I actually can’t put words to it, even to give you juicy details to laugh about. I am a veteran of fifteen years of intense self-enquiry…and twenty-five pages of fiction just left me flummoxed. I’m not sure what to say, except that I have discovered a potent and terrifying new tool, one I am rather afraid to use.
Novelist Shawn Klomperans recently said, “Writing a book shouldn’t be therapeutic; you should need therapy after writing one.”
I read that on Twitter a few weeks ago and while I thought it was funny, I didn’t get it.
After this week though, I get it.
Needless to say, I’ve been avoiding writing the novel. It’s now linked in my mind with Things I’d Rather Not Think About. It made me sick all last week, complete with fever! However, with only ten more days to go, I’ve decided to confront my demons head on and keep writing, despite a 16K word deficit. Onward! Upward! And I will run for cover if need be.
Also, be forewarned, there’s no way I’m ever going to let anyone read the damn thing.
Sure, I can’t help noticing errors on menus and each time I hear a Coloradan say “more slower” I am tempted to run home–rather quickly–to Massachusetts. The grammatic gymnastics I hear daily are eye-popping. When people ask me though, I say I’m not really a big grammar person. I actually find it tedious and constrictive and I have very little enthusiasm for it. I loathed studying it in school. (Though please note my correct usage of the m dash and hyphen in this paragraph. I just read up on it.)
Like Stephen Fry, I delight in the creativity and evolution of language. This fantastically satisfying video, courtesy Michelle Bar-Evan, epitomizes my thoughts on the subject:
My time in Colorado has shown me that so called Proper English is just colloquial of a haughtier kind. People here think they are speaking “correctly,” which I find amusing, just as my Massachusetts English sounds more correct to me, but probably ear-grating to a Brit.
The other day someone said to me, “They think they know the language but they can’t hardly even speak it!” I catch myself falling into odd speech patterns myself, because when you work with people you start to mimic them. I did this with my British colleagues and now say “rather” a lot more, and I end my questions with rounded lilts. A co-worker from Kentucky made the phrase “Well, you know what you might could do,” want to fall off the tip of my tongue years later. I worry that if I go home people will be shocked and horrified that I sound like a hick, and I won’t even realize anymore.
And then I see the word of the day on Urban Dictionary and I toss my concerns in the trash. This crazy time we live in is just as explosively creative for our language as it was when Shakespeare was writing, before the status conscious writers of English grammars got a hold of it and made every effort to squeeze the life out of it. Did you realize English grammar that we know today is based on Latin grammar? Or that members of the British lower middle class wrote them to try and replicate upper class speech patterns in order to make a quick buck off would-be social climbers during the Industrial Revolution? English grammars were essentially the same as the “get rich quick” trash that is on shelves everywhere today.
Lightning strikes The Statue of Liberty. So much for freedom.
(I had to pause after that last statement. Am I still here? Yes. All right then, continue.)
I say drop the snottiness and join the fray. Contribute your own words to Urban Dictionary and delight in the vibrant world we live in. (And learn some grammar so you can write well when you want to, and so you can work on your grammar stalking skills.)
Let me know if you add any words. One I added a few years back was “defission,” a combination of depression and fission. I’m still trying to get around to adding “boyfriended.” That’s when a single friend suddenly disappears because of a new relationship.
Meet my favorite drag queen, Hedwig. She is the eloquent, elegant, trashy and sad would-be rock star phenomenon of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, another all time favorite movie and soundtrack of mine. And, in keeping with our candy theme, here is her rendition of ‘Sugar Daddy.’ (Be sure to read the lyrics!)
Hedwig, originally an East German boy named Hansel, was so desperate to leave his repressive home –this is before the fall of the Berlin Wall, remember–that he agreed to be smuggled out of the country by a handsome American Marine. The only catch? He had to use his mother’s passport.
My sex change operation got botched/
My guardian angel fell asleep on the watch/
Now all I’ve got is this barbie doll crotch/
I’ve got an Angry Inch!
Admit it. You are a little bit curious. That’s okay because you really should be.
For the back story (literally) watch The Story of a Gummibaerchen (that means Gummi Bear in German.) The clip is vaguely NSFW but only because Hansel/Hedwig is flesh and blood and not marble like the Sleeping Hermaphrodite below.
Upon re-watching this I was thrilled to remember just how delightful it is to watch Hedwig. Her delicious use of language is like a swirled rainbow lollipop. Every minute she presents us a colorful new surprise, and we can’t help but follow the trail of sweet treasures offered up by this master storyteller. This film is truly one of the finest chapters in the history of film, as far as I am concerned.
