Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Erynn~
See? It happens to most of us. Emails, too. And cars, that's why
people get sideswiped, it's not careless drivers, it's that we've
temporarily become invis    ...

 
  

    
Martha, Yeah. But listening to a critic, as a reason to stop writing,
is just silliness. If you'd rather not write, because you might say
something you've said before, then there are stories you'd write that
won't get told.

(There are only two conmplaints from fans I've noticed -- either they
complain because It's not like the last thing you did, or they complain
because it is.)

I'd make a big rahrah speech about just getting down and writing, with
Sondheim's "Move on..." song from Sunday in the Park with George
playing in the background, but I doubt it would do any more good than
suggesting that Jones and the Stray was the first chapter of a YA
novel. As far as you were concerned, you'd said what there was to say. 

But I would say that, as a fan, I'm looking forward to seeing more
Martha Soukup stories.
  

    

Hear, hear!
  

    

Dan cleaned house and also cleaned us out. Death is in the
strawberries and Dream is in the hot tub. The mouse ate too many chips
which were only wafer thin. Dan did not perform the show as a one-man
one act. Linda and Martha were missed. Martha is a good author, dammit.
And Adam forgot the peeps.

madmen and stagewalkers and mice, oh my... Dan did a funny little
dance for us all. You should all see it. Michelle got confused whether 
they were poker chips, potato chips or chocolate chips (she did not
attempt to eat the poker chips). Adam thought a peep would make a good
stand-in for Martha (had he remembered them... maybe next time).

Words are written, but who wrote what? This sort of conundrum
exemplfies the willy nilly path of wandering of conversation that
occasionally emitted from the mouths of attendees.
Or something like that.
  

    
Like I said, critics have said all sorts of things that I've shrugged off.
A friend and good writer said of "Walls", "This is not only a story I can't
imagine anyone wanting to read, I can't imagine anyone wanting to write."
And more than a dozen good writers read "The Story So Far" and thought it a
complete miscue with the sole exception of Vonda McIntire.  But that didn't
bother me, because I wanted to write those stories, and I wanted to read
them even if only one or two other people wanted to.

But the thing that's always worried me from even before I started writing
was writing stuff that's already been done.  That's why I went to Clarion--
people let me know I was doing all sorts of dumb things (right about some of
them!--not all of them!)--but when I said, "But has this been done before?",
they said, "Uh, I don't think anyone's writing this stuff."  That was all I
needed to hear.

But maybe I finished.

Meanwhile, tonight's musical edition of Buffy was an amazing thing.  I've
watched it twice already.  I'll have watched it at least once more by the
weekend.  Sorry, guys, that you scheduled a poker game during it!
  

    
Thirding!  And I've just ordered TAPOW, too! (the majority of this
post was composed just after Linda's.  Slippage)

A general contribution to the writing thing.  I don't know if I've
mentioned this before (if I have, forgive me, and please skip), but I
had a major moment during the course of writing my second novel during
which I was like, you know, is this really worth it?  It's just words. 
Just a page.  What's the point, really?  I actually stopped midword,
and shut down my computer, and walked away.  I don't think I thought I
might never start it up again, but it was the first and only time it's
ever been a possibility.  And it *hurt*.  So I went out with a friend
the next night.  As friends, sort of hinging toward a first date but
not really.  Just a fantastic evening.  And she looked at me and said;
"You're a writer.  You don't need a point."
So.  Just saying that you don't really need anything worth saying. 
Just a story.  And sometimes only barely that.  Just an image.  Just a
phrase.  Just a character.

Pamela- I'm actually stuck at the moment.  The story's called
"Murmur", it's almost 20,000 words long in two weeks, and I know
exactly where it's going but just don't know how it's going to get
there yet.  Of course, it's also really sick and disturbing, so that
might also be part of it.  Hopefully I'll break through it in the next
couple of days.

JaNell- I can see you!  Tell Mr. Chris congratulations
("Joe, Will Entrekin sends congratulations to you."
<blank stare> "Er.  Okay.  Right.  Thanks").

