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March 18, 2006
Zoetrope Writers on Writing, Discussion prompt: Xujun Eberlein's notes from AWP
Robert Olen Butler threw a panel with three of his former students, Rita Mae Reese (a recent Wallace Stegner Fellow in Fiction), Christie Grimes (MFA student at Texas State U.), Brandy T.Wilson (Ph.D. student at Florida State U.). All of the three students are featured in Butler's recent book From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction.
The following discussion transpired out of Xujun's notes and the question she asked.
Butler says that most writing programs lean drastically toward craft techniques, rather than focusing on what means to be an artist. He quotes a Japanese film director: "Being an artist means never to avert your eyes." Many students write badly because they write from their heads. Art does not come from the mind; it comes from the dream, the unconsciousness. Nor do readers respond to an artwork from their minds. Workshops are not that helpful for one's writing because if you get too far into others' dreams, it is harder to get into your own.Students are usually fine with the first two things about fiction; that it is about human beings and about human emotion. But they always miss the third, that fiction is a temporal art form. It exists in time. Poetry can be exempted from time essentially (but fiction can't).
"Yearning" is Butler's favorite word. But "yearning", the dynamic of desire, is almost always absence in the first-year students' writing. You cannot exist for even three seconds of time without desiring something. You need to deeply engage in the character's emotions.
To do this the artist uses a trance state. The best time is early morning. Write as soon as you get up, before doing anything else, before even drinking your first cup of coffee. Certainly don't read anything before writing. It's the only time you are able to connect your creative mind with your dream, your unconsciousness. It is the most creative moment you would have. Just trust the trance. You should write at the same time everyday, and forget about it for the rest of the day. (In answer an audience question, Butler says he takes only one day break in every seven days. You should find your own rhythm, he advises the person who asked the question.)
(The three other panelists then talked about their own experiences of successfully applying the writing process taught by Butler.)
Xujun: Do you believe in such a method?
Ron Currie: Since it is already so obvious to me, with my limited experience, that everyone's 'process' is different, I can't help but be surprised. But then, maybe that confidence in one's own way of doing things is what makes Butler so good.
Jim Tomlinson: I took a week-long workshop from Robert Olen Butler at Indiana University Writers Conference 2003. Much of what he teaches I've used, although I'd say the dream-state, subconscious mind business seems to work best on first drafts, that a more critical and conscious effort is needed for revising, editing, making credible in the real world. That's my experience anyway.
I write primarily in the mornings, with coffee and oatmeal, after checking for urgent e-mails (and z-mails). But I don't turn on TV or read the morning newspaper until after I've done my morning's worth. I think Butler's right about that, about valuing the state of mind when you wake, and trying to write from that mindset.
Xujun: His book is out now. I'm going to find it to read. I might try his method, even though I'm not a believer.
Jim Ruland: What if you've got babies and bills and backaches and so on? Sometimes I need the morning, but only if I've written the night before and gone to bed with a problem unsolved or a question unanswered.
Sometimes, a walk on the beach gets me going, or exercise, or reading a book or two days after watching a movie. Everyone has different methods. From what I've gathered, there are things about the process (pens, postcards, a certain kind of desk -- does anyone else remember any of this from the time where Butler did the online experiment of writing a story live?) that he tends to fetishize. We all have our talismans and tricks, they're valuable to us only because we think they are. What would he say of Joyce writing sections of Ulysses in a crowded apartment using a suitcase in his lap for a table?
Another thing is: I'm suspicious of routines and methods because they become crutches. (I can't write because I'm out of coffee or the house is a mess or the battery on my laptop died.)
I think change can be more helpful than routine. Writing in a new space. Writing at night when you're used to writing in the morning or vice versa. Writing in a notebook when you're used to the computer or vice versa. Sometimes really strong coffee when you're used to tea can do the trick or a glass of wine when you're used to coffee can be really effective. I was able to work long sections of essay in my head during my commute one week simply by leaving the radio off and paying attention to the chatter in my head.
Claudia Smith: Good point Jim. I wish I could fall into that deep concentration, the kind I used to fall into, where someone could say my name three or four times and I wouldn't hear. But I write, honestly, during my son's naptime. Someday, maybe, I'll write when I wake up from my dreams.
