From my fiction workshop days; prompts; encouragement & some gorgeous prose

PROMPTS FOR SAT., AUG 13: 1)  THINK OF SOMEONE WITH WHOM YOU PARTED W/ UNRESOLVED ISSUES; NOW IMAGINE SEEING THEM 15 YEARS LATER.  2) 2 PEOPLE WAITING AT THE MTA LOST & FOUND, BOTH HAVING LOST SOMETHING  (MY SELF-ESTEEM...?)

RE: Proust's The Sweet Cheat Gone:

If I were the translator, I would take this sentence:

"And with each of my actions, even the most trivial, since they had all been steeped before in the blissful atmosphere which was Albertine's presence, I was obliged in turn, with a fresh expenditure of energy, with the same grief, to begin again the apprenticeship of separation."

And, so as to better follow, turn it into this:

"And with each of my actions (even the most trivial, since they had all been steeped before in the blissful atmosphere which was Albertine's presence), I was obliged in turn -- with a fresh expenditure of energy, with the same grief -- to begin again the apprenticeship of separation."

Because how brilliant is that, "the apprenticeship of separation"?  How awful would it be for that particular phrase to be lost because the reader's ability to concentrate had been exhausted by not one, but four, dense digressions!

PROUST RULES!
(And you can tell him I said so...)

 'Telling someone we will try is like wanting approval for something we have no intention of doing.' 
(So Yoda was channeling Proust!)

Any inspiration is good inspiration -- don't feel the need to wait, either. I've always found that I feel more creative/inspired/happy to write at a particular time of day (for me both early in the morning and late at night), & if you try to make it a routine, your psyche begins to work with you. Even if you only sit and re-read what you've done, until your work and its prose has soaked into your bones, you'll find that ideas for both original stuff and rewrites will spontaneously appear -- but you do have to keep thinking about it. And you don't need to wait for me or any other editor to do it, either. Go for it! Decide that this book is gonna be one solid thing that you did and did well -- by which I mean, did to the absolute best of your ability, so that whenever you re-read it you think yup, that's what I meant, and I like how I said it. Any time you have a slight sense of disappointment, or find yourself mentally explaining things to imaginary readers, that's when you have to sit down and change it. And once you've managed to do that, change a couple things for the better, or best, then your confidence increases that you can, and more importantly, WILL be able to do that throughout, until you're completely satisfied. There is no feeling like it, trust me. It nourishes and sustains me, all the time. I have my 3 books stacked up & anytime I pick one of them up and leaf through it I think this is good. James Salter was right when he said 'Kris, nothing matters but the writing. Everything else falls away."

Here's a couple pieces from a couple different novels with very different voices that I hope will inspire you:

"...we're from Oakland. And Oakland builds quality. Folks who creep but don't crawl. Melt down but don't vaporize. I move around -- Oakland, anyway. So I know the Bay Area creates righteous people who deal with splendor and sting, sham and certainty, gray velvet dog and lemon-glass sunshine -- all while just getting from Point A to Point B." -- Danyel Smith, from More Like Wrestling.

From The More I Owe You, by Michael Sledge, re Elizabeth Bishop:

"Elizabeth began to wonder at her failure of passion for her own work.  Poetry, when she was young, had seemed to be an open gate into the most lush of landscapes, as lush as that through which they were traveling now; nothing else had compared to the excitement of discovering her growing powers or the reaches of her own imagination.  Somehow, that had changed.  Poetry had used her up. It had left her desiccated.  She'd dedicated her entire adult life to the craft of writing, and yet even with the praise she'd received, the admiration of a number of people she herself had long admired, and the envy of a handful of others, it had given so little back, even less in times of real need.  It was like indentured servitude --or no, like faith in some particularly dry, ascetic, self-castigating religious sect.  The reward lay in the devotion itself.  It did not relieve her of her thirst."

ASKING

I'm still terrible at figuring out if the 'followers' are also 'readers,' and why I cannot pull comments up.  Nonetheless, I would like to ask:

in general, which do you prefer?

