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Thursday, October 06, 2011

"what the hell is good writing anyway?"

said the status of my friend Amir.

In typical Lukenian fashion, I went way overboard:


‎"Good writing doesn't persuade you to others' ideas; good writing lets you see through their eyes." -- Malcolm Gladwell (paraphrased)

A word after a word after a word is power." -- Margaret Atwood (a bit of a lower standard maybe??)

"The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do." -- Thomas Jefferson

"True eloquence consists of saying all that should be, not all that could be, said." -- La Rochefoucauld

"One should not aim at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand." -- Quintilian

"The whole end of speech is to be understood." -- Confucius

"When you catch an adjective, kill it." -- Mark Twain

"I wouldn't touch a superlative again with an umbrella." -- Dorothy Parker

"An abstract noun neither smiles nor sings nor tells bedtime stories." -- Lewis Lapham

"I have rewritten -- often several times -- every word I have ever published." -- Vladimir Nabokov

"The best writing is rewriting." -- E.B. White

Of course, Emerson said, "I hate quotations; tell me what you know." So I will.

There are three canons of good writing. One is clarity and (without idolizing it) simplicity, which the above, plus Strunk and White, have railed on for ages and ages. Of course, it can be perfectly clear and totally uninteresting.

Also important is plot, which has also been talked about to no end. There are many basic principles of plot and many shapes that conform to them, which have all been done to death; as long as you don't violate them (barring, of course, that you are a masterful genius who can transcend them), your writing will feel "genuine". But it can still be uninteresting.

Indeed, we might say that the above two are not goals to be achieved but pitfalls to be avoided. What goal, then, is to be achieved that will make writing engaging and interesting?

This quality is in the details, especially in the ones that appear minor but which make a strong impression. This sounds paradoxical; it is certainly difficult. Nevertheless, the most obvious details about any scene are not only clichés, they are not even effective; a writer must have the ability to isolate the elements of an experience that affect not the conscious but the subconscious. These more than anything else strike us as being just and true, and force the imagination.

How do you develop this talent? I think if you don't have an eye for it, no matter how much you work on avoiding those pitfalls (and the latter is certainly teachable), your writing will present no difficulties but no enticements either, and the best you can do is respond logically but dryly, not like a writer or poet. But if it is capable of being developed, the only way I know how is patience, both intentional and unintentional.

With intentional patience you must sit down, stop thinking about things, and consider everything in your view. Close your eyes and consider everything you feel, hear, and smell. (If you can taste things, good, but this rarely comes in handy!) Then go to a new place and repeat it. Walk over every square foot of the new place, turning over small objects and observing what is beneath, and what they look like on all sides. If necessary, make major changes to your environment, on the sole condition that you leave it there for a long time and get used to it. These exercises are the best you can do for the moment.

With a more long-term patience, the best you can hope to do is immerse yourself in an environment. You absorb best by doing things in it and interacting with it (and you will retain this best by involving other people and doing it in community; other writers will best understand what you are up to). You know all the intimate details of your house because you have lived there for a long time, and are thus capable of naming what seem second-nature to you but which would take a stranger ages to notice -- the fourth step that creaks, the spot on the blue couch no one likes to sit on because the kitten peed there once when it was afraid, the faces of your mother's maternal grandparents in the dark red frame, where the cereal is and where the granola bars are, the fact that you can hear your parents' conversations while lying in your bed. All those details have sunk in so well that you can evoke your house with extreme specificity to any member of it in three words, as anyone who travels with family can attest to. The difficulty, then, is making yourself so familiar with something that most people are unconsciously familiar with and will recognize even when you use a phrase no one has used before for that king of thing. And this requires patience, habit, and the ability to move on if you want to expand the scope of what you are qualified to write interestingly about.

