Grain of Wheat

It's noteworthy that much of the 'self-help' and 'self-improvement' advice sounds an awful lot like phrases taken right out of scripture.  A wide variety of scripture, I might add. I read a lovely essay about a woman who discovered that the child she was carrying tested positive for Down's.  Some advisors advised her to end the pregnancy.  She did not.  The essay was not about 'choice'; it was about letting go of her expectations of what her life should be and allowing life to happen, with all its twists and turns and surprises. She quoted a Buddhist phrase at the beginning of her essay which sounded so much like words from the New Testament reminding us that a grain of wheat must die in order to become more fully itself.  Let go of your little mind and let life surprise you.

What has this to do with writing?  Well, quite a bit actually.

I'm currently working on a series of short stories that I have culled from the novel  I had poured much work and struggle into. I have been banging my brain around the structure of the novel for several months, perhaps even a few years. Recently I decided to let go of the novel format and take the characters, scenes, conflicts and settings that I had invested in and re-shape chapters into work that could stand alone as short stories.

Now it's a bit more complicated than lifting chapters from a novel and re-labeling them short stories.  Short stories have their own set of rules for structure, narrative arc, beginning and end, and construction.  In order for some of my scenes and characters to stand out in the world by their lonesome, not cradled by chapters, I had to (and have to) re-think the direction and let myself be surprised by what developes.

I have sent one such story out into the world to be judged.  I am working on getting the others in fighting shape to join it.

A friend of mine once said what most writers know:  I don't know what I'm going to write until I write it.  Isn't that grand!! It's grand because it demonstrates a letting go, a release, a freedom to become a channel between the thoughts and characters that have moved in to our heads and that process, that encounter, dare I say, that grace that happens between pen and paper, between keyboard and screen, between mind and fingers taking off in a flurry of tapping.

None of this is as magical as I wish it were.  It's hard work.  It takes a great deal of logic and organization and thinking and criticizing and often years of training and straining.  But then, we need to let it go and see if the seeds we have been sowing are strong enough to take root and grow into something we can look upon with delight.

Creative Process

I've had a request to write about the 'creative process' sitting in my suggestion box for several months now.  Mea culpa. When my spouse (who got me started on this adventure) pointed out that I have not yet answered the request for a blog on Creative Process,  I countered with my argument that I write about the creative process all the time.  But, I am informed, I need to be more direct.  So, here's direct.

The 'creative process' is a bit of a slippery fish.  It starts early.  In infancy.  In very young childhood.  In all the reflection and memories and dinner table anecdotes that happen at every holiday and family/friend get togethers.  The creative process takes shape in sitting around with friends and  having a beer or a cup of coffee.  We cannot help but engage in the creative process if we tune into life at all.  It is a default setting for anyone with a brain wave. But for those of us who want to take the raw materials that life hands us and turn them into something more, we pay attention, tune in, remember just a bit more acutely than others.

What if we would like to capture that process on 'paper' though?  Turn the process into something a bit more tangible, like a short story, a novel, an essay?  That's where the work comes in.

And it is work.  It is a re-shaping,  selection, a series of decisions about what to include and what to leave out.  It cannot merely be a rambling, every detail re-telling of some long ago event.  That's what unedited video cameras are for, and no one really wants to spend time with unedited video.

In order to take the raw materials of life and turn them into something resembling 'art' we must ruminate, cogitate, write, re-write, edit and edit again before we present the stuff of life and transform them into a gem that we would like to share. We must 'cook' our thoughts and pay attention to our dreams, where we are off guard enough to let some whispers through. Whether we write fiction or non-fiction, imagination and selection are essential.

In a recent article, Digging to China, I wrote about playing in the mud.  In the creative process you have to get a little muddy-- you have to feel the dirt ooze between your fingers and watch as the worms wriggle to freedom.  You have to slap the mud into cakes and have enough imagination to believe they are hamburgers or cupcakes or mashed potatoes or weapons to lob at your brother.  You have to not mind getting messy and dropping down into that experience.  You have to 'make believe' as most young children do naturally, whether what you are aiming at is memoir or the next great novel.

The creative process is not some mystical whoo-whoo encounter with a muse.  Many of us wish it were.  Many of us would like to take dictation from some higher elusive being than slog through memories, create or re-create characters, situations, events.  Many of us would like to wake up in the morning and just type out a fabulous dream that is a little gem ready for publication.  Some writers do seem so gifted.  Most of us, I'm afraid, have to work a little harder and do the digging the old fashioned way.  When we get to the place of exotic treasure and work it into something we are proud of it does feel like we dug all the way to China.