‘Sleeping Hermaphrodite’ ~ Currently on display as part of the ‘Aphrodite and the Gods of Love’ exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Not long after Hedwig’s transformation and migration to the Candy Land of America, the great Berlin Wall came tumbling down, seemingly out of nowhere. I remember it well, though mostly as Jesus Jones singing Right Here Right Now.
That tempting candy must have tasted just a little bittersweet.
I’ve got the shakes. My sense of ease is tightening up. My mouth moves but I wonder what if anything will come out. The simple act of communication I take so for granted has become an issue in its own right, something to Pay Attention To. The thinking about it, the wondering, the…inevitable…pause…and then the fear and panic that nothing will come…at first it does, but I keep wondering and then it starts not to. And then there’s headache that will not go away. All this is happening because I put myself on a sharp deadline to do something I do not know how to do, and to do it quickly.
[Cue dramatic NaNoWriMo music. Ok, I do own the same slippers, but the similarities end there. I swear. Damn, she kind of looks like me…]
Yeah, so about that novel I’m writing? Turns out I am stuck because I don’t, ahem, actually knowhow to write a novel. And every day I falter, my word deficit grows exponentially. Knowing this has put me into an underground river of panic. I’m pretty sure riding that won’t get me anywhere I particularly want to go, so I’ve decided to press pause and examine the raft I’m sitting in for clues on how to get out.
First, I’ve noticed (surprisingly) that it isn’t the deadline that is freaking me out. I work with deadlines all the time. I’m not fond of them, and I usually prefer not to be rushed, but I do some of my best work on short notice. I’ve found it can spark my creativity to just have to wing it. So if not the deadline, what’s the issue?
Well, having no idea what to do to meet it! Yeah, that’s a problem. I’m paralyzed on the raft because I don’t know how to swim.
Usually I am busy formulating some plan, a master scheme if you will, of how I am going to accomplish the task du jour. I think, I ponder, I daydream, I muddle, and before you know it I’ve got a hold of some essential direction that is real and vibrant. Once I have that, the rest is just filling in the details with the execution. (In chess, you’d say this is the difference between strategy and tactics.) I am a big picture thinker, so once I can see the whole of it, I’ve got it. This is the equivalent of seeing a large branch downstream, thinking “Aha!” and plotting how to grab it and lift myself out. It’s then easy to gauge whether or not it will hold me, how and when to reach for it, and make sure I’m not strapped into the boat before I do. No problem!
The current state of affairs with the novel, however, is more like me sitting backwards in the boat trying to read a book on perfecting my crawl stroke only to get hit in the head with that branch. No wonder my head hurts.
You want candy? I want candy! I realized today that some of my favorite musical movie scenes have fantastical CANDY themes. So I decided to bring you as many as I could as part of a series. I can’t explain it. Maybe candy is inherently whimsical and inspires great film. I’m not sure I care.
Please just delight in the masterpieces I have presented you today. You simply must watch the video above; I have seen a lot of artistic movies and this scene stands out as one of the most memorable. And yes, there’s a point…what if a teenage girl were running your country? (Of course if you watched the film you’d know it was really the foreign war–by which I mean the American Revolution–that was bankrupting the country.)
Utter gorgeousness! Delicious! You must witness this rococo masterpiece of a film! Please validate my excessive use of exclamation points! This atmospheric character study was directed by Sophia Coppola, director of Lost in Translation. She is the woman who introduced us to Scarlett Johansson and, incidentally, ran an art gallery at UMass while I was there in the late nineties. I even met her briefly as part of a questionable film project we wound up shooting in her gallery. (As I recall the exhibit included a soundscape that repeated phrases like “Everything’s plas-tic, fan-tas-tic…Bubble chowder!” Even then she was intrigued by creating atmospheres with music and film. Trust her judgement…on the former, if not the latter.
Lest you think I am done, mais non! Attendez! This movie inspired one of my all time favorite Vogue covers as well, shot by master photographer Annie Leibovitz:
Here is an excerpt from “Annie Leibovitz: Life Through A Lens” which shows her process during the Vogue photoshoot for this Marie Antoinette:
Two, it comes in rainbow colors. Three, it feels soothing to have it around.
Four, it’s good for your teeth, and five, certain types of fluorite actually glow in the dark!
Can you see the unusual way the light moves through this crystal? Fluorite works with light in a very different way than most other minerals. According to The Beading Gem’s Journal:
Just recently China put on display in Wenchang, Hainan, the world’s largest luminous “pearl”. These are not really pearls as we know them but a rare kind of glow in the dark (phosphorescent) fluorite. The Chinese call them legendary luminous pearls or yemengzhu and believe touching one will bring good luck and fortune. The first yemengzhu fluorite was discovered in a Guangdong tungsten mine back in 1982. Since then, new and larger deposits have allowed several giant pearls to be made. This latest, the largest so far, has been valued at 2.2 billion yuan or about $331 million.
