The Occupational Hazards of Being a Writer...

So I was thinking about writing and writers and the 'writerly' self and all the many wholesome advantages it has bestowed on me, but also its shadowed side, the negative repurcussions of being a writer, the occupational hazards if you will. 

A writer's work has been defined as 'paying attention to the world' but sometimes paying attention to the world gets too much. Frankly, it can be dizzying at times. Trying to take in everything sometimes feels like you'd need ten eyes and a central processing unit instead of a brain. And it gets exasperating when you can't take account of everything. It causes sleeplessness, hyper and heightened sensitivity and an inability to concentrate on any one thing at a time.

One of the major occupational hazards of being a writer is that you read into things, in a really overblown way. I studied literature for my college degree and a recurring side-effect of learning to critically analyse texts is that I read into absolutely everything written now. We were taught how to interpret texts intimately, how to decode and deconstruct every sentence, every word, to see what's really going on beneath, theme-wise and meaning-wise and the handy skill of reading between the lines. Now I can't help but employ this skill in every written word context:  text messages, online messages, letters, notes, greeting cards. I read so much into what people write - how they phrase things, what vocabulary they use, line-breaks, structure, punctuation - it all says so much, whether they're conscious of it or not. I dissect any written document like a forensic scientist, looking for clues of personality (of which there are many), and also other things like what is not being said and what really wants to be said! (Yep, it's THAT revealing!)

I read an article recently on something similar - forensic linguistics to be exact. Which basically is the term for analysis of language and the written word being used as evidence in law convictions (You can read more about it here: Solving Crimes with Linguistics) There have been cases which were decided on the linguistic evidence presented - analysis and comparison of notes and emails proved ample evidence to link the accused with the crime. See, the way you write is so specific and unique, it can be used as an effective individual identification. 

Another side-effect of this 'critical analysis syndrome' is you become particulary sensitive to grammar - more precisely - grammar mistakes. You morph into a Grammar Nazi, consistently on the watch for misuses of there, their and they're, too, two and to, your and you're, and worst of all, superfluous apostrophe use! I just can't stand it when I encounter bad grammar, especially in public places, like shop signs. Somehow I equate perfect grammar with a well-oiled, harmonious, functioning fluctuating universe; bad grammar just upsets the whole balance and throws everything off-kilter. 

As a writer, I love words. I am, head-over-heels in love with words. Therefore I am wordy at times. Vaingloriously verbose. And when it comes to arguments, believe you me, verbose is a trait that you don't want to have! We writers are also prone to over-writing anything written - from birthday cards to text messages, grocery lists, post-its, business letters, the comments section in questionnaires, and even, I've been held accountable - social network statuses. Anywhere the written word is concerned - domestically, functionary or mandatory - you can be assured a writer will leave their verbal fingerprint (we quite rightly rejoice in this I might add).

Curiousity is a trait specific to being a writer. Apparently, we are notoriously so. Look - there's even a book/writing manual on it! (right). But curiousity can get you into  a lot of trouble - just look at crime writers and journalists. Those more lay writers of us just get termed 'nosey' by other people, whom we are frequently observing at close quarters, almost with the same keeness and intense awe as those nature documentary makers that stalk out and film wild animals. (One of the first exercises you do in writing workshops is called 'The KGB exercise' - write up a close observation of people and place).

Another hazard for writers is routine interference. It's been proven that writers do their best work either early in the morning or late at night. I'm the latter. My default work setting is now late pm. Early mornings I'm afraid are out for me. Lots of late night writing binges have meant that my mind has been programmed to perform better in the wee small hours. It's only then it becomes alive brimming and fizzing over with ideas. The result of which can mean lots of wasted, unproductive days and  sleepless nights.

