“If I had not existed, someone else would have written me…What is important is Hamlet and A Midsummer Nights Dream, not who wrote them, but that somebody did.” ~ William Faulkner

I have a problem with people calling writing anything other than exactly what it is: a person sitting down (or standing, whatever works) and writing to get an idea out of their head for others to have it.  It is not a prayer, it is not a scream, or howl.  Whatever torture it puts you through comes of your own self in a way that even the idea did not.  The idea came from your life.  The need to bleed for it is all you.  Whatever asceticism you subject yourself to is of your own doing, and if that is necessary for you to write, so be it.  But because you hang yourself on a cross every evening doesn’t mean you and I are saviors.  I pay $2.50 for coffee for every thousand words or so.  What, then, would you call me?  Whether you claw at your hair or pace grooves into your floor or you travel to a mountaintop or you sit quietly in your room, it is your work that makes you what you are.  It is not the action that produced the work.  The word is all.  I have as much respect for Marilynne Robinson as I do for Ernest Hemingway, and I do because they both wrote incredible pieces of literature.  To my knowledge, Robinson never served in any army, never drove an ambulance, never hunted or played at hunting U-boats in the Atlantic.  These are things that increase my esteem for Hemingway’s life separate from his body of work.  I would love The Sun Also Rises whether written by a hero or a coward.

And let’s not inflate what a writer is.  They are simply that.  Storytellers.  A good storyteller is obviously different from a bad storyteller but it’s the story that’s important.  You can blow smoke about writers being priests or prophets but everyone has something they can do well and only artists are given to the notion that they are particularly special.  When you get your car back from the mechanic and it runs you don’t spend time thinking about the  mechanic and what brought him to where he is.  You just drive.  You ought to think about the writer the same way you do the mechanic.  Each performs a service or creates a product and it is the quality of that thing which is important.  The only thing the writer ought to have of you is loyalty if he produces a quality product.  It’s delusional to ask for more and to think that a writer deserves it.  Embrace the work, love the work.  When I say I love McCarthy, I mean that I love McCarthy’s work.  He’s an interesting guy separate from that, but my interest in him arises primarily from my desire for him to write more books.  That’s how it ought to be.  It’s bad for the ego for you to think anything else.  And despite all of our metaphysical trappings, despite that our occupation itself is a unique one, we aren’t special.  We are certainly no more special than nurses or doctors, and certainly less deserving of praise than police officers, firefighters, and soldiers.

What a reader needs to take away from a book does not involve the writer.  I won’t delve any deeper in the Barthesian pool than to say that an ideal reading of any book begins with the first page of the text and ends with the last.  Any thoughts in between occur in the mind of the reader and nowhere else.  Don’t bring a dictionary, a biography, or Wikipedia to the party.  Ultimately no writer is going to quit fellating or cunniling-ing themself because I said they aren’t special.  It’s the truth, but it’s the reader I’m trying to reach, not the writer.  We’re a crazed lot to begin with.  But we’re not mystical, we’re not any more in tune with the universe because we put words on a page than anyone else.  It’s a unique occupation that’s not a little bit mysterious and more than a little attractive.  People like people who live on the edge, and whether it’s the edge of starvation, sanity, or megalomania, the edge is where writers tend to be.  But don’t love the writer.  Love the book.  If it’s good it is the best of the writer; blood, sweat, tears and all other precious bodily fluids distilled whether shed or not, into a story, a message.  Don’t ruin all our good work by wondering how dirty we got in the process.

Tune in next time for part 3, the anticlimax that I will call “In Defense of the Writer”.  Or some such stickuptheass nonsense.  Until then, here’s J. Tillman, telling it like it is.

A little late, but I just stumbled upon this article at Huffington Post, detailing the suppression of footage that followed the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  You can find a video and smaller article from the author here.  The video is graphic.  Then there’s this photo series at the Denver Post, following a new soldier from enlistment to return from combat.

I don’t think I thought about my uncle nearly enough today.  He passed several months ago after a titanic struggle with cancer–outlasting by over a year the predictions of his doctor.  I wouldn’t have any basis for my writing without him.  I did thank one of my best friends, who served.   One of the only ways I can justify not enlisting is that the people who came before did so I wouldn’t have to.  Otherwise, I feel like a coward.  That’s not up for discussion.

