely that it's a writer, one of your favourites and most highly regarded at that. (So thank you for that Colum.)  And by the way, he is such a nice guy in real life, highly intelligent and talkative, modest and courteous and kind.  

Anyway, he would know a lot about advice as he teaches Creative Writing at Hunter College in New York. He is by all accounts, not just a brilliant writer but an inspiring teacher as well. Anyway, words to  remember, to engrave into your writing heart:

 

'Do the things that do not compute. Be earnest. Be devoted. Be subversive of ease. Read aloud. Risk yourself. Do not be afraid of sentiment even when others call it sentimentality. Be ready to get ripped to pieces: It happens. Permit yourself anger. Fail. Take pause. Accept the rejections. Be vivified by collapse. Try resuscitation. Have wonder. Bear your portion of the world. Find a reader you trust. Trust them back. Be a student, not a teacher, even when you teach. Don’t bullshit yourself. If you believe the good reviews, you must believe the bad. Still, don’t hammer yourself. Do not allow your heart to harden. Face it, the cynics have better one-liners than we do. Take heart: they can never finish their stories. Have trust in the staying power of what is good. Enjoy difficulty. Embrace mystery. Find the universal in the local. Put your faith in language—character will follow and plot, too, will eventually emerge. Push yourself further. Do not tread water. It is possible to survive that way, but impossible to write. Transcend the personal. Prove that you are alive. We get our voice from the voices of others. Read promiscuously. Imitate. Become your own voice. Sing. Write about that which you want to know. Better still, write towards that which you don’t know. The best work comes from outside yourself. Only then will it reach within. Restore what has been devalued by others. Write beyond despair. Make justice from reality. Make vision from the dark. The considered grief is so much better than the unconsidered. Be suspicious of that which gives you too much consolation. Hope and belief and faith will fail you often. So what? Share your rage. Resist. Denounce. Have stamina. Have courage. Have perseverance. The quiet lines matter as much as those which make noise. Trust your blue pen, but don’t forget the red one. Allow your fear. Don’t be didactic. Make an argument for the imagined. Begin with doubt. Be an explorer, not a tourist. Go somewhere nobody else has gone, preferably towards beauty, hard beauty. Fight for repair. Believe in detail. Unique your language. A story begins long before its first word. It ends long after its last. Don’t panic. Trust your reader. Reveal a truth that isn’t yet there. At the same time, entertain. Satisfy the appetite for seriousness and joy. Dilate your nostrils. Fill your lungs with language. A lot can be taken from you—even your life—but not your stories about your life. So this, then, is a word, not without love, to a young writer: Write.'

It's something isn't it? Well it has been a motivating force for me to post here in the past three months. [Apologies for that...]  

I think my absolute favourite line in this letter is: 'Be vivified by collaspe.' Indeed! An audacious concept. Collaspe is not the end, rather a means to reanimation. An aha revelation. The very notion of letting collaspe, exhaustion, failure vivify you is heartedly reassuring. And coming from McCann's voice, I believe it. Also: 'prove that you are alive' - couldn't that be the  core raison d'etre of writing? And, 'read promiscuously', oh yeah. Think I'm guilty of that alright. Finally  - 'Fill your lungs with language'. Inhale deeply: yes, yes, yes :)

And if you enjoyed what you've read here, then I implore you to check out Colum McCann's novels - powerfully affecting, linguistically brilliant. He has that mark of a great writer - the ability to wield language to his own thematic desires, until the technical telling becomes the story, the story itself life not just as we know it, but as it could be known.  Transcending, tremendous. 

~ Siobhán 

Ten Things Not To Say To A Writer!

The hashtag #TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter has been trending on Twitter the past few days, in a big way. 

If you haven't heard about it, go google right now! It's basically a hashtag for writers to express their frustrations as to how the craft is misunderstood and generally disrespected by the majority of the public.  So many writers - both aspiring and established - have embraced the hashtag as a means of venting their frustrations. To give you a taste of some of the tweets, have a look at this article on:  Thought Catalog. Seems the most common refrain goes along the lines of ignorant dismissal: 'So what's your real job then?' (this line by Margaret Laurence always ricochets in my mind to that one: 'When I say 'work', I only mean writing. Everything else is just odd jobs.' Amen.) Many of the tweets also show the assumption that writing is a hobby and one that everyone can do apparently, given enough time. Pah!

Oh I can agree with so many of them. And this got to thinking what are the ten things I hate to have said to me in relation to writing... Hmmm:

1. "Ah, creative writing - you mean calligraphy." (Complete cluelessness. This actually was said to me, on a few occasions!) 

2. "Yes, but when are you going to get a real job?" (Peevish cynics/jealous onlookers suffering from a big lack of vision/imagination/dreams of their own) 

3. "Don't you have to be older to be a writer? You know, have more life experience." 

(Ageist and completely incorrect as to who writers are and what they do - because no, we are not all writing memoirs.) 

4. "Yes, but apart from that, what do you do?" (Haughty undermining) 

5. "You have to be really lucky to get a book published these days - like winning the lotto!" (Er no, snide dream disser, you don't need luck when you've got talent and drive.) 

