How to Succeed in Writing XI: The Stages

February 22, 2016November 11, 2019 RilalyLeave a comment

“It is (the writer’s) job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament and avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, in some perverse mood; but if he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write. –George Orwell

We’ve all read authors who write from what Orwell calls the “immature stage”. They get locked in a stage of life they will not, or cannot, escape. They hate their parents, they cannot get over the fact that someone of the opposite sex has dumped them in an unceremonious manner, or they cannot get past the fact that their political party cannot win, and those mentalities are reflected in their writing. If, on the other hand, as Orwell states, a writer is afforded the ability to completely forget the transgressions and tragedies that made him miserable in his youth –that which may otherwise diminish their mental health– they may not be the writer they could’ve been if they learned how to embrace those demons. A quality writer, if Orwell’s thesis is to be believed, is one of those rare individuals who is cursed, and blessed, with the inability to forget, while capably moving to the next stage of maturity, coupled with the ability to recall all of those sentiments and mentalities they struggled with in their effort to achieve more mature stages.

We’ve all heard of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that lists the various needs a person must satisfy to achieve a sense of completion. The initial stages of the hierarchy concerns basic needs (food, water, and breathing) that we take for granted, until they are not met. As this hierarchy progresses to completion, the needs become more complex, and the need to satisfy them more profound. There is also an idea that that person may take one level for granted –such as the need for friendship, and the need to be loved– and they may regress back a level. The basic structure of the Hierarchy of Needs suggests, however, that one cannot progress to next level, until the needs of the prior level are satisfied. Every person is different, of course, but the basic tenets are such that most people are not immune to the needs of a level you are currently on, and our stubborn refusal to accept the idea that we need more of whatever you currently have, has us stuck at that level.

Orwell’s addendum to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pertains to writers. His quote basically states that while writers are not immune to the need to progress in all the ways Maslow outlined, and that their progress is elemental to better writing, it’s just as vital to the quality of the writing that they be able to tap into the angst that drove them to want to be a writer while mired in a previous stage.

The best, most stark example, may be the starving artist that wrote something while mired in a premature stage. The piece they wrote may have been beautiful on one level, but it was generally regarded as being on the cusp of brilliance. The beauty of their piece may have been contained its raw exploration of their vulnerabilities, but it was also considered a snapshot of what this artist might be capable of ultimately, as it offered no solutions. Their piece was more of a list of complaints with no end in sight, a characteristic that can be compelling in its own right.

As we’ve witnessed, in all crafts, some starving artists never reach their full potential. Some of them become trapped in the starving artist mindset, or elementary stage of need, and they never gain a complete enough understanding of themselves, and thus mankind, to achieve a greater, or more complete artistic piece. Or, they may have progressed through the channels of their needs so completely that they’ve lost their need to create artistic pieces. It’s also been the case that a starving artist’s original piece was so successful that the person became successful and lost the starving artist mindset that gave them fame, and every piece they write thereafter is retread. This lack of artistic progression may be as simple as the artist never progressing to the self-actualized stage.

The website Simple Psychology states that “Maslow estimated that only two percent of people will reach the state of self-actualization.”

Is Maslow wrong, or are we? Are we a member of the ninety-eight percent, and does this affect our writing in such a manner that we don’t have the objectivity necessary to write a compelling fictional character, much less conduct our lives in a self-actualized manner?

As one that has progressed through a stage fairly recently, I can tell you that that progression served my writing well. I would not say that I’m a member of the two percent, but I have progressed, and I didn’t wake one day with the realization that I had progressed either. It was only upon reflection that I realized that only after one of my fundamental needs was met did my writing progress. I look back on my “immature stage” and I realized how much better my writing has become. I realized that my inability to complete a piece was more of a commentary on my inability to progress through my personal hierarchy of needs than it was my artistic abilities. I’ve also managed to keep in touch with all of the angst that drove some of my earlier works to bring them to completion in a manner I may not have if I hadn’t progressed.

