See the living crocodiles
Feb. 1st, 2006 12:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
j4It's mythically true, if not actually true, that professional writers of fiction are forever being asked where they get their ideas. Who the hell asks these dumb questions? I don't need to know where to get ideas. They soak in through my ears and my eyes and my fingertips, welling up behind my eyes like an acid bath of overloaded metaphor. If ideas were portions of fruit and vegetables, and if portions of fruit and vegetables really cured all known diseases, I'd be appearing on chat shows to talk about what it's like being immortal and whether that unique perspective on life really gives you a better chance of working out who's going to win Celebrity Big Brother.
What I want to know is how you get the tools or the time or the what-is-it-that-it-is to hammer those ideas into cogs and wheels and sprockets and pipes and valves that can be bolted or welded together into actual working machinery which can take stuff in at one end and spit different stuff out at the other. Because frankly in my limited experience the process seems to have entirely too much in common with attempting to weave writing-desks out of feathers.
The other question is whether sticking a lot of nuts and bolts et cetera on a big sheet of off-white canvas in any way constitutes Art, and -- ah! -- solving that question brings the accountants galumphing over the horizon, and that's before the critics are at the door, licking their gleaming teeth.
What I want to know is how you get the tools or the time or the what-is-it-that-it-is to hammer those ideas into cogs and wheels and sprockets and pipes and valves that can be bolted or welded together into actual working machinery which can take stuff in at one end and spit different stuff out at the other. Because frankly in my limited experience the process seems to have entirely too much in common with attempting to weave writing-desks out of feathers.
The other question is whether sticking a lot of nuts and bolts et cetera on a big sheet of off-white canvas in any way constitutes Art, and -- ah! -- solving that question brings the accountants galumphing over the horizon, and that's before the critics are at the door, licking their gleaming teeth.
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Date: 2006-02-01 01:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-01 01:15 pm (UTC)One particularly moronic chap on my flist provided feedback to a creative work I posted with "hey, you should do X Y Z next!" On being asked why, he said, oh, he had no particularly interest in X, Y, or Z, and in fact had never seen X or Y, but just thought that I might be looking for ideas.
No, no, I am not looking for ideas. I have *waving in a virtual sort of way that the ideas file, and the bits of my brane that haven't made it into the ideas file yet* PLENTY of those. Tuits, on the other hand...
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Date: 2006-02-01 01:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-02 03:41 pm (UTC)This comment didn't start out just being a vehicle for a pun, honest.
Now you can seal up the book and not write anymore
Date: 2006-02-01 01:28 pm (UTC)But, utimately, I think it's like music: if you don't need to do it, you're not going to be able to do it.
Re: Now you can seal up the book and not write anymore
Date: 2006-02-01 01:41 pm (UTC)I think it's more like food: you can need it all you want, but at the end of the day your need doesn't make the crops grow.
Good news about your father's novel, though.
Re: Now you can seal up the book and not write anymore
Date: 2006-02-01 01:46 pm (UTC)Re: Now you can seal up the book and not write anymore
Date: 2006-02-01 02:09 pm (UTC)I think "mere will" is sufficient to produce competent and well-crafted writing. It's the difference between art and craft, though; most (arguably all) good artists are also craftsmen, but not all craftsmen are artists.
Re: Now you can seal up the book and not write anymore
Date: 2006-02-01 04:37 pm (UTC)Mr J. Archer. Dick Francis (according to his description of his beginnings as a writer). Nanowrimo (in spades).
Re: Now you can seal up the book and not write anymore
Date: 2006-02-01 04:47 pm (UTC)The capacity to set 50kwords on a page*, one after the other, does not "being able to write" make.
*Granted, a metaphorical page. Or a very large one.
Out of idle curiosity...
Date: 2006-02-02 03:45 pm (UTC)I'm thinking of going for it this year because I have a Lame Idea for a novel, and I'd rather try out the scary process of Actually Writing Something Novel-Length on something that I don't feel matters that much if I mess it up.
Re: Out of idle curiosity...
