lookingland (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lookingland) wrote2006-01-03 09:04 pm
lookingland) wrote2006-01-03 09:04 pm
Entry tags:
this coaster's got wheels ~ !
i've been on what seems a rather emotional ride lately. dunno exactly why (though i s'pose i could guess at all the reasons).
last night i did not want to go to bed. i just put off and put off and found all manner of random things to "do" to avoid it. nights like that are bad ~ there's just something in me that doesn't want to go to sleep and face the day without having finished something ~ but the "something" remains unidentified. i wrote a long post about dying young that i then deleted because it sounded rather morbid (or egomaniacal, i couldn't decide which).
anyway, so here i am on the cusp of another night. the dogs have quietly bedded down, curled in warm dogballs on my bed, and i am feeling overbloated from drinking too much tea and a wee bit exhausted from trying to think (stripping the gears here).
~ * ~
i started reading Stewart O'Nan's Snow Angels last night, which i bought in a bargain bin a million years ago and hadn't read. i still dig his style, but this book has nowhere near the hook or the appeal (for me) that Prayer for the Dying had. definitely one of my all-time favorite books, ever. skeery skeery novel. Snow Angels is more pastoral, more Faulknerian (which makes sense since it won the Faulkner award). i'm digging it, but i wish i had something else to read ~ something that would set me on fire. a new Fermine, a new Styron ~ something just fresh and mind-blowing the way Ron Hansen's Mariette in Ecstasy was when i read that first page and then couldn't put the dang thing down.
people recommend books to me all the time (and sometimes even buy them for me), but i've found that books have to find me ~ it can't be a forced relationship. didn't i pick up Ondaatje from the bottom shelf of my professor's closet on a whim? didn't i find Wheat that Springeth Green randomly in a library crawl? sure: Styron and Lightman were recommended to me, but it took me a long time to actually pick them up ~ and when i did, it was "just" the right timing (a fate that has yet to befall The Tin Drum, which continues to sit, unread, on my shelf).
and who am i kidding anyway. i don't want to read a "great" book ~ i want to write one.
i unearthed rabbit's notes last night in the wee a.m. hours and am suddenly startled at the immensity of his story and the immensity of his words. raw, uninhibited, vulnerable. it's the story i could not write ~ a story of spiritual confusion, betrayal, innocence not merely lost, but cataclysmically obliterated. it's the story i've been trying to write for twenty years. and there it is: a partial manuscript of scraps that amount to about 25,000 words. it could be a book. it could be an immense book. but i shirk at the thought of writing it ~ for so many many reasons ~ not the least of which is: it's not really my story, is it?
i get so confused, especially when the world is slipping sideways as it's doing at the moment ~ i wonder what, if any, of my pursuits are "right" ~ what is it i'm actually called to do? what, ultimately, is the world i've created supposed to be or become? aside from my own personal amusement factory, that is.
i mean, i feel like i am doing something good and right with Eleison, but all of the other pieces are just a disparate mess. book after book of chronicles that interconnect, but are somehow like the most common xiphopagus twins: joined by ligaments and without sharing any major organs.
which is not to say i want them to be two-headed monstrosities incapable of independent life from one another, but they are still somehow missing a throughline in the narrative voice. and this is proving impossible to reconcile because whos one voice can oversee the whole of 65 years over which these stories span? the only "omniscient" character i have is Razi-el, and he's just too mythical and out there (woo-woo) to make sense as a narrator. Marithé is the oldest and the only character aside from Morse who comes into contact with almost every single other character. but he's pretty detached from most of the action. there's no one left at the end of the road who could reflect back except Morse, but that's assuming Morse would reflect back in a coherent way (and motivating that? fuggetaboutit).
and why can't they tell their own stories? well they can, i suppose. though several are already written from an omniscient third person pov (like Eleison). i can change that. i can change almost anything at this point. but the trick is making a meaningful change that will help further shape this world and give it cohesion. it's come together rather nicely in the last couple of years. but it's still just lacking that one style choice: the voice.