6. "Then again you could be lucky like -insert name of popular prolific chick lit author here"- (Well I hope NOT! since I don't want to sell-out my literary soul! Hard to understand every woman is not a chick-lit writer - or reader - for that matter!)

7. "Maybe you could write my life story, be a bestseller!" (Narcissists' input - happens more than you'd think...) 

8. "Oh I've always wanted to write a novel,  everyone has one in them." 

(Belittling. Er, no. Sure, everyone has a story or stories in them, but not everyone has the ability to transmute these narratives to imaginative written expressions.)

9. "Oh... so you're a journalist!" (Inability to comprehend the actual variety of genres in writing) 

10. "Did that really happen to you?" (Inability to understand ah, the premise of 'fiction') 

But I have to say, despite all of these things, there is one absolute worst thing than these. When I mention I write or want to be a writer, this response: _____________ . 

Big bad blank. Nothing, nada, nope, didn't hear that, don't want to hear that, what?!?!  Not what they have said, but what they have not said. A complete ignoring. Try it. As Carolyn See put it in her excellent guide to writing - 'Making a Literary Life', if you want to stop a conversation dead in its tracks, mention the fact that you write, or aspire to being a writer. Whoa! 

What about you fellow writers? What are your ten things? Writing is a misunderstood craft, especially when it's committed to as an active career. #TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter shows just how much. Darn it. But we accept the mantle valiantly. To write is to battle silence, indifference, ignorance, dismissal, misunderstanding, all of it. So, on we go, regardless of what people think of our profession/obsession/occupation.

But anyway, not to end on a cranky note. Here's ten things we writers would like to hear more:

Ten Things To DEFINITELY Say To A Writer:

1. How is the writing going? (genuine interest, acknowledgement) 
2. What an exciting profession! (admiration, respect) 
3. You're a very talented writer/I love your work. (recognition)
4. What a joy to create for a living! (support)
5. I really enjoyed your work (Plus that is to say I did actually read it) 
6. I love reading books. (support of your industry)
7. What do you write? (interest) 
8. What writers do you admire? (interest, upped)
9. I'd love to read your novel/script/poetry/articles. (support and encouragement)
10. Writing is hard work! (Yes, thank you!)


~Siobhán 



Observer: Hashtag Has Famous Writers Venting And Bonding on Twitter
Huffington Post: #TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter is Funny, But Also Good Etiquette

The Sense of a Sensibility: On Being a Poet

'To be a poet  is a condition, not a profession.' ~ Robert Frost

I've been thinking a lot recently on what it means to be called a 'poet.' To be a writer and to be termed a writer is a very different thing from being a poet. Writers write, poets... wander lonely as clouds, through dales and daydreams (!) Poets pen poems of course, but to majority opinion, they exist in a state of bemusement, in a dreamy airy-fairyness. If you imagine a writer, it's a person sitting slavishly at a typewriter, surrounded by reams of pages; imagine a poet and it's a vague ambling figure, eyes to the sky, mind gallivanting betwixt the real and the imaginary. If a writer's profession is seen to be a strange one, then a poet's is far more surreal, and unsure in the eyes of many. 

The term 'poet' not only describes what you do, but more so, who you are. It's not just the act of writing poems that defines a poet, it's the general disposition that goes with that. The poetic disposition or sensibility, the enabler of poetry writing. There is truth in what Robert Frost said that to be a poet 'is a condition, not a profession'. I agree. It is more trait than talent, more a way of being than of writing. Most poets will tell you that to have a career writing poetry is almost impossible. But to be a poet, is reward in itself, for you are blessed with an unique way of seeing the world. 

'Poet' is really a word for a person who pays close attention to life. A life-observer. Note-taker.  Poets see things minutely, miraculously. We are attentive to every little detail, every nuance of emotion, every shift of light. To be a poet is to be continually aware of life - the emotions that eddy and swirl, the strata of the  physical, natural world down to the slightest movement of a leaf in a breeze. As Mary Oliver says in one of her poems: "Instructions for living a life: pay attention, be astonished, tell about it." And that's what poets do. To be a poet you work in the realm of astonishment, where every little thing is a wonder, a wonder that demands the right words to translate it to a wider audience. You have sensitive antennae that are always feeling out situations for poetic inspiration. I always think the mind of a poet is like a coral reef, alive with colour, opening and probing in an endless unfurling of brilliant blossom, vibrant with life. We have a kind of built'in periscope in the heart, to see not out of the deep, but into the deep.

  
I saw an advertisement for a writing job recently with one of the requirements asking for a 'high emotional intelligence.' Granted, all writers have this of course. How else could you write credibly about people without an innate understanding of the emotional psyche? But poets, well they excel in this realm. Look how precisely we can identify and analyse emotions, pin them like strange underwater specimens to our blank page and dissect them into fragments of many metaphors and similes, symbols and images. Our area of expertise is emotional terrain. We are more equipped there than anywhere else. It's not just a keen sensitivity (we feel - a lot), but we can dive into the depths of those feelings and emerge with a new knowledge, a newly gleaned wisdom  that is poetry's greatest attribute.  