Art is Dog. Dog is Art

January 5, 2016October 4, 2024 RilalyLeave a comment

A man let his pet out for a tinkle. Nothing strange about that, right? His pet was a rooster. I was the visitor walking my dog passed his property, witnessing a homeowner doing what he does from the comfort of his own home, so I was in no position to evaluate his activities. Watching the man do that, led me to feel that I was a stranger in a strange land, and I couldn’t shake it. Other than this small, relatively insignificant episode, it wasn’t a strange land to me. Even though I was born and raised in a relatively industrial city, my home state is generally considered an agricultural one, and just about everyone I knew and spent some time in and around the agricultural industry. The state was I was now walking my dog in was so close to mine that I didn’t expect to see anything different from what I knew, and I didn’t, until this rooster sprang out the backdoor that the homeowner held open for him.

I tried to look away quickly, because I didn’t want him to know I saw it. I didn’t want to share that uncomfortable smile that we share with someone after they do something we consider embarrassing, and I didn’t want to have to come up with some comment to lighten the load for him. Just before I could look away, the homeowner waved. It was a hearty wave, strengthened by a pleasant smile. The man’s smile and the wave suggested that letting a rooster out in the backyard was nothing but routine for him, and there was no reason for me to stress out about it in the moment. I returned the smile, waved back, and continued walking my dog.

While attempting to force the conclusion of the episode in my head, I almost missed the rooster rush the fence after it saw how close my dog and I came to its territory. It quickly ambled down the considerable stairs that descended from the porch, and it sprinted across the yard to us, until its beak protruded through the fence. It eyed my dog, and it eyed me. It offered us an unmistakably foreboding eye to caution us against stepping any closer. It did not cockle-doodle-doo us, but some sound, like a bark, seemed like the next logical progression to punctuate its warning.

It followed us along the fence line with that foreboding eye. The silent tension percolating between us was not one of fear, but I was so confused that I wanted to hurry up and end this episode before a more confusion progression occurred. The writer side of me wants to write that when we reached the end of its fence line, it stood there watching us as if it didn’t know what to do, but even though its actions were born of mimicry, the rooster appeared to know exactly what it was doing. The rooster’s actions were so foreign to my limited understanding of roosters that they unnerved me. They unnerved and confused me so much that I thought if I were a four-to-five-year-old when I experienced this episode, I might walk away in tears. Especially, I thought, if this rooster tried to bark. If it tried to bark, or make some sort of sound to punctuate its warning, I thought it might rattle my foundation in the same ways some of the early David Lynch films could.

I forgot about this incident soon after that walk ended. I didn’t consider it a “You’ve got to hear this!” type of story for months. I considered it a “you had to be there” story where so many stories go to die. When one of my friends told me a story about an incident that “kind of freaked them out a little”, I dropped this story on them in that “You think that’s weird, get a load of what happened to me one day” vein that we do to outdo their stories. His reaction to this story was such that I began telling it so often that it became my story. I told it so often during the next year, that when I returned to the locale where it happened, I began telling it again without proper foresight.

“Oh, that’s my brother Harley,” a man said. “He has a pet rooster.”

Harley’s brother interrupted me in full story mode. I was in my element as a storyteller with a number of people listening in, and I was on a roll. Harley’s brother locked me up. I couldn’t think of anything to say. It was equivalent to driving down the street at eighty miles an hour and slamming on the brakes.

My favorite stories are of the “strange but true” variety that can stand on their own. They don’t require embellishment or a clever, fabricated conclusion. A more clever writer might’ve added something more to ignite laughter or some sort of other sense of satisfaction for their audience. They might have the rooster bark, or have it make some sound that it mimicked from the dogs it was obviously raised around. Strange but true stories like the-rooster-that-thought-it-was-a-dog are my favorites, not because they’re hilarious, but because they’re so true that they leave the listener with that “All right, but what do you want me to do with this?” reaction. When I’m in the middle of one of these stories, and someone interrupts the timing and emphasis I’ve developed after so many retellings, it annoys me. When that interruption deflates my story, I become visibly flustered.