It's interesting, what Butler had to say. I had a teacher I adored when I was in college. She made me believe I could graduate, and do lots of great things. She told me to get up and write every day at five in the morning. I wanted to impress her, so I lied and told her I did.
This may be a bit off subject, but one thing I miss from my childhood is the way I would become so immersed in a book, lost in it in an almost dreamlike state. I could lose sense of time, read and read until the sun went down and I would not notice. Then I went to school, learned to analyze, and now that feeling is rare. It comes over me more often when I write. I do fall into a kind of trance. But, I don't think I could if I hadn't studied it for such a long time.
Ron Currie: Do you think it has to do with learning to analyze in a formal setting, or is it just part and parcel of growing up? Because I feel the same way--that's one thing, anyway, that I miss about being a kid.
Claudia: maybe a bit of both?
Girija: I think it has to do with the process of analysis. Once you become an expert on 'reading' or any other thing, you lose your 'innocence', the ability to respond without a critical faculty operating. And whether the judgment is right or wrong is not even the issue. Recently, I started reading something straight after meditating and it was a much more enjoyable experience.
Xujun: But what if you've got babies...
You just need to get up before the babies wake :-)
To be fair, Butler did not say this method applies to everyone. And I agree with you it is not practical for many people. I'm probably one of those because I'm a night person. It's not like I could connect to the dream state before the dream.
Heinz Insu Fenkl: Butler is talking about the method attributed to Hemingway (writing early in the morning before the dream state entirely dissolves). You can do the same thing late at night or in a dark room with a small dose of melatonin (which is the natural brain chemical responsible for dream imagery) as it breaks down into DMT (which creates vivid visual and auditory hallucinations). It helps to keep the computer screen off if you touch-type, since you don't want to READ when you are WRITING.
Or, you can learn to induce the "trance" state at will with a little practice.
The problem is that what comes out in such a state needs a significant amount of editing (though sometimes this will only be necessary at a structural level). The "raw" material almost always has the quality of a 3rd or 4th iteration fractal, which means it contains a kind of organic/gestalt quality you wouldn't want to undo, but the material generally needs an organizing context, also. Sometimes even the context can come from the unconscious, but in my experience the unconscious is terrible at it, and this is where craft comes in.
Jill Stegman: Don't know if some of what you have written here is tongue-n-cheek, but I bought your brain chemistry analysis.
I think what you say is very perceptive. It is easy to let the trance state take over after you have, at least, a little knowledge of craft techniques. Then you are utilizing craft on a subconscious level as you write. The words just pour out into a coherent story. But if you don't have that experience behind you, you're in for some ferocious editing.
Yes. It definitely works. I actually get up very early, around four, to write. It sounded outrageous when I began two years ago, but the writing definitely flows better then. I never know what I'm going to write about. I can edit any time, but for the first draft, I really do best beginning at this early hour. There's just something magical about it for me.
Xujun: One thing I agree with Butler is that you need a certain mood, or engaging in certain emotions, for your writing. I don't write when I don't have that particular mood needed for a particular story.
I feel the first usable draft is always the most difficult work. Once I have it, editing is almost a pleasure.
Myfanwy Collins: Interesting. Thanks for this, Xujun. I've gotten up in the middle of the night and written before, but I can't do it first thing in the morning. Too addicted to my coffee and yogurt.
Xujun: I write whenever I have the mood. Or don't when I don't have the mood. One reason that I'm not very prolific. I also like to read before writing. It's interesting that Bill Roorback, my instructor in a nonfiction workshop, told us to read an hour every morning. He certainly has a different method from Butler's.
Kathy Fish: Interesting, but yeah, my "dream state" is pretty much shot to hell the second I open my eyes. A dog that needs to be let out, kids demanding pancakes, my own overwhelming need for coffee; if I could figure out a way to write while I'm actually still asleep!
Gail Siegel: Uh, ambient, maybe? Instead of sleep-driving and sleep-eating, maybe we can somehow get ourselves to sleep-write?
Jessica Lipnack: This is really fascinating. I do love the early morning writes, go for them whenever possible though they probably don't qualify, as I have a cup of coffee in hand. That said, I've had the experience any number of times of feeling as if I'm simply 'taking notes' as my fingers fly across the keyboard. No thinking involved. As an obsessive word counter, these occasions really pile them on (and as you say, Heinz, are desperately in search of the editor's scalpel).