Which brings me to a final footnote, on being qualified to write about things. It is often said that you should write what you know, and there's some truth in it. I maintain that I can write about ancient Rome, about Moscow, about marriage, and get my facts right -- as long as we're well-read, such a capacity is inevitable. But only in immersing ourselves there, whether in person or with the greatest efforts of imagination, can we be familiar with what is less mentioned, with what tends less often to become a catchphrase but which generates the strongest images, with what is the only thing that comes from our own experience and not some recycled knowledge: the small details whose evocative power outstrips all other description.

Sunday, September 04, 2011

facing possibilities and impossibilities


There was a time when I wrote about everything that took place in my life.
That no longer happens.
I go through event after event less aware of it than all that came before.
Days fit into one of a few available patterns and weeks are entirely homogeneous.

The one real secret to getting rid of stress is simply dealing with the things you can
and not worrying about the things you can’t.
What they don’t tell you is that once you deal with things
and get into the rhythm of dealing with them automatically
and no longer think about them or worry about them,
stress melts and changes colour until it is indistinguishable from apathy.
After all, if there’s anything that stresses you to think you have to do,
it’s the kind of thing that will sap your will to live if you actually do it.

Or maybe next week when I get through a tenth of the things I have piled up on my to-do list it'll seem better.
That's what I keep saying, anyway...

This isn’t to say I don’t recognize the value in these things.
But the more I do them, the more I hate the needs they satisfy
and the fact that I have them
and have to satisfy them.

And the thing is I know I don’t have to. For the most part.
The idea appears more and more appealling that I should just drop all this…
school and work and clubs and social obligations and chores and self-improvement and things I
just
can’t
do
anymore.
I just want to spend my days hiking and biking and thinking and composing music
and writing poetry and writing stories and writing philosophy and writing letters
but right now I’m overcome by the attitude captured in Daniel Johnston’s “Story of an Artist”:
“We don’t really like what you do; we don’t think anyone ever will.”
Except I’m my own accuser.
If only I had the courage to do what I know I both love most and am best at.
The conviction is developing more and more firmly: I am meant to do this.
So why can’t I?

There was a time when I wrote about everything that took place in my life,
and a good deal besides,
but that no longer happens.
I’ve become caught up in the many roles and functions involved in this “Being an Adult” thing.
And I care less every day.
Maybe one day I’ll finally cross the threshold.
Maybe it’ll be after this year of school, which, at
120% of full course load
(which next semester will involve disgusting amounts of travel between campuses),
an executive position in the debate club,
a job at the student newspaper,
and a girlfriend,
among many other new exciting wonderful happy pretty lovely and life-draining things,
seems rather plausible.

Friday, August 05, 2011

I Give You My Heart

A beautiful hymn, but also something I'm wondering about.

Who are we supposed to give our hearts to?
Family? Friends? Loves? God?
(I find it easiest to give affection to my cat.)

Can you give it to more than one person?

Should love be easy? hard? both?
Should you know right away?
Should you have to push yourself?
Both?

Why do I recognize love when giving, but not receiving?
Or is it the other way round?

But it's getting late, and I need rest...
here is a piece of Peace I put together today.


Wednesday, May 18, 2011

(during a prayer with music)

“I hate that they’re manipulating me.
I hate how they’re using music to make me feel something about the words.”

“No you don’t. You hate that they’re doing it badly.
You notice the incongruity because you don’t feel the same about the words,
or not as much, as you do about the music.”

“—which means they have to use the music to back up the cruddy words!”

(And these internal dialogues distract me from the words in the first place...)

Saturday, May 14, 2011

All I can offer you for following me is following me itself

Kind of a cool dream, walking with Jesus. I only remember a couple quotes.

Jesus: Will you follow me?
Me: I want to, but it would mean leaving behind the people I love?
Jesus: Some of them are coming; indeed, some are already further along, and the only way to reach them is to follow me.

Jesus: All I can offer you for following me is following me itself.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

One Day

Wrote while seeing Handel's Messiah, but it suits today, too.

