The Creation of Character
I love reading Ernest Gaines. In my mind he is probably the greatest crafter of character in modern literature. I remember once I read an interview with him, in which he said that he wrote the stories he did because the ghosts of his ancestors, the people he knew as a child and those that came before him, told their stories through him. He always writes in the first person, almost like a medium channeling a spirit. I remember when I read it I was floored, because it instantly reminded me of Elie Wiesel, another favorite writer of mine, who said he first felt compelled to write Night because the ghosts of his family spoke to him, entreating him not to let their tale die with them. "Remember...tell our stories." I love the thought of that.
I am thinking about inspiration tonight. The LOML asks me sometimes, "Where do the ideas come from? How do you decide who gets to live and who gets to die?" I give him the same answer you'll read in any interview with any writer, successful or not - I just get them. The characters kind of take over the story, and off they go. Only they know who lives and who dies till the end. Sometimes I feel possessed, and I am so far into the moment that I lose track of time and all concrete sense of what it is that I'm doing.
It is a kind of barter, I suppose. They get immortality. We get the (hopefully) material compensation that comes from the craft the trade.
The characters, whether real or imagined, determine the course. We only tell their stories.
Louisiana Love Affair
I know this place is a mess. I've grown up here. There's nothing, really, that anyone can tell me about my home state that would come as a surprise at this point. I've lived in just about every corner - from Natchitoches to Slidell, between Lake Charles and Alexandria, and now currently in Lafayette. I've been to a thousand tiny towns in between. I've walked the French Quarter in the wee hours, watched the Christmas Festival lights, fed alligators and danced the zydeco. I've seen the Courir and caught beads at Endymion. Not much you can tell me about the history, or the people, or the politics.
I know about the racism, the poverty, the anguish of the poor who spend their whole lives watching what seems to be a truer life pass them by. I know about the politicians who seem to think it is a competition sport to rob and rape as much of this beautiful land and its people as possible in the shortest period of time. I know about the lack of education and health care that keeps us at the bottom of every good ranking, and at the top of every bad one. I am a veteran of tiny schools with no funding, welfare lines and the Katrina disaster. And yet. And yet.
There is magic in this place. There are spirits in the air all around us - of the dead, and sometimes the living, who call in the wind, help us to remember, and give a crackle to the atmosphere at dusk. There is something, something, that draws people here from every nation on the globe - not just as individuals, mind you, but entire communities. You can feel it in your heart when you breathe the air, or watch the sunset, or listen to the buzz of the crickets in the evening. It is magic from another time, magic that the modern world has forgotten, magic that hangs over this land like a mist. It gives us strength, and power, and a will to continue. It gives us art overflowing like a bounty, painting and literature and music and food. It gives us our character, and our lifeblood.
Maybe it is the fact that even in our poverty and problems, we always find a way to be happy, to celebrate and to live life with every ounce of energy we have. Maybe it is the fact that this place has a history bathed in equal parts blood and joy. Maybe it is the Mississippi River, or the hurricanes, or the mysteries of the swamps. Whatever its origins, our magic is as real as a heartbeat. It's why people love to travel here from everywhere to see and hear and taste for themselves.
Why am I writing this out of the blue? Today I was driving along, moving from the city out into the surrounding countryside, and like a soft blanket it enveloped me and held me in its embrace. I looked around, even from the confines of my car, with my cellphone buzzing and the ipod blasting, and that magic penetrated my body straight through to my heart. Even though I have lived here my entire life, even though there is surely nothing new under the sun for me in the state of Louisiana, there, like a cool wave, it was. And so I came home, and wrote a love song.
20 March 2007
Warming Up
Happy these days as Spring has managed to, well, spring around here. Lots of people in south Louisiana are happy for winter, as it affords us our only chance at cool, mosquito-free weather for the year but I simply can't stand it. Every year I trudge through January and February, wondering if I'll make it until the color green finds its way back into the world. Nothing cheers my soul like seeing those first buds breaking out on tree branches everywhere. I can't even imagine how people in the northern climes manage it. At any rate, the cold in my bones is finally receding, and I can get on with things.
Sent off the manuscript of "Requiem for a Werewolf" yesterday to a magazine. Time to stop thinking about it for a bit, and perhaps work on another story. Maybe back to the novel for a few days. Had an idea the other day for a more conventional piece with the LOML as main character. My first love will always be the mildly fantastical, though, so I can imagine it will turn into something along those lines.