The loftiest thoughts I get about writing, about mine, are that maybe I’ll get it into someone’s head, down the line, that war doesn’t even have to turn you into a monster; it can make you a better man, and even as that better man it is  not worth it.  The only way we can justify a war now is to stop a war later, one our sons and daughters would have to fight.  If you’re not sparing the innocence of another, you are not just.

This post will be one in a two or three parter, provided I feel like following through with it, on the capital letter issues of writing.  Truth and big W writers. Maybe a little Beauty thrown in for good measure.

Being in an MFA program, surrounded by writers, some of us are bound to get a little lofty, a bit high-fallutin’, a tad too big for our britches.  A few days ago one of my profs was trying to inspire us, I think, by telling us that writers are like priests.  We’re ascetics, like no other profession in the world.  Who else locks themselves up in a room for hours on end to make money–and that only if we’re lucky?  We close ourselves off in order to create, spend hours and hours observing, making notes, waiting for inspiration.  When you get on a train of thought like this, you inevitably get a little misty-eyed, a little mystic, and you think of muses.  It’s a subject we dance around, for the most part.  No one wants to out and out say they’re receiving messages from some divine source, right?  Idn’t that a little hokey?

While that’s rhetorical, the answer is yes.  And despite that, people do say they’re tuned into otherworldly channels.  And it’s a channel with a lot of viewers.  I submit to you two stories of disparate success:  The first is Alicia Ostriker, whose book of poetry The Volcano Sequence was channeled to her by a volcano after a period of writer’s block.  Ms. Ostriker is published, many times over, and is, I guess, considered a success.  I got the chance to hear her read.  She wasn’t any good, in my opinion.  I’m backed up by other opinions, but apparently it’s the minority opinion.  Nevertheless, this woman had a book of poems beamed into her head by a volcano.  There’s one end.

On the other is a girl from way back.  I told this story on my old blog, so if you’re an old reader you can skip on down.  Beginning Creative Writing, we’re discussing the muses, the possibility thereof, opinions thereon.  This girl pipes up, says, “yeah, you know, sometimes it’s just like someone is speaking to me, the words just flow”.  You wouldn’t question this if it came from the mouth of Marilynne Robinson.  But this girl’s contribution to world literature is a story about making out with her boyfriend “like a wild hyena”, while Disney’s The Lion King played in the background.  Whatever you’re plugged into, I don’t want to be party to it.

The higher you get in the writer echelons, the less you hear about inspiration, about muses.  People talk more theoretically about what it is that’s fueling them.  My money is on the subconscious/unconscious.  I can tell you exactly when I’m getting inspired, because I can feel it.  You, observing me, can see it.  I zone out, clam up, stare off.  There’s nothing mystic about it.  It’s cool as hell, sure.  But it’s not mystical.

Washing your hands of the muse is a good thing for all of us.  There’s no reason for the occupation of writer to be so mystified, unless by proxy there is reverence for the text.  I’ll never be a guitar god, but that doesn’t mean I think Jimi Hendrix was anything more than highly skilled.  Killing the muse is good for the writer, too.  I doubt you’d ever come across a professional writer who waits to be inspired.  (I could cite sources, if you like.)  With inspiration in and on your head, you do what all the pros do: treat it like work.  It’s a grind like any other.  Some of us hate it, oddly enough.  But they say they have to do it.  Feel bad for them.

So, man.  I wrote a lot and said very little.  I’m sorry you’re exposed to such diarrhea of the mind but at least it’s not getting put down elsewhere.  What I wanted this to do, in part, was attack the notion of the muse as an external force, knock down some stilts writer’s might be standing on, and build a foundation for a post down the line on big W writers.   Notice it was Shelley, not Byron, that said that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.  Byron was too busy getting laid and saving Greece to say something as self-serving as that.

I mostly said that to piss off the Shelley fans.  But I’ve got a little point hidden in there, and I’ll write about it later.

There is a tendency for people to call me by my last name.  I don’t know why this is.  Furthermore, they have a tendency to shorten my name to Shonk, or Shonky.  I hate this with a passion.  What I don’t hate, though, is when my name gets turned into a verb, which has now happened twice.  It came about this time around a flip-cup table, when two of my opponents started calling me Shonk, and after their defeat it was declared that they were shonked.  Yeah.  Back in Ohio it’s  a little more lurid.

