Writers and Observation
Observation is a crucial skill for the writer. That’s a given. However it is so much a given that it is almost hallow advice. Almost like saying a writer must write. Many will ask “what does it mean, (and not mean) to be observant in life, from the perspective of improving one’s writing?”
I think the question itself reveals some potential pitfalls. For while the best writers are often keen observers, I don’t imagine many of them would get far if their observations were based solely on collecting material. True, I keep a notebook with me most of the time, that I may write down any ideas of fragments that come to me on the moment, and many such fragments come about as the result of observing. Yet if I spent my day observing everything with the specific intention of finding something about which to write, or to otherwise find something to incorporate into my writing, I’d not only be a less effective writer, but probably more than a tad creepy.
Rather, a writer should observe because he is curious. Because he longs to understand as best he can the world around him and the people in it. A writer should feed his open mind so as to paint a picture of either the world as it is, or the world as he thinks it could be. He does this be observing human nature. Common motivations. Reactions. Plights and pleasures. In an ideal situation the writer becomes a sponge so he can one day act as a mirror, if you will.
That disgust, or fascination, that joy or dread, that acceptance or rebellion of what it is to be alive on earth…these are the things that fuel great writing I think. And while one can produce something of value simply be writing a story about what one sees, I’m willing to bet that most of the deepest, most moving, most shocking and memorable writing has actually sprung forth from this immersion into essence of life. Even if that just means watching from the safer distance of a reclusive life, the writer observes for the sake of learning, and then incorporate what he learns into his work.
Of course there is nothing wrong with trolling for material. All writers looking for a new angle or story line do so at some point. That too is part of the writer’s life. Yet like so many things, one approaches mastery not by obsessing over the actual activity, but by nurturing that within oneself that makes one long to be a master of a skill in the first place.
If you long to write, you probably already long to observe the world. To think about what you find, and to present it in some way. Give your attentions to that, and eventually the writing will take care of itself.
Still Standing. Okay, Maybe Leaning.
As some of my Twitter followers have survived by now, I have been away from regular internet access until yesterday morning. In fact until yesterday morning, I was rarely at my own home for about four days.
On Friday evening, it would seem that a meteorological phenomena, (the name of which I heard once, and cannot for the life of me recall), swept into Maryland, as well as many other states, causing great havoc, damage, and fear. It was like a huge chain of severe dangerous thunderstorms linked arms and clothes-lined the northeast.
The result was devastation, on many levels. My home was without power for four days, as I said. Some are still without power. All over the place there were downed trees and power lines. The best tree where we live was felled. The solid, 100 year old barn on the farm I am house sitting would have looked no worse after these storms had someone blown up a keg of TNT inside of it. (We are still finding shards of it all over the property. )
Making it worse, I was caught off guard. In fact many people in my area were caught off guard, because it would seem the weather professionals were caught off guard a bit. Right before the power went out here, the last thing we heard was that storms were weakening.
Were they ever wrong.
It was said that this enormous but tight chain of storms might as well have been a mid-level hurricane by the time it was all over. I can attest to that comparison, because although I have never been in a hurricane, I can’t imagine it being much more fierce than what I went through on Friday night. To make it worse, I live, (at the moment) in a mobile home with my mother.
Time to be candid; I panicked. Not uneasy, not worried, but panicked. I have always hated storms, and in particular since I have lived in this tiny house. You see, hear, and feel every damn last aspect of them. House shakes. The field in which it sits converts into a basin of hell in the worst ones. And the sound…
So yes, panic. Some of it due to the conditions I have described above, and some due to my natural, and seemingly unshakable belief deep down that something awful will happen to me and mine, thus preventing me from ever truly living out my life, let alone enjoying it. The seeds of such occasional despair and doom were planted I know not when and by parties unknown. I know only that the result has been a tenacious spiritual weed garden. Like all weeds there are entire seasons during which they wither and do not grow. But then there are entire season where they infest and choke every flower in sight.
I thought for about an hour on Friday that I was going to die in these damn storms. My intellect, of which I have been proud my entire life ceased to be of any use. I was frozen. Paralyzed. Visions of what it might feel like to die in gale force winds amid hail and lightening battling in what was left if my mind with images of things/people I love most and visions of those things I have been unable to accomplish in life. Things on the deepest level of my consciousness I most long for, but for whatever reason have been unable to realize.
Ironic. One could say I have rarely been both less like myself and more like myself at the exact same time.
The storms passed, eventually, as storms do. I lived. This house survived. (Though these days I consider that more a matter of chance than anything else, and I want to move before next summer. To anywhere that has a basement, and some sense of solid structure. I think Mom also desires this now.) But the nightmarish quality did not move out to sea along with this horrendous storm chain.