My fave lines from many novels, or the freewheeling God-knows-what of me own mind?

Mostly reading, Baxter & Moran

From Charles Baxter's:

There's Something I Want You to Do:

     'The gods laughed easily in the late afternoon, watching human futility fold up for the day.  All poetry, good or bad, made the gods laugh.  To the gods, poems were sour useless editorials, like bitchy letters to Santa.'

     Character in this story is a translator, staying in Italy for a while but working with 'the Bortho-Ugaric dialect.'  As it is a small town, when she goes to buy cigs from the tobacconist, he notes she does not smoke, then says, 'Things are not translating?  Sometimes they do not.  Sometimes they stubbornly stay what they are.  I am sorry.'
(Ain't dat de truth...!)

     Later, coming back to the villa where her son & his bossy girlfriend are waiting, rosy post-sex, 'beautiful and radiant,' she thinks:  'This world was paradise, after all, when your son and his girlfriend, healthy and in love with each other, cook dinner for you inside a cool dark Italian villa, and you could worry all day about a line of poetry that you couldn't translate properly, and you could be annoyed by simpleton American tourists.  To be bothered by trivialities was sheer heaven.'

--from Forbearance

     'He took another sip of his drink as he fought off soul-nausea and the urge to beg.  He would not tell Nan how much he had loved her, the size and mature intensity of that love, its ability to give his life meaning.  A man does not beg to be taken back, he reminded himself.  Begging qualifies as the primary criterion for admission to loserdom, that territory inhabited by platoons of nice vanilla guys who belong in civilized places like Denmark and Sweden, not here in the U.S., where they are held in contempt and trampled.'

     'As the bar grew noisier, Benny and Nana gazed at each other without tenderness, in the hard labor of separation.  He felt the first wellsprings of hatred – liberating, a breeze from the soul's window.  You have to hate them first if you're going to break up with them.  Gathering himself, he nodded at her, stood up with what he hoped was quiet dignity, and left her with the bar bill.'

(You GO, dude!)

     'By morning, he had acquired an atom-smashing headache.  His brain was a particle accelerator, throwing off broken pieces of thought.'

(oh do I know those!)
Baxter has never failed to write riveting, real, deeply human stories; if you can't relate, you need to start living!

From How to Build a Girl, by Caitlin Moran:

     A teenage (ever-nastier-cuz-so-much-(sl)eas(z)ier) music critic (fr'real in real life, so who knows re book, except how much a true enthusiast she is re sex; God I love that about her!):

     'The music where I DO find myself in the songs, all written by sexy, clever, angry freaks.  1992 is full of them.'  Ie, The Manic Street Preachers; Suede; Marc Bolan and David Bowie, laying 'a cluch of dragon eggs in 1973, and they've just begun to hatch.

     'And, most dazzlingly of all, the girly-girls themselves.  Women.

     'For there's a storm in America, and the rain has now blown in over here, just in time for me:  Riot Grrrl.  A bunch of women like some League of Extraordinary Gentlewomen – writing fanzines, putting on female-only gigs, hanging out with each other, trying to make a space in the crowded, swampy jungle of rock that is for women alone.

     'They are all warriors, dressed in petticoats and sturdy boots – Kathleen Hanna from Bikini Kill paid for her guitar by stripping; Courtney Love punches out people who abuse her.

     'Courtney Love punched K Hanna too, but this is the way of the rock star – let us not forget Charlie Watts punching Mick Jagger after Jagger called him 'my drummer.' 

     'You're MY SINGER,' Watts snarled, before adjusting his cuffs, and walking away.  Sometimes, in the jungle, you fight each other.  The jungle is hot, and you get angry.'

     'The songs they write are like drunken conversations with friends, in pubs, at the point just before you start dancing on the tables.  'Rebel Grrl' by Bikini Kill has K Hanna starting to describe a proud, odd woman as if she hates her, but then explains that this girl is her hero, and she wants to fuck her.'

Basta

The Children of Men, by PD James.

            All those Parisian cartooners shot dead this week.

            How many more species went extinct today?

