Literary Theory

Planners, Pantsters, and Thinksters: Wednesday Workshop

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Planners, Pantsters, and Thinksters
Wednesday Workshop
9 November 2016

Two new writers (John King and Amy … ) have joined our writers’ group (Chuck Bowie, Kevin Stephens, John Sutherland, and Roger Moore) and now we are six (with apologies to Winnie the Pooh). In addition, we have a virtual member (Allan Hudson) and a potential member (Victor Hendricken). Amy has joined on a first name basis. Alas, there were only four of us last night: Amy, John K, Kevin and Roger; Chuck and John S were both indisposed. We wish them good health.

This leads me to the question: what is the best way to integrate new members into an already established group of writers? I have no answer. Last night’s activities seemed quite successful.  First we introduced ourselves, first names only (oh dear!) and then we invited Amy to tell us about her writing. What an adventure. She has completed one novel, 110,000 words, and has two more planned in the series. She is questioning her opening chapter: is it the right one or should she begin after chapter three? Without having read the work, I personally find it difficult to give advice.

We explored some of the themes Amy presented to us and discussed a series of images that recurred and seemed to link the novel together. The idea of iterative thematic imagery serving as a leitmotiv came forward and we analyzed how repeated images can tie a novel (or a poem, or a short story) together. We spent some time on triggers that motivate actions and reactions from the characters. What is the trigger or the hook that draws the readers in, makes them look to the future, and persuades them to want to continue finding out more about the characters?

We also discussed Kevin’s favorite topic: planners and pantsters. Kevin is a planner who works everything out in advance. His charts, photos, character guides, outlines, and plans are an exemplary work of art in themselves and are highly admired by the group members. Many writers are pantsters; that means to say they pick up their pens or sit by their key-boards and write by instinct and fly by the seat of the pants. I find myself in between these two extremes, for, like Fray Luis de León and Juan de Valdés long before me, I think most of my writing out and keep it in my head until it comes time to put it down on the page. Perhaps this makes me a thinkster; I would like to think it did.

We also discussed the importance of The First Five Pages (Noah Lukeman’s book, sub-titled: a writer’s guide to staying out of the rejection pile). We invited Amy to send us her first five pages for an online critique. Our next step will be to look at the first five pages of the chapter with which she is proposing to start. It was an exciting conversation. I hope it was not a scary one for Amy’s first time out.

John K has been to one of our previous meetings, plus we had a long series of discussions with him at the WFNB meetings last weekend in Shediac. He and I helped close the hotel bar in Shediac at 1:30 am, so we are very proud of our efforts there. He presented us with the outline of a ‘tale’ that he is developing. Good man: he writes with a pen in a notebook, jotting down his ideas as they come to him and elaborating them in pen and ink, just as I do. Kevin and Amy had their tablets and their computers while John K and I had our pens and notebooks.

Without going into the details of his story and giving anything away, he walked us through the tale as he has it at present. he has great ideas, but at present is in search of a format in which to present his ‘tale’. Is it a short story? Too long and too many episodes. A novella? Could be. A full length novel? We didn’t see why not, and more and more potential episodes suggested themselves as we went along. In many ways it sounded like a film or a televisions series and John K’s active photographic mind, he has done courses in film and script writing, painted an engaging series of linked pictures, all of them with great potential. We are hoping that John K will send us an outline sketch, maybe even a storyboard,  of what he is planning. Perhaps we should also ask Amy for a chapter plan, or would that be too ambitious?

As for Kevin and I, we joined in the conversation, presented commentaries and ideas, outlined some of our own plans and directions, and had a thoroughly enjoyable time. Kevin’s book DiAngelo will be released on 22 February 2017. He is at the final editing stage right now and is busy, busy, busy with the final version of the text. We are all excited for him and are pushing him to keep at it and get the first novel of his planned five novel series out, and up, and running.   He is also planning a series of pre-release advertisements scenarios, all of which are sure to catch the eye of potential readers.

And that may well be the topic for another day: how do we market our books and what is the best way to attract readers?

Titles: Wednesday Workshop

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Titles
Wednesday’s Workshop
02 November 2016

I am currently thinking and re-thinking the titles to my books.

Clearly, the title is of the utmost importance. The title should draw the reader in while offering some information on the content. Alas, my earlier titles did not do this.

Monkey Temple, for example, really doesn’t say much about what the book contains. Nor does its subtitle: A narrative fable for modern times. Those who have read poems from the book or who have heard me read excerpts from it, know what it is about. However, deep down the title really says little about the life and times of Monkey, the protagonist who works and suffers in the corporate Monkey Temple.