The following morning, Saturday, my mother and I made our to the house we are watching for a month. (After being nearly killed by people on the highway who actually thought it was funny to cut us off and run us off of the road.) The vision of the jagged, splintered, pile of wood with the gaping hole that took up two thirds of what used to be the barn looming in the distance in front of us as we rolled down the long gravel driveway is one I will not soon forget. Ditto for the pieces of debris from same, some as big as the car I was driving, laying scattered all over the property, sometimes half a mile away from the source.
The house, somehow, was not damaged. Neither were the bales of hay sitting 20 feet away from the barn.
The weather as we surveyed the damaged was as it had been for days and as it has been each of the five days since: stifling hot. But it was sunny and clear. So it was at least a pretty day to look at as we counted barn doors, metal roof sections crumpled like paper in a trash can, huge planks embedded into the ground, and other detritus that was once this family’s barn. All the while, there was an odd silence over the property. Not that the farm is usually noisy, but it was as though it were knocked unconscious, and for all I know it was. Between that deadened soundscape that seemed to swallow up the very words my mother and I spoke, the debris and the lack of power, it had the feeling of an apocalypse scene.
So all of Saturday was unnerving, even though there was no storm activity. Thankfully power was restored to the farmhouse within 30 minutes of our arrival, and we stayed there for four nights until our own power was restored.
But this involved breaking my routine, which of course I hate. I don’t have a 9 to 5 right now, as I try to build this damn freelancing thing. So it’s me, me, and me at “work” each day. And with no internet at the farm and no power at home this made much of what I do during a normal day impossible.
Then there are the orientation problems; the TV compared to where the beds are, where one can go for quiet, the places one can take a walk, etc. Little of what I required to feel grounded was available for those four days. I got along okay, but I had this sense of a borrowed life, or of being half in this dimension and half in another. Only rehearsing my lines for Richard III and going to my writers salon on Monday give me anything resembling a sense of normalcy.
I could have been doing more to attempt some degree of my regular routine, I guess. I had my notebooks into which I could have been outlining blog posts or ideas for my fiction. I could have gotten up at dawn in time to get to the library “in town”, about 30 minutes away, to see if I could pick up their wi-fi. I suppose any number of a dozen actions could have been taken that were not. Because right or wrong, logical or not I couldn’t get it together to do most of what I normally do. By the second day this was not out of fear, but out of, as I said, disorientation.
Yet between the strange setting, the disconnect from the world of information, (especially at night), the lingering creepiness of sleeping about 50 yards from a structure that had exploded only days before, and the legitimate fear of my own demise on Friday evening, an embryonic concept entered into my consciousness. It had several parts.
Part One: Get on with it. I’ m probably going to fail in most of what I attempt to do in life, because, to be frank about it, that has been the case so far. I say that sans bitterness. It is just a statistical truth. But whereas I am often obsessed with that truth, after the last few days I almost feel the need to go out and fail spectacularly, because one day I could be swept away in a fucking storm, literally or symbolically.
When one is facing the biggest chain of storms in twenty years knocking quite literally at the front door, and visions of theatre are anywhere near one’s conscious thoughts, that probably means something. Get on with it, or get the hell out. Even if the rest of the world thinks you are eccentric or even insane. Because hell, you may be. Yet should it matter? To me, it almost doesn’t anymore. Whether I am crazy, or merely percieved as such, it is almost a liberating notion.
Part Two: Do a little of something you are about, wherever you are. Whatever your circumstances. No power, no internet, living like a refugee for a week? Take some small aspects of what you are and what you do with you. I don’t mean your career, I mean the things you create or engage in to feel human.
Like I said, I could and should have been outlining future writings down on paper when I had no internet or computer. I didn’t. That would have helped ground me, as reviewing my lines for the play eventually did. (As well as reciting other random Shakespeare at the top of my lungs into the echoing spaces of the old farm house. Cool acoustic effect, actually.) If you’re an artist stuck somewhere without your easel and all else fails, draw in the dirt with a stick until things are back to “normal”. Always have a football in the trunk of your car if you play. Take a sad song and make it better.
For many of you I am sure these concepts are nothing new. They are certainly not new to the world at large. And to tell you the truth they are not new to me. I have been aware of such realities, advice, and concepts for quite some time now. It just tends to get lost in the garden of weeds at times. Different things have reminded me of such things over my life, but none so unnerving as this week.
