Inspiration in a Hospital?
Not everyone that goes into a hospital is in grave danger, of course. Good things happens in hospitals too. Yet that doesn’t mean anyone particularly enjoys being a patient. Or waiting for a patient. Yet I found myself in that situation yesterday for several hours as a family member had an outpatient procedure performed.
Still, since I did have to wait there for a while, I had to point out that hospitals are excellent people-watching places. Always busy, with so many levels of staff for different departments moving in and out all of the time. Plus patients or others like me, waiting for patients. All sorts of potential questions about who every one is, what they are doing next, or what they just finished doing. It gets the writer an actor in me to thinking a bit.
And, as much as we try to avoid thinking dark things about hospitals, it cannot be denied that at times they can be dramatic places, with a sense of urgency to their proceedings. It just so happens that nothing urgent or dramatic occurred in the section i was waiting in yesterday, but somewhere in the building somebody was rushing to do something, no doubt. There is a certain energy in a hospital, even in the waiting areas, as a result of so many human stories and motivations descending into one small space.
I’m not suggesting that a writer go wait in a hospital just to get material. That would be macabre. But if you should find yourself in a hospital under a non-emergency or less than severe circumstance, take some time to think about just how much is going on within the building, and how important each of those things is. Life is preserved and improved there every moment, and you’ll see probably dozens of people going about that very important work every few minutes you’re in a waiting room. Might as well make the most of being there and consider that aspect of the experience, if you have nothing else to do for a few hours.
The Fear of Shelving
Last night is as close as I have come to shelving my current novel in progress. It may yet come to that.
To begin with I started thinking that if I keep asking the question about continuing with this story at this time, that’s probably a strong indication that I shouldn’t continue. For more than a year I have, every few months, revisited the idea of putting this novel on ice. How many times does one think about doing such a thing before actually doing it?
Plus, I have written in this long project more sporadically than any other. I wrote the first draft of a stage play last year, and the lion’s share of a one man show. Flower to Dionysus my “first” novel will be available for purchase later this year, after I go through the final proof read. Getting to this place with that novel has been a slow but steady climb over a few years.
For straight up fun, two years ago I finished an entire mystery novel within within Nanowrimo.
In each of those cases their were struggles. There were days, or even stretches of several days during which I didn’t feel like working on the project. Sometimes I didn’t. But then I’d get back to it. I’d push my way into the momentum of writing again. The desire to have any given story told, available some day to readers, got me going through the dry spots. Discipline won out in each of the examples I gave above, as well as countless others in regarding shorter fiction and non-fiction projects.
Yet I stop for working on this novel for extending periods of time.
My initial reaction is that I am just being lazy or lacking discipline. Yet as I have demonstrated in this post, there have been all kinds of projects, even of similar length, through which I have persevered. I’ve even been looking forward to starting the next draft of the play soon. And I will be performing the one-man show next month. Discipline, it would appear, is not my issue. Motivation is not, in and of itself my issue.
So, the natural consideration lately is that the project itself is an issue.
Which is odd, because I still like the overall concept of this novel. I believe in the theme or message I wanted it to deliver. The characters work for me. And yet, something is just not coming together to spark the momentum I eventually found with other long or work intensive projects. To be frank, I’m tired of seeing myself vacillate on this project. I don’t like the attitude or reputation I project, either to the world or to myself with all of the reboots and deadlines and second chances and breaks I take with this novel. I’m better writer than that. Maybe not brilliant or prolific, but better than my behavior with this novel indicates.
If one counts all novel length pieces I have written in my life, including those I had no intention of sharing with anyone, this stalled novel is somewhere around number four. However, it is only the second I ever conceived specifically to be shared with readers some day. Every writer has to shelf something at some point in time, even longer projects. I guess it just smacks of absurd to be thinking about shelving only my second “fully-intended” novel.
Then there is the fact that I have no novel-length narrative in cue to begin should I shelve this one. I have only the faintest whisps of ghosts of potential ideas for Novels Three or Four, and they all lie far off in the fog of my stored imagination. Formless, aimless, and not even capable of summary outside of my mind. If I shelved Novel Two now, I’d be without a novel-length project. (Though I would be working on my play.)
In the end, however, neither being my second fully-intended novel, nor having no other novel in the pipeline are solid reasons for keep this project off the shelf. I know it. It just isn’t easy to accept.
