LOOKING FORWARD, LOOKING BACK

With crystal balls in short supply, looking forward is at best speculative, and at worst purely wishful thinking (New Year's resolutions anyone?)  Still, with the refreshing picture of turning over a new leaf that the flip from 31st December to 1st January brings to mind, we all like to indulge ourselves in the somewhat bipolar activity of reviewing the old and anticipating the new.

In terms of the new, if the recent influx of joggers, walkers and cyclists in the streets is anything to go by, many of us are embracing the New Year: New Me idea.  Not least among them I too have vowed to get more exercise, adopt not just one but two AFD's (alcohol free days) per week (gasp!), bitch less and empathise more, write in this blog regularly (ha! I hear you say), not take criticism and rejection personally and other such absurdly unrealistic, not to mention unoriginal, figments of someone else's imagination.  What's important about any of it I suspect is that it keeps us subscribing to the idea that, with sufficient motivation and determination, we can take control of our lives, notwithstanding those hefty slabs of it that are beyond our grasp.  Reaching however never did anyone any harm and illusory though the concept of self revitalisation may be, it  feels good to give it a shot.

A friend of mine recently adopted the phrase "shameless self promotion" in describing her venture to put her current, very exciting writing project, as they say "out there", by means of a personalised website.  At the risk of being (again) unoriginal, I'd like to take a similar approach (ideologically at least) to my own writing.

What this means is convincing myself, first of all, and then that many headed monster, the market, that I've got something worth selling.  My natural instinct has always been to hide my light under a bushel (whatever the hell a bushel is), a practice that leads to fumbling in the dark and getting stepped on.  

Shameless of course implies being prepared to let it all hang out, without fear, timidity, anxiety or any of those other self-defeating inhibitions I imbibed at my mother's knee.  It means letting go of the idea that trying to flog your work implies seeking favours to which you're not really entitled, embracing the idea that if I think my work has merit, I shouldn't let anyone else convince me it hasn't, and finally abandoning for ever any fantasy of achieving perfection.

As much as the ability to string words together, a writer needs persistence; that vastly underestimated quality that probably takes you further than any other.  I recently found a perfect (ok, pretty good) analogy for the persistence a writer needs in a quote from Edward Hoagland's "The Courage of Turtles".  Here it is:

"Turtles .... don't feel that the contest is unfair;  they keep plugging, rolling like sailorly souls - a bobbing, infirm gait, a brave, sea-legged momentum - stopping occasionally to study the lay of the land."

So for me, it means cut the whingeing and whining, stop resenting other writers' successes, forget expecting anything to be fair, listen to valid criticism and let the rest roll off like the proverbial duck and reminding myself every day that writers write.  Pausing, like the turtle, every now and then to take stock is allowed.  Stomping off in a huff, thinking I'm a loser isn't.  It's as simple as that really.

I haven't devoted any space here to reviewing the old, but if you've read previous versions of the blog you'll pretty much know last year was a biggie, in that I got married, practically finished off my Masters and moved gratefully into semi-retirement, which pretty much sums it up.

At this time of year, the coming months shine with promise, especially as we surge forth renewed and optimistic.  I don't know what will unfold but I doubt I'll get many clues from crystal balls, astrological charts or Chinese horoscopes and if ever I'm tempted to waste time looking, I hope I remember this quote from Shakespeare

"The fault, dear Brutus is not in our stars.
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

Underlings arise! Let's make 2013 the year of shameless self promotion!!

Women Writers

I was in the library the other day looking for a particular book which I found, but then I noticed, sitting on the shelf near it, the book "At Eighty Two: A Journal" by May Sarton http://great-writers.suite101.com/article.cfm/may_sarton_biography.

When my second marriage ended and I moved into a tiny cottage on my own, I felt very alone. Returning to the single life after seven or so years of being in a marriage, despite the fact that it was my choice to do so, was a major life transition. Although small and cosy in atmosphere, that house felt very empty and silent for quite a while. Around that time I found in a secondhand book shop May Sarton's book "Journal of a Solitude" and as it seemed so apt, I bought it.

My introduction to the world of this delightful woman writer was a joyful one - I felt so much in common with her, as do legions of her women (and men) fans around the world. So when I found another journal of hers in the library I had to borrow it. Once again it was a delight to be transported to the world of this woman, who even though grappling with the infirmities, indignities and debilities of age, creates a world rich with wonderful insights and descriptions - her beautiful house in Maine overlooking the ocean, her many fascinating friends, books she is reading, poetry, food, her beloved cat, flowers and so much else. I found with this book, as with the earlier one of hers, you quickly feel as though you know her so well, and slip into her life like an old friend. It was only a few months after she finished this book that she died, so sadly there will be no more journals. But there are earlier ones I haven't yet read, as well as novels and poetry, so I can add them to the endless list of books to be read.