Procrastination is a serious occupational hazard of writing. Due to the nature of the writing process - random, weird, and generally undefinable - procrastination develops in and around writing bouts. It's a veiled fear in a way, inverted adrenaline, a sort of coping mechanism, but it is real nevertheless. It's also a perilous pitfall. Handicapping. Paralysing. And can succeed in killing your writing career if it's left to develop ceaselesly, like an aggressive fungus growth. 

Physical hazards in writing are limited but include: stiff limbs, poor circulation and backache (exercise deprivation as sitting at a desk to write usually requires staying at a desk, no breaks, no leg stretches ). Another is that I always end up with pen ink all over my clothes. Even though I can't seem to keep a pen with me to save my life, I still manage to have ink scrawls everywhere - jeans, hands, even face (an embarassing result of frenzied inspired scribbling.) Bitten nails are also a side-effect of the profession, as is eye-strain, with glasses a necessity for most writers at some stage. Not to mention a predisposition to drinking copious amounts of coffee and if we're of the Hemingway school of writers - hard liquor. 

I can't read books solely for pleasure anymore. I read them as a writer, actively not passively, poring over sentence constructions and dissecting well-chosen words. I read and re-read; I can't just read in a continuous manner, moving along at a fast pace, I keep stopping and starting, marvelling at the language, even noting some phrases down, so I'm a ponderously slow reader (my friend pointed this out to me circa 10 years old, when she noticed she'd have a whole chapter read in the time it took me to read two pages - I just couldn't move on until I'd absorbed everything they had to offer.)

Environmentally speaking, we writers, on average, waste a lot of paper. All those countless atrocious attempts and aimless doodles pages (not to mention dumped manuscripts) that are  scrunched up and thrown in the bin before we even begin the real writing. We go through not just a lot of paper, but a lot of ink. Even though most submissions nowadays are online, we do like extra hard copies of our work to be somewhere within reach just to remind ourselves that we have produced something substantial after all. 

Writing can turn you anti-social from time to time. Like it's hard to keep up a conversation while your mind keeps wandering to that half-written story in your head. You nod along vaguely but really, you've left your body. There has to be a name for this, this type of 'ghost' writing. You never stop being a writer, you don't leave the job behind at your desk - you are writing in your mind non-stop 24/7.

Another unfortunate consequence of being a writer is that you tend to make up things in real life as well as just on the page. Oh yep. This one can land you in a lot of trouble. Daily life becomes a sort of blank page awaiting your scribbles. You start to tell yourself stories from day-to-day happenings, everything becomes plot-driven and people take on the roles of stock characters. Also, you start to project characters onto real-life people. You turn real-life people into characters and sometimes, you start to believe the fictional version rather then the real one. You makes muses of people and start fictionalising them until they become myths, half-human, half-god (not good this, believe me I know #I'm a Poet) 

You're prone to fictionalising, full stop. You make things up, tell white lies, embellish - ah, yes that's the word - you're prone to embellishment: making things sound more exciting than they actually are. Boring subject-matter wouldn't cut it in a book and same in real life - so you harness your embellishing skills and set to embellishing - that is, adding an event here, a description there, a juicy bit of dialogue there until you yourself become the unreliable narrator of your own life. 

But the worst occupational hazard has to be the backlash you will invariably receive when published. Lawsuits are not uncommon. And we writers are generally an opinionated bunch, and as scribes of the written word, we tend to you know - write these opinions down - therefore immortalising them forever in hardcore evidence. Which can lead to a lot of disgruntlement on our audience's behalf. But hey, we live our lives on the parapet, writing is expression and expression is truth, and truth will always get you into some kind of trouble.

On the same note, writing can make you more outspoken. Writing, unlike speaking, insists that you put down only what is true (like a filter), and when you do it often enough, for long enough, happily enough, it kind of transposes into your speech medium too - until vóila -you start to speak the truth. And boy, do things get complicated then...

So you see, there's a lot of occupational hazards attached to writing. Here are just some. What about you? Are you afflicted with the same ones I am? Or do other  more grotesque ones haunt you dear writers? It's a dangerous game writing, but to give it up would be to live in a world of far worse afflictions. 