In similar fashion, Though Lovers Be Lost is a wonderful title, taken from Dylan Thomas, and illustrating his theory that “though lovers be lost, love shall not, and death shall have no dominion.” If readers have these lines on the tip of their tongues, as most people from Wales do, then they will have a fair idea about the contents of the book. However, without that intimate knowledge of one of the great Welsh poets … many readers will be lost and the title will lack meaning, check my post on Intertextuality.

Bistro is a collection of flash fiction. I am not sure that the title suggests that instead of a standard and expected table of contents the book has a menu that refers to the 34 pieces of flash fiction are contained within its pages. The pieces are so varied, rather like a meal of sashimi or sushi, that it is difficult to describe the contents (or menu) in such a short thing as the title. Does the one word, Bistro, draw the reader in? The cover picture might and the combination of title and picture and cover may go further. However, I have my reservations.

Empress of Ireland, on the other hand, is a book of poems about a specific event: the sinking of the Empress of Ireland  in the St. Lawrence River in May, 1914. Here, title and event are closely linked and hopefully the title is rather more indicative of the contents. Even here, as in the cases of the books mentioned previously, a brief description of the book is necessary.

Sun and Moon is a great title, provided you have lived in Oaxaca, Mexico, and know that Sun and Moon are the official symbols of the state of Oaxaca. Without that knowledge, the sub-title, Poems from Oaxaca, Mexico, is essential. The cover photograph with the state symbol of Sun and Moon is intriguing, but it is still necessary to read the description to find out what the book is about. Are title and sub-title enough in themselves? I’m still not sure.

Obsidian’s Edge is a tricky title. I thought everybody knew that obsidian is the shiny black glassy stone produced in volcanic areas. Further, I thought most people knew that the edge of obsidian is used in weapons and knives that cut. By extension, obsidian knives were used by the Aztecs and others in their human sacrifices … so much knowledge that is clear to the writer but unclear to the reader who may not realize that we all live at Obsidian’s Edge with the sacrifice of our own lives hanging by a thin thread on a daily basis. Oh dear, I have been to workshops and readings recently where people knew nothing about obsidian and its properties … my title gives so little information.

Land of Rocks and Saints has yet to be revised and rewritten. Few English readers will associate it with the old Spanish saying, Ávila: tierra de cantos y santos / Avila, Land of Rocks and Saints. The tragedy of living a life in more than one language is that the cultural knowledge so easily understood in one does not necessarily transfer readily into a second or third language. Some of my readers write me to say that they Google all these terms and learn a tremendous amount from the books. Alas, I have to improve my titles. I need to sharpen them and use them to draw my future readers in.

Ávila: cantos y santos y ciudad de la santa, the Spanish translation of Land of Rocks and Saints that I have just put up on Amazon / Kindle, is a better title. Avila is both the province and the capital city of the province. The rocks and saints are clearly linked to the name and the city itself is the city of the saint, St. Teresa of Avila, of course. Hopefully, this title, in Spanish, will attract some Spanish readers. I can only hope.

The book on which I am currently working was originally called Iberian Interludes and had no sub-title. In my revision, I am selecting poems about Spain from various earlier collections and placing them together in one large compendium. I have selected poems from two collections Iberian Interludes and In the Art Gallery (oh dear, I never mentioned that it was the Prado and that all the paintings could be found there). To these I have added a selection of individual poems either published in reviews and literary magazines or taken from other collections.

I am still working on a title for this collection, hence today’s post. I have rejected Iberian Interludes as too vague (how many of my potential readers know that Spain is Iberia) and I am now looking at a bold assertion: Spain. If I do this, I will need a sub-title. The evolution of the subtitle looks like this: Bull’s Blood and Bottled Sunshine, ¡Olé!  >  Bull’s Blood and Bottled Sun >  Bottled Sun and Bull’s Blood. I wonder if Spain: Bottled Sun and Bull’s Blood will be catchy enough. Will it draw readers in and attract them? There’s still time for me to think and re-think and all observations will be gratefully accepted.

By all means, let me know what you think.

Accents: Wednesday Workshop

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Accents
Wednesday Workshop

We began last night with an absentee — John Sutherland, who was in Nova Scotia for Thanksgiving — and a guest writer — Allan Hudson who, in addition to his fiction maintains a blog called the South Branch Scribbler. This is accessible at http://allanhudson.blogspot.ca/

We introduced ourselves and talked about our writing and our writing styles. Kevin Stephens, for example, thinks of himself as a structuralist who plans his writing, in advance, down to the last detail. He uses an Excel spread sheet, with photos of all his characters, heroes and villains, a detailed time line, and notes on all their major characteristics. Chuck Bowie is much looser with his structure and allows his characters to think and plan “on the hoof” so to speak. As a result, he rewrites great chunks of his action as the characters change their minds and tell him what they want to do. Roger Moore is primarily a poet. He works out most things in his head (Think before you Ink) and writes them down when he is ready. He uses notebooks and pen and ink for preference. Allan Hudson spoke of his difficulties as a writer of short fiction. However, the group praised his abilities as the owner of an excellent blog that really supports writers in the region. Chuck and Roger have both appeared on Allan’s blog and both will be happy to feature there again while Kevin and John are both hoping for a first appearance. That is the sort of presence that Allan inspires. In addition, he has some 400-500 visitors to the Blog each week and has recorded a weekly high of over 1,000 visits. These are powerful figures and speak so highly of his blogging talents.