Jim Ruland: When I'm really into a project and it's going pretty well, but it's getting late, and my body are shutting down, if I can leave the desk mid-scene, mid-problem, the part of my brain that composes the sentences will mingle with my dreams; not so much where I can control them but the composition process, fixating on certain words, playing with rhetoric and syntax, shuffling through tropes, becomes part of the dream. It's pretty cool. On those mornings I all but float over to the computer.
Claudia: long commutes are good. time for deep daydreaming.
Jim Tomlinson: I've missed my exit off the Interstate more than once, mental writing on my commute.
Jim Ruland: I've had some success writing with the monitor off. It's like tossing words into a cave in which some beast resides. When you turn on the monitor surprises abound and you're never quite ready for what you find.
My favorite writing instructor, Robert Kirsch (a past chief literary critic at the LA Times) said for the brevity of good prose: "write fast and write tired." I try to do that (the last part is easier than the first part) and, for me, it results in stories with minimal padding and/or coherence.
He taught several tricks for inducing creativity but the one I remember best is to eat dinner with your fingers. Salad works better than soup for this. You give attention to each leaf or segment, chewing until the item is liquified, swallowing. He claimed this allowed dreams to be remembered as the brain digested information in much the same way as the digestive process--although he stopped short of identifying resultant text as... I forget what made this sound logical at the time, but it does work.
Mark Hubbard: My eyes start glazing over when people mention dream states, trances, etc. I don't even know how much credence I give to the notion of a subconscious. For me, writing is as much an exercise of intellect as anything else, so it's a fully woken, fully straight, fully sober activity.
Posted by girija tropp at 01:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
March 15, 2006
Surprises, More Surprises, And Aren't We Pleased with Ourselves!
I actually sat down this afternoon and wrote! And the result did not suck--otherwise, I wouldn't be blogging about it, I guess. It's been more of that sort of week and I was feeling tired and dispirited, feeling a little resentful that the business has had me running around--even though these are chores that I enjoy. Besides, it was the afternoon and I'm a morning person.
I seem to have caught a weird and interesting voice that I'd stumbled upon earlier this year in a story called Advent, a sort of Orwellian tale, even if I say so myself. And then I couldn't get hold of it again, except in a kind of imitation-of-myself kind of fashion. But when I get hold of the 'voice' again, I can usually pull the rest of the narrative back in line using a sort of mental 'squint'.
The downloading of the voice was accompanied by a trance-like state. Plus I was listening to Nirvana Lounge 3. There's a song on track 4 that would sound like Bad Bollywood Day if I wasn't so spaced out. The cover of this album is a virulent pink. There is no accounting for my tastes!
Finally, a whiff of news. Local author made big--Kate Grenville has won the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Here's a link to the article in The Age.
Posted by girija tropp at 08:34 PM | Permalink
March 12, 2006
What one does when one is not doing the novel
I'm actually doing amazing stuff given all that's going on around here. I had all my notes to hand but only crafted a little more on what I had last week. I have a strong idea in my head about where this novel is going but the actual doing of it is as if I've never written one before.
So to close the day, I went to Zoetrope to see what my friends were doing and where they have been pubbed lately and here's a site link via Susan Henderson. I put a link to one of my stories up there. But there are lots lots more. Go forth and read.
Posted by girija tropp at 11:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
March 11, 2006
Visually Interesting Sites by way of my son ZEV
Zev, my son, whose graffiti art is part of the banner image of this site pointed me in the direction of these great-to-look at fare:
Nice Produce :: Nice Things, for Nice People
In our back garden, we have a long sheet of polystyrene sort of material that, at the time of grab-and-take, with permission, from the back of our local Coles supermarket, was supposed to become part of a second coolroom for the food manufacturing business. It has now been transformed into a panel for a street-artist-in-the-making. I have officially put in for graffiti on the garage wall, across the small front garden, and opposite my writing room.
Apart from such entertainment, I took myself off to the movies to see Lord of War and thought it was a splendid example of a movie of its kind... based on fact etc. My husband wasn't as impressed as I was. But I know how difficult it is to pull off a good unsympathetic protagonist.