Take care now! 

~Siobhán

A Blue True Dream of Sky

 'I never get tired of the blue sky'  ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Finally, it's blue sky season! Is there anything more beautiful than the sight of a big blue sky I ask you? Especially after months of grey murky ones?!

I LOVE blue skies. Blue skies make everything better. Blue skies invoke smiles and grins and giddy fits of glee. Blue skies reveal hidden sights. Notice how everything looks so much better when the day is lit by the sky's blue hue and everywhere, everything shines and shimmers? Blue skies make days brighter and better and bigger. Blue skies are superlative!

I am always reminded of EE Cumming's poem, 'i thank you God' and the line -  'for a blue true dream of sky' when marvelling upon a blue sky. For it is true somehow. It is truth. This is how the world is supposed to be; this is how life should be; bright and cheery and big and vast and beautiful and ever-unfolding and beaming and bursting - this is the truth.

There are all kinds of beautiful blue in a blue sky: azure, cerulean, turquoise, powder blue, cobalt. (If you want to read on the glories of the colour blue, you can check out my previous post on all things blue here: Why So Blue?) It's the kind of blue that will keep you gawping at it for ages upon ages trying to define it - or - just appreciate it. It's a colour that's alive and breathing. A colour that never gets tired or dull or ordinary. A colour that is truly vivid.

Why do I like  blue skies? Because they're banners of good times. They're exultation, exclamation. They're the bastions of new beginnings.  They buoy the spirits. They are the ultimate mascot of  optimism, true blue. 'Excuse me while I kiss the sky' - and yes, Jimi Hendrix, they incite feelings of elation, sheer glad-to-be-aliveness, throw back your head and let your spirit soar kind of happiness. 

Yep, pretty spectacular.

 

Blue skies are celestial. 'And they were canopied by the blue sky,/So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful,/That God alone was to be seen in Heaven.'  Lord Byron wasn't the only one who saw the heavenly connection in blue skies. Robert Frost did so in his poem 'Fragmentary Blue' where he likens our affinity for blue skies with what lies higher up, the big beyond.  'The sky is the daily bread of the eyes' - Ralph Waldo Emerson noted, the spiritual canvas that is available to all and with as easy an entry as a glance.

There is infinity hanging up there in the big blue, horizons unscaled and plentiful perspective, an accessible kind of transcending. Who doesn't, on occasion, tilt their head skywards and soar with daydreams and flyaway notions of all those castles we yearn to build up there?  The way ahead is much clearer on blue sky days than grey ones. Blueprints all around. 

To me, blue skies  feel exactly like this: In the sky/an infinitude of hope,/a canvas of glory/all possibilities mine. (Terri Guillemets) All possibilities mine. That's it! Blue skies represent possibilities. They are vast and limitless and tell of countless horizons. Maybe that's why we feel so good on a blue sky day?

Blue skies are for daydreamers -  'You can't put your feet on the ground until you've touched the sky,' says writer Paul Auster. Many's a daydream was built on a blue sky and its up, up and away influencing. It is the perfect backdrop for imaginings. But how do you touch the sky? 'Only from the heart can you touch the sky' Rumi maintained. And he was right, there is an element of dreams and belief so evident in contemplating the sky, that in business, there's even a word for it: blue-sky thinking - thinking outside of the box, pushing the boundaries to excel to greatness.

Oh, but how to put it exactly, this feeling of exuberance? 'If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things in nature have a message you understand, Rejoice, for your soul is alive.' ~  Eleanora Duse.  Yes, that's it, a litmus test of being alive. 

And maybe why I find blue skies so cool is because really, they're part of our ordinary landscape that when you look closely at, you realise is truly extraordinary. Up beyond the sky into deep dark space and lo and behold, look back at the earth, this humble little planet of ours, with its banner of blue, glowing in the dark, so welcoming in the black surrounding universe, a miracle really - '...I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in

thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child - our own two eyes. All is a miracle.' (- Thich Nhat Hanh.) Blue skies, the casual reminder of that miracle, alerting us to the very fact of it.