And contrary to some popular opinion, we poets do not live in a grandiose world of our own making. As a poet, you are intrinsically attuned to the world as it is, not removed from it. We render it in language that shines a light on its silent secrets, illuminates and releases its burden of unnoticed glamours. Poetry is an expression of living, a testament of being here and feeling alive, a 'life-cherishing force' as Mary Oliver notes. And it is not the pursuit of the dreamy, or the airy-fairy, or a part-time past-time. It is a worthy discipline. I love how Mark Strand put it that: 'life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention.' In our finer moments, poetry is what we all do, what we all feel; that which quickens out heartbeat and bestows on us a true sense of being alive. Poets are just people who pledge their lives to this course, who take the time to record in verse (to seek, as Coleridge said 'the best words in the best order') the amazement of life they witness.  How can any of this be sometimes looked upon with smug derision by certain people? (Cynic, thy name is critic!)

Writers are concerned mostly with the search for truth in their writing. For poets, it's something else. Our holy grail goal is akin to Beauty, which is always to be found lilting over the horizon, stepping in and out of our wordings like a mirage goddess. To some people success is money, status, fame. To a writer, it is recreating Life in fiction; to a poet it is the skillful capturing of the Muse, the transformation of ordinary matter into the extraordinary. Poetry is a kind of alchemy, gilding precious gold the most commonplace of things. A poet  is blessed with a vision that sees the world as it innately is: a kind of Wonderland of experience and inspiration. 

How to spot a poet? Well maybe it's that person staring off into the distance with a glint in their eye, someone who takes an impish delight in their surroundings.  People who mutter words aloud - Yeats was often caught at this while out walking - no doubt the locals thought him mad, but my, how we of the poetic disposition would disagree! I often speak words aloud to hear their trill (and thrill.) To sound out how they fit together, how they sieve through air for a soft feather finish. As WH Auden says, 'a poet is first and foremost a person who is passionately in love with language,' but I beg to differ. A poet is first and foremost a person who is passionately in love with the world. As Wallace Stevens put it: 'a poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.' And it is this love that leads to ingenious feats of language craft. 

In a book I'm reading now by Irish author Niall Williams ('History of the Rain') I was struck by the lines on the first page about the personality of a poet: "My father bore a burden of impossible ambition. He wanted all things to be better then they were, beginning with himself and ending with this world. Maybe this was because he was a poet. Maybe all poets are doomed to disappointment. Maybe it comes from too much dazzlement." 

Dazzlement. Yes! The very thing. That's the occupational consequence of being a poet, being constantly dazzled.  And it can lead to a lot of things: gratitude, luminous verse, a magnificent sense of the joy of living. But also it can mean disappointment and disillusion and that distinctly Irish trait implied here of melancholy. 

I realise I'm lucky to be Irish and live in a country where poetry is respected so much. To be called a poet here is a term of endearment and respect. We have always celebrated poets in Ireland, right back to ancient times when a 'file' or bard, was one of the highest esteemed members of society. They were seen as a kind of magic practitioner (I love how Seamus Heaney echoed this when he said that he 'dabbled' in words), and were revered for their work. The file was the person who had a say in the running of society, one of its wise council, not to mention a mirth maker and almost soothsayer. The written word was held in the utmost regard, and still is. Today, poets enjoy a respectful presence in the land. Poetry competitions, readings and celebrations are rampant and our legacy of great poets such as Yeats and Heaney always something to be proud of despite other national problems. In a way our national character is infused with a sense of poetry, which manifests itself in wit and melancholy and a 'gift for the gab.' Our language is rain-soaked, dew-fed, a warm mixture of Gaelic and English, a cadence of mirth and woe, chiseled on the rhyme of sing-song greetings and the rhythm of jaunty dialects. 'We are all born with the gene of poetry', but I think this is particularly true of the Irish. And I'm glad to be an inheritor of that heritage. 

I've been thinking about this recently I suppose as I am becoming more aware of it all. How I pay attention to the world. How each day is a mass of colour amid a volley of words and bright bouquets of inspiration that manifest in the most ordinary of situations. Sometimes, there is sensory overload - too much to take in. The whole day shifts and shimmers as a wild rough draft and I struggle to lasso the neurotic subject  matter and pull it all into shape. 

I love that I see the world as a poet. As a place of plentiful inspiration. On good days, every little thing sings for notation: trees, skies, the petal of a flower, the memory of a song, the flutter of an eyelash, the wing of a bird, a smile, a word, a phrase, a food, a feather-light passing feeling. It is an exuberant, almost invincible feeling, a feeling that can trump every other negativity that crops up along the way. Instant heart highs. I have the power to shapeshift it all onto the page, and once there, some sense is made, but more than that, some significance, some semblance of worthy recognition emerges. Anything is worthy of poetry - as Flaubert said: 'There is not a particle of life that does not contain poetry within it'. And you find that to single out a subject for poetic incarnation is to enlarge the experience of it. To present it on a epic scale. And the result is that life accelerates into a momentum of mattering. It's almost a kind of superpower, really.