Good Halloween party, that.  Chauffeur and I shonked the competition at flip-cup and beer pong.  We went to the party as each other, which was a good laugh for the few people that were familiar with us.  I donned  a pair of fairy wings for part of the evening.  At some point before I bedded down with a laundry bag as a pillow, next to a girl nicknamed Armyfuck, Chauffeur and I managed to switch back into our own clothes.  Neither of us remembers how this happened.  It’s the great mystery of the evening.  The next morning we bailed a bit early and got breakfast at this great joint called Flo’s.  Come’a the pancakes.  Sometimes this place ain’t so bad.  Then you come home like I did today to a parking ticket and an overdue fee on a book.

Soon, I promise, a writing post.  You pick the topic:  1. On the muses, or 2. On how I write in two completely distinct voices depending upon whether it’s a short story or one of my novels.  Pick the first one, please.

Hovering under 39k on AAM.  Started writing a new short story tentatively titled “Anhedonia”.

Oh, hell, I didn’t tell you, did I?  I was invited by the good folks at The Splinter Generation to read “My Wakeup” at Avenue 50 in LA.  December 16th, 7-9PM.  Mark your calendars.  I’ve got a practice reading tomorrow in class.  Wish me luck.

Aaand one last thing.  00:50-1:22 and 3:16-3:27 of this video.  Killer.

In lieu of a real writing post–one soon to come, I promise– here’s a couple links, related and unrelated to writing.

Most of you probably know that I’m pretty old-fashioned.  Something in me shrivels up a little every time I send a text.  But this is the age we live in, and it’s how I keep in touch with people.  If I could knock on my momma’s door every day I would.  It’s good to know, though, that in spite of the advances of technology and the regression of most methods of conduct, some folks are trying to set an example.  I give you The Art of Manliness and 1001 Rules for my Unborn Son.  Both of these sites hark back to an older time when being a man didn’t mean slick hair and muscles, it meant being educated, gentlemanly, and moral.  A quick look through the Art of Manliness will yield articles like “30 Days to a Better Man Day 14: Write a Letter to Your Father”.  This while Asylum’s comparable articles are “How To Surreptitiously Ogle Women” or some such nonsense.

Next up is a topic near and dear to my heart, but one I play close to the chest when it comes to my writing.  i09, a site I’ve never heard of, has an article up about the changing trends in apocalyptic literature.  It seems that, lately, people don’t care or write about how the apocalypse comes about, they just care that it happens.  The Road explains precious little about its apocalypse, as the current shining example.  And apparently this is happening a lot.  People just want the aftermath–they want to see people struggle.  This topic has had me thinking for a while.  The number of groups on Facebook that involve zombies in some manner is 1,400.  The most popular group has over 80,000 members, and that group is “The Hardest Part About a Zombie Apocalypse Will be Pretending I’m Not Excited”.  Ask any of your friends, seriously, any, if they’ve given thought to the zombie apocalypse–in particular, not even just “the end of the world”.  I’d wager if you ask ten you’ll come back with 9 yes answers.  It’s this weird drive we’ve got, particularly these younger generations, for a real, pan-level struggle.  We don’t want WWIII because that involves morals.  We don’t want a pandemic because that can’t be fought clearly.  Zombies provide a tangible enemy without any moral hangups.  We want to fight.

Chew on that for a while.

It was almost ten years ago that I fell in love with a girl who cannot be overstated in my life.  I don’t remember how exactly things came about–I don’t recall any seduction.  I remember sitting on the sidewalk with the sun beginning to set, thinking about God, and her, and hoping she’d come outside.  And she did.  From then on, for a good two years, she was what I thought about, straight, solid.  There wasn’t much else.  She was my first, an early first, depending on who you talk to.  The second time we made love it was to this song, on repeat.  I had just turned sixteen.  The stereo was this modern-looking thing, all gray with blue lights.  I think I remember how she felt now better than I did a few years ago.

She was pretty hard on me.  Broke my heart.  I was who I was then, and that was considerably weaker than I am now.  But she set me on this path, and I wouldn’t change any of it.  Still getting roughed up from time to time.  But I guess I grew an appreciation for that, too.  Writing fuel.

