A Return to the Ordinary World (with, perhaps, some elixir)
So I am home from the wonderous experience that is Viable Paradise. As they say: to those that have not experienced it, no words will convey, and to those that have, no words are necessary. For any such intense experiences, that is a true encapsulation of how we, as people, process them. How then can I convey, dear readers, what it is like?
A good friend asked me what I thought was the best pece of advice I learned at VP. I don't recall exactly what I responded with, but I thought about that for some time after, as you do. Contemplating as I washed the dishes and cleared the table from dinner, etc. Now I think the best piece of advice will change for me over time. What I walked away from the conference firmly in my head, has already shifted over the course of the long journey home, and the brief respite of a few days before diving headlong back into the work-a-day treadmill that is ordinary life. I expect that to change over the weeks and months, probably years to come. Sometimes, we're just not ready for the lesson that life and opporutunity present to us now. But if we are careful, if we are lucky, and hoard a piece of that away, perhaps when we are ready, we will stand in the middle of a store somewhere and say: Aha! I know what that means now. Then go on to put that into practice.
We twenty-four students all came to the workshop at somewhat different points in our carreers. Some younger, some older. Some more accomplished, some with few or no successes yet under our belts. I would be surprised if you asked all of us that same question you didn't find twenty-four different responses. That's human nature. What surprised me, though perhaps shouldn't have, was the hints I saw of the instructors also going through their own Aha! moments. I guess there is truth that a part of teaching, is learning things anew. Learning, it seems, like many other aspects of the world, is a cyclical thing.
I find it very hard to sum up a week of intinsity in any small way, but if I had to, I think I would say: be true.
It seems, perhaps, strange to say that. Since we, as writers of fiction, are inherently liars. We tell made up crazy stories to entertain. But so many of the lessons at the core, about the writing voice, about what we have to say, what we care about, what moves us, that's as close as I can get to summing it up. It reminds me of a scene in Walk the Line.
There's a scene when Johnny Cash is trying out for Sam Phillips. He and his band are singing something, and it's sort of mediocre. It's not bad, but it's not special. Sam stops them, and is ready to dismiss them. Johnny, incredulous, asks why. Is it the song? Or how I sing it. Sam comes back with a great line, that I'm about to flub. He tells Johnny that he's just going through the motions, one of dozens of decent sounding gospel singers, but that he doesn't believe it. He doesn't believe how Johnny feels as he sings that song. Then he says, "if you have one song to sing, if you lay dying in the gutter, and had time to sing one last song, what would it be?" And of course, being a movie, Johnny comes back with Folsom Prison Blues.
I don't know if I can answer every single time that if I only had time enough to tell one more story, the one I'm writing is it. But I aim to work as if it were.
A good friend asked me what I thought was the best pece of advice I learned at VP. I don't recall exactly what I responded with, but I thought about that for some time after, as you do. Contemplating as I washed the dishes and cleared the table from dinner, etc. Now I think the best piece of advice will change for me over time. What I walked away from the conference firmly in my head, has already shifted over the course of the long journey home, and the brief respite of a few days before diving headlong back into the work-a-day treadmill that is ordinary life. I expect that to change over the weeks and months, probably years to come. Sometimes, we're just not ready for the lesson that life and opporutunity present to us now. But if we are careful, if we are lucky, and hoard a piece of that away, perhaps when we are ready, we will stand in the middle of a store somewhere and say: Aha! I know what that means now. Then go on to put that into practice.
We twenty-four students all came to the workshop at somewhat different points in our carreers. Some younger, some older. Some more accomplished, some with few or no successes yet under our belts. I would be surprised if you asked all of us that same question you didn't find twenty-four different responses. That's human nature. What surprised me, though perhaps shouldn't have, was the hints I saw of the instructors also going through their own Aha! moments. I guess there is truth that a part of teaching, is learning things anew. Learning, it seems, like many other aspects of the world, is a cyclical thing.
I find it very hard to sum up a week of intinsity in any small way, but if I had to, I think I would say: be true.
It seems, perhaps, strange to say that. Since we, as writers of fiction, are inherently liars. We tell made up crazy stories to entertain. But so many of the lessons at the core, about the writing voice, about what we have to say, what we care about, what moves us, that's as close as I can get to summing it up. It reminds me of a scene in Walk the Line.
There's a scene when Johnny Cash is trying out for Sam Phillips. He and his band are singing something, and it's sort of mediocre. It's not bad, but it's not special. Sam stops them, and is ready to dismiss them. Johnny, incredulous, asks why. Is it the song? Or how I sing it. Sam comes back with a great line, that I'm about to flub. He tells Johnny that he's just going through the motions, one of dozens of decent sounding gospel singers, but that he doesn't believe it. He doesn't believe how Johnny feels as he sings that song. Then he says, "if you have one song to sing, if you lay dying in the gutter, and had time to sing one last song, what would it be?" And of course, being a movie, Johnny comes back with Folsom Prison Blues.
I don't know if I can answer every single time that if I only had time enough to tell one more story, the one I'm writing is it. But I aim to work as if it were.