            Why don't we hear about them, see their pix, hear about their lack as an impact on the environment?

            Wouldn't THAT be a pretty fucking important – SITE?

            Call NRDC!

Other Things We Didn't Keep Track Of:

     Civilians (and not just women and children, either)

     Animals

     Habitats

     Housing

     The Middle Class

     Health Care

     Sea Animals

     Big Banks with Big Bail-Outs and No Jail Time!

     Living wages

            We destroyed in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Iraq (two times!  Say it Fugees' style:  "two times!"); Afghanistan (poor damned Afghan Whigistan -- pounded in the so-called 'Cold' War (gangbanger once asked me, Ever been shot?  when I shook my head, he said, 'It burns.')

            And changed what. 

            What did we change?

            Well with the last two (three if you count Iraq, twice, which you should), we helped the fundamentalist martyrs recruit a lotta young men,  their own fathers training their sons to kill us or die trying.  We got China to hold us entire in just a single of its 8-pocket worker overalls. We got a ton more, and better, heroin, from the now-in-full-bloom poppy fields (oh let us NOT disregard the huge bizness/economies, with secret labs and young interns hired for outrageous rates for just six, eight, maybe a year, maybe five, to make sure the product is pure -- & oh God do we got lotsa mostly men with PTSD who were told to kill total strangers, but if some asshole stalks and rapes his wife, and he does something about that, well, hey!  That's murder!  Civilization is not about taking the law into your own hands!

            THAT'S RIGHT, USA.

            IT'S NOT.

            But now that Syria and Ukraine are having the real freedom battles, where the fuck are we?

            Where were we in Tibet?  Where were we in Chechnya?

            (Oh please that's so easy even my favorite three-year-old Ra could answer that!  Bowing and scraping to keep our loan interests low!)

            His Holiness:  A Nobel Peace Prize Winner not welcome at the White House.

            Have I EVER been prouder!

            And then there's the assassination of enemies (as we paid Pakistan BILLIONS per month to keep a lookout for Bin Laden, they sheltered him completely – I mean shit with that kinda pay day?  Who wouldn't sign on the corruption dotted line??) , 'assassinations' (wait, how is that different than murder?  Cause the government did it?) then used as occasions for touchdown victory dances.  Which Obama practically did.  It was his big I'M NOT A WUSS day, even if I just really want everyone to get along!

            And yeah, that didn't create a hundred thousand new terrorist cells – probably sprouted ISIS.

            Named after a goddess.

            Shame on you motherfuckers, so scared you're gonna get a hard-on looking at a woman's face you shroud them as if they're dead and refuse to let them learn to read.  Or, for that matter, go to the hospital with acute appendicitis, or even just to the store for some milk for their babies without a male chaperone.  Because, hey, if they do…here comes the stone age!

            (By which I mean, killing with stones.  Everyone, now, look around!  Grab what's handy, or haul your own!  Come on now, this is community in action!  Everybody Wang Chung tonight!)

            Fanaticism.

            Fans.

            Fans are only good for cooling you down.

            This hetting everyone up – well I guess it goes along with global warming.  Never thought of that before…we're just mimicking the planet's own headlong rush to the valleys of hell, right?

            Why shouldn't we?  This is where we live, animals among other animals, who we seem to have sworn to kill in great, huge, mind-bogglingly enormous masses.

            OKAY.

            Basta!!

            Basta.

            basta.

Texting As a New Dialect

RE TEXTING AS NEW DIALECT:

            Texting changing the face of the language. (I abbrev w the besta them), but God I love the voluptuousness of words in full.  Voluptuous being a great eg of onomatopeia. 

            Bette Midler on the radio, on Billie and Simone and TLC, too, along with Fats Waller.   'What a world,' she says. 'I shake my head all day.'

            TY minor &/or major gods/goddesses for:

            Libraries and radio,  music and dancing, brilliant comrades & crackling dialogue,  sometimes even in real life --

            For sweet, long kisses that are their own vocabulary, for the sudden bolt of recognition when you meet some seemingly unassuming human being, and realize:  (thank you, INXS)

            you're one a my.