She sent me a letter last night, apologizing for everything.  It was sort of shocking, bewildering, and completely plain.  This was the sort of thing that happened in movies, you know?  Girl of your dreams, the first girl you put away in that hallowed part of your mind or heart, comes to you and says, “I did you wrong”.  I wasn’t sure what to say to that.  So I told her I accepted, wasn’t even really sure she needed to apologize, given who I am now.  Where would I be if she had treated me differently?  Who would I be?  Husband to her, father to three, first kid aged six?  What a difference.  And I’m not knocking that, either.  Lord, but I loved her.  That could have been a great way to live.  But it’s not what happened.  I didn’t repeat a generation, didn’t become my father–though I am becoming him in many ways.  You all know where I am now.

It’s life, yeah?  You do things that make you who you are and make other people and you don’t realize until later, long after things have sealed, the mortar has dried.  What do you say to that?  I don’t think you say anything at all.  You smile a little sadly, maybe you shake a hand or offer a hug.  And then you move on.

Walked out of my new house this afternoon with Long December playing.  Strange to listen to it while in California, strange still to see palm trees, to walk outside in late October with the sun hot.  The song means a lot to me.  Like most songs I’ve pinned it to a woman, and in this case two, because I’ve yet to shake my world from the second.  I was walking down my new street toward campus and I realized this place will never reflect my emotions.  It is stagnant, if you can call a blue sky stagnant.  It is defiant.  I suppose that does reflect me at times.

Two nights ago I went out with Chauffeur (one word, goes with his nickname for me) and a girl to a supposed dive downtown.  We had burgers and beer, had a shot to celebrate the girl’s birthday, and went across the street to check out another bar, a little closer to an actual dive.  As we walked in a fellow playing pool turned and put his hand in the air and I high-fived him and shook.  As we waited on our beers he pointed at the three of us and the bartender wouldn’t take our money.   We drank and went out to the back to let Chauffeur smoke and watched this half-pint latina with a lot of metal in her face rap very, very poorly in front of a camera.  (Riverside, side, side, on the mike, mike, mike…ad nauseam.)  We went back in for a while and met Joe, our drunken benefactor, play pool with one hand–his non-dominant.  He’s apparently some sort of drunken savant, because he was sinking shots pretty consistently.  I followed Chauffeur back out for another smoke and we were making fun of the rapper when we realized she was still at it, still saying mike, mike.  We dove behind a brick wall and laughed for a good five minutes.  When we went back in Joe decided to give us a tour of downtown and we followed him directly next door to a gay bar where he bought us more drinks.  We moved on, discussed random things.  Chauffeur and I wandered off briefly to look at a war memorial and I remember telling him that I write because I didn’t serve, and that’s mostly right.  I wouldn’t feel like I have to write if I served.  It was a good night, maybe the most fun I’ve had since I’ve been here.

Yesterday I moved everything out of the apartment and into the new house.  I don’t know how to feel about that.  I should feel good to be shut of it, because truly little good happened there.  And this, here, is all new.  As fresh as can be without a bout of amnesia.  But I couldn’t help but feel like I was giving some things up.  Signing off on memories, devaluing them.  I don’t like that.

In the evening the owner of the house, another grad student, took me out to a coffeeshop downtown on the back of his scooter.  I got some writing done.  And today I went back to the apartment to clean it and I was struck again with the knowledge that I am leaving one of two places that I’ve known her.  I stared at that damn futon and at the couch and the pool and the lounge chair as if I could place them more firmly into my memory.  But they’re already relics.  Already cherished in their way.  Walking back home I was taken by the smell of the orange trees and I stood at the intersection of Canyon Crest and MLK, standing in the thin shadow of the lightpole, this song came on:

I watched a woman pull up to the light in a rusted truck, watched her look at me.  She was beautiful, and it was a romantic contrast.  When I crossed I glanced her way again and she locked eyes with me and I passed on and I thought about the few times a woman has touched me out here.  A hand on my shoulder, arm around my waist.  I thought about reservoirs, literal and figurative.  I thought of how quickly my reservoir dries out here, how soon a night like Wednesday can fade.  It’s not a matter of whether or not I can make it.  I know I can.  It’s whether or not I come out the other side having gained ground, rather than lost it.  I haven’t regretted the way I’ve spent my life so far, and I’d hate to start now.