Allan came to the group with a specific question: how do we, as writers, handle dialog? We spoke briefly on this topic, having handled it before. See these two blogs that we summarized in our discussion.

https://rogermoorepoet.com/2016/09/30/he-said-she-said-writing-dialogue/

https://rogermoorepoet.com/2016/08/24/wednesdays-workshop-dialogue/

From dialogue we moved on to the use of accents in our writing. We began by stating that it is almost impossible to generate a spoken accent in written print. In part, this is because what we write in our own heads may not be what the reader receives in his or her own head. Then we broke “accent” down into its component parts: (1) the accidents of spoken speech – almost impossible to imitate in writing. (2) the accidents of syntactical change, where a different style of grammar already suggests an accented speaker – this is most certainly achievable and Kevin has managed it in particular with his Russian speakers. (3) the accidents of vocabulary choice – and this too is achievable with relative ease, as Chuck has shown in his Mancunian and Rumanian speech patterns (Steal it all). And (4) the insertion of selected colloquial phrases – boyo, and warra teg, for the Welsh; och aye, for the Scots; mon ami, for the French … such phrasing coupled with elements of 2 and 3 above help overcome the difficulties expressed in 1 above.

We then moved on to discuss the function of writing groups. Some groups exchange writing and commentate on member submissions. We do this from time to time, usually on a one on one basis. More important, perhaps, we submit questions to each other, as with the dialogue / accent examples above. Then we discuss moments of difficulty in the writing with which we are currently engaged. From the many open suggestions placed on the table, the author can then figure out his preferred options. Above all, we see ourselves as a support group for writers, ourselves and others. This means that at one level, we rejoice at the good news and lament the bad news. However, at another level, we help each other in very specific ways. One concrete example, John came over to my house and helped me create my account on CreateSpace. Then he talked / walked me through the placing of Monkey Temple online at Amazon and Kindle. I now have seven books online available worldwide at Amazon and Kindle. Without his help, I might never have taken this step.

We began at 7:00 pm and at 9:50 pm the gentleman in charge of The Second Cup announced that they were closing in ten minutes. Such is the power of friendship, group ethics, and the spoken word. I don’t think we counted the seconds or the passing time. “And a great time was had by all.”

THE END.

 

 

 

Monkey’s Tractatus

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Monkey’s Tractatus
(after a philosophical argument between
Ludvig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell)

When monkey sees a hippopotamus in the temple grounds
he knows it is grounded in fact.
We really must get rid of it!
It obediently vanishes.

There is a silence in the temple cells
broken only by the broom’s clean sweep
as insects are swept away from the footsteps of the unworthy.

Monkey sees the hippo trapped beneath a chair.
He can feel it struggling to set itself free.
Now hippo gets tangled in monkey’s hair.

Monkey will have its hide for a shield against dark thoughts,
an unbroken umbrella to guard him from this rain of teardrops.

Hippo bathes in a hip bath of crocodile tears:
Sunt rerum lacrimae.
He wallows in philosophical sorrow.

When the hippo leaves the temple,
there is a silence as the unspoken word returns,
a silence broken only by the hum of the hoover,
and the beat of a condor’s invisible wings.

People Poems 2

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People Poems are dedicated to people who, for one reason or another, have distinguished themselves in my life. People Poem 2 is dedicated to Pearl Kirkby who persuaded me — in one sentence — to change my signature from that of a backward looking former academic to that of a forward looking creative writer. ID, from Granite Ship rewritten as Land of Rocks and Saints, and liked by Pearl, reminds me of my time in academia. However, the final image of the USB states clearly the forward-looking aspect of my creativity. I am now a full-time creative writer. Thank you, Pearl, for pointing this out to me. Please accept this poem and this bouquet of e-flowers as my tribute and acknowledgement of my debt to you.

ID

Within this bookstore are many books, yet none
with my name on the cover or my life blood inside.
Deeper I dig, and deeper. Now here is a name I know,
and there in the bibliography, at last, I find my name:

two books, a dozen or so articles, a thesis, and I am
vindicated. All that study, that work, has led to this:
my name in a foreign book in a foreign bookstore. Nice
work: now I know that wherever I go, I can establish

my identity, set myself free from anonymity’s pangs.
Plug in the computer, turn it on, and there I am on the web,
smiling back at me. There is no better passport, no better

sense of being, of identity, than that contained in these
images of self, these self-reproductions that I carry with
me, always, in a memory stick looped round my neck.

