jayhat

Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

Rudd continues to wonder what time it is

In English, Getting Close, novelish, Writing on January 4, 2011 at 10:27 pm

Rudd said: “What time is it.”

“You keep asking,” he said, without glancing down.

“Well I keep wondering.”

“Then maybe you should have brought a watch.”

“I don’t wear watches.”

He still hadn’t glanced down. “It’s a quarter past two.” A beat. “In the afternoon.”

“No it’s not,” Rudd said. The sun was setting. “Stop being an asshole.”

“How would you know, Rudd? Do you have a watch you aren’t telling me about?”

“Asshole,” Rudd said.

“Not much longer now,” he said.

“How would you know?” Rudd said.

“Because you wouldn’t be so nervous about the time if there was a lot of it to go.”

Rudd nodded. “So what time is it, then?”

“Half past two.” A beat. “In the afternoon.”

“Asshole,” Rudd said.

As they stood in silence as the sun set over the horizon, in the distance smoke billowed like a signal, a plume that trailed into the twilight like snake skin.

“You know what comes next?” he said.

“Nope,” Rudd said. “I rarely do.”

“Fair enough,” he said.

The problem with many classics

In English, nature, Writing on October 12, 2010 at 10:31 pm

When people read the classics, they’re often slowed by the language, complain about the piousness of characters, etc.—when I read the classics, I often wonder how so many authors existed in linear worlds with linear characters who grow in linear ways and tell stories that unfold linearly.

The world is circular for a reason, and clouds dot the sky and merge and form bigger clouds, and rivers form deltas and twist and have things called rapids.

I’ve never met a woman who only wanted a man, and I know of no man whose only desire is money. I have friends and colleagues, but none of them exist only to my end, and they have me, and I exist to no one’s end.

And my story has little to do with their story, other than the fact that my cloud or the water in my river or—whathaveyou—happen to merge or bump or touch at some place or another.

On puppetry.

In What people are, Writing on September 30, 2010 at 7:56 pm

I don’t know anything about puppetry. I imagine, though, that the craft is measured by the master’s ability to convince his audience that his puppets are real—that they are characters in a story or actors in a play, that they are sentient, capable of their own being, self-aware, and as in tune with their own destiny as you or I. I imagine that the craft is measured by the master’s ability to convince his audience that he doesn’t exist.

Or at least allow them to forget, if only for a moment.

How bizarre.

On form

In English, nature, Writing on September 23, 2010 at 7:13 pm

I used to baffle myself thinking about artists who seemed unconcerned with form. Or rather, when I saw something that should have otherwise been a decent piece of art, I wondered why authors and painters and musicians and sculptors chose to degrade their creations by stepping out of character or—short of that—why they failed to recognize these certain things. I wondered how they could be so arrogant or blind or distasteful or ignorant. It was infuriating, really, to see such potential squandered because someone didn’t have the right eye or—short of that—someone didn’t have the right person advising them or—short of that—someone didn’t the wherewithal to recognize a good piece of advice.

Many who I quarreled this point with argued that the beauty of these works were in their imperfections, that beauty—in its nature, they argued—is only obvious because it’s so rare.

I saw such points as cop outs.

There’s so many imperfect things already, why give us one more.

* * * *

I realize now that form doesn’t exist in nature—it’s a construct and to deconstruct a construct it is to thrust oneself forth into a gaping paradoxical abyss.

I realize now that art, in its purest form, has no form because it has no nature except to be that—of nature, and nature is a formless, directionless, irrational beast. To control her, to understand her, to predict her—fruitless. To even try is as ignorant as it is stupid.

That’s the truth.

Why details are overrated.

In Memory, Post Script, Writing on September 21, 2010 at 5:29 pm

The past is prologue and winners write the history books, but they always seem to leave out details.

My thoughts: This is because, frankly, details are only useful if they’re a means to a bigger picture.

No one remembers details—history is a series of big pictures connected by hunches, accusations, and assumptions. How things happened is always a summary, and the colors, tones, and blushes are only mentioned when the result would otherwise be misunderstood.

So, these details, then, cease to be details because they become a part of the plot—like props.

People’s lives aren’t defined by details.

People’s lives are defined by the big pictures.

Yet, we spend so much time focusing on details.

How odd.

The Fall

In Ancillarious, novelish, Writing on September 17, 2009 at 7:54 pm

Something happened and then the midnight sky bled with the embers of a burning city.

Below, a stale crimson fog lavished and hung. The sewers flooded through broken pipes, a viscous water that stank of dog and rot and sweat, an earthy dew that salted the seas of crumbled grain.

Within minutes, they grey remains of death covered the streets, inches deep in a mid-summer blizzard, each unique flake a piece of something that used to be. Leaves, stone, people, birds, glass, metal, wood, rubber, plastic, tile, bugs and worms and grubs. All soot and ash. Crosses, apses, domes, pillars and pews and pulpits. All soot and ash.

Within hours, waves washed the streets. Mildew corpses moldered in fish stew, a fecund boil that begat a fine green salt that dried in clumps and lined the rubble with undulating stencils that parodied the tide…

Writing (as it pertains to Darwin)

In Language, novelish, Writing on September 13, 2009 at 10:57 am

It’s a landmark moment in every writer’s life when he receives his first rejection letter, and it can affect him in a number of ways.

Possibly,

If he is foolish enough to believe that his work was actually as good as he felt it was—to chew the very truffles he dug up—the letter comes with humility. It is the recognition that it is not a perfect work, that he is not infallible. That some people just don’t jive with everything he writes, lean on every word, enunciate the last phoneme of every sentence. That nothing is ever finished as long as there is someone who disagrees with it. That if everyone agrees with something, it must not really say anything.

This man—he, who had been foolish and ignorant—can either learn his lesson or he can become a brick wall, believing the rejection is no fault of his own; the publisher simply has bad taste and it is to his detriment that he rejects such a fine piece of literature.

Or,

If this man lacks the confidence to withstand criticism, a rejection might mean the end. Some people take resistance as a challenge; others shy from it, choosing instead to live safely within their limitations. Why risk failure when the alternative is so comfortable? There’s regret, sure, but regret is for the feeble. Regret only irks those motivated enough to do something about it. And if one is willing to do something about regret, a challenge should have been of no consequence in the first place. In which case, we are talking of cowards and misers.

To whom criticism is of no consequence.

For it is their nature.

But,

If this man is realistic enough to realize that even the smoothest roads need to be repaved from time to time—that achievement is relative to what one is capable of—he will see rejection is a rite of passage, something every author experiences, a yardstick for measuring miles.

* * * *

Which is interesting, because:

An author will go back on his previous works and read, utterly embarrassed.

The work is alien. Commas are not where they should be. Too many superlatives. What awful, contrived dialogue.

The embarrassment is not that it is poorly written; rather, the embarrassment is that, at one point—maybe not even that long ago—the author had been convinced that the writing was very nearly flawless.

Writing evolves.

Like anything worth doing, it gets better the more it’s practiced.

But the feeling upon completion never changes.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.