Like Van Gogh, I never get tired of the blue sky either. It is infinitely more entrancing to me than sunsets - sunsets are gorgeous yes, but they announce the darkness, the dimming of the day, an ending. Blue skies are the complete opposite: they are the flags of dawn announcing the day and all the many possibilities it has in store for us. They are heralds of new horizons, harbingers of joy, reminders of what a big beautiful world we actually live in and just how involving it is.  Now, what could beat that?  Blue-sky beaming, ~ Siobhán *** Soundtrack for watching skies by! -

Sunday Morning Musing: Getting Happy

Yes, Stephen King knows exactly how to put it. Writing isn't about so many things; rather about one in general: enriching life - yours and others  and then, as an offshot, a consequence - getting happy, getting immensely immeasurably happy. 


~ Siobhán

Favourite Words #1: Melancholy

 'Melancholy is the pleasure of being sad.' - Victor Hugo

So I've come up with this idea for some new regular blog posts on some favourite words of mine (because I love what words can do). 

And the first word I'd like to muse on is: Melancholy. 

It's a word that often comes up in relation to poetry, poets, and the arts in general. And it's a word I love as much for its sound and its sight, as its meaning. 

 
Melancholy -  like a green vine coiling around the heart. Or a perfumed sadness. A beautiful kind of sorrow, like an intricate lace veil worn over the face while grieving, a deep forest-green pool of tears and an emerald halo of sighs. So many images that come to mind when I see the word... A black inkscape of tears, tears, so many tears, oval-shaped and drooping like sad but beautiful pearls.  

A dam of tears always on the verge of bursting. An eye, like an antenna, always open, and always feeling. (like The Cure's 'Wish' album artwork, left) And it sounds like tears too doesn't it? A collected deep reservoir of tears. And almost like the dripping of a tap that will never shut off - a faucet of tears left to over-run in the heart. Like the rippling of water in a pool after a stone is thrown in; a drowned wish.

When studying literature, melancholy is guaranteed to be one of the most common words you will come across in the experience of your reading. But what is melancholy exactly? And why and how did it originate? 

It's defined in the dictionary as being a 'deep, pensive, and long-lasting sadness.' The word 'melancholy' first arose from the medieval categorisation of the four medical 'humors' - diseases or ailments caused by an imbalance in the basic bodily fluids: melancholia, phlegmatic, sanguine and choleric. Melancholia was caused by an excess of black bile, a medical condition which had symptoms of moodiness, despair and sadness - hence the later terming of melancholy as a 'black' mood.

Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet was the first place I encountered the word melancholy. Upon first seeing Romeo appear in the play, we learn from his cousin Benvolio that he is depressed, sad and moody, 'melancholy' as all the notes remark.  His father descibes his affliction in detail:

  'Many a morning hath he there been seen,

with tears augmenting the fresh morning's dew,

adding to clouds, more clouds with his deep sighs...

Away from light steals home my heavy son,

and private in his chamber pens himself,

shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out,

and makes himself an artifical night:

Black and portentous must this humour prove,

unless good counsel may the cause remove.' 

'With tears augmenting the fresh morning's dew....' maybe that's where I got the tears imagery. Romeo is described in all the secondary reading as being 'melancholy' - sad for the sake of being sad, a sort of wallowing and feeling sorry for one's self, moody, in a word (which is brilliantly amplified by Radiohead's moody soundtrack in the Baz Luhrmann film version - listen here). Turns out, Romeo is lovesick and admits 'I have lost myself, I am not here, this is not Romeo, he's some other where.' A lovesick melancholy then. A sort of self-indulgent moping. A weight of weary woe.