Plaza de Santa Teresa
26 VII 2005

Ownership: Whose poem is it anyway?

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Whose poem is it?
Fictional Friends
Saturday, 17 September 2016

Ana, Anna, BettyAnne,
David, Jane, Lachlan, Margaret, Neil,
Roger

            I spent a happy two hours on Saturday afternoon in a literary workshop with a group of Fictional Friends. We were work-shopping a colleague’s story. It had been circulated to us the week before and we had all had a chance to read it and offer our responses. The author joined in the discussion quite freely and the conversation was in depth and very pointed.

Without giving away any intimate details, I believe that the general points that arose in the discussion are well worth opening up to a wider audience. I will leave them in question form.

1. The narrative voice: Is it stronger than the voice of the characters and should it be? To what extent should the narrator dominate the story? Should the characters have pride of place? How do we seek and find a balance between narrator and characters, especially when the author’s own voice, in real life and literature, can be so strong?

2. The focal point: What is the focal point of the story? Should it have a single focus, a single slug line, a sentence that can sum it up? Is it about the conflict between two characters in a dysfunctional marriage? Is it about a tit-for-tat relationship with secrecy and revenge at the heart of it? How should the story be focused so the spotlight falls on one of these elements or highlights the potential conflict among all three?

3. The characters: Is the narrator a third character? Are the two main characters evenly balanced? Do they have to be likeable? Are they likeable? Can they be strengthened? If they are not likeable, can their unlike-ability be softened in any way so the reader draws closer to them? Can the points of conflict between them be sharpened or focused more clearly? Should the story be lengthened to include more background detail? Should it be shortened and made more incisive? Are there non sequiturs, false trails, red herrings that can be eliminated?

4. Dialog: Is the dialog genuine and believable? Do people really speak like this? Is the couple communicating or are they merely talking at each other without listening? Is their lack of communication, via the dialog, a key component of the story? Can this lack of communication be strengthened? Is their language unique to them, each of them? Are the ‘he said’ / ‘she said’ necessary when there are only two characters? If their speech and points of view are distinctive then dialogic pointers are not necessary, surely? All ‘saidisms’ should be removed, ‘she squeaked, he sighed’, shouldn’t they? Such ‘saidisms’ can be paraphrased within the text, can’t they?

5. Punctuation: Does the punctuation need a copy editor to sort it out? Does the punctuation enhance the meaning or confuse the reader? Do the traditional forms of punctuation hold good in the age of texting and twitter and tweet? Surely the punctuation should be standardized, possibly for the narrator and the two main characters? Standardized, perhaps, but according to whose rules? Or does the narrative create its own rules?

6. Dramatic Irony: How much does each character know? How much should the reader know? How do we let vital information become available to the reader while keeping it secret from the other characters? Do we achieve this via dialog? How do the various narrators work in this context omniscient, narrator as character, narrator with partial knowledge etc?

Two writing tips:

1. Stay in the mood: We work hard as authors to create a mood for our characters and our readers. Once we have created that mood, we must stay in it. Anything that breaks the audience’s attention must be avoided: punctuation mistakes, spelling mistakes, authorial intervention, ‘saidisms’, sudden changes in character, words that are obtrusive … avoid too, those little jokes that we love so much, especially if they do not contribute to the story  … they distract the audience from what’s happening … avoid our favorite repeated phrases … non-essentials must be left out … get in the mood … stay in the mood.

2. Read your work aloud: This is one of the best ways of concentrating on what you are writing. Two techniques: (1) record your work, close your eyes, play it back and really listen to it, perhaps more than once. This allows you to focus on rhythm, structure, and movement. (2) Read your work aloud as you are writing and after you have written. For me, in poetry, this includes the finger-tapping, syllable counting, rhythmic mode — a sílabas contadas, as Fray Luis de León, one of Spain’s most rhythmic writers, used to say.

At the end of the session, the author responded to the commentaries and then invited each of the work-shoppers to offer a condensed suggestion in a line or two. My own went like this: “You have heard thirty-five to forty different suggestions. You are the author, only you. You most focus clearly on your story and choose those recommendations that suit you best and move your story forward in the way that you want.”

Waking in the early hours of the night to converse with the Harvest moon that still drifted through the night sky, the following very different thoughts came to me. They come from my long-term experiences with work-shopping, schools of creative writing, and editors who decide what parts of an author’s work they will publish, and then ONLY with appropriate and editor-approved changes.

Whose poem is it anyway?
When we workshop a poem or a short story and
when we receive all this feedback,
what is our role?
Is the poem or the story still ours?
Whose story is it?

