Character, Characters

I'd like to think that I would have been one of the kids who joined Harry Potter in his secret society to counteract the fascism that has taken over Hogwarts in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The wise and benevolent Dumbledore has been disenfranchised due to a wave of suppression and rule by terror that has overthrown their world. The personification of this government of terror is Dolores Umbridge, a Dark Arts professor clad in  pink, sporting immovably coiffured haired and a smile that broadens in insincerity in proportion to the pain her students suffer at her discipline. Harry and friends employ courage, skill and cleverness to undermine the darkness that is a constant threat.

But I am not writing about Harry Potter.  I'm commenting on characters and character and the role literature plays in our understanding of such things. When a story is well crafted and its heroes and villains embody the qualities that writers and artists have been portraying since the ancient days of cultural mythologies those writers have become wright-ers of our current mythology; that is, they craft stories that help us understand the moral battles we must all face, in one form or another no matter where or when we live.

The names and settings may change, but we humans have been battling the same evils with the same virtues forever.  Since folks gathered around communal fires and shared meals we have anticipated the arrival of the local seanachie to tell a tale and subtly, oh so subtly, teach us about courage and love and evil and good and all the other things that go into wondrous mix that makes us human. Even when they are writing about wizards.

http://www.wordstrumpet.com/

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.

Snowed In

I've been running into the idea of finding God in the darkness, in the cloud, in the quiet places lately.  Maybe it's the kind of thing folks write about during winter.  One of my complaints about living in Texas has been that there aren't any real seasons.  We have summer and we have something else that is not quite summer, but hardly qualifies as Spring, Fall or Winter. My son and daughter-in-law live in Boston and after a while the winter doesn't so much look like a gift as much as it looks like a prison term or a very cold Purgatory.  But closer to the equator here in Texas we usually skip right over winter and step into something that is a little chilly, often quite warm, just fixin' to cuddle up to a long stretch of HOT that starts in March and hangs around through Thanksgiving.

Maybe it's my conditioning of growing up in a part of the world where there are four distinct seasons, but I think that a stretch of winter is very important.  We need, that is our souls, our hearts, our guts, our minds, need a time to be pulled away from the rush of sunny warm activities and dig in a little.  It's nature's gift of retreat, whether we think we want it or not.

If we don't have a little winter in our souls I think we run the risk of becoming ninnies. Yep, ninnies.  All activity and busy-ness and self-centered stuff.  We need a little heft, a little gravitas, a little snow shoveling once in a while to pull us down to the quieter places where we can listen and just be.

Yes, the snow is pretty as it weighs down the branches on the trees and covers the brown lawns.  Yes, the snow will turn to slush and then to mud with just enough layering of ice to make driving or walking treacherous.  But it makes us pause, and often taking pause is the only way we will ever learn anything.  There is something sacramental in the snow.  Not safe, but sacramental.

February Made Me Shiver

Its been more gray than usual here in North Texas---- reminds me of the endless winters I spent as a kid on Long Island. February meant snow--   momentarily fresh---then quickly old,  covered in the soot of car exhaust and tire tracks.  February meant  boots and cold toes and shivers and  knitted hats and red noses and rosy cheeks.  It meant  coming in for hot chocolate of scalded milk and Ovaltine or the little packets of chocolate powder with tiny marshmallows.  It meant chicken noodle soup and play time getting just a bit longer as winter kicked up its last hurrah. February meant back to ordinary time.  Days of routine now that Christmas and New Year's were weeks behind us.  February was the lull before the whimsy that is March. February is the time to get some work done.

Oh.

Whatever New Year's resolutions we might have made and broken by now are fading into the 'good intentions' stack that gets larger and more cluttered like the back of my closet each year.

We need to have times between the highs and lows of the Christmas season and the lovely, rainy days of Spring.  Time to get our rhythm back and settle in a little deeper to where we find the core of who we are, and hopefully, carefully, sometimes tediously, produce the work that has been waiting to be discovered and pried loose.

February is often the time when Lent begins, which itself is a time of reflection and preparation for Easter.  February means days of deep reflection, without which we cannot hope to produce anything worthwhile.

Writing, at least writing where you have to drop down several levels and dig around in the dark places to find some gems, is hard work.  It is contemplative work.  We need to be able to step into places that are not always comfortable and safe.  We cannot live the whole year in a February state of mind, but I am grateful for these quieter days where the weather and the ordinariness ready me for the soul's work of what I have decided to devote my time to.

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.