Kelly- Very nice pictures.  Compliments to both models and
photographer alike (and seconding the digging-the-box set thought;
definitely Pandora-esque).

On another note, don't know how many here watch tv (get the sense
we're all generally rather busy), but there's a new commercial in which
Peer Gynt's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" plays in a symphony
hall, and there's a skeleton watching the show, and a chandalier turns
into a crystalline dragon, which is then vanquished, and the vanquisher
(the female conductor of the symphony) picks up a perfect shimmering
rose from the remains.  It's *brilliant*.  Fantastic.  I *love* it.  I
mean, it's only for *Golden Sun* (a game for Game Boy Advanced), but
still it rocks the house.
I also managed to catch a show on MTV2 (yes, a lot of television
watching in the past couple days.  Think I've earned it, after a year
and a half without a day off besides weekends), called *One Giant
Leap*, about world music and creativity and art and things to that
nature.  They interviewed Kurt Vonnegut, and musicians, and one
particular guy I know I've seen but can't think of who he is, and
Dennis Hopper, and the whole thing really just rocked the house.  And
this whole post goes circular, because they mentioned that you know,
art is one of the few things that doesn't really have a point, doesn't
really have a meaning.  A story's just a story, a painting's just a
painting, they're just sort of there.
  

    
Martha -- But that's always the problem: when you start you're doing
stuff no-one has done before. After a while, you're doing stuff that's
part of the landscape, if only because you've been doing it.

Oddly, I don't mind the idea of doing stuff other people have done.
The fun of doing STARDUST was to write in a very specific mode and
genre and time. I figured it was a skill I'd like to learn, and nobody
else was doing it, and it should be possible to make it more than
pastiche.

(Currently lots of 'am I repeating myself/do I actually have anything
to say' questions going round in my head on the ENDLESS NIGHTS book of
short stories I'm doing. Keep your fingers crossed for me.)

Will -- how odd. I've always figured that art had to have meaning,
needs to have a point; after all, someone made it in order to say
something. I can go with a pebble's just a pebble, up to a point, but
not a story's just a story -- it's about something. Something is being
(or failing to be) communicated. Art is about having something to say.
  

    <scribbled>
  

    
I'd have to agree that a story is more than a story, but I do think
that some stories have their own agendas and need to be told even if
the author isn't entirely sure why when they're writing it. I've
certainly had the experience of not realizing I was saying something
through a story until halfway, or three quarters of the way through it.
Of I've started out saying something and ended up saying something
totally other.

As for repeating oneself... last night the Mouse made the point that
if you listen to any album, let alone series of albums by the same
artist, you will hear a lot of redundancy in terms of themes, musical
styles, and so forth. I know that a lot of my poetry explores similar
themes, and even iconic images. (Icarus in particular keeps popping
up). 

I think that's just it... exploration. An artist can certainly return
to a theme and explore it further. The fear of repeating oneself may
prevent one from finding out that they actually have more to say on a
subject then they realized.

As a case in point, just to keep picking on Martha, The Story So Far,
could easily have a really neat follow up story... what happens to our
protagonist when she writes a story that she hasn't lived? It's a
return to a story, and a character, and a theme that has been explored,
but the "continuing adventure" could be fascinating!
  

    <scribbled>
  

    
Oh, on a totally different note, it should probably be noted that
among other things, it was established last night that Neil is now
"The Neil" and may be referred to as such to avoid confusion with any
other real or potential Neils that inhabit this or any other plane of
existence.

That being said, my fingers are crossed for The Neil and Endless
Nights.
  

    
I am hungover on Rumi this morning and drunk again, now, on artists on
art.  Taking it in with great gulping breaths.  

(Splitting this post up, for obvious reasons.)

     *

Neil:  Thank you so much for your thoughtful response.  I see
patience, persistence and flexibility as tools in your bag.  _Coraline_
took ten years?  I’ll appreciate it even more, then.  I think my
efforts at being patient--and even flexible--suffer in the wake of my
insecurities.  When one project stalls, I’m convinced it’s because I’m
an utter failure.  This carries over into anything else I try to do,
then.  Your story about _ 3 Septembers & a January_ was a great reality
check.

