(no subject)
Inspired by Lamott's Bird by Bird, I have been mucking about - and that seems to be exactly the right word for what I have been doing - with some creative writing. That despite my obvious handicap: viz, I am not at all creative. Still, I've spent the odd hour or so at the keyboard, playing at the craft of writing.
Of course, this means I've spent most of my time on what I suspect is the principle thing that writers of fiction do: staring at the monitor, thinking What the hell comes next?
What an amazingly arrogant act writing fiction is! To attempt to define, to limn, such a various, multivalent, complex creature as a human being! What hubris, what star-shaking arrogance! To capture the infinite possibilities of any human life, to pin down a butterfly as big as a soul, is like trying to sketch a sunset with a lead pencil. Very much like that, in fact: almost impossible to do well, but when it is done well, a marvel.
J.R.R. Tolkien called this subcreation, and for him it was akin to a sacrament; an attribute of the Divine that can be mirrored by sublunar humanity. I don't know this for a fact, since I have not yet read his essay on fairy stories and fantasy literature, but I suspect that he viewed this subcreation as an almost holy exercise in imitatio Christi. In some Gnostic traditions, creation is a prerogative of the highest God which is usurped by a loving but unskilled demiurge; the result being the corrupt, imperfect world in which we dwell. This is black heresy to my mind, going as it does against one of the fundamental (to me) truths: God created the world, and saw that it was good. Nevertheless, I can understand how the creation is thought a divine prerogative.
(One of these days, I'm really going to have to sit down and do some hard thinking about how all these things that are basic to our humanity - storytelling, creation, sex, art, metaphor, lies - come together. Where does each intersect the other? How do they fit together? Seems to me to be a damned important question.)
So with J.R.R. Tolkien, the Gnostic Demiurge, and God Almighty looking over my shoulder, it's a wonder that I have the chutzpah to get even one word on the page.
That sounds more facetious than I mean it to. I want my characters to be true, to feel and sound like real people - to do else is mere caricature. But then, what should they do, how should they act, where should they go? We are so diverse, so staggeringly multifaceted, in what we do and say and think and feel, that it is difficult to portray any creature of my imagination as other than a marionette, responding only to my tugs on the strings. For characters to have life, the author must show not only the how and the what, but the why, as well.
So far the longest thing I have written is the story of a dull prince, in which I use the convention of the Once-upon-a-time, wandering-prince-discovers-his-destiny story. Because it is bounded, I am free to play within those bounds; they are a strong scaffold upon which I can build my story.
Of course, this means I've spent most of my time on what I suspect is the principle thing that writers of fiction do: staring at the monitor, thinking What the hell comes next?
What an amazingly arrogant act writing fiction is! To attempt to define, to limn, such a various, multivalent, complex creature as a human being! What hubris, what star-shaking arrogance! To capture the infinite possibilities of any human life, to pin down a butterfly as big as a soul, is like trying to sketch a sunset with a lead pencil. Very much like that, in fact: almost impossible to do well, but when it is done well, a marvel.
J.R.R. Tolkien called this subcreation, and for him it was akin to a sacrament; an attribute of the Divine that can be mirrored by sublunar humanity. I don't know this for a fact, since I have not yet read his essay on fairy stories and fantasy literature, but I suspect that he viewed this subcreation as an almost holy exercise in imitatio Christi. In some Gnostic traditions, creation is a prerogative of the highest God which is usurped by a loving but unskilled demiurge; the result being the corrupt, imperfect world in which we dwell. This is black heresy to my mind, going as it does against one of the fundamental (to me) truths: God created the world, and saw that it was good. Nevertheless, I can understand how the creation is thought a divine prerogative.
(One of these days, I'm really going to have to sit down and do some hard thinking about how all these things that are basic to our humanity - storytelling, creation, sex, art, metaphor, lies - come together. Where does each intersect the other? How do they fit together? Seems to me to be a damned important question.)
So with J.R.R. Tolkien, the Gnostic Demiurge, and God Almighty looking over my shoulder, it's a wonder that I have the chutzpah to get even one word on the page.
That sounds more facetious than I mean it to. I want my characters to be true, to feel and sound like real people - to do else is mere caricature. But then, what should they do, how should they act, where should they go? We are so diverse, so staggeringly multifaceted, in what we do and say and think and feel, that it is difficult to portray any creature of my imagination as other than a marionette, responding only to my tugs on the strings. For characters to have life, the author must show not only the how and the what, but the why, as well.
So far the longest thing I have written is the story of a dull prince, in which I use the convention of the Once-upon-a-time, wandering-prince-discovers-his-destiny story. Because it is bounded, I am free to play within those bounds; they are a strong scaffold upon which I can build my story.