Date: 2006-02-02 04:03 pm (UTC)It depends on how you count "usefulness". It certainly seems useful in terms of proving to oneself that one is able to write at length over a prolonged stretch of time, which is a thing you kind of need to know to be able to write novels, and of providing moral support for people so doing; I doubt it's likely to produce any great novels by itself, because there's so much you only learn from doing lots of writing and most of the people I've seen do it are early in that process. Committing to writing 50kwords in a month would very much not work with my process, particularly when people are aiming to do a certain amount every day, because my process very much leans on doing a week's worth in one or two prolonged sessions, but there are plenty of people - Stephen King frex - who work happily with a certain amount every day. [ I do however reject the thought that you're not serious about writing if you can't push the commitments of dayjob and rest of life out of the way enough to write every day, but that's a different rant entirely. ]
I also think November's not the best choice of month for it, because that's so not going to work for anyone who gets SAD.
I'm thinking of going for it this year because I have a Lame Idea for a novel, and I'd rather try out the scary process of Actually Writing Something Novel-Length on something that I don't feel matters that much if I mess it up.
Luck with that working out. *hug*
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Date: 2006-02-01 01:40 pm (UTC)At confirmation class last night (but that's a tale for another post), the vicar was telling us that communing with God means escaping from all those pesky ideas into a place beyond thought and self. He said that the best time to achieve a good satisfying state of prayer was when you were bored. But, but, I stammered, I'm never bored! Too many ideas! And I love them all like children!
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Date: 2006-02-01 02:00 pm (UTC)Any parent, however devoted, needs some child-free time now and then.
I find that it's not so much boredom as routine that gives me space for the mindset which I think correlates most closesly with what you might call "prayer" -- whether I find that routine in the formal patterns of choral Evensong or the soft domestic rhythms of knitting, cleaning, folding clothes. It's the clicking of rosary beads, the turning of prayer wheels, the steps of a dance; it's weaving yourself into a pattern.
Boredom, for me, is something different: it's that horrible combination of lethargy and restlessness, residual momentum without direction. It's desperately looking for the patterns in the static. It's like sitting in an uncomfortable chair, waiting for a film to end, only to find that the film was your life and it's not a double-feature.
Boredom terrifies me.
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Date: 2006-02-01 04:04 pm (UTC)I see what you mean about boredom and sympathise entirely. Time without ideas, without every aspect in here having something to focus on, is dangerous for me because for want of anything better to do they turn inward and introspective and depressed and that can do a reinforcing downward spiral thing I really wish to avoid.
I'm not sure I have a reasonable grasp on what are safe ways to calm them down without risking that. Civ, a nice large empire in that is complex enough to give them each something to worry about. Extremely loud concerts. Sex, sometimes. Being swept up in a compelling narrative of someone else's. That's about it.
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Date: 2006-02-02 03:50 pm (UTC)Sex is about the one area where I can escape from the non-stop noise in my brain of ideas about ideas about ideas (and so ad infinitum). Just one moment when I don't actually need any words.
Consequently I don't write much about sex, because I'm a bit scared of making it not work any more. Is that weird?
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Date: 2006-02-02 04:05 pm (UTC)Sometimes I can. But not always, by any means. Sometimes the storm of words and ideas are serving and enhancing it.
Consequently I don't write much about sex, because I'm a bit scared of making it not work any more. Is that weird?
That makes perfect sense to me fwiw.
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Date: 2006-02-02 04:13 pm (UTC)Mmmhh, yes, definitely, but, um. For me, there's still (usually) a point when the words run out. *blushes*
DAMN DAMN DAMN, now I have more things I want to write about, but there are boring things needing done (and miles to go before I sleep).
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Date: 2006-02-01 01:40 pm (UTC)Getting those images and ideas and vignettes into some form of workable whole is indeed the killer. Or so I find, but then I suppose some people make passable lives for themselves writing cohesive but uninspired stories, or films, or songs.
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Date: 2006-02-02 03:59 pm (UTC)cohesive but uninspired
It's what I was saying, er, down there, or maybe up there, in another comment anyway, about art v. craft. Well-crafted books are the "good solid home cooking" of reading IMHO. And sometimes you don't want "inspired" cooking, sometimes you just want e.g. fish and chips done properly, with just the right amount of batter on the fish, and chips that aren't too greasy or too crunchy, and DAMN I'M HUNGRY NOW.