The cult of melancholy was quite prevalent in Elizabethan society - stemming from a preoccupation with death and a lack of things to do for the educated classes. Shakespeare's Hamlet was a personification of this particular affliction, known as 'the melancholy Prince' or the 'malcontent', who spent his days philosophising and ruminating on death and existentialism, while battling with the horrors of revenge wrecked upon a sensitive mind. 

'There’s something in his soul,/O’er which his melancholy sits on brood;' - Claudius comments of him, while Hamlet himself spends most of the play moping around, contemplating the act of revenge upon his father's killer Claudius and indulging frequently in soliloquies which reveal the mechanisms of a mind prone to despair: 'I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercise; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire: why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.'

Eighteenth and nineteenth century England saw the further rise of melancholy. Poet John Keats' famous 'Ode to Melancholy' encapsulates this feeling, 'the wakeful anguish of the soul' perfectly. And like him, the Romantic poets fostered the cult of melancholy as an extension of the sublime and beauty. Because to suffer was to have a poetic sensibility, and in melancholy, beauty resided. French Modernist poet Charles Baudelaire noted 'I can barely conceive of a type of Beauty in which there is no melancholy'. Beauty was both the cause and cure of melancholy, as Keats demonstrates in this poem:

Ode on Melancholy - John Keats
1.
No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kissed
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

2.
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

3.
She dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips;
Ay, in the very temple of delight
Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous
tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

But in art, melancholy is something else: both an affliction and a gift. An expected consequence of being sensitive and creative.  Aristotle said that 'great men are always of a nature originally melancholy.'   

Artist Albert Durer represented melancholy as a state in which the artist waits for inspiration to strike; that time of despondency in between creative periods (Melancholia I, 1514, left). I can definitely relate to this as it's exactly how I have been feeling these past few days: forlorn and grey and withering away in the wake of impending inspiration as the world crashes into insignificance around me...

Melancholy became increasingly associated with artists and writers as the centuries wore on, a sort of occupational hazard almost. Claire Tomalin, Dickens biographer, has said that 'writing induces melancholy. You're alone, a hermit'-  which is quite true I suppose. And loneliness is a pre-requisite for melancholy. 

But also, melancholy seems an essential ingredient in creating great art too. How can you create great art without having known sadness? After all, it's the tragedies, the sad stories that get us the most, that stick in the gut and sputter in the heart. Singer-songwriter of The Beatles fame Paul McCartney said that with writers, 'there's nothing wrong with melancholy. It's an important colour in the writing.' This corresponds to what American singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin says about writing songs, 'I think that the indefinable space between happy and sad is the most moving and compelling place for an artist to be. If there's anything I consistently strive for, it's a melancholy limbo.' 

A melancholy limbo - a place between happy and sad. A moving and compelling place. Is that what melancholy can be defined as? From what I know of it, it is a limbo sort of place; a place you hang around in, full of shadows; a place where things are felt ever more keenly than normal and where everything seems bittersweet; and a place where your love of beauty is a symbolic pomegranate, condemning you to the dark underworld for a while. But all the better to see the light when you emerge again. 

Melancholy is not a word that you would hear in modern language. It's old-fashioned and sort of quaint sounding, but does it still exist? Yes. It's known now as the lighter side of depression, the medieval forerunner to it perhaps, but mostly, it's still a word associated with the arts and the artistic disposition. 

When I think of melancholy in a modern context I always think of 'Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness,' the aptly named album of nineties rock group The Smashing Pumpkins. Here is music that embodies the whole concept of the feeling, from the mournful artwork to the languorous tunes. It was an album 'based on the human condition of mortal sadness' according to the band's frontman Billy Corgan and features songs with lamentative titles like: 'Ode to No One, ' 'Tales of a Scorched Earth', 'By Starlight', ' 'Where Boys Fear to Tread, 'My Blue Heaven,' 'Porcelina of the Vast Oceans,' that echo the titles of those earlier Romantic poems which are just as doleful. (listen here)