 I believe you completely about the work of writing “one word at a
time, one after the other.”  But do they make any sense, ultimately,
when they’re strung together so loosely?  Do you get material of any
value from those days?  The stuff I do like that is so disjointed; it
looks like puppets sculpted by madmen.  And I hate it, usually.  But
maybe I can’t see the forest for the emotional state of the trees.

You said: <"Art is about having something to say.">  But isn’t what we
have to say--to communicate to another human being--sometimes as
simple as “this is me, this is what I look like in this art form,” in
order to forge that connection?  I grant you that there’s a difference
between art-as-exhibition and artist-as-source of the art, like the
difference between memoirs and fiction.  A conscientious artist is
responsible to whatever structure s/he’s working in.  Maybe it’s a
question of which is subject to the other: artist or art form.  Maybe
I’m just egocentric or too new to being an artist to have experienced
something more transcendent.  But I think I believe that the origin of
all my art-stories is me and that that, lord help us all, *is* the
point.

Of course, that’s why it gets so hard on the days when I’m not enough.

(Also, I don’t have to please anyone but myself, at this point,
because no one else sees it.)

Heart fingers crossed for ENDLESS.  But we love them already, you
know.  Shouldn’t that make it easier, not harder?
  

    
JaNell:  Absolutely I want your answer.  Thank you for your honesty. 
I appreciated the resonance between what you said about gestation and
not forcing, and Neil’s “not cooked yet.”  It reinforced that message
for me.  I hope you got my comment on your Excentrica guest book, a
while ago.  

Martha:  I’ll have more to say when I finally finish WALLS.  But I can
say for now that it is absolutely one of the books I’m reading because
I really want to, and not because I think I *should*.  And one of the
things I love the most about it is to watch the building of the house
that Martha wrote.  And your *words* are the heart of that home.  

As for the fear of repeating yourself, I respect anybody’s fears,
because I know what great big teeth mine have.  I was just reading a
book last night that stated that two of the conditions for successful
creativity were: 1) a sense that what you’re doing has value, and 2) a
sense of safety from criticism or negative consequence (at least until
you're ready for that phase).  So what you're expressing seems to make
artistic sense.

But I respectfully submit that someone should have mentioned to
Shakespeare that he oughtn’t to repeat himself.

DanW: 
<putting on best poker face>  Was post (429) a bluff?  Were you not
feeling very much like Dan last night?  Who was that masked Poster?  I
call.

>The fear of repeating oneself may prevent one from finding out that
>they actually have more to say on a subject then they realized. 

Oh, well said!  And I LOVE Icarus.  Anything you care to share? 
Where’s your website?  I journaled (sp?) this once:

“Because light is living and motion is energy and mass is really no
different, after all; because I was Icarus and burned when I flew too
close; because I have never gotten over the feel of wings.”

Will:  Thank you, again, for sharing your thoughts.  They were really
helpful to me.  Sending support to you.  Rest.  Renew.  Write.  And
Grieg rocks!
  

    
I've never had any interest in writing followup stories.  I don't seem to
have a serial brain.  The editor who bought "Jones and the Stray" wanted a
novel of it, and I could see how a novel of it would be fine, but I'd done
the part I wanted to do!

Nor do I mind when other writers repeat themselves.  Writerly obsessions are
interesting to me as a reader.  But they're not so interesting to me as a
writer....

And I don't want to dominate this.

Possibly because of the Buffy episode, I dreamed last night about Neil's
television series, and the two-parter script he'd written for it that was so
gut-wrenching that even reading the words on the page, as I was in the
dream, I practically had to put my hands over my eyes and squint at the
paper to brace myself from it.
  

    
Pamela~yes, I got it, and thank you. It's an experimental thing; I
just started writing prose this summer, and it's all new skin raw and
naked for me. Putting some of my work up as it's written also lets me
see progress, I guess, and having feedback, well, why am I writing if
not to tell stories to people? Writing just for myself would be so
masturbatory...