Being a poet may not be practical in today's world. It may not get you a 9 to 5 job or a moneyed up lifestyle. But it will make you rich with other gifts. Because of being a poet, having a poetic disposition, I find treasure everywhere I look; I can create my own riches. And I suppose I'm writing this post to acknowledge that fact, to express my heartfelt thanks for this 'condition' of being.  To accept it more fully. To understand it. To know my place in the grand scheme of work/life/career/vocation. And maybe mostly, to remember that there is something that I do that will always remain... hidden I suppose. Partly invisible.  But it is still there nonetheless. Pulsing quietly like a galaxy of stars. And it may not matter to some, but it matters to me. It may not be a way of proving my worth in the workplace or 'real' world (let's face it, in most jobs, poetic sensibility or 'high emotional intelligence' is not a required must), but is a way of proving my worth as an all-seeing, all-feeling human being, as a way of paying (awed) dues for my stay on this planet. I thank all my lucky stars that I have been bestowed with not just a knack at arranging words but this way of seeing, of being. This profound delight in taking note of living. I think this line sums up the feeling of a poet writing a poem most brilliantly: 

                                                       

 "And what I was feeling was the wonder, of being more than me. I had become a shining star, a burning nova. Exploding with love." 

~Walter Myers  

To put it simply, a kind of magic.

And a big-up salute to all you poets reading this! We may have it tough at times contending with practical pedanticness and cynical critics, but do remember, the goodness, the giddy gladness that accompanies our profession, and condition. 

~Siobhán

Can Writers Read Too Much?

As an insatiable reader I would automatically answer the question the title of this post poses with a vehement No! But as a writer, I'm beginning to wonder if there is such a thing as reading too much.

Reading, it goes without saying, is essential to writing. It is the yin to its yang. One can't exist without the other. They're the two sides of one coin. One the passive part, the other the active, a type of verbal inhalation and creative exhalation. But when engaging in both these sides, is it necessary to find balance between the two? Like a see-saw, will one go down if the other goes up? It's all about achieving balance. And recently my scales have been off (by a truckload of books).

 

What exactly is reading too much? On an ordinary scale, until your eyes hurt would usually be a tip-off. Or until words kick up a blunderbuss through your head obscuring fiction and reality (ahem, guilty, several times over). But for a writer to read too much? What does that mean when writers, out of all people, read SO much? It is a part of their work after all. But what is the quantity of reading that will impede upon writing? And can it really impede, as its primary function is first and foremost always to encourage?

On the one hand I feel like I am feeding the furnaces of writing with reading so many books; on the other, like I am shutting them off. I love to read. All writers love to read, all encourage wide reading if you want to be a writer (Stephen King advises us to read 'a lot'.  MFA writing courses have lengthy reading lists.) But I wonder - how much reading exactly? Because it is an activity that could prove infinite - once you start, you just can't stop! I find myself while in the midst of a reading binge wanting to write, but, ultimately putting it off. Wait until this book is finished, which inevitable becomes another book and another book.

You may all have heard of and read the iconic textbook on creativity Julia Cameron's 'The Artist's Way' and found it inspirational, stimulating, encouraging to the highest strata. I loved it yes. I cherish it as one of the most inspirational guides to writing ever written, but there's just one component of it I had trouble with. And no it was not the controversial morning pages (I did groan at them but liked them), but rather the chapter where she urged us NOT TO READ. Yep, to effectively ban reading from our daily schedules for two weeks I think it was, so that our own ink could flow better. 

I never liked that idea, but I did try it. But my 'reading diet' only lasted for a while. I mean, how can you not read? She insisted it was because it could be a distraction to writing. The idea being that it's easier to read than write. Easy to pick up a book than a pen, a feather as opposed to a heavyweight. And I suppose, easy to get discouraged by all the greatness of literature to ever pick up a pen again. But really, easier to hide away in the already written word than to be the one out there forging it. All the better, she urges, to hear our own voice. I suppose she has a point. 

                                                              

I'm thinking of this now as I realise I've been doing a lot of reading lately. Because I let my reading slide for a long hiatus once, I am now even more determined to get stuck in.  I'm on Goodreads and love the challenge of trying to read 50+ books within a year. I deliberately took this number so I could read a book a week or thereabouts, a good balance I thought. But - big BUT - I have noticed that my writing time has suffered in the process. 

I'm not the only writer to feel like this. I came across a quote from Susan Sontag recently that echoes this feeling in a blunt admittance: "I read too much - as an escape from writing". In a Paris Review interview talking about how she gets started writing, she said: "Getting started is partly stalling, stalling by way of reading and of listening to music, which energizes me and also makes me restless." That's it exactly - reading energizes us, puts us in the take-off point for writing, but too much of it and not enough writing can indeed make us 'restless.' I often stall writing too by reading and listening to music. (At this point in the post, I have listened to a full album on repeat and read about five articles on Susan Sontag, not to mention a few other blogs AND found another book to order in the course of all that...)

I haven't written a lot in a while. My spare time has been more easily filled with books. And I suppose if you have the slightest bit of writing block, books can soon turn it into a Berlin Wall Blockade. They fill the hours with their quiet insistence and their word-worlds swarm around your head, leaving no room for burgeoning ones of your own. It's not so much a case of stage-fright when it comes to your own blank page, but more like so many words buzzing in your head it's hard to find your own in their (marvelous) cacophony.