16 March 2007
Critical of the Critic
Last week I read the review of 300 by Dana Stevens in Slate Magazine online and then on Saturday I saw the movie for myself. Can I just say what the hell? Perhaps in some situations it helps to have a piece of art reviewed by someone who has no previous knowledge of the form. I can understand the concept of a fresh pair of eyes. Unfortunately, however, I don't think that was the case here. It was pretty clear to me that Ms. Stevens doesn't know or care to know anything about the art form this film was taken from.
Her main beef with 300 seems to be that it isn't a vehicle for promoting some sort of message against our current war situation in the Middle East. Now, before anyone jumps to conclusions, I am not a supporter of said situation. I am a card-carrying, dyed-in-the wool Liberal, and not afraid to admit it (even though I live in Louisiana and it's practically a hanging offense here). It irritates me, however, that she takes this movie to task for not being a socially-conscious enough war film. At one point she bemoans the fact that it "doesn't include at least some nod in the direction of antiwar sentiment." Her attitude is dripping with undisguised contempt when she reveals that director Zack Snyder created the film for (Shock!!) entertainment value.
Now I'm fairly sure here that Dana Stevens has no idea who Frank Miller is. I can understand that she doesn't have much interest in graphic novels or comics. But I think anyone who does can agree that to truly appreciate this film you should know something about its origins. This film was, from a comic fan's perspective, beautiful. The filmmakers captured the feel of the graphic novel perfectly, from the gorgeous colorization down to the detail of the 2-D blood. It felt like a comic, because that's what it was - a comic come alive. It was a love story dedicated to what this art form has done since its conception, provide a stylized, compact, artistic rendering of a story.
And while I'm at it, I'm sorry to have to be the one to break this to you, but this story is in fact based on an actual event, in which a very small contingent of soldiers fought to the death even though they were vastly outnumbered. They were Spartans, professional soldiers who were trained to follow their king no matter what the cost. If you went to see a movie with the tagline, "Spartans, tonight we dine in Hell!" with the notion that you'd see peace accords and a solution to eternal conflict in the Middle East, well, as the LOML says to me frequently, I don't know what to tell you.
Sorry, Dana. I loved it.
13 March 2007
Milestones & Stepping Stones
Finished the first draft of the current story. It now has a name (drum roll), "Requiem for a Werewolf". The goal this week is to get it revised and perhaps sent off to a magazine. Also did some reading - I finished Stephen King's On Writing a couple of nights ago. Very good, actually. In general, I find his writing to be somewhat pedestrian (with the exception of The Stand and the first Gunslinger book), but this was very well written, with some excellent practical advice for new writers. What I came away with was a sense that he truly loves what he does. Perhaps that is just a screen, but it seemed genuine to me.
05 March 2007
A Poem I wrote in 1992
Wicked
When the dark night broke out against the land
They called us wicked.
When the fire came, and tore on through the day
They called it justice.
When we died, and our skin popped and roasted on the spit
We cursed them all.
And still we remain
We crawl
We doom
And yes we are
Still
Wicked.
23 February 2007
Scrotums Being Cut Out
I have been thinking about writing in terms of the process of the thing, the way the idea crawls out of the authors head and manages to take on a life of its own independently. This image has been stuck in my head for days - that of Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters of the Third Kind sculpting his mashed potatoes - changing them from a big white blob into a mountain. I feel like that when I write - I am a massive reviser and polisher. Sometimes it bogs me down.
And on and on and on...
Speaking of scrotums, everyone should immediately go out and buy a copy of Susan Patron's Newbury Award Winning book, The Higher Power of Lucky, whether you have kids or not. It's catching flak from certain school librarian-types and uptight/confused community members for using the word scrotum in the text. Maybe the publisher should release a version with scrotum replaced by Hoo-Ha. What is wrong with these people?
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet."
You said it Will...
20 February 2007
Hair, Love Songs, and the Number 42
Not even through the first chapter of the Lilith novel and it is already turning into a love song to my beloved New Orleans post-Katrina. I am in love with that city, no doubt about it. I am, in fact, in love with the entire state of Louisiana. I was born and raised here - I have lived in every part and explored most of it extensively. What is it about this place? I love the literature, the art, the music. I am fascinated by how we natives look at Her - we are fiercely loyal bunch, in spite of the fact that everyone is aware of how many problems there are to fix.
