Writing Process 4 | unobtrusive lucidity

Motivation for Muck

I’ve been thinking lately about something that Karen enjoys pointing out to me about writing. She’s very passionate about quoting (loosely) Jeffery Overstreet in saying that there are two reasons to jump into the muck in the story that you’re writing. One is to roll around in it and get dirty. The other is to clean it up. You have to decide which is your reason as you’re writing your story.

I was forced to re-visit this idea in a discussion after I wasted two hours of my life suffering through the cinematic chaos-fighting-chaos tragedy that was this year’s movie, The Green Hornet, in which a classic radio superhero is reduced to stereotypical American idiocy who gets his kicks from driving around and blowing everything up for narcissistic purposes (even in the end, whatever good he does is to better himself). While I could talk about the obvious snapshot of our culture that can be seen in this conglomeration of images that someone mistakenly called a film, I won’t give it the time it doesn’t deserve, because the commentary is unintentional.

In short, there was nothing redemptive about the movie. The entire two hours was one long jump into the muck in which everyone rolled around and got dirty. Destruction for destruction’s sake, disregard for good or evil in search of only the self, indiscriminate violence, 3rd grade humor. The darkness is glorified in this film, not portrayed for a reason.

I mention this movie not to review it, but to point out the opposite of what I hope to accomplish when I write…to sort of define by counter-example. Karen frequently points out that my writing is dark, and that she has a difficult time reading my fiction for partly that reason. She has difficulty finding a redemptive element, which is bothersome to me because that’s exactly what I want to make central in the writing. The darkness is there to show how amazing the light is when it takes over. We jump into the muck in order to show how much better it is to be clean than dirty, so to speak. That’s my goal in my fiction.

I also firmly believe Madeleine L’Engle when she said that the characters will tell the writer where they need to go, and that the writer’s job is to record the adventure. The protagonist in my current work-in-progress (the one for which I’m pushing so hard to make a self-imposed deadline of finishing Part I by mid-week) has experienced horrific trauma in her childhood. When I began imagining the story, and when this character appeared in my mind’s eye, it wasn’t like I had much choice to exercise in the matter. She is who she is at the time the novel takes place because of what happened to her in the past. Assuming that I can accurately record her journey, then there will be redemption of her situation as she explores relationships with others and her own sense of identity. Sometimes, though, its so difficult to write her flashbacks…because of the nature of the trauma…that I’m left struggling with exactly the problem I talked about above: I have to be so careful to not just get dirty when I jump into the muck, and so intentional to clean it out.

Because simply adding to the chaos, contributing to the noise, does no one any good, not even if all you’re aiming for is entertainment. As is so often the case, this choice is reflected in “real” life, as well. I’m in a professional situation currently that is really frustrating. In my mind, its too messy. My instinct is to withdraw from it, to pass it off as someone else’s problem, to compartmentalize my brain around it. I think, though, that if I were to choose to do that, that I would be rolling in the muck and just getting dirty. I’m not redeeming anything if that’s the choice I make. I’m not making anything better.

And, with a daughter preparing to join us any day now, I don’t want to leave any more of the world mired in muck than I absolutely have to. The more I try to take a hand in redeeming, the better a world she will inherit.

Photo Attribution: Sean MacEntee

Distractions? Distractions, Anyone?

For something that I enjoy doing so much, its extremely easy to find an excuse to not do it.

I’m speaking of writing, specifically. One of the reasons I force myself into a regular posting schedule here is to give myself deadlines to meet, because I know you have come to expect these posts to be up on certain days. I currently don’t have those deadlines looming on my other projects, and, try as I might to set personal deadlines for them, I just don’t tend to be that successful. Setting a time limit, or a word or page count, for a day’s work on my current work in progress (a novel) seems arbitrary, and I know that I typically won’t manage to keep it. The best I can do is schedule specific days for which I am going to block off significant time to write. That’s about as (successfully) structured as I get with timing.

I sort of face a particular problem, though…and I’m positive that I’m not the only writer who experiences this. I’m an auditory learner. I’m very, very keyed into sounds, which is the reason I’m a music lover, and the reason I entered theatre by doing sound design. So, I don’t do well (even with reading) if there’s conversation going on the background. Even music with lyrics tends to be a significant distraction.