One Day

Because there really was a time
when God was dead,
and heaven broke,
and evil had forever won,
the Earth committed to the devil’s rule,
and all that had been made, was made to decay.
But nothing carries on
for long that way:
I gather that it lasted
only one full day.

Saturday, April 02, 2011

untitled, but addressed to God

You, you are like hurricane eye

(and everything outside it)

You, you are like stars in the day

see me even when you’re invisible



You, you are like radio signal

I tune in and you are there

You, you are like eternal tide

I sit long enough I find you

Thursday, February 24, 2011

random

Phone company texts me my account balance; my credit with them (it's a prepaid plan) is $64.64.

Then I do the KenKen puzzle and two adjacent boxes catch my eye, 24x and 10+; in a 6x6 puzzle, both have only one solution: 6,4.

I go downstairs to put on music while I write, and I load my music library; at the bottom of the screen it reads "6464 items selected".

Uh... but anyway, random. Why do I notice these things...

for the nose

poem I rummaged up (summer 2009) (very perplexing)

...

the big nose

Life is a big nose—
a too big
and rife with danger
“Poetry Is My Country
and I Canst Not Change Her”
nose

In some hour of need where the flowers grew
God bless those blanketed by snow
God bless the snows that lie atop our sparrow;
what use was its nose?

But in my hour of need when I plant the seed
the warmful air is stirred by sparrow’s wing (offering);
I inhale the country of the poetry,
I inhale it when it snows

but life is not worth living for;
you live it for the nose

...

you guys noses are not even that great

Sunday, January 23, 2011

ides of March and other lucky days

 (Disclaimer: unless you're in a particularly generous and contemplative mood, this post is longer than its topic warrants.)

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar—a hilarious comedy, if your name is Brutus.

Caesar:
Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue shriller than all the music*
Cry "Caesar!" Speak, Caesar is turn'd to hear.

Soothsayer:
Beware the ides of March.

The link tells you some cool facts about the history of the "ides", but the short version is: in March it's the 15th.

Caesar's supposed to beware it because he gets stabbed to deathas the Wikipedia article notes, "23 times". None too shabby, guys. None too shabby.

I met two girls lately. One of them was briefly involved with me, so briefly that it requires a subordinate clause containing the word, in November. Not any more. The other girl I've been slightly more careful with in terms of friendship.

Once in December the second girl and I were talking about special days or something and it occurred to me I didn't know the birthday of the first one. So I said to my friend, "By the way, what's your birthday?"

"March 16th," she said, and I, since I am a nerd who always has the most random references from literature in the back of his head, thought, Whew! close.

The next time I saw the first girl (on less romantic terms than in the past), I asked when hers was. "November.""Oh! Did I miss it? I should have asked." "No, I've made a habit of not telling people. I think none of my recent friends knows when it is. You were there, though." I wasn't sure, but I had a vague suspicion I had accidentally chosen that day to give the worst birthday present ever. But anyway, it was an interesting idea—not telling anyone.

With this second girl, so far I've taken an approach of  complete honesty and openness. Well, I usually do—I'm no good at keeping secrets, especially about myself—but this is more intentional. She knows far more about me than a recent friend should, to be honest (har har). It's even become a topic of discussion, since she considers herself to have "the bad habit" of not doing the same, but "telling people what they want to hear".

"But," she said, "you're making me better in some ways."

 Which made my heart smile a little.

But when she called me today, I'd just gotten home from a long day at work and was feeling a little uneasy. She brought up the subject of going out to see special events together, such as a classical music concert (which she'd like to try), and asked me when my birthday was, with somewhat ambiguous implications.

"July, right?" she said, and for some reason I held my breath. "The eleventh?"

I exhaled, smiled, and hesitated. Finally, I said, "Close—but nope."

I feel mischievous. I'm gonna hold on to this one for now.



*How could I not make specific mention of the amazing poetry of this line?

Saturday, January 22, 2011

romance

is among the most complicated things on Earth

if you let it be

I'm gonna have to let it be

(damn)

well, I guess one of us must know (sooner or later) ...