i've thought of trying to go in a Lemony Snicket direction ~ come up with a narrative voice that is, in itself, a character who is completely divorced from the action, but i'm not clever enough for that. it winds up sounding like mock (and mawkish) victorian purple prose. why couldn't i be Edward Gorey? but then i am reminded that it is one thing to be clever ~ quite another to be smart.
ah, what a morass. more and more ass all the time.
i keep looking for a model out there. thought i would find it in Balzac, but french prose is really its own sort of animal. and french 19th century prose is much like most of the novel-writing of the time: decorative, author-intrusive, and equivocating (which is why Octave Mirabeau is such a shocking good read). i dun wanna lapse into another Dickens/Dumas/Hugo fixation ~ been there, done that.
and i don't want to be Faulkner, or Ondaatje, or even Ron Hansen (i hate you for that book, truly).
i want to be me. peculiarly and particularly me. without affectation, without putting on a hat to make it work.
how can it be, writing as long as i have been, that i am still looking for my voice?
(and do i really think i will find it if i stay up all night babbling on here?)
: o p <~
last night i did not want to go to bed. i just put off and put off and found all manner of random things to "do" to avoid it. nights like that are bad ~ there's just something in me that doesn't want to go to sleep and face the day without having finished something ~ but the "something" remains unidentified. i wrote a long post about dying young that i then deleted because it sounded rather morbid (or egomaniacal, i couldn't decide which).
anyway, so here i am on the cusp of another night. the dogs have quietly bedded down, curled in warm dogballs on my bed, and i am feeling overbloated from drinking too much tea and a wee bit exhausted from trying to think (stripping the gears here).
~ * ~
i started reading Stewart O'Nan's Snow Angels last night, which i bought in a bargain bin a million years ago and hadn't read. i still dig his style, but this book has nowhere near the hook or the appeal (for me) that Prayer for the Dying had. definitely one of my all-time favorite books, ever. skeery skeery novel. Snow Angels is more pastoral, more Faulknerian (which makes sense since it won the Faulkner award). i'm digging it, but i wish i had something else to read ~ something that would set me on fire. a new Fermine, a new Styron ~ something just fresh and mind-blowing the way Ron Hansen's Mariette in Ecstasy was when i read that first page and then couldn't put the dang thing down.
people recommend books to me all the time (and sometimes even buy them for me), but i've found that books have to find me ~ it can't be a forced relationship. didn't i pick up Ondaatje from the bottom shelf of my professor's closet on a whim? didn't i find Wheat that Springeth Green randomly in a library crawl? sure: Styron and Lightman were recommended to me, but it took me a long time to actually pick them up ~ and when i did, it was "just" the right timing (a fate that has yet to befall The Tin Drum, which continues to sit, unread, on my shelf).
and who am i kidding anyway. i don't want to read a "great" book ~ i want to write one.
i unearthed rabbit's notes last night in the wee a.m. hours and am suddenly startled at the immensity of his story and the immensity of his words. raw, uninhibited, vulnerable. it's the story i could not write ~ a story of spiritual confusion, betrayal, innocence not merely lost, but cataclysmically obliterated. it's the story i've been trying to write for twenty years. and there it is: a partial manuscript of scraps that amount to about 25,000 words. it could be a book. it could be an immense book. but i shirk at the thought of writing it ~ for so many many reasons ~ not the least of which is: it's not really my story, is it?
i get so confused, especially when the world is slipping sideways as it's doing at the moment ~ i wonder what, if any, of my pursuits are "right" ~ what is it i'm actually called to do? what, ultimately, is the world i've created supposed to be or become? aside from my own personal amusement factory, that is.
i mean, i feel like i am doing something good and right with Eleison, but all of the other pieces are just a disparate mess. book after book of chronicles that interconnect, but are somehow like the most common xiphopagus twins: joined by ligaments and without sharing any major organs.