I love the hell out of this song.  The voice just barely holding onto its hushed tone.  You can hear Beam biting on the end of every word.  I picture teeth chopping at the microphone.  I think I’m exaggerating a bit, but when I sing it I can’t help but sing it loud.

Anyway.  That song is one of 90 on the “refined” playlist for AAM.  Refined from 221.  I wanted to share the brief story of my good day.  It’s brief because it’s been good only for about 5 hours, since I started writing at the coffee shop.  The fellow at the counter knows me by now and greets me warmly.  I asked for coffee and apparently I’d earned the honor of a house mug, as he took one down and gave me my coffee in it.  I love getting coffee in different ways from drinking other things at a coffee shop.  The first time I drank coffee and liked it was in Valparaiso, Nebraska.  I had it doctored heavily but I still felt strangely adult, accomplished, looking out at the fields around the bed and breakfast.  I’d run away from home, you could say, and came to that town through a series of odd coincidences involving my first book and second heartbreak.  It’s one of my favorite places on Earth.  I ate grilled chicken sandwiches for lunch and dinner and drank beer and got the strangest look when I showed the lady my Ohio ID.  I drove 14 hours to get there.  God, it was worth it.

Right, so, I was talking about this cup of coffee.  In a black and white mug with kitties on it.  Drinking the coffee and sitting at my laptop, man, did I write.  And I looked over earlier passages for reference.  I had myself grinning.  You know that’s a good sign.  Or that you’re delusional.  I chose to believe the former today.  I wrote, and things showed themselves, and the dialogue was sharp and the threads came together.  I finished a scene and started another and I feel good about the openness of it and about what’s coming.

There was an MFA reception today, and I zoned out for a good part of it, sitting in a corner, and for the first time in a while I felt my tanks getting refilled.  I can’t remember if I’ve talked about it on here or not, but my subconscious sometimes puts the rest of me on hold and makes me sit wherever I am and space out while it drinks something in.  It did that today, and I remember getting a few looks, had a fellow come over to me and tell me I was marginalizing myself (nice guy, pretended he was my dad so I could pitch my book to him–I guess as an exercise in clarity).  But lately the only voice that’s been coming to my mind was that of Samuel, the main character’s son, who will eventually take the reins of the book.  It’s great to feel that voice, and it’s great that it’s so insistent.  He’s hounding me.  I know I’m bordering on hokum, here.  Believe me when I say I don’t plug myself into the ether like some writers feel they do.  But there is an element of writing that you can’t pin to the conscious.  And it’s lovely when that element shows itself.

I wrote about 1,500 words today, 500 over the weekend, and I’m set for another easy 500.  Gravy.  Now let’s just hope I can find the time through everything else to keep up this pace.  Might have to start foregoing sleep.  It’s not like I really need 8 hours a day anyway.  Not like I’m working, or anything.  Looking back, this post wasn’t very brief at all.  Guess I lied to you.

I imagine some of you folks aren’t familiar with that name.  Let’s rectify that.

That Evening Sun is an adaptation of one of Gay’s short stories.  I can’t believe I haven’t heard about it until now.

Here’s an excerpt of Provinces of Night, in my opinion, his best work.  In Provinces and in his first, The Long Home, Gay follows the trail of Cormac McCarthy’s early southern fiction and does something McCarthy had a hard time doing– making it readable.  People sing the praises of Child of God, and some of his other early work, but I have a hard time making heads or tails of it.  Gay is able to carry off the same tone without the labyrinthine prose.  He reads with the relative ease of McCarthy’s more palatable Border Trilogy while staying deep in the Southern Gothic tradition.

Gay is hopefully going to come into some fame shortly.  A movie of Provinces is in post-production and it stars some big enough names to get it off the ground: Val Kilmer, Kris Kristofferson.  He’s also got a new book coming…soon.  It’s been pushed back a time or two.  So, look him up.  Get on the train before he’s popular and one-up your friends.

It’s the colors that I remember most.  The room is dim but lit sourcelessly. I can see the walls, cream colored, and the sheets I’m tangled in as pink like a conch.  And your hair, dark as the corners of the room, dark as the door.  You get into bed and I put my arm around you and you curl up to me.  I know it’s a dream now.  But it goes on, and I put my cheek to yours and you turn to me, and we’re resting our heads against each other, and I feel your skin against mine and my hands are nowhere, it’s just our faces, our necks.  We fit perfectly.  And then I wake up.