Tracks

Cold wind pushes against me as I walk through the canyons of lower Manhattan to the subway, tears fill my eyes, leak down my cheek.  Down the hole I go.  And wait.  Subways in the middle of the day are strange and ugly places. The smell of garbage and urine, the sound of rats scurrying under the platform, and the fine black soot that covers the rails and hovers in the air filling my nostrils and coating my lungs seem less personal in the crush of rush hour. The air is heavy with the cast off dust of commuters that have made this descent into post-modern Hades morning and evening for years.  Vertigo warns me while I straddle a tentative foot over the faded yellow line, that I am close, too close to falling into the dark ugliness that I submit to every day to carry out what has become the routine of my life.  I am almost alone.  A man in an oversized stained tan parka sits on a bench under the tile letters proclaiming this destination: Broad Street. Enter by the narrow gate, for the road to perdition is broad. These words come unbidden and startle me. I stand far enough away from him to be able to run up the stairs if he stirs, but not so far as to be rude to the poor man.  He mutters something into his dirty coat then draws his head out of his turtle’s collar and looks at me.  The J train screeches to a halt, the grimy doors open.  I take a seat opposite the man who sits on the platform bench looking at me.  I return his gaze through the smudged window.  When the doors close and the train pulls out, I am relieved to be away from him. And slightly ashamed.

copyright © 2009 J.B. McCullagh: Rose in Bloom (working title)

This is an excerpt from the beginning of the novel I am currently working on.  Working, in my case, is a rather loosely defined term.  Working includes such things as thinking, dreaming, imagining, letting the characters form in their own way, and of, course,they need to reveal themselves.  Working also includes trying out the scaffolding for these characters, their major conflicts and how the pieces and the people fit together.  Since this is my first serious attempt at novel writing I need to feel my way through, letting the many how to write books continue to gather dust on various desks and bookshelves around my house.

There are countless books on writing, some wonderful, some not so much.  Trouble with some writing books is that you have to read them.  Read them and do exercises.  Get out your pencil and papers, children, because it is time to write a theme.  Yes, Sister, we all say in weary unison. Maybe that's it.  My formal introduction to writing in the first grade was something called Theme writing.  It was all very structured and strict, guidelines had to be followed.  A beginning, a middle and an end must be part of the Theme. Punctuation and spelling mattered.  No one would dare call them stories.  Theme writing was an obstacle course that sifted the wheat from the chaff among the first grade crowd.  If you could endure that and still want to write, congratulations.  Considering I was 5 going on 6 when I started first grade, no wonder I hated it.  The stories I "wrote" before that were games and imaginings I made up for my younger sister and brother.  We would play them out and they would be 'written' as we went along, with surprises and meltdowns popping up just because someone needed a nap or had a wet diaper.  Before I went to school I would practice 'writing' in discarded notebooks of my older sibs, but I just wrote what I wanted using words I could guess at spelling.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that best 'how-to' books on writing are all the novels and works of non-fiction I have hungrily consumed these many years.  I think maybe I'm putting myself back in first grade when I set out to work on my novel by getting all jammed up in the rules.  I've got to figure out a way to shake loose all my well intentioned training and learn to trust the sounds and words that want to be on the page.  We'll see how it goes.

Supposed To

I'm supposed to be writing a novel.  I say supposed instead of the more definite I am writing a novel because that's too much of what my work looks like.  Supposed to covers an intention, a duty, a job I have accepted, but have not really given enough energy and brain power to.  Supposed to keeps me tethered to the long rope of obligation that at least makes me give thought to my work in progess, even if the progress is hardly discernible. Oh, I give this novel thought.  I sit in front of my keyboard for long stretches of time.  I sit with my puppy Frankie on my lap and my feet up on my desk.  Frankie has become used to this, it's an arrangement that seems to work.  Again, seems to, supposed to---- does not imply that a lot of actual work is getting done around here, does it?  Why am I supposed to be writing a novel in the first place?  Why don't I move on to something more immediate--- like getting the laundry done or the refrigerator cleaned?  Well, those homely tasks come in handy as a distraction.  Sometimes they even come in handy as a device to let my brain float a bit-- just engaged enough to keep me awake and somewhat alert without turning the engine on full blast. My usual form of minimum engagement activity is to play hand after hand of computer solitaire.   The screen behind the game holds my little word gems while I try to sneak up on my thoughts for the next chapter or some character development or maybe some revealing conversation.  Once in a while it even works and I get a paragraph or two down and I can feel I have accomplished something.  Oh, but I am too easily pleased.

I say I am supposed to be writing a novel because for years, since I sat on the basement floor in my parents house, books piled around me, children's books, picture books, classic fairy tales and shelves filled with the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Hemingway and so many others, the magic of producing and telling stories has been my biggest delight. the black letters on the page were more real to me than toys.  I would caress the words with my fingers and understand, so glad for this gift of reading.  I could not count the number of nights I fell asleep with a book folded across me, or mixed in with the blankets because my eyes gave out before I would willingly set the book down for tomorrow.

Also, I say supposed to write becasue my darling husband set this blog up for me because he knows this about me. He knows that I delight in words and thoughts and sounds and ideas.  So often I dispel this energy through talking and then find I have little left over to put on the page.  So, yes, I am supposed to write because I am supposed to write.  If it sounds okay, great.  If it doesn't, well, that has to be okay too, because if I waited for Shakespeare of Hawthorne to use me as a scribe, nothing would ever be done.