which is not to say i want them to be two-headed monstrosities incapable of independent life from one another, but they are still somehow missing a throughline in the narrative voice. and this is proving impossible to reconcile because whos one voice can oversee the whole of 65 years over which these stories span? the only "omniscient" character i have is Razi-el, and he's just too mythical and out there (woo-woo) to make sense as a narrator. Marithé is the oldest and the only character aside from Morse who comes into contact with almost every single other character. but he's pretty detached from most of the action. there's no one left at the end of the road who could reflect back except Morse, but that's assuming Morse would reflect back in a coherent way (and motivating that? fuggetaboutit).
and why can't they tell their own stories? well they can, i suppose. though several are already written from an omniscient third person pov (like Eleison). i can change that. i can change almost anything at this point. but the trick is making a meaningful change that will help further shape this world and give it cohesion. it's come together rather nicely in the last couple of years. but it's still just lacking that one style choice: the voice.
i've thought of trying to go in a Lemony Snicket direction ~ come up with a narrative voice that is, in itself, a character who is completely divorced from the action, but i'm not clever enough for that. it winds up sounding like mock (and mawkish) victorian purple prose. why couldn't i be Edward Gorey? but then i am reminded that it is one thing to be clever ~ quite another to be smart.
ah, what a morass. more and more ass all the time.
i keep looking for a model out there. thought i would find it in Balzac, but french prose is really its own sort of animal. and french 19th century prose is much like most of the novel-writing of the time: decorative, author-intrusive, and equivocating (which is why Octave Mirabeau is such a shocking good read). i dun wanna lapse into another Dickens/Dumas/Hugo fixation ~ been there, done that.
and i don't want to be Faulkner, or Ondaatje, or even Ron Hansen (i hate you for that book, truly).
i want to be me. peculiarly and particularly me. without affectation, without putting on a hat to make it work.
how can it be, writing as long as i have been, that i am still looking for my voice?
(and do i really think i will find it if i stay up all night babbling on here?)
: o p <~
no subject
~ i wonder what, if any, of my pursuits are "right" ~ what is it i'm actually called to do? what, ultimately, is the world i've created supposed to be or become? aside from my own personal amusement factory, that is.
I wonder that about my story, and all its interlocking characters and storylines and everything else. If I were to ever, like, publish it, would anyone enjoy it? Would it help anyone? Make anyone think? I dunno. Do I even want to publish it? Can I regain what I've lost since 2004 when I began to seriously write for it? Are the things lost best lost? Can I even write a book, a coherent book that flows and weaves well? Do I even want to? Can I even do such a thing? I seem to only be able to write snippets, or long parts, but I can't be continuous, not without a lot of effort (*thinks about her NaNo story, aeck, can almost hear it dying*)...I think I'm just destined to write a Sandra Cisneros-type book, short stories and such ("The House on Mango Street" immediately comes to mind), and maybe that's for the best...I dunno. *^^*;;
*dies again* Sorry for rambling here. *sheepish, needs to head off to bed NOW...hugs*
~ Laura.
no subject
Fishy fishy! *dances away the night*
~ Laura.
no subject
nothing wrong with The House on Mango Street as a concept ~ it's certainly one i've played with before.
i've been through the to-publish or not to publish thing a long time and ultimately, that matters less to me than simply finishing the work. because before the work is finished, publishing really isn't even an option yet. i can see the idea of publishing as a motivator, perhaps, but not for me personally. i want something altogether more/different from writing (just can't quite put my finger on it).
i think it's fair to say, in all cases, that when these doubts and questions kick up, the most important thing to do is to keep writing (and write through them) ~ in fact, perhaps it's important to write more than ever.
sometimes i think writing is like faith: it's there, you just have to keep plugging away at the marble chip by chip for it to take shape.
i guess the worst we can do is bog down in discouragement and disorganization.
so up an' at 'em ~ git to work!
: D
no subject
no subject
: D