Looking at the daily routines of famous writers, it is clear that they distinctly differentiate reading and writing, most to the strict tune of writing first - dawn or morning and reading second - evening usually, when all the 'work' is done. I wonder is there an optimum time for reading and an optimum time for writing? Or does it depend solely on mood or preference?  Is it better then to write in the daytime and read at night? Or what about your one precious hour of free-time - read or write? One is relaxing, the other invigorating. If I read at night, I sleep sound. If I write at night, I'm up all night, brain buzzing in a blizzard of words. I try to do both every day, ideally equally, but my pattern of late has been reading first, writing second. Or a few days binge reading and then binge writing. 

I have loved my reading time recently, but am missing my writing time. Maybe there is a limit that needs to be imposed in order to write at a more efficient pace. I'm thinking now maybe it is necessary, as Julia Cameron advised, to go cold turkey on reading in order to be in serious writing mode, well at least a little bit cold turkey. I suppose you can't  make headway on your novel while your head's down the rabbit hole of another book can you? 

The act of reading subconsciously preps the mind's terrain for the act of writing. It is fuel for the fire of writing. For this reason I feel, as all writers likely do, that the more I read, the better I will write and to this account, can end up reading for days and days without writing. But I'll admit the relative 'easiness' of it is a kind of luxury limbo I can fall into now and then. To drag myself out of it and actually put myself into writing mode again feels like dragging yourself out of a cosy warm bed in the morning, the duvet too much of a comfort to discard just yet, it being also an incubator for dreams. 

 

I read a really interesting article recently criticising MFAs in which the writer said something really evocative - that writers ('real writers' ahem) read from childhood so as to form the appropriate 'neural architecture' required for writing. Don't you just love that phrase?! From it I picture an inner Rococo mind with cascading columns on which cherubic angels of inspiration alight, crossed with a flickering neon super-accelerated sci-fi-like set. Writing is hard-wired into our minds alright and every new piece of literature we read adds another feature to this architecture. But it's important to realise that this neural architecture is there - waiting for us to start reaping its glories.

Whatever about a time to read and a time to write, there has to be a time to know when one over-arches into the other's territory. I remember the days of writing assignments at college in which there was an 'incubation period' first, usually 1-4 weeks, in which research was done and knowledge gleaned, a time to collect all the necessary content and stimuli.  And then, just like that, a time to stop and get down to the writing of it, a sort of D-Day of deliberation. You knew it when it happened: your own fully-formed opinions would pulse to be processed, ripe for the picking. To spend more time researching was a kind of cop-out, a faltering, a delusion and frankly, with a deadline looming - a danger. You were ready. It was now or never. I'm thinking it is the same for writing now, albeit with no deadline looming, except the personal ones. Now, it is even more imperative to impose those D-Days especially when you can lose the run of yourself in reading. To harness the 'energy' of reading as Susan Sontag put it, and dispel that 'restlessness.'
   

I wonder what is the process for other aspiring writers - how do you balance your reading with your writing? Should there be a balance? Do you go on occasional reading diets to feed your writing?  Advice appreciated! 

~Siobhán. 

Notes From An Aspiring Author

Since it's a New Year, I'm going to try something new here: an update on my status as an 'aspiring' author, just to keep you in tandem with my new observations and thoughts on the writing process, the various trials and tribulations and small victories there may be. If you are an aspiring author too - which I know many of you are and more - do feel very welcome to chip in and share your own experiences. It's a lonely profession this writing. 

Besides, I really like that prefix 'aspiring' don't you? It has so much... desire in it. Yes, if desire and ambition were to be coupled and melded into one word it would very much be: aspire.

~Aspiring ~ 
My definition: To aspire is as necessary as to respire. It denotes living, breathing, doing, seeking, an earnest ever-there trying. It speaks of a life that is lived in the hope of fulfilling, of becoming. To hope and to hold the horizon in your heart with all your breath, with all your power. To be always leaning towards a destination, like a newborn bud to the light of the sun. To grow in the light. To follow the light. To be a bud brimming with a bloom. To direct all your energy towards one bright and shining goal. To nurture it. To push potential to actuality, carefully trilling the tutting, pouting, hesitating, posturing of 'im' out of impossible, to clear the way for the possible. An unconquerable Sisyphus. To say 'I am almost there', 'I want', 'I believe,' 'I know where I am headed', is to aspire to. To gain gargantuan heights. I will be, I will do everything I can to become this which is my fixed ambition. An affixed promise of becoming that which you desire the most, in all the world. In this case, a writer. 

And why is it that every aspiring writer seems an incognito, undercover, hidden one? It seems to be something you keep to yourself, like a secret - a heroic Superman kind of  secret. When it is revealed, it's like the air colours somewhat, a freshness, a revealing like none before.  But do we aspire towards a dream or a set-in-stone career? Because being a writer - ah - I mean an author, is a bit of both isn't it? It's both possible and impossible. Possible if you try outrageously, pour your whole self into it - time, energy, wherewithal; impossible if you don't - if you give in to doubt, to block, to rejections and all those afflicting bad vibes. But what's so exciting and unnerving about being an 'aspiring author' is that we are always hovering between these two polarities, torn between their different energies. We know it could all go one way or the other and so we stand on the cusp of potential poised to dive into a pool of stars or fall face-down on the floor. But, the very word 'aspiring' is a positive one I think. It is laden with intent, a foreseeing, a believing in what will be the next logical outcome: bud to bloom, amateur to master, effort to reward, writer to author. 