Will i be able to hold on to this approach longer this time? Will it take? After such a scary, disorienting, depressing and chaotic week will i finally be able to fully implement that about which I write in this post? I won’t claim to know for certain. I can assure you however that both the brevity and the frequent absurdity of our lives has been brought more to the forefront of my mind in the last few days than it has been in quite sometime. I gather certain things will even out as I return to the mundane of the everyday. (As much as I ever have possessed “everyday”.) Yet my instinct tells me that a bigger portion of my time will now be spent embracing my own insanity in an insane world.
I suppose you will have to stay tuned to see just what exactly the results of that will be. As will I.
Fan Fiction
Yesterday afternoon, after about six weeks of writing, including one major overhaul that was tiring, and a week or so of editing and formatting, I submitted a story to the 2012 Winkie Con Oz Fiction contest. I could have probably edited it for another month and never felt like it was quite ready. But, that is common for writers.
Not so common for me is writing fan fiction, which this is. Fan fiction being exactly what it sounds like-fiction taking place in worlds and/or involving characters from the work of someone else. It has been popular for decades, but like many “quasi-underground” endeavors the internet has increased its reach and impact considerably.
This recent piece in the Wall Street Journal does a better job than I could of exploring the history and scope of fan fiction, as well as providing some good links to fan fiction sites. Give it a read when you get the chance.
Here at TyUnglebower.com today I wanted to share some of my thoughts about this concept, seeing as how I have now in some ways officially embraced it.
Not that this Oz story was my very first venture into fan fiction. Years ago I was recruited by a friend, who’s mother owned a bookstore at the time, to write two brief skits involving the Harry Potter characters. She and her friends performed them during the crowded release of I believe the 5th book. I wasn’t able to attend, but I am told it went rather well.
Though I have contributed these “works” to the collection of fan fiction that seems to cover a third of the internet’s surface, I remain of two minds on it, somewhat.
On the one hand, the writer in me says that we should always strive to create our own worlds, characters, and plots. That it is our responsibility to do the extra work to be original in our creations. That perhaps relying on someone else’s imagination is a cheat, whether or not the characters are legally in the public domain.
Then another part of me says that just about anything ever written, including Harry Potter and other currently popular titles borrows aspects of previously published works. There is a difference between borrowing a concept and borrowing a character, name and all. This I will grant you. Still, all good stories share certain aspects, settings, time frames, events, etc. I don’t believe that there are only seven basic stories, but I do believe that most stories have certain things in common with stories that came before them.
So when I consider it that way, I soften a bit. After all, if exploring a story with someone else’s characters and settings helps to engage a would-be writer’s imagination, it is difficult for me as a creative type to speak out against it. Fan fiction may not be the most creative, but it could spawn the most creative writing. And if story telling, as opposed to world building is our goal as writers, fan fiction is a valuable exercise.
As far as the intellectual property argument for things not yet in the public domain, again I am of two minds.
I understand wanting to protect the characters and settings one has slaved so hard over. To keep your “children” out of the hands of those that don’t understand them and who had no part in their creation. And if someone else is turning a profit on characters I created, I do want that to stop. However if someone wants to write a 50 page story about characters I created, and posts it to a fan fiction site, why should I be bothered? If they are making no money from it, should it anger me? Truly I see why it bothers some, but I can’t quite get worked up about it.
And if 300,000 people end up reading it? I consider that in part to be a testament to the interest people have for characters I created.
It can get tricky though, deciding just how much attention one deserves for moving my creations around in their own words. And perhaps when I am a well known author my views will change. Yet my instinct is that they will not, so long as nobody else makes any money from them, and so long as the world understands that I, and not fans, dictate the canon.
A few weeks ago someone in my writing group described fan fiction as “playing around in someone else’s sandbox for a while.” I think that’s an apt description. And while I wouldn’t want to spend all of my time in someone else’s sandbox, as a writer sometimes I just want to play around. And if I am not willing to play, or let others play with my toys sometimes, am I not doing a disservice to writing as a whole?
Your take on fan fiction?
Half-Christmas
Today is June 25. “Half-Christmas” to some fun loving types, myself included. That is to say that today, Christmas Day was six months ago, as well as being six months from now. (Though with it being a Leap Year this year the concept is one day off, technically.) Starting tomorrow, this Christmas will be closer than last Christmas.
I’ve talked about this day before, both on my blogs and on Twitter. Sometimes I will put on one of my Christmas records on this day, or watch old Christmas home movies. That sort of thing.
Removing a concept from its natural habitat can sometimes bring it into greater focus. You expect to hear Christmas music at Christmas time. And for those who celebrate the season, the carols and such serve a wonderful purpose; they enhance the season and put us in the right frame of mind for same. Yet some aspect of them can be lost amid the ocean of holiday trappings. Like a hose turned to full blast inside a swimming pool. You can’t see the water coming out because it is already surrounded by water. To see it, you have to remove it from the pool.