I had a finger in the air, and a smile on my face, as I prepared to launch into my critically acclaimed conclusion, but this man’s intimate familiarity with the rooster’s owner brought me to that screeching halt. It locked me up so bad that for the next couple of guilt-ridden moments I wondered if there was a colloquial antonym for verbal diarrhea. I considered the term verbal constipation, but I wasn’t sure if that captured it.

“Harley had two dogs,” Harley’s brother added. “They died. That rooster is the only thing he has left.”

There was something in the man’s tone I couldn’t immediately place. I immediately assumed it was compassion that he was directing at his brother’s loss. The more I thought about it, however, the more I began to believe that he might have felt bad about ruining my story and causing me a mean case of verbal constipation. He might have noticed how much I enjoyed telling this story before his interruption, and he might have recognized that he had taken one hell of a good story away from me.

Whatever the case was, the man provided me an answer for why a homeowner would release a rooster in his backyard. The rooster grew up around dogs. The rooster either mimicked the patterns of those dogs protecting their property, for so many years, that it couldn’t stop after they passed, or the rooster thought it was a dog. I did not ask if the rooster scratched at the door when it wanted to go outside, or if it saw my dog and I approaching and began running in canine circles, until Harley picked up on the visual cues that the rooster mimicked when it wanted outside. I didn’t ask about Harley, and if Harley participated in this routine because he missed the dogs so much that continuing the routine provided some sort of therapy? I didn’t ask if Harley thought the rooster’s actions were kind of cute, or funny in the beginning, and he ended up doing it so often that whatever drove him to do it in the beginning was gone and the routine of it all took over, because by the time I saw Harley do it, I saw nothing but routine on his face. I wish I asked some of these questions, just to fill out the details of this story, but Harley’s brother caught me so off guard that I ended the moment with a mean case of verbal constipation.

The Art of the Nod

A speaker began speaking about himself. He began informing us of his talents, what he planned to do with them, and all of his subsequent dreams and expectations. His life story was interesting in the beginning, but he just went on for too long. He was also the type of speaker who provides far too many details, and he provided so many alternatives that no listener would be able to maintain interest no matter how much they wanted Ari to like them. I managed to maintain the façade that Ari intrigued me, but it was a struggle. When everyone else failed in this regard, I became the center of his attention. When that happened, maintaining interest became more of a chore for me.

My friend, a third party in this conversation, was not as successful in her efforts to purport interest. She nodded off. I was, presumably, the only one who saw her nod off, and I was the only one to witness her artistic recovery.

When she nodded off, her head went down and some instinctual part of not wanting to appear so bored that she fell asleep took over, and she jerked her head up. The art of this nod occurred a second later when she nodded down again. This second nod was not a result of falling asleep, but an attempt to rewrite any theories we might have had about her falling asleep in the first place. She performed the second, voluntary nod to re-characterize the first one as nothing more than the first in a series of nods of agreement.

She even added a “Yep!” to further characterize the hearty series of nods further.

She had no idea what she was agreeing to, but she got away with it. I looked out at the faces of the others in the room. No one else saw it. I was impressed. I looked back at her, and she had not only maintained her agreement, she strengthened it, until she was garnering more attention from Ari than I was.

In the halls of social protocol, I considered this art.

I all but applauded her for this reaction when I asked her about it later. I mentioned that I didn’t think a person could carry something like that off once “That!” I said, “was too artistic. That requires practice!” I asked if she ever did this to me. She said she hadn’t. She said I was never that boring. I was grateful for the compliment, but I had to know how often she did that. She said as far as she was concerned it was the first time. She had no other explanation for it, other than the fact that she was trying to avoid appearing rude. She tired of my questions after a while, and she stated that the moment embarrassed her, and she asked that we move onto other subjects.