My official list of goals for 2015 gives me the entire year to finish a draft of Novel Two, but I don’t know if that’s the barometer I should stick with. That could allow me to put this whole decision off even longer. I think a mini-Nano sort of thing is in order. Say two solid weeks of daily writing in that project specifically in an effort to reach a word count. If the word count or more enthusiasm fail to materialize, that really should be that.
Maybe.
One might have to be a writer to truly understand that choosing not to write can be just and draining as actually writing.
Yes, Out, No In, On and On
A few weeks ago I was at a chain restaurant. I was seated near the swinging double doors to the kitchen. From my angle I could only see one of them at first. Someone had posted the word “NO” on one of the doors with mail box letters. If I had to guess, I’d say it was done in haste, given how crooked they were. People only ever came out of that door; obviously “NO” meant to not enter through that side. It was probably applied by a weary manager one night the moment he realized, “IN” and “OUT” were not specifically enough messages, thus calling many a broken dish or possibly nose.
I can see some of the confusion that might have happened among the staff with “IN” or “OUT” used instead. “Does it mean ‘IN’ to the kitchen? Or people are coming ‘IN’ so watch out?”
“NO” makes the point. Or as some of my friends would say, “No…just no.”
Without being obvious about it, I got up at one point to get a better view of the other door. As expected, “YES” was applied here. I thought of how yin-yang the entire thing was. How when there is a “NO” somewhere, a “YES” can usually be found if one looks hard enough.
I still wasn’t satisfied, though. Though to most, what lie on the other side of each door would have been obvious, I had to see it myself. It required sustained attention for a few minutes, and an enthusiastic exit by one of the wait staff, but sure enough, on the other side of the “NO” door itself was in fact a “YES.” Naturally on the kitchen side of the “YES” door was affixed the word “NO.”
No we are getting beyond yin-yang and into a bit of Zen or existentialism perhaps. Not only is there a “YES” in life near the “NO” if we look, the “YES” is fact IS the “NO” if viewed from a particular angle. In the kitchen, what is “Yes” is to me as a customer the “NO” door. And the other way around.
Perspective and purpose. One thing defined not just in multiple ways, but as its polar opposite, when order and safety require it.
In the swinging doors in the restaurant of existence, we may all just be servers moving constantly between the kitchen and the dining room. Our goal at the moment, and our position relative to everything else determined if the door in front of us is a “YES” or a “NO.”
And passing through either one causes ripples. Pass through the wrong one, and potential disaster. Pass through the correct one and it continues to swing back and forth for quite a while after we’ve done so. Dancing through all of the yes’s and no’s in our life, we leave something in our wake, at least for a while.
And if we stand there between “YES” and “NO” and just wait, we’re in the way, and will probably before long be knocked flat on our asses.
I Don’t Rely on an Unreliable Narrator
I don’t know about this “unreliable narrator” thing.
It’s not illegitimate. This is a matter of my tastes as a writer and reader. I’m not so set in my ways that I’ll declare my tastes will never change. That being said, so far in my writing and reading life, my tastes run quite counter to the unreliable narrator. There are several reasons for this.
To begin with, it seems a bit too much like a gimmick. Something injected into a book to buy some extra suspense. The words themselves can remain terrific writing, but the story to me seems somewhat crutched when we know you can’t believe a thing the narrator is saying. As with all such devices, expert use of the reliable narrator exists, and proves me wrong somewhere, I’m sure. Yet on the whole, it seems like something that one could overdose on with ease. Almost like the “it was all a dream!” ending that should never be employed anymore. Right now I tend to think that there is little difference between that and, “it was all a lie!”
Yet there are times when the unreliable narrator self-identifies as such, Holden Caulfield being the most often cited example. That’s a bit different, since he is a first person narrator, and everything first person is bound to be in the very least skewed in some sense. Yet if the first thing I get from a first-person narrator is, “I’m full of shit,” I am far less interested in hearing their side of anything, even their own story. Once more, as with any concept, if the word choice is exquisite, such a read would be worth the time for the poetry of the language in some cases, but for me that’s a high standard to meet.
In my head I can hear some of you reminding me that not all unreliable narrators intend to deceive. The character may be limited in some way, or under duress. That much is true, but even so the author is in fact attempting deception by use of such a “damaged goods” narrator. Surprises I don’t mind. In fact if a fiction can pull off surprising me without pissing me off, I’m quite happy. But wholesale deception is not a prerequisite to surprise in this case.
