Of Hell and Heaven

So this famous writer dies and is waiting reassignment to some future existence.  He's offered a tour of both heaven and hell, so he figures "What the...whatever."  His first stop is in hell and it's packed with writers, tearing out their hair in frustration, crippled with writer's block, unable to get out a single word, or even worse, hating anything they do get down on paper.  Stunned, he next visits heaven and finds it crammed with writers, tearing out their hair in frustration, crippled with writer's block, unable to get out a single word, or even worse, hating anything they do get down on paper.

The writer turns to St. Peter and asks him why hell and heaven are identical.  St. Pete replies, "Oh, no, the agony is the same, but in heaven they get published."

Yet we still have this innate need to write.  And suffer, it seems.  Why would anyone subject themselves to such torture?

Northrop Frye, in his Anatomy of Criticism, gives one of the best theories on our shared passion, compulsion, obsession, fixation.  First, he suggests that every narrative contains within itself the writer's vision of the individual and her relationship to the universe.  Second, the writer has an innate need, not always consciously recognized, to communicate or share her vision with the world.

Pretty simple, really.  We're moved to show others how we see the world.  To do the challenging, frustrating, frightening, yet hopefully rewarding work to achieve it in black on white.  And what are those rewards for all our sweat and tears?  Not money, not fame or adulation, or even tenure, although each of those might be great for those very few writers who attain them.  No, we do it so a reader, someone we've never met, will pick up--or tap on--our book and read it, hopefully understanding and maybe even learning a bit or expanding their perception of the world through our vision.  Simply that.

As writers, then, what do we owe each other in recognition and acknowledgement of our common desire to share our visions?

Very simply, to read.  To read consistently and closely in not only our favored writing genre but widely, exploring and broadening our own understanding while adding tricks and tools for our own writing.  As Robert Adams says, in his wonderful A Love of Reading, "To read is to share the writer's risk."  That risk of showing how we view the universe, a showing that bares so much, if we let it.

So, I ask you, what are you reading?

This Madeleine's For You

Have to admit it never occurred to me till I read a recent post noting that a writer's compromised sense of smell--or, for that matter, color blindness, or a hearing issue, not to mention the deadened taste buds from excessive smoking--could be a real handicap when it comes to writing description. 

So sad. 

Imagine a Proust doppelganger stubbing out his Gauloises in the ashtray on the kitchen table, wiping his lips, smiling at his mother, then dunking his petites madeleine in that cup of tea, from which touch of tea and cake to palate . . . springs . . . nothing but cardboard and tepid gruel, stone and crumbling chalk.  So, alas, Marcel doesn't stop, intent upon the extraordinary changes taking place.  No exquisite pleasure invades his senses, the vicissitudes of life fail to become indifferent for him, and no new sensation gives the effect of filling him--as love does--with a precious essence, an essence that wasn't simply in him, but was him.  No feeling of something starting within him, leaving its resting place, and attempting to rise from his depths where it was embedded like an anchor.

No recognizing that, no matter how often we may see an object, it is with more vitality, a more unsubstantial yet more persistent, more faithful rendering, that the smell and taste of things remain poised a longer time, like souls, ready to remind us, amid the ruins of all the rest.

No recapturing the old, dead moment, no return to Combray.

The taste of cake and tea, that archetypal involuntary memory or deja vu, wasted, and no monumental 3,000 word search for lost time.

But fortunately, Marcel, even though he probably smoked, could still draw on his senses--all five of them--and "Proust's madeleine" has become a touchstone in twentieth-century literature.  And draw he does, creating masterfully evocative settings and descriptions that entice and embrace the reader.

And it turns out that this month is the 100th anniversary of the publication of Swann's Way, the first volume of his In Search of Lost Time.  So grab a copy of Swann's Way and treat yourself, at the very least, to the opening "Combray" section, usually titled "Overture," and learn from a master how to evoke the senses and use setting and description to ground the reader in the story.

Next time, once I finish Swann's Way again, we'll chat some more on how to use setting and description to evoke the senses and bring our fiction to life.

Enjoy your madeleine . . . .

The Greatest Gift

As others bloggers often say, submitting your work and receiving criticism can feel like watching your darlings as they wait on death row--that fearful anticipation of shoving your luscious and inspiring prose into the broiling oven of a critique group that's preheated to char your creations into oblivion.  Sounds horrible, doesn't it?  Letting others jab and poke and prod at your well thesaurused words, your lovely sentences, your brilliant paragraphs, your perfect story.  Who in their right mind would submit themselves to such, lying on the carpet like a frightened puppy, legs akimbo, belly exposed, and tail wagging as you wait to see if the hulk standing over you will pet or kick.

And yet.

And yet, we realize the real writing is in the revision, as Mike said recently, and no writer can be their own best editor.  Okay, maybe if you're Henry James and just walk around your studio dictating a single perfect draft of your really, really long and incredibly complex novel to a typist.  Maybe.  But for most of us, getting feedback from readers we come to trust is the surest way to the most productive revision.  Even though it may sometimes sting, a thorough critique is the greatest gift a writer can receive--or give.  Remember what we tell our kids when we smear the iodine on their cuts...

So, what makes for a good critique group and what's the process?