  1. Editors.

            My first editors insisted on re-writing my texts. They wanted me to say and write things this way, not that way. “Here’s your poem,” one wrote back. “Resubmit it like this and I’ll publish it.” It wasn’t the way I wanted it, but I did what he said and my poem was published. House editorial style: same thing. Whose poem is it? Mine, because it bears my name … but did I want it written that way? Good question.

2. El Poeta-Pueblo.

I have mentioned this concept before. It comes from Ramón Menéndez Pidal who suggested that in the best oral tradition Medieval and Renaissance Spanish poetry passed through the mouths of a series of anonymous polishers who chose the best verses and strengthened them as they went along. If the poet is the people, whose poem is it? I think of soccer chants, bumper stickers, certain repeated jokes, especially old jokes that are recycled again and again with merely a change of victim. So much is in the air, so much is heard, over-heard, half-heard … where does creativity start and where does it end?

3. Originality, Copyright, and the Right to Copy.

Some of the thoughts expressed above question the meaning of ownership, originality, creativity, and copyright. How original are we? Who actually creates the ideas in the film based on the book based on the idea based on the suggestion of the anonymous voice overheard on the commuter train? When we work in a workshop, to whom does the end result belong? When we work in a creative writing program with tutors and commentators and a thesis director who rewrites, corrects, and approves the final product, whose work is it? When we work in a team, is it the final voice that determines the final structure of the entity, that is the creator and bears the label of creativity? By extension, to what extent do we have the right to listen in, to copy, to borrow, to re-create? Is a re-creator a creator and to what extent does the re-creator really create?

Just some thoughts to share with my fictional and other friends for the joy of creation never ends — and yes, we have the right to copy (with acknowledgement), to borrow (with a tribute), to change, and shuffle, and cut … for me it’s all a form of creativity. If our friends and writing groups want to join in and help us write, then why shouldn’t they? But never forget the role of el pueblo-poeta and don’t forget to ask: whose poem is it?

Imitation and Creation: Wednesday Workshop

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Imitation and Creation Wednesday Workshop

 Martes y trece, mal día / Tuesday the 13th, bad day.

Imitation:

In our age of instant and spontaneous creativity, imitation is almost always bad. And yet, as John pointed out to me on Tuesday evening at our weekly meeting, imitation is the best form of flattery. We flatter other writers when we borrow from them and imitate their styles. I don’t mean wholesale plundering and plagiarism, but a nod here and there surely does no harm.

We also discussed the idea of imitatio / imitation, in ancient and medieval (and later) rhetorical texts.

Imitatio: the ideal of the good man, of the blessed spot, of the Golden Age — in rhetoric not all imitation is bad. Moreover, imitation can be doubly good when the “remake” is more original than, and betters, the original production.

Orality

From imitation we moved to orality: how much do we see and hear and overhear and then repeat? And, by extension, how accurately do we repeat what we hear?

If we go back to Roman times, the marching songs of the Imperium spread throughout the Roman Empire (Holy or not), and catchy songs, tunes, and words they were with thousands marching to them and singing them in taverns and on the road.

Think the Re-conquest of Spain (la Reconquista) and the romances noticieros, the news ballads, songs that circulated orally and were transmitted throughout the Iberian Peninsula. It is hard to imagine a society with little writing, no newspapers, no radio, no television, and everything transmitted by foot, horseback, and word of mouth. Yet that describes the situation in Spain in the 14th and 15th centuries. News was sung, and imitated, and circulated by song and word of mouth.

Ramón Menéndez Pidal coined the phrase el poeta pueblo / the poet as people, a concept that suggested an anonymous series of authors and contributors, many nameless, speaking and revising, remembering and re-polishing, verses and songs. This leads to a true oral authenticity of authorship where everyone joins in to create and re-create and we end up with a literary process of natural selection (oh yes, we discussed Darwin, and Wilberforce, and Huxley, and Mendel, and Marx, and many other things and people as well, we don’t do things by halves on Tuesday nights).

Think now of the literate, those who had letters and could write and read, and the illiterate, those who could neither read nor print their names. For us, the illiterate come down to us as crosses or ticks or thumbprints in history or as a stonemason’s mark on a cathedral, perhaps. But nevertheless, the illiterate heard, they memorized, they repeated, and they spoke. And no, in spite of all our assumptions, they were NOT stupid.

Think Napoleonic Wars and the songs that were sung on board ship in the various navies and don’t forget the marching armies. Many of these songs, words changed, are still with us. The words change, the tunes change, the rhythms change, but so many, oh so many, are recognizable when we go to their roots and examine them.

Orality and Literacy

Now think of a society in which some people can read and some can’t. Cervantes presents us with a world in which the literate and the illiterate mingle in a changing society. He shows us how they interact in his novel Don Quixote. The closest we can come today is to a world in which some are computer literate and some aren’t; some can text and some can’t; some are totally at home in social media, and some aren’t. Often this is a case of education and money. It can also be a question of privilege. But wealth and circumstance enter into the equation as well.