Re: Icarus
About ten years or more ago, I wrote this as the tail end of a song:

"Oh Icarus,
When you fell, you were flying for the sun
And I was searching for a heaven too,
Just like anyone."

Must have been in the eighties, actually, in some rock opera phase or
another...
  

    
Well Guy Fawkes was fun, even though I didn't get to blow anything up.
We finished dinner, then when it was finally dark, we went out into
the empty middle of a park, started getting the fireworks out and the
skies opened. Total downpour.
Still, a great evening with friends. Liz and I ran around under their
verandah with sparklers in both hands, the boys rolled their eyes and
went inside to play cards and drink beer and the rain thundered on the
roof. :)
  

    <scribbled>
  

    
(above scribbled due to failed HTML)

What, no anvil shoot? 
It's always a staple at the Museum of Appalachia's Fall Homecoming.
http://bcbrown.net/bluegrass/chronicles/museumofappalachia/

Really, though, it sounds like you had fun. 
"I could use some fun," she muttered darkly...
  

    
Pamela - that was Madman, Mousey and Me... but who wrote what is the
mystery.

You can find my website in my profile, but it's http://come.to/macguru
The primary icarus reference is in Cycle, in the Verbal Gymnastics
section. Sonnet VI also has some Icarus stuff as well.
  

    
Just got American Gods out of the library....  Haven't started it yet.
  

    
Dan: well it certainly sounds like the three of you had a _lot_ of fun
:)
  

    
So, I wrote a Halloween poem, all dark and dready and whatnot, in
rhyme, yet, which I don't usually do because it's too easy...
And people like it! It was just to prove a point...
Aaarrggh.

Writers: does this happen often, that what you might consider an
intellectual exercise, or practice, is more well received than you
think it deserves?
  

    
Neil- Well, yes.  But then, 'story' is very encompassing.  It *does*
say something.  It has characters, and a series of events, etc. (or
not, depending on the story written, I guess).  Didn't mean that they
don't mean anything (well, *I* didn't, at least.  I don't know quite
how the show felt about it).
At the same time, though, I think I've had problems, at times, when I
started to worry about what meaning a story had, or what it was trying
to say, rather than just writing a good story.

JaNell- Well, if you believe "Philosophy of Composition", it happened
to Poe with "The Raven" (No, I'm not sure I do believe it).  But, then,
isn't all writing intellectual exercise?

Oh, and Neil- Not sure I'll be online tomorrow, so happy birthday to
you (it's tomorrow, right?  I think so.  If not, just disregard this
until it is).
  

    

Pamela -- there are good days and there are bad days. The work you do
on the bad days is hard and horrid and one word at a time. The work you
do on the good days flows like spring water. Six months later, you'll
no longer know which page was written on which day.

And sure "I'm here doing this" is a message, as good as any other.

Jo -- we once had drizzle and fireworks here, which worked
brilliantly, and once had snow. A real downpour, though, is something
that I only remember once from England...

kafclown, I hope you enjoy it.

JaNell -- there's no reason to it. If it was too easy to write, I tend
to be suspicious of it, but it doesn't say anything about how an
audience will react. One of the best story poems I ever wrote was the
Vampire Sestina, which was a five-finger exercise: I wanted to write a
sestina, so I put down 6 words and tried. 

Once you've written it and shown it to people it's out of your hands.

Will -- often you don't know what it's actually about until it's done.
And sometimes not till years later...

Birthday is actually Saturday (which will be spent in Chicago at the
Humanites Festival this year, far from the bosom of my family) (sigh).
Thanks for the good wishes.
  

    
Martha--just a quick favour (and this goes out to any other US Buffy
fans here), us poor antipodeans won't see season 6 Buffy until next
year some time [insert piteous weeping here]. So could you please
pretty please let me know if you are about to spoil something so that I
can poke my eyes out with chopsticks first? 

Muchly appreciated.