Our apartment, which I love, has an open floor plan, in which the only rooms with doors are the bathroom and the bedroom. Its an energy efficient, “green” apartment, using its open floor plan to provide a significant amount of natural light during the day. We love that. The best part of an open floor plan is the openness.

And, the worst about an open floor plan is…the openness.

My writing desk sits in the upstairs loft, and whatever Karen happens to be doing downstairs drifts its sounds remarkably well upstairs, leaving me hopelessly distracted. Thus, I’m essentially in the same position going upstairs as I am sitting in a coffee shop to hope to do some writing. Earbuds and my iPod become my best friend, and I had to invest in some nice earbuds, to prevent myself from hearing all of the ambient conversation and noise. I have to play jazz or other instrumental music, though, because lyrics will seriously mess with my word flow.

None of that is a challenge in and of itself, of course, but setting it up (as trivial as it is to do so), or to travel to the coffee shop, sometimes seems so daunting when so much else is on my plate that I simply use it as an excuse to not write at all.

Fellow writers, what specific environmental obstacles do you face when working on a project? How do you overcome them?

And, I promise, I’m working on that work in progress this weekend!

Photo Attribution: underminingme

Tragi-Comedy

A few days ago, Karen decided that she was in the mood for a romantic comedy. Thus, we bypassed the latest episode of House in the Hulu cue, and ultimately plugged in a DVD of Gilmore Girls. And, no, I don’t need to turn in my man-card…if you’ve never watched that program, I’d point out to you that it is one of the best-written television serials I’ve ever seen, from a perspective of dialogue if not plot arc. I made the comment that I would like to be able to write something that clever. At the end of the day, though, I just don’t typically have things that are that happy and funny make their way out of my keyboard.

While I personally found this recent post on Good Letters about the poor theology that underlies poor art to be spot on, Karen had a big issue with what it says…she feels that it throws the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. She spoke of how allowance has to be made for those members of an audience who struggle with certain things. She spoke of a scene in a recent television program that she watched that depicted a sexual assault. She says that, while the scene was well-filmed and not at all gratuitous, she was still very bothered by what she saw.

I take the stance that I can’t possibly be responsible for everyone who reads what I write, and whether or not they will have a deep spiritual struggle with what I have written.

This leads me back to the realization that I don’t really write comedy. I tend to not direct it well on stage, either…its just not my genre. Its not that I’m an overly somber or stoic guy…I’ve been told that my sense of humor, while a bit off-center, is quite funny. For some reason, though, my writing tends to be of a darker subject matter and tone. I don’t know why, it just is.

So, if every character that I create is somehow based on me, what does this say about me that my writing is always dark and shying away from the comedic?

Wouldn’t I be a better person if I could write profoundly funny things?

Or am I just being paranoid?

Photo Attribution: Cara Photography

More…or Less…

I am so over that guilty feeling.

I remember when I first used to get it. The guilty feeling, that is. It began when I was considering applying to an MFA program in creative writing. The school to which I was going to apply (I’m intentionally omitting a link to protect the innocent) melded spirituality with the craft of writing, which was initially much to my liking. I think, in retrospect, that they could be a bit heavy on the religious side, too, because I remember the phraseology that the program used. They indicated a dedication to developing “writing as a spiritual discipline.”

For those of you not familiar with the concept of spiritual disciplines, they are religious practices in the Christian faith meant to heighten the experience and connection involved in specific practices of that faith. They are not without merit. Foster’s writing on the topic is the core of the spiritual discipline concept (at least as it relates to Christianity), and he has much to say that is worthwhile.

Initially, the idea of cultivating a spiritual discipline of writing was very appealing to me. The concept brought images of dedication and higher calling with which I resonated. I determined to develop a religious practice of writing. I delved in.

The problem is, though, that I’ve never done well with consistent religious practices. I’ve always taken liturgy best in small doses, and there are few religious rituals with which I am able to engage in any meaningful way (although the few with which I can are extremely meaningful to me).