Now think of how this world of ours is expanding exponentially with its many forms of instant media and also how it is contracting exponentially as it becomes, in the words of the Spanish, a pocket handkerchief / el mundo es un pañuelo.

Originality

Into this mixture we must now throw originality: how creative are we? How original are we? What does it mean to be original, to be creative? I was always horrified when I heard students and professors repeating the “best” adverts they had heard on television the night before. Alas, I can still sing many of the early ads I heard on black and white television in the fifties. How much room is there in the human brain? How original is the mind that regurgitates the tv ads of so long ago and how, just how, do we incorporate them into our own version of creativity? Is creativity then warped tradition and reconditioned memory? Then think jokes, re-cycled jokes, with an ever -changing victim subjected to a never changing punchline: I don’t want to go there.

Let us think Atlantic Canada: how do we deal with Milton Acorn’s Jackpine Sonnets? Are they failed sonnets with fewer lines and falsified rhymes and rhythms? Or are they true poetic creations that reflect the True North Strong and Free that is the Jack Pine growing frivolous and free in Atlantic Canada? I will never forget my first encounter with Milton Acorn. He borrowed my photocopier code and photocopied himself, literally, on the department photocopier, limb by limb. Now is that original or not? I still remember him carrying his photocopied features across campus …

Imitation and Creation, from my computer, our Wednesday Workshop, a day late … so Euro-Centric, for that is my background, and I do apologize. For I am well aware of the influence of the tales that spread from China and India and the Arabian Peninsula into Greece and then Rome and then places further west. A small world ours, a veritable handkerchief, a literary handkerchief with repercussions across time and space, repercussions that have breadth and depth and that may come to us in so many different ways.

Imitation? Originality? Creativity? Talk to us about them, next Tuesday, at our regular weekly meeting.

 

Apologia FFF

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Apologia
Friday Fast Fiction

                   Late last night, I opened Alistair Macleod’s book The Lost Salt Gift of Blood and I re-read the first story. I was soon dabbing my eyes with a tissue and blowing my nose.
This morning, I want to destroy everything I have written. I know I don’t possess the verbal and emotional genius of the great writers and I sense that I will never be able to write like them. Graduate school taught me to be passive, not active, and to write impersonally, choking every emotion when I write. Academia also taught me how to kiss and how to run away with my thirty silver pence. “Never challenge the status quo,” my professors told me. “Learn the rules and disobey them at your peril.”
But here, in this private space where I create and re-create, there are no rules. The enemy is not clear any more and the fight is not one of black against white. It is rather a choice between diminishing shades of grey, and all cats are grey in the gathering dark that storms against my closing mind. Should I destroy all my writing? I won’t be the first to do so; nor would I be the last. And I won’t be the first or the last to destroy myself either. Intellectual, academic, and creative suicide: as total as the suicide of the flesh.
I carry on my back the names of those who have gone on before me as if they were a pile of heavy stones packed into a rucksack that I carry up a steep hill, day after day, only to find myself, next morning, starting at the bottom once again. But this is not the point: the point is that if I cannot write like the great writers, how can I write?
I think of Mikhail Bakhtin and his cronotopos, man’s dialog with his time and his place. I have no roots, no memories, and that is where my stories must start: in the loss of self, the loss of place, the loss of everything. I was uprooted at an early age, soon lost my foundations, was sent into exile, and only survival mattered.
I look at the first page of one of my manuscripts. My writing manifesto is clear before me: “And this is how I remember my childhood,” I read. “Flashes of fragmented memory frozen like those black and white publicity photos I saw as a child in the local cinema. If I hold the scene long enough in my mind, it flourishes and the figures speak and come back to life.”
I am aware of the words of T. S. Eliot that “every attempt / is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure / because one has only learned to get the better of words / for the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which / one is no longer disposed to say it” (East Coker).
Are my stories an exercise in creativity or are they a remembrance of things past? How accurate is memory? Do we recall things just as they happened? Or do we weave new fancies? In other words, are my inner photographs real photographs or have they already been tinted and tainted by the heavy hand of creativity and falseness?
The truth is that I can no longer tell fact from fiction. Perhaps it was all a dream, a nightmare, rather, something that I just imagined. And perhaps every word of it is true.
I no longer know.

Wednesday’s Workshop: News & Reviews

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Wednesday’s Workshop
News and Reviews

Tuesday evening began with John and Roger discussing the editing process. How easy it is to see the motes in another writer’s eye while failing to suspect the beams in our own.