Was having a discussion about that very topic the other day on the way home from a trip to Baton Rouge - what it is about this place that spawns so many artists. We speculated that it is the poverty, or perhaps the unique mixture of cultures found here, or just the history in general, hardships and prejudices, various booms and busts. Suffering inspires art, no doubt about that. And we have had more than our share of suffering over the years.
Recently the powers that be have been pushing very hard to update us, to try and attract more technology-driven industries here. Good idea, we need that for sure, but I wonder what the face of Louisiana would look like with a Silicon Valley shine to it. Of course, if nothing's done about the coast, we'll all be underwater in 50 years anyway and it'll all be a memory. Recorded in the art...
Very cool interview/photo essay with Neil Gaiman by Susan Henderson over at LitPark this morning. It's all about Neil's HAIR. I laughed, but strangely enough, I couldn't look away. Interspersed with cool quotes from Fragile Things.
Speaking of Louisiana Art, etc. I caught up on my Anne Rice news last night. I had sort of lost touch/interest in her since she moved from New Orleans to California. I vaguely recalled she had published a new book on the life of Christ, but I hadn't even bothered to look at it. At one time I was a huge fan of hers - she was at the height of her popularity when I was in college going through my obligatory vampire interest stage. Seems in the interim she has regained her faith in God and has returned to the Mother Church. Interesting. I am curious about how that happened. I lost my faith long ago but I like to read accounts of both sides of the great debate. Am currently reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. A few years ago I followed C.S. Lewis' journey back to faith. I may go and buy the book simply to read her notes on the subject. It is THE great question which in one form or another shapes every life on this planet. Where do we come from, where are we going. We all want to know. At the moment I am leaning towards Dawkins' view that we are evolutionarily hardwired for it. We want an explanation for things, and in the absence of something obvious, we make it up. It is part of our DNA.
In any case, human nature fascinates me, and a great part of Lilith's character stems from her relationship to her father Yahweh, so I have a dual interest in exploring the subject.
07 February 2007
Just Do It
I, like most writers I imagine, am extremely critical of my own work. Most of the time I read through what I've written and I just hate it, for one reason or another. I bog myself down in endless drafts, re-writes, and agonizing thoughts of it just not being good enough. This is a big problem for me- to the point that it literally paralyzes my pen. The other night I was sitting, staring at the pages I have written so far on my novel, and suddenly this thought popped into my head - who gives a damn? I mean, really, who cares if this sucks huge purple oranges? I write because I love to, because I am compelled to. I write because it is what I am meant to do. If that means I never make a dime from it, and no one ever reads what I have created beyond myself and my few friends, then so what?
From that astonishing revelation I have determined to go at this project with a new tact- I just sit down and write. A thousand words a day, perhaps, whatever falls into my brain. I write, and I write, and I write. I write until this book is finished. THEN, and only then, will I go back and start the drafting process, the rewrites, and the tweaking. At least at that point I will have an opus to be magnum.
06 February 2007
A Woman's Right to Choose - Rebuttal to Letter in Lafayette Daily Advertiser
So-called “Right to Life” activists condemn Roe v. Wade and decry what they call the massive killing of babies in the years since its ruling, but can we not remember the thousands of women every year who died as a result of botched abortions in this country before 1973? There are graves littering every state containing the bodies of women who were butchered in motel rooms or died horrifying deaths at their own hands because they were terrified of the consequences of bringing a baby into the world. Were their lives not of worth?
In Leslie Alexander’s guest column of February 4, 2007, she speaks of girls giving birth at the prom or in a hotel room, leaving the babies to die in garbage dumps. How is this an argument against abortion? These girls are the very ones who should be given a chance to end their pregnancies in a clean, safe environment.
It is easy to sit back and pass judgment on someone else from our comfortable middle-class living rooms. It is easy to point a finger at the girl who was impregnated by her own father, and say, “You need parental consent for an abortion,” or, even worse, “You should carry that child and give birth to it.” It is easy to look at a poor working mother, making a minimum wage (which in this country isn’t even enough to feed one person, much less a family), and tell her she has to carry and find a way to feed yet another child she can’t afford. Pro-Lifers advocate adoption as an option – but how many of you are willing to adopt one of these kids, who otherwise will languish their entire childhoods in orphanages or foster homes? Our social services system is overtaxed now with cases of abuse and neglect of unwanted children.