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Date: 2006-02-01 01:53 pm (UTC)Where do you get your ideas... In my case, this will require the assistance of a doctor with a flashlight.
In the case of X, Y and McZ the paperback author, their latest bestselling thriller contains an avalanche of presidents, plots, jesters, terrorists, virulent virii and lords-a-leaping... and would've made a more compelling narrative if they'd all had one idea and stuck with it.
One idea means one story. Two ideas equals a complicated story. Multiple 'ideas' means the optimal deus ex machina is to stop at the penultimate chapter and use the book as a doorstop, firelighter or parrot-cage axminster carpet.
As you say: the difficult bit is making the idea work on and with the characters and the narrative.
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Date: 2006-02-01 03:56 pm (UTC)I wish to disagree with this, on the grounds that three ideas is the least a short story needs unless one is a genius, and I do not think there are that many of those working in the world at the moment - can think of two or three off the top of my head; and a novel that isn't giving me some new concept, perspective, thing about characterisation or other interesting development every few pages is headed nowhere fast.
Though perhaps we're just using "idea" on a different scale.
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Date: 2006-02-01 01:57 pm (UTC)You are a wonderful writer and someday I shall enjoy reading your works in print. I have an idea, in fact [vbg]...
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Date: 2006-02-02 04:00 pm (UTC)Will look out for the book. Email to follow. :)
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Date: 2006-02-02 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-01 03:00 pm (UTC)A whole book, though, a whole book! What a marvel that would be.
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Date: 2006-02-01 03:59 pm (UTC)The tools do seem to come with practice, and also with talking endlessly about process with other people who do it and playing with the things that have worked for them to see if they work for you. [ The world does not need, for example, a set of short stories that are riffs on a set of Leonard Cohen songs, but it's still an interesting exercise in some ways. ]
As for getting time, energy, motivation... it seems the particular value of obsessive-compulsive I do is actually rather good for that. Which is not the most sharable thing in the world, alas.
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Date: 2006-02-02 04:05 pm (UTC)This particular bit of the world would be interested to read them, though. :-)
I fear that for me the talking-endlessly-about-process would be the novel-writing equivalent of buying self-help books: that is, a substitute for Actually Doing Stuff. But, still.
On the subject of creative writing exercises (and I don't mean that phrase to sound quite as sneery as I now fear it does), I wish somebody had told Stephen Millhauser (http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/m/steven-millhauser/barnum-museum.htm) that the world did not really need a 'story' which is a frame-by-frame description of an imagined comic-strip version of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Nonetheless, I am in some obscure way glad to know that such a thing can exist...
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Date: 2006-02-02 04:12 pm (UTC)This particular bit of the world would be interested to read them, though. :-)
To a first approximation I can't do short stories, and the best Cohen songs are too perfect for me to dare approach that way; I do recommend George R, R. Martin's "Bitterblooms", though I'm blowed if I can remember what collection that's in, which does this with "Suzanne".
I fear that for me the talking-endlessly-about-process would be the novel-writing equivalent of buying self-help books: that is, a substitute for Actually Doing Stuff. But, still.
Well, the endlessly talking about stuff happens in time with other people around, the writing does not, and it certainly helps me to have what feels like limited home net access at this point. And also no TV.
On the subject of creative writing exercises (and I don't mean that phrase to sound quite as sneery as I now fear it does),
I don't think it does.
I wish somebody had told Stephen Millhauser that the world did not really need a 'story' which is a frame-by-frame description of an imagined comic-strip version of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Nonetheless, I am in some obscure way glad to know that such a thing can exist...
Well, as a demonstration of what's within the range of human possibility perhaps. [ Also it reminds me of my favourite novel title ever, The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover. ]
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Date: 2006-02-01 06:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-02 04:21 pm (UTC)And in case anybody else is reading this & hasn't seen it: "Where do you get your ideas?" by Neil Gaiman. (http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/essays/essaysbyneil/ideasessay)
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Date: 2006-02-01 09:42 pm (UTC)Did you know that that's, like, the topic of my phd? :-S
If I find an answer, I'll let you know...
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Date: 2006-02-02 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-02 04:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-01 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-01 09:54 pm (UTC)