Anti-hero protagonists are fine. I’ve written a few myself. Some of them are even the narrators of my fiction. In the right hands, an amoral, or even immoral narrator could be fascinating, (more so if it’s in first-person.) Yet when I sit down to read a story, I want to know I’m getting the story, or at least a reasonable angle on said story. If the narrator is a killer, I want to at least know his story, and not something he made up just to bullshit me. If I’m reading the novel in the first place, that’s my willing entrance into a fiction. The vehicle by which this story is delivered to me need not be shiny, new, and sugar coated. There can by cracks in the windshield, and rust on the roof. It can reek of cigarette smoke or rattle a bit when it goes over 55 miles per hour. But I want to at least know it has enough gas and won’t fall apart on me while I take the elective journey that is reading a novel or story.
Now, let’s not be obtuse. Any perspective a character has, whether they are the narrator or not, will have a small sampling of inaccuracy at least. As in real life, if five normal characters in fiction witness something, there will be small, but forgivable variations in their stories, even if all of them are honest. Different perceptions, different memories and ways of revealing information. That’s human life. When you split that many hairs, you can say that everyone is unreliable. However, I think most will agree that there is a considerable difference between the normal divergence of interpretation between healthy people, and specific intention to hide information or deceive, or to be too damaged to know what one is talking about. The former allows us as people to muddle through in good shape in life. The latter constructs a world wherein we never trust anyone for any length of time about anything. The same is true in fiction, and I prefer the former.
Actually, in most of my own fiction I try to keep the narrator out of the way as much as possible. I take an over-the-shoulder approach about 80 per cent of the time, and that makes the unreliable narrator a non-issue for the most part. I want a reader to know what is happening as it happens, and be relatively secure that what they see is what they get. If I want to surprise or shock, my ideal is to do so through action or revelation inside a character’s mind, not by means of a narrator you cannot trust.
What do you think of the unreliable narrator? Any suggestions as to stories or novels that do it well, and might change my mind on the issue?
The Essays are Coming! The Essays are Coming!
I’ll be posting more essays on the blog this year. I don’t mean the type you wrote on a novel in sophomore English, though. What kind do I mean?
Well, to be honest, I don’t have a strict definition or subject perimeter for these pieces. Some will be philosophical, probably. Some will be spiritual. There will be some on everyday life and observations. Perhaps even some political ones, here and there. If the mood strikes me, there might even be one that leans toward the academic, (but don’t hold your breath on that one.)
The only thing I can say about them is that they will at times be beyond the usual fair offered here on the blog, and that they will be longer than most of my posts. I’ll probably think of some cute or fancy name for such posts, so you can know ahead of time what you’re getting into.
Why do this? Other than this being my website to do with what I please, that is. Essays are not the way to fame or even employment these days, except in rare circumstances. The collective attention span in our society has shortened, and long form writing, (or at least longER form, in comparison to my other stuff) may be a fading endeavor, especially online. Yet as a writer, not to mention someone who thinks and over-thinks as often as I do, I feel the need at times for a more in depth expression of something on my mind. A more lengthy exploration of a topic or question or mystery or experience than a single tweet, Facebook status or regular blog post will allow. And though I doubt these types of posts will be my most popular among readers, they will at least be available for reading. This allows for a certain type of creativity that writing for myself and storing it on a hard drive doesn’t allow.
This isn’t new for my blog, either. I have at certain times posted longer pieces. My September 11th story is one example. (And I consider that some of my finest work of the last few years.) And certainly last years Open Letter Continuum contained some longer, more personal pieces. Just last month I wrote about my experience in a middle school Christmas chorus. That post, in fact, was sort of the impetus of this idea. Something I wrote about for the holidays for pure enjoyment got me to thinking how many other things I could write about in that fashion. So, the idea was born, or at least, formalized.
I’m thinking there will be about one or two such posts a month, though I don’t want to promise anything. Could be less or more, depending on what strikes me at any given time. And again, this is not a project with a specific end or timetable. It’s just an occasional aspect of this blog being made into a more regular one.
I’ll probably post most of these on Thursdays, however. Thursdays feel like an essay day. I’m not sure why. Maybe that’s a good topic for a future essay…
In any event, I hope at least some of you that enjoy my introvert and writing oriented posts will stop by and take a little extra time to read some of these essays as the come along. I look forward to writing them without fanfare, now that I’ve informed my readers of this intention.
Ty Unglebower 