Ms. Alexander also speaks of embryonic stem cell research as a way we are wiping out “entire generations” of children, and claims there have been no successful experiments using these cells. Of course, it should be obvious that scientists who advocate their use are only doing so for evil, sadistic purposes! How absurd! A quick Google search brings up hundreds of stories of success with embryonic stem cells helping to find cures for everything from cancer and diabetes to Parkinson’s and paralysis. It should also be noted that these cells are not obtained through abortion, but through the use of in vitro fertilized eggs which have been given approval by the donors for use in scientific research. They are not a baby – they are groups of a couple hundred cells that were created in a Petri dish.
If Pro-Life groups really want to reduce the number of abortions every year, they should focus on pregnancy prevention instead of taking away a woman’s right to choose. Instead of taking upon ourselves the right to judge another for a deeply personal decision, we should provide all women with comprehensive sex education and easily accessible birth control. Ending reproductive freedom rights is not the answer.
05 February 2007
Here's a shout-out to Neil Gaiman who has a current campaign going to google-bomb radio show host Penn Jillette . I love Neil's blog - I read it nearly every day. Very cool as he not only writes about the process of writing as-seen-through-the-eyes-of-someone-who-is-successful-at-it, but he frequently posts interesting and varied links to tidbits on subjects ranging from art to music, travel, gp silliness and just being a parent. He also answers lots of his fans' questions, from the reasonable to the slightly kooky. Seems like a real decent guy (not to mention a fabulously imaginitive author).
I am fired up politically right now. My local excuse for a newspaper published a "guest column" today on the subject of abortion. Now, granted, it was on the OPINION page, and as a true believer in free speech I have to adhere to the view that this woman has a right to scream from whichever rooftop she desires every idiotic belief she wants to espouse. However, this particular newspaper is largely biased in the Republican/Right-Wing/South Louisiana vein, and so it is very, very rare for them to print opinions which differ from those held by the main body of their subscription and advertising customers. I know how the economics of a successful business work, but man, whatever happened to the media's job of being the voice of all the people?
I suppose the idea of unbiased media coverage is more or less a fantasy in this day and age, when journalism for the most part has been reduced to sound bites and publicity stunts, but I know there are some journalists and news outlets who have, and who do, try to present both sides of every issue. In the spirit of that little dream which refuses to die, I plan to fire off a letter to this newspaper in the (vain, I know) hope that it will be published as a rebuttal to the insane (not to mention outright wrong) information this woman tried to pass off as fact in her "column". It's time that those of us in Louisiana who are educated and informed about the issues make ourselves heard.
I'll post my rebuttal column here when it's ready.
03 February 2007
Pet Peeve - People who misspell "lose" and/or "loose" or use them interchangeably.
Read a very good book yesterday - Love is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield. Besides being an achingly beautiful love story, it is also contains great observations about growing up Gen X. In particular it captures the feeling our entire generation had that the 90's were going to be the decade that changed everything - we were tearing down the Reagan years and remaking the world in our own image. Through the mirror of the music we made and listened to, he has captured what it meant to be 20-something in the age of Nirvana and Biggie Smalls. Good read. Funny as well.
Another old love of mine was the Pre-Raphaelite poetry and art movement of the 19th century. I fell in love with the imagination of little, crazed A.C. Swinburne as a young girl muddling through puberty and confusion. I only had an ancient, beat up anthology that my mom had probably bought for 25 cents at some garage sale to read, but man, did it fire up my imagination. I did my senior honors undergrad thesis on their views of women (it's a rather funny read now). As with most everything else that had given my life richness and meaning however, I packed it away when I finished college, sure that it was pointless because it wasn't worth any money. Now, as with lots of other things I once loved, I am dusting off those memories and interests and finding their true worth all over again. Just today I had a vision of myself in grad school, perhaps, set on a course in Academia to pore over Rossetti and Swinburne and their father, John Keats, for all eternity. If that sounds like Hell to you, it sounds like Heaven to me.
31 January 2007
Nice rendering I found of amulet that could be used to protect children from Lilith. The names of the angels are Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semengelof. They were charged by God with finding Lilith in the desert and returning her to her Father. She refused, and was cursed to hunt and kill human babies before their 8th day of life, only sparing those who were protected by the names of these three angels. Her own children were cursed to be born as demons, and 100 would die nightly.
26 January 2007
Dialogue is by far the hardest thing to write for me. I have a tendency towards a more formal version of language when I write, and my dialogue feels stilted and unnatural to me. I have to consciously work each line out in my mind, break it down from what I would write people saying, to what they actually might say.