            …Tribe!

            Lookit that.  Dam 'puter capped that last word.  Where was the period prompting that?  Do not like being re-styled by some prim English teacher from app. days yore stuck in the system. 

            TESTING TESTING TESTING:

            Go fuck yourself.

            OK well.  At least it didn't change it to duck yourself.

           

            Lately, saying the words as I type them.  Hear 'em in my head anyway.  But still; c'est etrange.  Estrange.  Estrangement.  THERE'S a word for ya.

            Whoever y'are.

            Is this a blog?

            I'm thinking yes.

            If so, surely it should end anytime now.

            Any time.

            Now.

My Education, by Susan Choi

From Susan Choi’s:

My Education:

     ‘At the time, I believed the least relevant factor of all was that we were both women.  Of course this was the first fact that anyone saw, but for us it felt last.  It failed to register, at least with me.  My adoration of her was so unto itself it could refer outward, to other affairs between women or even between human beings.  It was its own totality, bottomless and consuming, a font of impossible pleasure that from the start also bore down on me like a drill until at last it accomplished a permanent perforation.  And yet, irrelevant as I thought gender was to our sex, and to all the disasters it wrought, I now see that the form our love took was fundamentally girlish. … the way I loved, and the way she loved me…we might as well have been sylphs capering through the glade, crowned with daisy tiaras and trailing lace rags. … we wept a great deal, and loudly; and endured our orgasms like shipwreck survivors with hoarse shrieks of actual fear.’

(Um...WOW).

‘Love bestows such a dangerous sense of entitlement.  … Did I marvel at such a change of fortune? …No.  I exulted, I reveled, I buried her flesh beneath tireless kisses, but I also felt arrogant justification.  I felt I was finally where I belonged.’

‘We liked to make love very clean and go to sleep very dirty, sweat-enmatted and pungently syrup-adhered.’

DAMN.

‘…through our escalating argument, which we conducted in stage whispers, not for risk of behind heard but because, perhaps, hissing is second only to shrieking for the gratification of heated emotions.’

When they spend a week in NY, she describes how that city salutes them:

‘…and in a flash I perceived the lifeblood of that city, its particular meaning, paradoxically mapped at the cross point of the greatest breadth of possibility with the highest expectation.  You could be anyone you wanted, yet you had to be someone.  I was wearing her clothes … but I felt less diminished than transposed into my own ordained form.’ 

‘And yet there were times in that endlessly dilating week – for every day’s newness made days within days, so that the week seemed to have magically lengthened, the more it diminished – when Martha and I, having drunk our way past drunkenness to a gritty sobriety; having eaten ourselves hungry again; most rare having fucked ourselves calm, so that sex relinquished its hold for a while in our minds; … would sit across from each other … simply pouring ourselves out to each other in talk, as we had somehow not done before.’

That's New York Ci-TAY for ya, people.  That's my NYC!

‘Always, in her lengthy experience, sex had been the key to a door behind which lay a realm of shared secrets.  Sexual love was a conspiracy, the blood pact with the partner in crime – '

Then re being unable to sleep, wondering where the other is:

‘The wretched deathless consciousness: this was why people murdered themselves.'

(Indeed).

         'That winter, I misplaced myself.

         ‘I was not even lost, a condition which still retains something intended.  … I only slid down, in near silence, from whatever had carried me forward.  I slid down like a scrap from some pile on a cart.  I slid down, into dusty unregarded margins, and was left behind and forgotten by the flesh part of me, which went on. … 

     'Waking in the morning I was conscious I had woken, a pain so intense that it solved its own problem.’

(I remember that post-heartbreak, esp the waking thing, much, much too painfully well…)

Re odd couples: 

     ‘Something foreign to logic cleaved such pairs together:  pure ardor.  A sheer force of love.  Matthew and I were a pair of quite similar envelopes.  Close in age… genetically lucky with our looks and our minds.  Inclined … toward all the same places, people, and things.  One might wonder, if feeling unsteady, how deep a deficit of ardor such a list of matched traits could conceal.’

Ouch.