Avoid the passive:
It is easier said than done. For those trained in academia and / or the scientific mode, the removal of the author and the insertion of the neutral and objective observer is de rigeur. John, a scientist, and Roger, an academic, share the same problems. We each use our editing tweezers to remove those motes from each others eyes, and wow, do we need help. We share our work by e-mail and the comments help us focus and revise. We are not Beta readers or editors in the full sense of the world, but we work well together and that is what matters.

Advice:

Find a good and trustworthy reader who will tell you the truth about your writing. The search for objectivity in a critical review is essential: if you find a good reader, treat them to all good things and don’t let them go.

TWUC:

Chuck is currently the Atlantic Provinces Representative for The Writers Union of Canada (TWUC). When he arrived (late, but just in time for his third of the ginger cookie) he told us of the meetings he was setting up for TWUC members across Atlantic Canada. Hopefully, there will be two in New Brunswick. More details will emerge later.

New Novel:

Chuck then continued talking about his new novel. We have discussed the plot of it before and were interested in how he had developed it. Changes are on the way, and as more problems are set, so more and different solutions emerge. The plot is intricate and convoluted and Donovan, Chuck’s main character, continues in his search to aid the underdogs in their fight to achieve justice.

New Beginnings:

Both Chuck and John bemoaned the fact that they need to write more introductory chapters to what were their previous introductory chapters. “I wrote this chapter to explain what was happening in the novel and now I need another chapter to explain what’s happening in this one.” JINX as my daughter used to say, crossing her fingers, and JINXED they are to write more and more introductions thus front-end-loading their plots. In Chuck’s case, he started at the front and worked forward; in John’s case he started at the back and wrote backwards … Chuck is now writing backwards too … ours not to reason why …

Computer Tracking:

The late, and unexpected, arrival of Kevin, our computer expert, (who did not get a portion of the weekly ginger cookie) led us straight into a discussion of the many programs available for tracking plot and character. Kevin believes strongly in this style of writing: think and plan it all out and log it all into a computer program. John and Chuck believe their characters need freedom to challenge the author, to develop, and to change their minds. Roger reminded them of Unamuno’s novel [novela / nívola] Niebla in which a character doesn’t like his fate in the story and travels to Salamanca to tell Don Miguel de Unamuno not to kill him off, as he plans. Some critics think Niebla is a very poor novel, as characters cross the space between fiction and the real world. Unamuno’s answer is legendary: “I am not writing a novel / novela,” he replied. “I’m writing a nivel / nívola. Niebla is a perfectly good nívola.”

News:

Two new books were presented to the group, Monkey Temple (Roger Moore) and The Caroline (John K. Sutherland). These circulated and one anonymous member of the group received autographed copies.

Reviews:

Both books are available via Amazon and Kindle. They need both reviewers and purchasers. But this is the old egg and chicken: do you purchase the book and then review it or do you review it (based on the Beta reading you have done) and then purchase it? This is a thorny question and one we left for another discussion, along with the major question — how do we get genuine and honest reviewers for our books?

In conclusion:

We concluded with the reminder that the Fall meeting of the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick (WFNB — we are all members) is already scheduled. If we are planning to go, we must hurry to sign up … so this is a reminder to do so. Before we concluded we agreed that a table in the Christmas Craft Fair or at the Local Farmer’s market, at which we offer our books for sale, might be a very good idea. We can certainly do this at the WFNB. But with four of us now starting to publish, a concerted effort at marketing, reviewing, and selling is most certainly needed.

Valid and reasonable suggestions on how to do this would be welcome.

Print: Wednesday’s Workshop

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Print, Printing, and Prints
Wednesday Workshop

Tuesday evening’s Gents Night Out started with John and I, on our own, and after our usual jovial salutations, we talked about putting things into print.

Print

John visited me last week and guided me through the placing of Monkey Temple on CreateSpace at Amazon. Then, when it was up, he talked me through the placing of the same text on Kindle. Now both are available online. He has read Monkey Temple and was kind enough to give it an online review (and a 5 star rating). He tells me it is his favorite among my books. Julie Gordon, another good friend from an online writing course we shared, has also read Monkey Temple, and she gave it another 5 star review, so it is doing well. Only one poem from Monkey Temple has appeared on this blog, Monkey’s FAQs. With it already in print, I may add an occasional poem to the blog, but I will not run through the whole text.

Though Lovers Be lost is also available on Amazon. John’s teaching was good, as I told him in our conversation, and I put TLBL up on my own. However, it is not yet available on Kindle, but it will be available soon. Now, Though Lovers Be Lost has appeared here on the blog in toto, so, if you, dear reader, have followed the blog and would like to contribute a review online … well, I would be very grateful.

Printing

I am just tidying up The Empress of Island and that manuscript, together with the flash fiction of Bistro, should go up on Amazon very soon. Two separate books, I should hasten to add. Again, with the amount of text from both that I have posted on this blog, if you have followed them, then please consider posting a review.