Melancholy today manifests itself most in music, in sad songs most especially (and it sounds especially like this song: Lie in the Sound a lounging in moroseness, a sorrowful plunge, a drowning, a languor of lovesickness and lethargy, an innate ache, a free-falling into the empty echoing abyss of sadness.) And like in the Keats' poem, we do 'glut' ourselves on melancholy - it is a feeling mechanism if you like, a way and a means of actually feeling. We can shed tears from listening to the saddest songs. There's a grandeur about them that catches us around the throat. Maybe it's the catharsis - the release of pent-up emotions through art, that powerful process of emotional cleansing - that resonates with us so deeply.

Melancholy. Melancholy. Sad and sighs and sorrow and beauty and art and an aesthetic sensitivity. Victor Hugo may have been right - there is a pleasure in being sad - and that is what melancholy is. Not a dark despair, but a bittersweet appreciation of the sad things in life. As they are what can most make us feel.

And if melancholy is associated with art - a side-effect of it and an ingredient -  then art is also a cure for it. As writer and poet Margaret Atwood has said in no uncertain terms -  'the loony bins are full of those who haven't written a poem.' Maybe melancholy is our saving grace after all, not just a wistful characteristic. Something that involves both an appreciation of beauty as well as a wounding by it - in other words - an appropriate reaction to the world we find ourselves in.

~Siobhán 

Things I Do While Procrastinating About Writing...

In the midst of a writing procrastination paralysis...! I don't get it - yesterday I was on a perfect prose roll, now today it's like my mind has frozen up, my ink has all dried up, my ability to string words together has skidded to a halt! 

All because I didn't write right away today - I put it off, I got sidetracked, I waited -  then the procrastination set in. (It's sneaky like that).

Damn.

Symptoms of this procrastination include: (You may recognise some of these...)

-Staring blankly out a window - on and off - all day...

 

-Going bigtime domestic (doing dishes and all kinds of previously-shunned housework, tidying up, de-cluttering workspace, trying to feng-shui practically everything in an attempt to re-order my mind...)

-Trying to douse my verbal mind with visuals - ie. watching copious amounts of TV

-Spending inordinate amounts of time on social networking sites...

-Biting my nails furiously (ouch)

-Sighing miserably every few hours

-Refusing all books (can't bear to look at the printed word - makes me feel more guilty)

-Googling excessively

-Staring blankly at a new Word document

-Having a DVD-box-set-athon  (helps to quiet my screaming mind)

-Editing music playlists and making new ones

-Moping

-Snapping at passers-by

-Experimenting with vegetating

-Buying new notebooks:

-Staring blankly into the ether 

-Observing minute everyday detail, like dust motes settling onto furniture and construing it into some existential significance...

-Thinking, thinking, thinking, rifling and contemplating - but no writing:

 












-Searching for pens

-Doodling over said new notebooks with found pens

-Talking about writing: (the worst one)

 










-And all the while, dying a little inside.

***
Sound familiar anyone??

Oh. Oh. Oh.

It's like Waiting for Godot - waiting for that one moment of inspiration, that timely hour when it will be right to write. 

I'm sure you've all experienced it, this procrastination when it comes to writing. Not a block per se, but a putting off, a feeling that comes from that demon doubt and all the shadows that go with it - namely, the quest for perfection.

It will pass yes. Soon I'll be navigating my way through firing synapses and brainstorms of words coming so fast at me that I won't have time to write them all down and I'll be rolling around in words until my fingers get inky and all of this crippling, debilitating waiting will be a ghost, a faint memory, a faint footnote to the bigger picture, behind me, and in front of me - all the bright lights of verbosity.

But for now, it's miserable. (And writing about it helps :) A step to knocking the progress of  procrastination:

Thank you for reading,


~ Siobhán

Rules on Writing - Bending & Breaking Them!