Posted by girija tropp at 07:07 PM | Permalink
March 07, 2006
Is there ever a best time to start anything, A Novel
I started my novel last Sunday. I had the house to myself and everything went splendidly. Good clean prose, I said to myself. At least, until the day after. This one has been waiting in line to be written and is flowing out the keyboard. However, this month is so busy with the family business that I have been pressed into service. I'm finding it hard to write with two hours sleep, after that initial Sunday. But I'm committed to pushing words around without missing a day. I am looking forward, however, to my usual writing schedule.
The excercises that I invented are working marvels for the long form. It is harder to pull everything together and I have paper everywhere. Wish I had a laptop. But then I'd have to sacrifice the latest and the bestest!
My first novel does take me away from time to time. I discovered last week that I had a repeated chapter. The software InDesign works well to pull my completed manuscript together. The version I use is fairly buggy and I need to update it soon... and I will. But it is way better than Word which keeps changing my formatting at will. Most people might not have this problem but as a designer, I have various different fonts that float around everywhere. I've set up styles and named them etc but they don't behave the way they should.
I like to use a particular font for a body of work. With my first novel, it was American Garamond. But I'm now over that and I'm using Americana. Of course, when I send stuff out, I change the entire thing into something conventional like Georgia and this does well for web transmission. But never Times New Roman. Just looking at that font makes me dry up. I like Futura as well. I enjoy picking up books that are set in an unusual but readable type. And I like the way certain publishing houses like Knopf layout their books. Zoetrope All-Story, the magazine, sets the stories in unusual ways--there is always an invited guest designer in every issue. Black Warrior Review that I read for the first time some months ago, was also a treat to hold in the hand, and look at, before getting into the serious business of reading. I can tell from the cover art if I'm going to enjoy a book and I'm rarely wrong. I'm so good at this that my husband sets me onto the library shelves as if releasing a hound to the scent of good fiction.
And I saw, while surfing, a few weeks ago that Frederic Busch had died. And was saddened. Night Inspector was a fabulous novel. There is something about his writing that is so intense.
So that is it for now... tomorrow, back to the novel but first, I'll have to put in a day's work. Soon, I'll have my perfect writing days back. Also, I'm turning off Comments for the duration of my next novel first draft.
Posted by girija tropp at 11:36 PM | Permalink
March 03, 2006
What I'm reading now
Louise Erdrich's The Painted Drum. I started reading it on the train but did not get very far because I was tired and kept falling asleep into the aisle. I've been hanging out for her next book ever since Four Souls, which I think was absolutely wonderful. The first chapter is a version of a story in the New Yorker that I read a while ago and enjoyed so I'm curious to see what she does--there are two other chapters that appeared as short stories in the same magazine. I'm curious about the whole book. She does interesting things with structure and weaves different narrative strands skillfully.
The Life of Pi. Loved the intro to this, the writer's story of how the book came about. And I've got a few pages under the belt but my husband reports that he is not going to continue after getting about 80 pages in, and has been stranded in the zoo. We tend to like the same books but not always.
Posted by girija tropp at 09:56 AM | Permalink
March 02, 2006
The things to do for family and to put bread on the table
1. Woke up thinking of ideas I was going to put down for another excercise--and knowing that it would be awhile b4 I got to do any writing.
1b. Did my Tai Chi Chi Kung... it was just turning light, 6.30 am.
2. Made 2 different breakfasts. One for me and my son Zev: Lamb neck soup (toast for him)... me, I was waiting to see if they are lefover friands from the commercial kitchen. Spinach omlettes in roti for the big boys. While they ate, I tried to help with taking the friands out of the trays... they yelled "your gloves are wet" "don't squeeze them" "push them up from the bottom" "put them down in straight lines"
There were friands leftover.
3. Washed up and put ginger water on for chai. Sat down with two pumpkin chilli chocolate friands. Went to heaven.
4. Started my writing list with: I saw a man in an Italian suit trotting down the freeway... Filled 3 pages.
5. Finshed making the chai and took it over to the commercial kitchen.
6. Got my rock crystal lamp out of the bedroom and put it on my writing table and went back to my list.
Posted by girija tropp at 11:11 AM | Permalink