So, perhaps this was a recipe for disaster. Because, until that time, I wrote (at least from a creative writing perspective) when I had a project that I was driven to write. I never missed a deadline, and I was not captive of the illusion that I should write only when my “muse” struck. I was disciplined about completing what I was writing…I was just inconsistently disciplined (I remember writing dialogue for a scene in a play once on a laptop in the car while waiting in line for a car wash). A bit scattered, perhaps, but passionately so, and it worked.

The issue is that, when applying religion to a spiritual practice, the inevitable occurred: inhumanly high standards, and increasing feelings of guilt with each failure. I took the advice of many writing blogs that a writer should write every day, in a disciplined manner, for the sake of writing. Every day.

So, judge me if you like, fellow writers, but I have never had a week that I’ve pulled that off.

Moreover, I drove my wife crazy, because I was constantly complaining that I either hadn’t written in two days, or hadn’t written enough, or…well, you get the idea.

Then, a few weeks ago, I read a blog post by an author who recently published his first children’s novel. The post was unbelievably encouraging to me because he discussed his insanely hectic schedule at his day job (and we all have those…the schedule and the job), and that he only made time to write his novel on weekends, blocking out several hours at a time for two days a week instead of one or two hours nightly.

This, to my initial disbelief, was successful for him!

And my feelings of guilt, dear reader, flew away to never plague me again.

With their departure came the realization that not writing every day doesn’t make me less disciplined a writer, or less dedicated a writer, or place me under less of a spiritual or “higher” calling to write. It means that I favor quality over quantity, and blocking off an hour or two (if I was lucky) every night was not only robbing me of quality, but was depriving me of the life that a writer needs to live in order to have material from which to write.

In short, writing, like religion, is about substance instead of frequency, and sometimes, less is more.

I’m going to work on one or more of my writing projects this weekend, probably for a large block of time. And I may not touch them again until next weekend, after which they will have had an opportunity to coalesce in my brain. That will make for a better final product, anyway.

Not to mention a much happier life in between.

Photo Attribution: smoorenburg

The Proof of Bad Writing

Just a couple of quick thoughts, delayed by Blogger’s recent outage.

We were watching Bones last night. I think the writers may actually be pulling that show back from the train-wreck that they permitted it to become. After we finished the most recent episode, Hulu sort of automatically plays episodes of similar programs. This time it chose to play Body of Proof, which is essentially a cheap attempt to copy Bones. Apparently, television networks simply copy the success of others if they can’t come up with anything original (read: most of the time). I don’t recommend Body of Proof: it’s written poorly, the characters are stereotyped, and the directing…well, the directing…

I looked up from reading whatever it was I was reading in the middle of the show, because it had digressed into background noise for me. The scene that was taking place when I looked up involved the protagonist talking to a child in a living room. Her partner enters the scene behind her, standing next to the front door of the home, and tells the protagonist that they have to leave. She acknowledges her partner, says goodbye to the child, and then exits the scene…off to the viewer’s left, leaving her partner standing beside the front door behind her. The show promptly cut to the next scene.

What???

That sparked some conversation in our living room. I feel bad for the actors. I feel bad for them because I can’t tell how good they are, and, if I never see them cast in anything else, I’ll never know, and always have a bad impression of them. I’ve worked in a lot of live performances in my life, and, although most of that time has not been on stage, I’ve learned some important things. An actor can be incredibly gifted, but if they’re working under poor direction…and especially if they’re working under poor direction of a poor script…they’re going to look like they don’t know what they’re doing.

There are other examples, though, of actors that have saved projects with just a little extra help. I’ll use The Happening as an example. The Happening is the only screenplay I’ve seen from Shyamalan that wasn’t outstanding…all of his other films have been superb. The Happening was, however, well directed, and gave the actors, especially Zooey Deschanel and Mark Wahlberg, an opportunity to work with the screenplay in a way that breathed some sort of life into it. Deschanel, in particular, literally transformed some of the scenes with facial expressions alone. The film wouldn’t have survived without their excellent performances, and the direction that permitted them to develop those performances.

My issue with Body of Proof is that it has neither. The direction is poor, and the writing is forced, contrived, and even melodramatic at times. The actors, as a result, appear clueless. Here’s to hoping I manage to see these actors in something else sometime…I’d love to see what their abilities truly are.