Old People

Old people? Old people? Let me tell you something about old people. Old people set the parameter. If it weren’t for old people, your nuance would have no contrast. All that rebellion you cherish, that avant garde comedy, would just be blather. Old people? Have you ever watched the movie Caddyshack? Did you find it humorous? Uh huh. Ask anyone that knows anything about the finer nuances of comedy, and they’ll tell you that that movie would not have been half as funny as it was, were it not for the old person in that production, Ted Knight, providing contrast. Without contrast in comedy, the movie is just a bunch of buffoons standing around reciting lines to one another. Contrast provides the pivot point for comedy, and that old man in Caddyshack, that fuddy duddy as you call him, set the standard for the role that straight men would play in comedy for the next four decades. The straight men set the parameters for other players to bounce off, and that’s what we old, boring types do. We set the parameters for the rest of you to appear funny, cool, hip and sexy. Try writing a cool, hip, funny scene without a Dean Wormer, and we’ll see how far you get.

Like Boxing for Writers

Some writers believe that what they write is witty, humorous, or a display of their as of yet undiscovered talent in the art of comedy? We’ve all watched them write about clouds and trees, and we’ve all let that go, because we know all writers have to preen themselves every once in a while, but when they attempt comedy some of us think these writers need an intervention.

One of the dangers inherent in comedy is that it’s relative, and every audience member should acknowledge that before they castigate another’s attempt at being humorous, but some attempts at humor are so bad that I want to say that we can all see the writer’s haymaker coming.

When the author writes about a disagreement they had with their daughter about what television show to watch, we know to put our laughing galoshes on. We also know that every author, if they are male, will provide exhaustive detail about how they regard their daughter a superior intellect. They will provide us with eyewitness testimony of their daughter’s brilliance, and for some authors this will last for about a quarter of the story.

At this point, many of us envy those who can start a story and ‘X’ out of it when it fails to intrigue them. Those who are able to find their way through the maze of the author’s shame, apologies, and qualifiers are introduced to a flurry of jokes that are intended to impress the judges. There’s no power behind the punches, because the author doesn’t want to offend the reader, their daughter, or any judge that might happen upon their story. We see their effort dangling, and as the joke plays out we all learn what not to do when we’re looking for a laugh. The author is the butterfly that floats merrily through our head without the fear, or the need to fear, the bee sting. They’re the Pernell Whitaker, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Floyd Maywhether of the writing world that gets points from the judges, but bores those of us who don’t understand the art of boxing. We want something exciting to happen, the judge can call it blood lust if they want, but if the reader wanted to witness the majestic art of dance, they would’ve attended the ballet.

Find Your Own Truth

December 29, 2015December 31, 2024 RilalyLeave a comment

“You need to find your own truth,” Ray Bradbury said to a caller of a radio show on which he was a guest. Mr. Bradbury expounded on the idea, somewhat, but he remained vague. He said some things about following the lead of influential masters of the craft, and all that, “But you’ll eventually need to find your own truth,”

We loathe vague advice. We want answers, thorough and perfect answers, that help us cross bridges. We also want those answers to be pointed and easy to incorporate, but another part of us knows that the seeker of easy paths often gets what they pay for in that regard.

When we listen to a radio show guesting a master craftsman, however, we expect nuggets of information to unlock the mystery of how a master craftsman managed to carve out a niche in his overpopulated craft. We want tidbits, words of wisdom about design, and/or habits we can imitate and emulate, until we reach a point where we don’t feel so alone in our structure. Vague advice and vague platitudes feel like a waste of our time. Especially when that advice comes so close to our personal core and stops abrupt.

Ray Bradbury went onto define his vision of an artistic truth as he saw it, as a guest on this radio show, but that definition didn’t step much beyond the precipice. I tuned him out by the time he began speaking of other matters, and I eventually turned the channel. I might have missed some great advice, but I was frustrated.