Gosh, all the writing sites and Tweets and Facebook pages I've signed up to, they seem to like nothing more than to post endless lists on 'Rules for Writing.' Sometimes from famous authors, sometimes more obscure ones, and sometimes it seems, just off the top of their heads. Which basically makes me want to scream out in frustration!!!! 

Because there are no real rules to writing. Advice on writing, sure, give me loads of that! (And the best advice is: Write!) But these so-called rules? - Pah!!! Writing is about breaking the rules is it not? It's about expressing your own unique take on the world in language, and to do that, to be original, you have to break some rules. 

Like take this list of rules for example. I've never seen anything more limiting (even though it's trying to be funny/smart...) 

by Frank L Visco

I break every damn one of these 'rules' when I write (parenthetical remarks are always necessary I say!) And avoid alliteration? Never! Oh the audacity of that! Never end a sentence with a preposition? As if! Eliminate sentence fragments? No! It reminds me of my grammar textbook at school (and what writer didn't ever tweak grammar rules to suit their needs?) 

My first rule-breaking was starting sentences beginning with 'and' and 'but.' Why ever not I thought? If used in the right way, these two conjunctions can be pretty darn powerful: and can be used as a defeatist sigh to a sentence; but as an irrevocable blunt declaration. I remember being penalised on a school essay I wrote circa 12 years of age for too much punctuation. Pah! So what if I used a semi-colon here or there?! I'm sure the piece made more sense than those limbo essays without any punctuation to tether them down, not even a full stop!

-Elmore Leonard

 Another 'rule' that's been around the block a few times is to always use 'said' to carry dialogue, and never another speech marker. What about all those other words in the English language that signify dialogue - what's wrong with them? For example, what  about 'asked'? Because 'asked' is a world away from 'said'. Or even 'demanded'? Or  'declared' or 'drawled'? (Btw, drawl is good - can tell you a lot about a character)  All these words laying unused at the bottom of a writer's tool kit and said smacked everywhere? No thanks!

Other inane rules include to never use the word 'suddenly'. Apparently because it's a lazy word. But what if you make it do its work, tone it up, a few push-ups and pumps, pages of holding back and then - suddenly (aha) -  it appears and looks all brand new and shiny. Is that not ok?

These 'rules' that say 'don't do this' and 'never use this' really piss me off. Maybe it's the rebel in me - but when someone tells me not to do something, it just makes me really want to do it all the more! I especially hate the 'rule' to never have a sentence over 4 lines long or alternatively, a one-word sentence. But my gosh, haven't these rule-makers seen what an one-word sentence can do? Raymond Carver said that a full stop placed at the right place could 'pierce the heart.' Well one-word senteces are the bayonets that do the piercing. They are what a suspenseful score is to an exciting scene. 

Whatever would those stuffy rule-makers say to Colum Mc Cann's novel 'Let the Great World Spin' when they come across the stream-of-consciousness sentence that goes on for a full paragraph - half a page in length - detailing all the various ways people die? A sentence that stuns us and forces us to look at death in an unflinching manner. A truly breath-taking tour-de-force of a sentence that puts everything in perspective. A sentence in which theme and style sync so harmoniously together as to cause a powerful reaction in the reader.  

And that rule about not using too much dialogue - tell that to Hemingway whose story 'Hills Like White Elephants' is nothing but dialogue and all the better for it as it forces us to read between-the-lines. (And not to forget - has become a staple in classic short stories).

Of course, this is not new in literature. James Joyce was the master of stream-of-consciousness, Ulysses being a supreme example of a novel that broke the rules and set new precedents for experimentation in form in literature for decades to come. 

Which brings me to the excellent writer Jonathan Safron Foer who pushes the boundaries to the extreme. His post-9/11 novel Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is full of radical deviations from conventional novel writing. It's not just language that Foer plays with, twisting and moulding it to suit his theme and every nuanced emotion of what he is writing, but everything else too, including form, structure and layout. 