~New Writing Paraphernalia ~

I've started the New Year off in positive fashion buying new notebooks in the hopes of  kickstarting a whole new writing schedule (well, schedule is a bit optimistic - let's go with routine instead, ahem.)  My plan was to have one as a general notebook, another as a sort of journal for things like morning pages and observations (see The Artist's Way) and then I was thinking maybe another one for prose while I was at it, an additional one for articles, then one for keeping track of submission dates etc in what would be a super organised extravaganza, a first of its kind on my part. But alas, thrifty sense got the best of me when I thought hold on a sec, I need to stop buying and just start writing! So with their purposes a little eschew, here they are in all their shining finery: 

There's just something about a new notebook that makes you feel all shiny and new. And more motivated you know, to fill them. I think every aspiring author revels in buying them. So working from my first few fledglings of notes, here I am on this new blog endeavor. 

It's worth noting that I also bought a new pack of pencils, the novelty being I NEVER use pencils, even though so many writers swear by them (stodgy traditional stylists hmpf!) My thinking being maybe they'll stick around more than pens as they come in a case which I am determined to keep them in. (I can never keep a pen around me - I seem to repel them. In all my years of writing, I think I've gone through hundreds, maybe thousands of lost and found pens. Remember that film 'State of Play' with Russell Crowe as the hardcore investigative journo and the pen necklace he made for his rookie assistant Rachel McAdams who was always losing pens? Well, I'm thinking that's the lengths I will have to go to if I want to keep a pen on me. A writer with no pen, a builder with no tools - the irony, I assure you, never ceases to jab at my doubtful self's sensitivity to the query of 'am I in the right profession??!'). Anyway, the pencils are spectacular:

In pencil font, words flow across the page like water smoothing benevolent bedrock beneath. Nothing is permanent, so everything is possible, flourishing with a soft assurance. Words are a silk caress, a scarf blowing colours into the breeze. No longer blunt objects, hesitant scrapes and scores, but a confident fanfare of swirls and suave creations, curves of comfort, like ships put out to sea, unfurling their sails finally to the wind, sun shining starboard. 

I've also acquired a desk in the past few months, a real writer's desk. Well, what I like to call a real writer's desk - my desk for writing at least. It's a basic prop, but its symbolism is not to be underestimated. I've never really had a desk before assigned solely to writing, I've written anywhere and everywhere, laptop ad-hoc. Now I take to the testing task of sitting at it a few hours every day, without fail. Discipline. Does every aspiring writer possess this necessary quality (more like a Herculean feat at times) that the pros have I wonder? I forget which writer it is now, but I read that he uses an app that will delete all the words he has written in a day if he doesn't make it to such a number. Now that's scary motivation. Discipline is a stern enforcer which I am trying to cultivate. This desk, I hope, will be my trusted ally in this.

 

~Honesty and Writing~

I've been reminded lately of how writing has an inherent sort of lie-detector radar. You can speak untruths, but you can't so easily write them. Lots of things brought this to my attention recently, most especially the free speech debate which has erupted since the tragic Charlie Hebdo killings in Paris. If we are not allowed to write (and publish) what we think, what we want, no matter how offensive or unappealing it may be, then what? This I say in reference not just to the controversial magazine's content, but to the impassioned language that has sprung up in the debate in its wake. Why should we censor and repress ourselves? Language is a mode of expression - we may or may not use it wisely, but it must be up to each of us how to use it as it is a means of expressing one's self. We must be free to use it whatever way we choose, the only limits being those we impose upon ourselves as personal parameters. 'I shouldn't write this' is a million miles away from 'I am not permitted to write this.' We already impose sanctions on our speech in relation to social settings and sensitivities, but when it comes to print, to the written word, freedom of speech must reign. Provocation has always been a shock tactic, but have we always been so susceptible to shock by it? There have always been insults and out-of-line offensive publications; there has not, however, always been violent retaliation. If nothing else, what the whole Charlie Hebdo tragedy proves is that language, art, is a powerful, powerful medium, capable of eliciting passions and pains. 

See there's something about putting words on paper that filters through the residual sediment of speech to the embedded core of truth. Take diary writing for instance. It's confessional or not at all. Honesty is part and parcel of every writing process. People write letters when they have trouble expressing their true feelings to people. It's a way of tapping into the essential content of ourselves that can often get buried or submerged beneath layers of posturing and pacifying and social-pleasing. You can't write without honesty, and therefore it goes to say, without showing your self, without being your self. I think it was Jeanette Winterson who said: 'language is for revealing, not for hiding'. It's an implement of discourse, not disguise. And for people who use language slyly and strategically to confuse and to camouflage and to disguise their true feelings and intentions, then I say diddly squat! to them. Say what you mean, write it clearly and concisely and truthfully, or don't bother at all. In declarations, not obfuscations. And with no fear. No hesitations.

~Submisson Status~
Ah, time to face the minotaur in the labyrinth, take the podium stand naked, to enter a ticket - more like your ticking tenuous self with a holdall of heart and hope - in the harsh lottery of publishing. Yes, potential submissions are still in my head as we speak. Still mind-calculating what will go where and when the pieces are to be deemed 'ready' and me, their maker, willing. More on that next month! 