My Lilith novel has evolved in such a fragmented way. Over the years I have written lots of bits and pieces- impressions of her, I guess. Some of her memories. Some of her emotions. Now the task is to create a frame in which to hold all my pictures and to add the context that will give them a coherent order. It will be tough, and I am trying not to stress over the fact that I only have until the end of the summer. After that I'll have to find some gainful employment. Starving artist and all. Mouths to feed. It'll be back to grad school for me, a teaching career. Don't get me wrong, I love kids. I enjoy teaching. But it's not my passion. I want to write, more than anything I have ever wanted. I have been given this one chance. I have to make it work.
Interesting link I came across last night. One of my (many many many) projects lately is to learn about photography. Here is an online course. I haven't gone through it yet, so we'll see. I love the internet. One gigantic library, connecting the whole world together. What an age to live in.
25 January 2007
Very productive day. Finally accomplished something after being sick basically for two weeks straight. Worked on the ever-insistent Lilith novel. I am truly starting to feel the pieces come together, into a coherent story and not just a collections of portraits and short stories. Over the years my vision of the form the plot would take has changed dramatically, as have the themes I wanted to put forward. Strange, how this novel has evolved alongside me, as much a living thing in my mind as it could possibly be. It is true that the art we create, however good or bad, however it may be judged by those who see it, is in a real sense our child, born of us in every sense that matters. How painful it must be for artists to watch their first effort stillborn without a publisher, or torn to shreds by critics after its birth. A pain we are all willing to experience for the chance it will have life outside us at all, however.
22 January 2007
Saw two great movies this weekend - Pan's Labrynth & Children of Men. Wow. Wow. At the risk of getting repetitive, Wow again. Labrynth is an unbelievably beautiful, violent, moving tale of the power of a little girl's imagination to carry her through the horror of her reality. My heart ached and I cried for her innocence and her suffering. Five stars, without a doubt. The dream-like quality of the film left me wanting to go out and buy some chalk. :)
Children of Men was powerful in a similar way in that it was another story of the triumph of the human spirit when faced with the worst possible circumstances. Interesting to me how both films drew as their most basic theme the dichotomy between what mankind is capable of at both ends of the spectrum of good and evil. We write symphonies and drop nuclear bombs. We produce Picasso and Hitler, Mozart and Stalin, Muhammed and Jesus and Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush. What creatures of cross-purposes we are.
Something that interests me about the movie business. They churn out mounds of mindless drivel, remakes of remakes and awful, horrible wastes of money that end up on every screen in America while truly good movies, independent films and art films that have something to say end up struggling for bookings. Luckily I live near enough to large cities which usually get at least one print of the more popular of these, but I wonder how many more just languish and never get the audience they deserve.
20 January 2007
Bleh. Feel awful today. My daughter is sick as well, and I spent most of the night trying to bring down her fever. I managed to get about 10 minutes of work done on "Living Forever" last night before she wandered into my office, crying & shivering uncontrollably with chills. Today she seems a little better, so even though my own body is screaming at me to just go to bed, I am going to try to write a bit more.
In any case, weather here is cold, rainy and nasty outside, which tends to be very conducive to writing, so I have that on my side. However, there is also paying work to be done (self-employed in advertising/marketing), so I'm not expecting a good bit of progress. Hope springs eternal, though. We'll see.
18 January 2007
Have totally revamped this site. It started out as a place for me to vent my left-leaning political rantings that otherwise had no outlet, but I've decided to change it to a journal of sorts that chronicles my year of "taking the big chance". Everyone has that dream of writing the Great American Novel, and this is the year when I either make that happen or relegate fiction-writing to the box of dusty hobbies that I take out from time to time. It's now or never, as they say.
Today my children are home with me, due to school closure for the Ice Storm That Never Happened, so I've not gotten much done basically except for creating this blog. Probably won't until everyone is sleeping tonight.
In any case, here is where I am so far: My latest story, tentatively titled "Living Forever" is currently under construction with a myriad of broken promises pertaining to its completion. Hopefully this week. It is a sci-fi piece, and I am hoping to shop it out to a couple of genre magazines. In addition, I have been making notes for the big project, the as-yet-untitled Lilith book, which has occupied my mind off and on for the last 15 years and which I am determined to finish before I die, published or not. It will be my magnum opus, so I have to get it done, right? What kind of life boasts an unfinished magnum opus?