After I heard the advice, but I went back to doing what I was doing soon after hearing it, because he didn’t give me what I wanted and needed at the time. It did start popping up when I was doing something, and then it started popping up when I started doing something else. The advice initially felt like useless new-age advice we give to confused souls looking for guidance. It felt like sage advice from some kind of guru who never figured out how to succeed within normal structures in life, so he began dispensing gobbledy gook that others should interpret but never can, so they just label the guru a spiritual guide, because they don’t know what else to call him.

It might take hours, it might take weeks, but this idea of an individual truth, as it pertains specifically to artistic vision, becomes applicable so often and, in so many situations, that we begin to chew on it and digest it. Others may continue to find this vague advice about an artistic truth nothing more than waste matter –to bring this analogy to its biological conclusion– but it begins to infiltrate everything the eager student does. If the advice is pertinent, the recipient begins spotting truths what should’ve been so obvious before. They begin to see that what they thought was their artistic truth, and what their primary influences considered true, is not as true for them as they once thought.

Vague advice might seem inconsequential to those who do not bump up against the precipice. For these people, a platitude such as, “Find your own truth” may have an “of course” suffix attached to it. “Of course an artist needs to find their artistic truth when approaching an artistic project,” they say. “Isn’t that the very definition of art?” It is, but if we were to ask an artist about the current project they’re working on, and its relation to their definition of an artistic truth, they will surely reply that they think they’re really onto something. If we ask them about the project after they finish the piece, we will likely receive a revelation of the artist’s frustration in one form or another, as most art involves the pursuit of an artistic truth coupled with an inability to ever capture it to the artist’s satisfaction. Yet, we could say that the pursuit of artistic truth, coupled with the frustration of never achieving it, provides more fuel to the artist than an actual, final, arrived-upon truth ever could.

Finding an artistic truth, involves intensive knowledge of the rules of a craft, locating the parameters of the artist’s ability, finding their formula within, and whittling. Any individual who has ever attempted to create art has started with a master’s template in mind. The aspiring, young artist tries to imitate and emulate that master’s design, and they wonder what that master might do in moments of artistic uncertainty: Can I do this? What would they do? Should I do that? Is my truth nestled somewhere inside all of that awaiting further exploration? At a furthered point in the process, the artist discovers other truths, including artistic truths that contradict prior truths, until all truths become falsehoods when compared to the current artistic truth. This is where the whittling begins.

In a manner similar to the whittler whittling away at a stick to create form, the storyteller is always whittling. He’s whittling when he writes. He’s whittling when he reads. He’s whittling in a movie theater, spotting subplots and subtext that his fellow moviegoers might not see. He’s whittling when we tell him about our experience at the used car dealership. He’s trying to get to the core of the tale, a core the storyteller might not see.

“I could tell you about the greatest adventure tale ever told, or a story that everyone agrees is the funniest they’ve ever heard,” she says, “and you’d focus on the part where I said the instead of the.” The whittler searches for the truth, or a subjective truth that he can use. Is it the truth, or the truth? It doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t believe that the storyteller’s representation of the truth is the truth.

Once the artist has learned all the rules, defined the parameters, and found his own formula within a study of a master’s template, and all the templates that contradict that master template, it is time for him to branch out and find his own artistic truth.

The Narrative Essay

Even while scouring the read-if-you-like (RIYL) links the various outlets provide for the books I’ve enjoyed previously, I knew that the narrative essay existed. Just as I’ve always known that the strawberry existed, I knew about the form some call memoir, also known as literary non-fiction or creative non-fiction, but have you ever tasted a strawberry that caused you to flirt with the idea of eating nothing but strawberries for the rest of your life? If you have, your enjoyment probably had more to do with your diet prior to eating that strawberry than the actual flavor of the inexplicably delicious fruit. In the course of one’s life, a person might accidentally indulge in a diet that leaves them vitamin deficient, and they might not know the carelessness of their ways until they take that first bite of the little heart-shaped berry.