More ramblings to come, 

~ Siobhán 

~aka an aspiring author~ 

Sunday Morning Musing: Bukowski Wisdom

'There is no losing in writing, it will make your toes laugh as you sleep. it will make you stride like a tiger...'

I love this line especially from Bukowski's declaration. 'There is no losing in writing...' There isn't. It is beneficial, it is all becoming. Even if you are never published, never famous, writing will still be there, will still re-make you and bring the world into clearer focus. It is a gift, a privilege, a power. It will make you 'stride like a tiger' down the terrain of life (yes.) And although I've never thought about it before, the idea of toes 'laughing' as we sleep is just fantastic. Fingers thrum, heart bebops, brain flicker-flashes when you're on a roll, so why wouldn't toes be laughing too!

For more of Bukowski's tough-guy hard-earned writerly wisdom, click on his name in the Labels below this post. He has a lot to say on the craft and separating the real writers from the just-a-notion ones. All straight-up to-the-point talk. And all of it tried, tested and true. 

~ Siobhán

Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

'Tyger! Tyger! burning bright...'

Did you know that yesterday was Global Tiger Day? A day designated as of a few years ago to raise awareness for tiger conservation. Sadly, their numbers are dwindling and they are close to the verge of extinction.

Tigers are magnificent animals aren't they? The most admired of all the big cats, they hold a mesmeric fascination for many people, myself included. There's something so mysterious about them, beautiful, intense, and fearsome. They are animals of myth, of metaphor, of meaning, animals of life and death, of great beauty and simultaneously, great terror. 
 

And where can we experience these animals in more detail? Why, literature of course. Nature documentaries tell us the facts about tigers; literature, the myths. Tigers often feature in fiction, majestic in their metaphorical appeal. From Shere Khan in Kipling's classic 'The Jungle Book', to modern day Richard Parker, the shipwrecked tiger in 'Life of Pi', tigers are an intriguing addition to narratives. What I want to do here is mention a few books and poems that I found particularly memorable.

Tigers in Red Weather - Ruth Padel 
"Whatever artist dreamed up the tiger face exaggerated the eyes. White butterfly patches wing up like higher, bigger eyes above surprisingly small real ones of ochre. Black hierogliphics in these patches vary from tiger to tiger. Over his right eye is a blurry black triangle with three crescent moons above. Over the left a worm of black flame."
 
First off, it's poet's Ruth Padel's brilliant part travelogue, part poetic reflection on notes from her journey/quest to Asia to understand more about tigers. The book chronicles the history of tigers in their diverse habitats, ranging from their symbolic importance to cultural influence.  This unique book offers a detailed analysis of the tiger, in its rapidly changing habitat, in culture, in literature and what is most arresting, in the author's own personal life. The chapters are interwoven with a personal narrative arc in which Padel explores her own fascination with tigers and the wild in the light of a bitter break-up. The book strives to answer - explore rather -  the question of why tigers fascinate us, and what this fascination means. It is a book like no other; genre-defying and filled with passion and poetry.  To read it is to delve into the world of tigers: to wade knee-deep in Asian forests, in staggering conservation facts and figures, in fantastic myths and legends (did you know that some Eastern religions revere the tiger as a god?), into the fecund poetry of the wild, and in the process, of the heart. 

The Tiger's Wife - Tea Obreht

“In my earliest memory, my grandfather is bald as a stone and he takes me to see the tigers.” 

This book by debut young author Tea Obreht uses the symbol of a tiger in a most compelling manner.  The novel is set in a Balkan country of modern day, and the story is one about death, in a world marked by old legends and war wounds, love and loss. The tiger appears in the story as a sign of power, of strength, befriending the abused wife of a brutal butcher, the seeming key part in the complex riddle of the plot. It's up to us to interpret it, but what the tiger means is never obvious, it is always changing, like a mirage or a myth from the moment it appears in the novel - escaping from a bombed zoo to lurk in the background of the story, only to appear in crucial moments and hasten the climax of this confusing, yet affecting story. 

Life of Pi - Yann Martel  "Richard Parker rose unsteadily to his feet on the tarpaulin, eyes blazing as they met mine, ears laid tight to this head, all weapons drawn. His head was the size and colour of the lifebuoy, with teeth."Perhaps the most famous and favourite animal in fiction is Richard Parker, the 400lb Bengal tiger that ends up in a lifeboat with sole survivor Pi in this magical realist tale from Yann Martel. The book's original spark revolves on the presence of this character and unlike other fictions that feature tigers, this tiger is a mainstay in the story, not fleeting or lurking, but in the main stage of the lifeboat for two thirds of the novel, up front and scarily personal! Richard Parker is not just a plot device but a fierce frightening character that keeps the pages turning and the suspense wire-tight. If you want to experience a tiger in close-up quarters, read this. And if you want to read a swashbuckling adventure tale with a spiritual centre, read this. And if you want to read a really good book, read this!