John himself is preparing yet another novel for publishing. We discussed the timeline and the structure of this novel, his twentieth, or twenty-first. He is trying to schedule gaps in the text of five years and ten years and is working out a plan to have all the characters age over those time spaces, not an easy task, as you can imagine, but then, John is a very good novelist. He gave me a signed copy of his novel, The Caroline, available online at Ex Libris, and Clare and I will be reading that, one after the other, if not together. You can find John on Amazon at John K. Sutherland, incidentally. You can find me most easily under my name and the book title: Roger Moore: Monkey Temple … that gets me every time. If you just type in my name, there is more 007 material than even James Bond and 100 secretaries could account for, all paid On Her Majesty’s Most Secret Service.

Prints

 A knock at the window of The Second Cup, right behind me: John points over my shoulder, it is Kevin, come late, with the most attractive … now, you really don’t know what I am going to say next, although you think you do, … nine week old Habanese puppy in his arms. Of course, she can’t come in, so we go out to greet her. What a darling … I refused to touch her. Puppies are catching and I don’t want to catch one: too much bending and house training at my advanced and creaky age. If I can’t tie up my shoelaces, I can’t clean up after a poo-pee — that’s the French for a puppy, la poupée, oh no, my mistake, a poupée is a little doll — just what Kevin’s puppy is.

Kevin left the dog in the car — in the shade, windows down to give air circulation, cool evening — John and I lectured him — he didn’t need the lecture –. and we discussed Kevin’s week. Things are going well and he is juggling work, writing — he is finishing his first manuscript and has a contract — wow! — I look forward to giving news of the publication of his book on a future Wednesday Workshop — and he’s also working on a new and very secret PROJECT — about which we can say nothing except ssssh!

Footprints

Kevin didn’t want to leave the poo-pee in the car for too long, especially since she was fond of climbing her way into the driving seat — remember Clyde? — oh no, not another Clyde! — and so we all soon made footprints. Alas, Chuck’s were covered with dust and sand and we didn’t see him this week. He is busy with a building project and also with his fourth novel — The Underwater Road — for which he, too, has a contract. His other novels are doing well. I have only read Steal It All … but I must say that Chuck Bowie is a master of mystery and intrigue, as I said on my online review.

So, this Wednesday’s Workshop is a potpourri: lots of announcements, friendships, changes in momentum, new editions, and new additions, and not so much literary criticism and theoretical musings. Ah well, life’s often like that.

See you all next Wednesday!

A question and an answer

Question: I am curious if you’ve ever had any of your short stories/poetry published in any lit. mag? I’m wondering because I am travelling down that publishing avenue and looking for advice when pitching to literary magazines. Although the general consensus seems to be that it’s a wholly tough market to get into!
Tales from the Trunk — https://trunktalessite.wordpress.com/

Answer: I have published about 135 poems in literary magazines, mainly in Canada. This happened mainly in the ’80’s and ’90’s when the market was probably a little bit easier to break into. I have also published 14 or 15 short stories (and won some awards and honorable mentions, same with poetry, too, incidentally).  It seems to me that there are two distinct ways to go: (1) Submit, submit, submit: paper your walls with reject slips, keep going, keep improving, no matter what, don’t give up, ever. You must be stubborn and believe that your work is worth continuing with and BETTER than what those who are rejecting you think it is. Mind you: listen to them, keep reading, check your markets, revise your work in accordance to what editors think (if they make suggestions), and, above all, be as stubborn as a mule or worse. I did that for years and then I started to take route #2: (2) Go Indie and publish your own work. With route #1 behind me, I knew who I was and what I was writing. If other people didn’t like it, that was their problem. Sure: I am a Welshman, writing in English, in Canada, about Spain, Mexico, and Wales … duh … so, as they keep telling me, it’s just not marketable. Why not write about the Maple Trees turning red and Maple syrup … duh … going Indie led me into two further directions. (A) I published my own collections, paid for them myself and, in a fit of pique, gave them away free to my friends, “because my poetry is too precious to sell for money”! NB I had a full time job and could afford to do this. (B) I am now publishing via CreateSpace (Amazon.com). This is for free and easy to do. There are other options out there. Some ask you for cash up front …. I wouldn’t pay for their services. Others are free and excellent. I also recommend Smashwords or is it Wordsmash? Anyway, it’s also free and you can control where your books go and what they do. I chose Amazon because I had a persuasive friend who talked me through the process. If you have someone who can talk you through the process, any process, of publishing online, that helps. If you have a writing group THAT IS HONEST WITH YOUR WORK — that is essential. You must have some reliable readers who can step up and say: “No, that is not up to your usual standard” or “No, you can do better than this.”Good luck and best wishes, and yes, if I can answer your questions and help, I most certainly will.