One of the colleagues she mentions is Carolyn Heilbrun, a well known feminist and author, who was also an amazing character http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/n_9589/. In reading about her life, I came across this quote about her, which sums up so well what I find inspiring about so many women writers and of course hope to re-create in some way in my own writing, eventually

..."She argued for the importance of the uniquely feminine experience of reading in clear, candid language: "Women, I believe, search for fellow beings who have faced similar struggles, conveyed them in ways a reader can transform into her own life, confirmed desires the reader had hardly acknowledged, desires that now seem possible. Women catch courage from the women whose lives and writings they read, and women call the bearer of that courage friend."

To Plot or Not

I've recently been reading quite a few books on writing by writers of varying degrees of accomplishment. These are not so much "how to" books as advice from those who may be expected to know, in so far as they have had books published. As an aspiring writer, I am eager for all the advice I can get, although as with any field of learning you must take some and leave some.

There is a common theme among a lot of such material that emphasises the indispensability of plot. This premise is based on the notion that in today's world of instant gratification, audiences have limited attention spans. As well, because film and television have become the entertainment of choice for the masses, being accessible, cheap and undemanding, people have become accustomed to a fast pace, quickly unfolding events and a speedy resolution to the drama. They are therefore not willing to hang around waiting for something to happen. Writers who hope to engage their readers are as a result encouraged to hit them between the eyes within the first couple of pages, or risk having their book unceremoniously consigned to the dustbin, or worse put back on the shelf.

I don't necessarily disagree with this. An exciting unputdownable book is a great way to while away the time, hence the popularity of airport paperback outlets. But the corollary to this, propounded by at least some of these advice givers, is that fiction that is not plot focused and escapist in nature, that is instead too much like "real life" is boring, tedious and not worth the time spent in writing it. Why, this school of thought suggests, would we want to read about something that could happen to us, who cares, yawn yawn? Most people's lives considered in this way are I suppose predictable and humdrum. And if one was to catalogue in detail the minutiae and trivia of day to day existence, no-one would be terribly interested least of all the writer.

But life is not all about that. There are highlights, lowlights and moments of great drama within the ordinary. People I am convinced like to identify. They like to find their own experiences in the lives and words of others. They like to know that others have felt the same emotions; frustrations, anger, joy, sorrow, whatever as they have. We can even find solace in reading about how someone has handled a tragedy in life that we have faced or may face. There is a place for this stuff.

As the writer Anne Tyler said in a recent interview, "the whole purpose of my books is to sink into other lives .... I would love it if the readers sank along with me." And plenty of readers have, considering her hugely successful body of work, recognised by the Pulitzer Prize no less. Possibly it's a way of portraying our shared humanity.

So there's no place really for an extremist view about plot driven fiction. There's room for both kinds. Some people love Harry Potter and anything by J.R. Tolkien, some love Virginia Woolf. Some just love anything that keeps them awake or helps them to nod off, whatever.

I like books of all kinds but I especially love books where I can relate to the protagonists and what happens to them, and they're the kinds of stories and books I hope to write. Equally there is great skill in writing good science fiction, suspenseful cliff-hangers, blood curdling thrillers or passionate bodice rippers. Horses for courses, as they say and anyone who is reckless enough to issue imperatives about what should and should not be written, deserves not to be read!

Life is a Picture

In my quest to become a writer, I attended a writing workshop last weekend at the SA Writer's Centre. It was entitled "Writing from the Inside Out". Although only three hours in duration, it was a very rewarding experience. As it was a practical workshop, we got to write (what else!) and read the fruits of our labours to the class. Although potentially exposing one's vulnerabilities, this is an invaluable task for a writer, aspiring or experienced. Writing, although an engaging and at times satisfying activity, is essentially a very isolated one. One labours away, waging a war with the blank page and hopes that what emerges from the intellectual wrestling match is something half way reasonable. You never really know though, at least not until you get to the stage of submitting work to a publisher I suppose. The capacity for self-delusion is alive and well in every one of us, and there is always the nagging fear that what may seem flights of rhetorical brilliance at the time, will be little more than self indulgent drivel on re-reading, or worse on reading by someone else.

Be that as it may, it's not really what I meant to say. The theory behind the topic of the workshop was that to write well, we should be able to draw upon images and develop the ability to translate them as settings for our stories. In other words, it's not enough merely to create believable characters, a compelling plot and a well structured account of something (piece of cake though all that is!!), it needs a setting. It is in the setting that we have the opportunity to use what we know as well as what we can imagine. As an exercise, we were asked to bring along photos or images of a scene that meant something to us. Using this as inspiration , we then had to write a short piece in or around or somehow related to this scene.

What I found intriguing about this was how similar it was to painting. It was creating a landscape through words, rather than through the medium of paint. The method practically of course is different, but the creative process is remarkably, uncannily similar. So, for me because I have done some painting, this was an exciting and invigorating challenge.

I don't think you have to be particularly artistic in any medium to appreciate this. The human mind is naturally creative and imaginative and if you just sit and look at a scene, a picture, an image, whether it be a beautiful landscape, a person or a still life, I think you will find it speaks to you. This is of course the great joy of art, our eyes and ears and senses are captured by a skilful writer, painter or musician and transported to another world. It's nothing less than magic.