 

In poetry, I suppose William Blake's 'The Tyger' (above) is the most well-known poem about tigers, the image of the animal with its 'fearful symmetry' 'burning bright' in the poem a suggestion of the fearful presence and allure of evil. But, I want to turn your attention to some other poems. (You can read  the typescript of 'The Tyger' on my Poem a Day blog today.)The first one by Ruth Padel, 'Tiger Drinking at Forest Pool' is the end result of  her tiger quest, and is found as a preface to 'Tigers in Red Weather'. It is both dramatic and beautiful, just like the animal itself, offering flitting glimpses of the tiger, and in these images, everything it represents. The poem fittingly captures the essence of the tiger as described in her book: mysterious, majestic, mythic.   Tiger Drinking at Forest Pool - Ruth Padel Water,moonlight, danger, dream.                                                                                                      Bronze urn angled on a tree root: one Slash of light, then gone. A red moon Seen through clouds, or almost seen. Treasure found but lost, flitting betweenThe worlds of lost and found. An unjust lawRepealed, a wish come true, a lifelongSadness healed. Haven, in the mindTo anyone hurt by littleness. A prayerFor the moment, saved; treachery forgiven.Flame of the crackle-glaze tangle, amberReflected in grey milk-jade. An old songRemembered, long debt paid. A painting on silk, which may fade.    The second is a metaphysical classic from South American poet Borges, where the tiger begins as a symbol, but then is interrupted by the realisation of its real self, the 'deadly jewel' that stalks the forests in Bengal and Sumatra, as being superior to the one of thought. The poem presents a conflict between the imagiantion and reality, the mind's pursuits as opposed to the physical world, essentially the tension involved in writing - can we writers ever note down life as it truly is? It ends cryptically with the poet talking of the need to find a 'third' tiger, one that is neither symbolic or real, an elusive creature no doubt.  The Other Tiger - Jorge Luis Borges A tiger comes to mind. The twilight hereExalts the vast and busy Library

And seems to set the bookshelves back in gloom;
Innocent, ruthless, bloodstained, sleek
It wanders through its forest and its day
Printing a track along the muddy banks
Of sluggish streams whose names it does not know
(In its world there are no names or past
Or time to come, only the vivid now)
And makes its way across wild distances
Sniffing the braided labyrinth of smells
And in the wind picking the smell of dawn
And tantalizing scent of grazing deer;
Among the bamboo's slanting stripes I glimpse
The tiger's stripes and sense the bony frame
Under the splendid, quivering cover of skin.
Curving oceans and the planet's wastes keep us
Apart in vain; from here in a house far off
In South America I dream of you,
Track you, O tiger of the Ganges' banks.
It strikes me now as evening fills my soul
That the tiger addressed in my poem
Is a shadowy beast, a tiger of symbols
And scraps picked up at random out of books,
A string of labored tropes that have no life,
And not the fated tiger, the deadly jewel
That under sun or stars or changing moon
Goes on in Bengal or Sumatra fulfilling
Its rounds of love and indolence and death.
To the tiger of symbols I hold opposed
The one that's real, the one whose blood runs hot
As it cuts down a herd of buffaloes,
And that today, this August third, nineteen
Fifty-nine, throws its shadow on the grass;
But by the act of giving it a name,
By trying to fix the limits of its world,
It becomes a fiction not a living beast,
Not a tiger out roaming the wilds of earth.

We'll hunt for a third tiger now, but like
The others this one too will be a form
Of what I dream, a structure of words, and not
The flesh and one tiger that beyond all myths
Paces the earth. I know these things quite well,
Yet nonetheless some force keeps driving me
In this vague, unreasonable, and ancient quest,
And I go on pursuing through the hours

Another tiger, the beast not found in verse.  My last choice comes from Wallace Stevens, 'Disillusionment of Ten O' Clock.' In it is the phrase that became the title of Padel's book - 'tigers in red weather.' The association, from a mere mention, is of tigers with the wilder side of life. In the poem they seem to be motifs of the go-getting ambition and passion that lies within us all - that flip side of life that we all hunger after.  Disillusionment of Ten O' Clock - Wallace Stevens The houses are haunted

By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches Tigers

In red weather.   It's clear that the tiger is an animal that appeals to all and yet can mean so many different things. What do tigers represent to you? To me it's a fierce kind of freedom, a fearlessness, a wild ultimatum to live, a vibrancy of being alive, a certainty of spirit, a ferocious resolve.  In Life of Pi at one point, with the seas and skies swirling around him, everything in monocolour, Pi notes how his eye and resolve is drawn to the colour of Richard Parker - the same colour as the lifeboat, a vibrant colour of life, of survival, of wanting and fighting to live. There's also that 'fearful symmetry' to tigers that Blake talked of. Padel describes in her book a moment of looking at a tiger's face up close - how excruciatingly terrifying it is, like looking at a 'death mask.' Tigers are intriguingly both beautiful and terrible, a thing of vibrant life and violent death, powerful, yet now, in our modern world, vulnerable. But their power is such that they can mean many things - metaphors, motifs, symbols, allegories.  Do you have the 'eye of the tiger'? Can you unleash the 'tiger inside'? Modern life is filled with such references. As is literature. But sadly, the forests of the world are emptying with tigers.  The 'painting on silk' which Padel's describes,  is beginning to fade. You can read more on tigers plight here: WWF Tiger Day.  ~Siobhán