Each of his characters who narrate the novel have not only different voices, but different typeface templates too that relate to their character. Foer even manipulates the typeface in one chapter, making the print so tight and dense and squeezed together until it becomes a black blur, so as to highlight his character's emotional turmoil; he inserts doodles into another chapter and other pictures appear randomly throughout the book enhancing what the words say. In one startling and moving chapter, the type is marred by red-pen marks, the circling of 'grammar mistakes' that a character has circled on an array of letters from his father. The effect is shocking, given that the narrative is of the bombing of Dresden in WWII and the description of its harrowing aftermath, made all the more real and immediate and horrific with this red ink all over the pages like blood. The whole novel is  indeed 'extremely loud and incredibly close', the author's innovative stylistics making it cut to the core.

Foer is just one of the radical new writers that are pushing the boundaries of language. It may be classed as postmodern, but I prefer to think of it as 'exciting.' It's just one example of what can be done with language if we are brave enough to play around with it. Creativity is, after, all defined as 'intelligence having fun', so why not have fun with writing?

Why all these limiting rules? Let the only rule of writing be: write whatever way you want! Heed only your gut and not these gutless rules thought up by some disgruntled ego-centric grammarian! Yep, that's about it. Forget all this malarkey about grammar. Fuggghedaboutit! Make up words, use slang and parentheses and one-word sentences! I know too many beginner writers who quiver in fear at the thought of these so-called ''rules.' And spend the whole duration of writing groups worrying about their grammar and spelling like it's the be-all and end-all of writing. It's not grammar-school you sign up for when you commit to writing! That's only a technicality. Worry about the big stuff - like themes - rather than the mechanics I say!

These crazy grammar rules make for boring writers. Stifling and tedious and trivial. Everytime I come across them, I feel a bout of brain-sleep coming on. Really? What sort of boring writer went to the trouble of writing these all out anyway? They might as well talk about the correct way of sharpening a pecil or what type of notebook to buy or how to edit and paste on Word or.....(yawn).

Rules suggest regimentation, control, limits, fear, and conformity. But to write, you got to be BRAVE. You've got to laugh at the rules and write without them looming in front of you like an angry professor. You are a writer - language is your tool - respect it sure, but don't be afraid of it. If you want to be a jockey, you can't be afraid of horses. Or a professional swimmer, you can't fear water. You have to open yourself to all the wondrous possibilities that your field offers. Be fearless, be confident in your abilities and your knowledge of language, and its quite malleable qualities, and then you'll find your groove.

Rules suggest that someone has actually mastered the craft of writing and is all-superior, all-knowing. But truth is, writing is a craft we continually learn from. It can't be mastered; it is ever-evolving and its most defining characteristic is mystery: even the bestselling writers still don't know where most of their work 'comes from.' (It definitely didn't come from sticking to the rules that's for sure!) 

Thankfully, most writers 'rules' on writing are in the form of advice and encouragement (which is great). Margaret Atwood urges us to 'write in pencil, especially on aeroplanes.' And one of my favourites, Hemingway recommends us to 'write drunk and edit sober.'  Never trust the ones who spout grammar rules - trying to enforce a sanitised form of regulated writing - it may have worked for them, but chances are, it won't for us. Each to their own.

The only rule of writing is to write often and whatever way you like. Even in gibberish if that suits your mood or theme! Why not? JRR Tolkien and Lewis Carroll invented their own language to authenticate their fictional worlds and had no qualms about inserting it into the narrative. Poets create their own words - neologisms -  all the time. Emily Dickinson brought the hyphen into fashion. Some writers have even opted out from using punctuation. Some refuse speech marks for dialogue. Some have one sentence chapters. Lots use the word 'suddenly' and to great effect.

Writing is expression, freedom of speech, so why should it be regulated by the paltry dictations of grammar or a few opinions of other writers? 

It shouldn't. Rules are made for breaking after all. (Or at the very least, bending...) That's why I just ended with a cliché! ;) 

'Til the next time,

 

~ Siobhán