"This giant luminous pearl specimen, which weighs in at 6 tonnes and is 1.6 m (5 feet) high, took 3 years to grind into a sphere! " --from The Beading Gems Journal
Six, apparently it is good luck…and is supposed to aid in the development of intuition and creativity.
Mostly though, I just think it is captivating and I could stare at it for hours…
Here is a video of the giant luminous pearl. (Yeah, sorry, it’s in Chinese.) 西瓜波值 22 億 唔係 啩 – YouTube
And since they oddly chose not to show the five foot phosphorescent bead actually glowing, here is a very rough approximation of what it would look like. (Wait for it…!)
I actually started writing. This is frickin’ fantastic.
This past week I decided to “write a novel” as part of the National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo. It was kind of a joke. A lark. A ‘what the hell’ kind of proposition. And now here I am writing the darn thing. I wrote 2104 words last night. I am pretty perplexed and awed by this. I am used to writing short fiction–really short, like poetry. I really didn’t think this was possible.
So now here we are. I have discovered that my need for structure lends itself to mystery novels. Apparently I like starting with atmospheres in the form of locations. (Years ago I dreamed of travel writing…is this why?) My intrepid journaling over the past 15 years has developed into a sophisticated form of introspection and psychological awareness that I can adapt into first person narrative. My obsessive, insatiable need to research topics for years will now have a respectable home, instead of squatting indefinitely in my head and taking up prime real estate. After years of banging my head against the wall and wondering ‘why, how, huh?’ about something until I crack the stubborn nut, I can finally explain to people why I stare off into space all the time. In metaphor! Through dialogue! I am starting to suspect the complex world of fiction is the perfect vehicle for sharing the nuance of what I’ve learned.
Some of the questions I’ve asked myself over the years include:
– How is it possible that a woman with a PhD in nanotechnology would leave her fantastic corporate research position to live on a houseboat and become…an astrologer? [That was a real head scratcher, but now I know.]
– If a forged artwork is close enough to the original that no one can tell for sure if it is fake, does it actually matter? And why? [I would say yes.]
-What’s the deal with free jazz? Why would anyone listen to it, never mind be passionate about it? [I’m still working on this one, though I did make some small headway.]
– How on earth do people write long fiction such as novels? [Apparently they just start actually writing them. Who knew?] Where do the characters come from? Just how real are they to the authors? What does it feel like to live in that head space all the time? Is the process really any different from spiritual folk who create personal relationships with their deities?
I’ve never understood the urge to Write the Great American Novel. It just seems like an awful lot of work to put toward inevitable mediocrity. I do however understand the urge to get free software. So I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo, aka National Novel Writing Month, to be eligible for a (half) free copy of Scrivener‘s novel writing software. Which I can then use…to write a novel? Hmm, I’ve got plot holes before I’ve even started. Only 50,000 words to go.
As of last night’s kickoff at the elegant St. Julien Hotel, I had barely settled on a genre, and spent the time doodling in front of the fire trying to come up with ideas. My friend Mike (aka Mikepedia, so called because he has read everything published before 1900) managed to write a remarkably gripping opening scene reminiscent of Nick Hornby writing as Snoop Dogg. Chloe, our 13 year old muse, scribbled pages of vampire character studies. She was the only one to get the memo, so she had the right novel-writing glasses on, along with most of the 25+ participants. (Say hello to the team at NaNoWriMo who are making this madness happen: Opening NaNoWriMo Video)
So far this morning I have managed to write a synopsis, which to be honest, I am impressed with, if only because I didn’t have a single clue as to what to do a few hours before.
A murder takes place during Boulder’s Halloween Naked Pumpkin Run, and a real life witch solves the crime. The small city is a hot spot for New Age spiritual seekers of all stripes (and sports), and ultimately our heroine must decide who is for real–and who is not! Blending a Neo-pagan worldview with a careful interplay of detective’s logic and witch’s intuition, this book explores the world of New Age and Wiccan politics in a world of competitive athletes, entrepreneurs and de rigueur costume parties, all in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains.
Wish us luck! I clearly need it. And why aren’t you writing your own? Get on it! Only 1,667 words a day!
I am a commercial freelance writer/editor, creativity coach and artist living in Boulder, Colorado. The pivotal intersection of my passions are art, spirituality and healing, but my work takes me in many interesting directions. I'd love to talk to you about any projects you are working on. My 'About' and 'Writing/Editing' pages will tell you a bit more, in case the obvious tends to elude you. If it does, great! You probably have an unusual perspective and I will surely enjoy our conversation.
Mysterious Artemis 