“You simply must try these strawberries,” a co-worker said in a buffet line at the office. I have always loved strawberries, but I didn’t even notice these particular strawberries in the shadow of the glorious array of meats and carbs at the other end of the buffet. While I stood there, impatiently waiting for the slow forking procedures some have for finding the perfect piece of meat, she gave me a look. “Just try them,” she said. I did.

Prior to eating that strawberry, I knew nothing about chemical rewards the brain offers for fulfilling a need, and I didn’t know anything about it after I took that first bite either. The only thing I knew, or thought, was that that strawberry was so delicious that I experienced a temporary feeling of euphoria. I piled some strawberries on my plate, and ate a couple of them, but the line was so slow that I was allowed to eat a number of the strawberries on my plate before progressing. I normally do not do this, and I normally loathe those people who do. I prefer to assemble a meal for myself and wait until I’m at a table before I even take my first bite. My co-worker was so insistent that I try one, that I bit into to one to indulge her.

“These things are glorious,” I said.

“What are?”

“The strawberries.”

“Oh, right,” she said. “I told you.”

The sixth and seventh strawberries were as glorious as the first few, and before I knew it, I was gorging on the fruit when another friend behind me, in the buffet line, informed me that I was holding up the line.

At this point, the reader might like to know the title of the one gorgeous little narrative essay that spawned my feelings of creative euphoria. The only answer I can give is that one essay will not quench those suffering from a nutrient depletion any more than a single strawberry can. You might need to gorge on them in the rude, obsessive manner I did that day in the buffet line. One narrative essay did not provide a eureka-style epiphany that led me to understanding of all the creative avenues worthy of exploration in the form. One essay did not quench the idea depletion I experienced in the time-tested formulas and notions I had of the world of storytelling. I just knew I needed something more and something different, and I read all the narrative essays I could find in a manner equivalent to the effort I put into exploring the maximum benefits the strawberry could provide, until a grocery store checker proclaimed that she never witnessed anyone purchase as many strawberries as I was in one transaction. She even called a fellow employee over to witness the spectacle I laid out on her conveyor belt. The unspoken critique between the two was that no wife would permit a man to make such an exaggerated, imbalanced purchase, so I must be a self-indulgent bachelor.

An unprecedented amount of strawberries did not provide me with an unprecedented amount of euphoria, of course, as the brain appears to only provide euphoric chemical rewards for satisfying a severe depletion, but the chemical rewards of finding my own truth, in the narrative essay format, have proven almost endless. The same holds true for the rewards I’ve experienced reading the output of others who have reached their creative peaks. I knew narrative essays existed, as I said, but I considered most to be dry, personal essays that attempted to describe the cute, funny things that happened to them on their way to 40. I never thought of them as a vehicle for the exploration of the answers to our abundant questions on how to be, become, and live in the stories written by those authors who accomplished it.

It is difficult to describe an epiphany to a person who has never experienced one or even to those who have. The variables are so unique that they can be difficult to describe to a listener donning an of-course face. More often than not, an epiphany does not involve the provocative shock of unique, ingenious thoughts. My personal definition involves all of the of-course thoughts nestled among commonplace events and conversations that one has to arrive at by their own accord. When such an explanation doesn’t make a dent in the of-course faces, we can only conclude that epiphanies are almost entirely personal.

For me, the narrative essay was an avenue to the truth my mind craved, and I might have never have ventured down that path had Ray Bradbury’s vague four words “Find your own truth,” failed to register. For those who stubbornly maintain their of-course faces in the shadow of the maxim the late, great Ray Bradbury, I offer another vague piece of advice that the late, great Rodney Dangerfield offered to an aspiring, young comedian: “You’ll figure it out.”

If advice such as these two nuggets appear so obvious that it is considered unworthy of discussion, or the reader cannot see how to apply it, no matter how much time they spend thinking about it, adding to it, or whittling away at it to find a worthy core, I add this: You’ll either figure it out, or you won’t.