So when we listen to Christmas music on the day that is furthest on the calendar from Christmas Day, we can perhaps more appreciate the songs, stories and movies for what they are at their core. They don’t blend in with the surroundings, but stick out prominently. They take on a degree of novelty for us. And while “Silent Night” is just as ultra-familiar to us in June as it is in December, it actually takes on a small degree of novelty, or even newness when played in June. And if we take it to heart, that novelty we discover can be revisited during the actual season.
You may have deduced by now that this post is not just about Christmas songs in June. The overall point I am making can apply to creative acts and choices we make each day. We can turn something on its ear and see how it looks from a different angle. We can shine a different light on it. Look at it from a few paces away. Instead of listening to a Christmas album in June, perhaps you have dessert first, and then your entree. If your kids have assigned chores, maybe for a few days you have them switch chores. Read your favorite book again in a room of the house you never sit in, and see if it changes how the book makes you feel.
It doesn’t have to be complex. Sticking a CD in the player isn’t difficult, after all. It just needs to take the familiar, the everyday, that which in life has become perhaps a bit monotonous, and tweak it somehow so that it is novel again. Whatever you need to do on occasion to inject meaning into something that may have lost all meaning for you recently. Life is too short to allow everything to become mundane.
So, Merry Christmas to all.
What are some easy ways you can mix things up a bit?
Writing Update
Today I wanted to share with my readers a brief update on my writing projects and plans. I like to keep people in the loop about what I’m doing, just to show that I don’t just talk about writing, but actually do it.
To begin with, the third draft of my light-fantasy novel Flowers for Dionysus is currently in the hands of several test readers. I finished the draft in mid-May. It is probably the last draft that will deal mostly with structural issues, such as chapters and scene sequences. The next revision, (which I plan to begin no later than the end of August, and have finished by Christmas time) will begin to focus on word choice. On some of the poetic aspects of any given scene. This isn’t literary fiction, and some of that consideration has been present throughout the drafting process, as I always like to use words that sound good. Yet in the upcoming 4th draft it will probably be a central focus.
I am in the final revisions of a short story I will be submitting to a contest at the end of the month. Sponsored by the annual Winkie-Con, the story must take place in the land of Oz, in any of its incarnations. Any tone is accepted, so long as it is less than 10,000 words. My first draft was just over that amount, but the subsequent revisions have knocked off at least 2,000 words, and I can probably excise even more, though with the deadline approaching I won’t have many more revisions left.
I’d say it’s about 80% of the way towards its final submission form. It’s sort of a darker, but not bleak take on some smaller aspects mentioned in passing in the Oz books. I can’t say more, nor can I print it here until the contest is over. (As publication in a blog is grounds for disqualification.) First prize is 100 dollars. Whether I win or not, it has been a great exercise for me. I tend to do somewhat better with a few perimeters within which to tell a story. When all is said and done, I will post the entire story here to be read. Probably in chunks, as it is on the long side for a blog post.
Also, I am considering this online fiction journal’s call for submissions. No prize per se, but publication in their special issue. They are looking for stories, (also 10,000 words or less), pertaining to or set during an apocalypse, or in a world after same. I have no clear cut ideas for this one, and I may not participate. It is due sometime in August, which gives me a decent amount of time to come up with something, and write it if I so chose. About as much time as I had for the Oz story. (Though with that one I had a world already built for me.) I have some very broad notions of what I might do with this, if anything. Should I decide to go for it, I will let you all know.
In the non-fiction world, I have a piece that will appear in the summer issue of FiND iT FREDERiCK Magazine. I shouldn’t say much about that, as the magazine is not out yet. But as I have said here on the blog before, I have contributed to that publication several times over the last few years. I will link to the article directly when it comes out in the online edition.
I’ll also mention that I continue to write a twice-monthly column for Showbizradio.com about acting. I have been doing that for a few years. I have some thinking to do about that one these days.
I hope to get some local freelance writing work from some arts organizations. I have not contacted any of them yet, but plan to in the near future, once I tailor a “pitch” or offer of service to each of them. I do enjoy writing for and about the arts.
On that note, if you haven’t already, go subscribe to my other blog, please. Always Off Book has been a place for me to record my adventures, thoughts and concerns about acting for the last six years or so. I muse on my characters, relay highs and lows of any given performance, and just talk about what it’s like to be in a show. If you enjoy my writing here, or if you just enjoy theatre, do drop in and tell me what you think.
So that is the gist of what this writer is up to, and plans to be up to for the near future.
What are all of you up to, lately? What are you plans for say, the next three months?
Ty Unglebower 