talking about writing
Tonight at work, Fat Tony and I talked a lot about writing. Fat Tony is a writer and, in terms of our both being writers, we have mostly behaved like two good-natured yet slightly territorial dogs at the park. We sniffed each other out and jostled each other at first, but somewhere along the line we decided not to bother figuring out who was alpha and to just play nice instead.
Tonight, Fat Tony was reading a book on grammar called "Eats Shoots and Leaves" (a phrase, the meaning of which chaanges dramatically with the addition of commas) and I was reading a Hemingway biography. Fat Tony started things off with an excited explanation of the complicated and completely subjective status of the comma according to the author of the book. I lamented my own overuse of commas and how it got me in such big trouble with birdlady who, at one point, after much comma-brow-beating, said to me, pointing to a comma in a draft of the brief I'd written, "Justify your use of that comma! Give me the reason you chose to put a comma there." And she waited for an answer. This was not a rhetorical question.
After commiserating about commas, we started talking about Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast," which is a sort of memoir about his time in the '20s writing in Paris. I just finished it today and I was struck by the atmosphere he described. He spent his days writing in cafes and socializing with a stellar crowd of other authors: Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Ezra Pound. Fat Tony and I talked about how amazing it would be to be surrounded by other great writers and living in an atmosphere that encouraged and held our work. Instead, we're isolated and only see other writers in workshops that often feel stilted and unhelpful. We laughed at the thought of Hemingway, sitting in a workshop full of terrible writers, passing around copies of excerpts of his great works with a nervous, expectant face. "Well, guys... what do you think?" That would never happen.
There's so much bad writing out there -- really bad writing from people who actively identify as writers -- I literally cringe when I hear someone else claim to be a writer and I never, ever want to read their stuff. Unless I'm feeling completely selfless and uncharacteristically altruistic, nothing good can come from reading the writing of a casual friend or aquaintance. If the writing is bad, I will always think of that person as a bad writer and it will make me uncomfortable. However, if the writing is *good* (ie: better than mine) it will make me anxious and insecure. A lose/lose situation.
I have never wanted to read any of Fat Tony's stuff. Recently, he had a short piece published in a web journal and he heavilly publicized it among friends and even at work, which I would never have done and which made me feel weird. I avoided reading the story for a long time, but he finally wore me down and I finally googled the journal and read the story last week. I was worried that I would realize Fat Tony was a bogus writer. I was equally worried I would realize Fat Tony was the next Papa Hemingway and it would probably make me want to kill myself. Fortunately, the story was solidly mediocre. It was respectably clever with comforting room for improvement. It didn't throw my opinion of Fat Tony (or myself) towards either extreme, which is good.
"A Moveable Feast," and tonight's conversation with Fat Tony, for that matter, reminded me of something really important I had forgotten over the years: the value of honing one's craft. It's easy to focus on the wrong thing when you're writing -- easy to get too involved with the concept of the muse -- easy to wait to be swept up by something -- easy to feel carried away by awesome ideas or completely stagnant from the lack of them. It is easy to forget that there's a *craft* to writing. There is something slow and deliberate about it. There is value (incalculable) in the *how* as well as the what. *How* to tell the story, not just what the story will be. How to shape the narrative, how to use language. To write a paragraph and take it apart and put it back together again and know the function of each word, each comma.
Writing this blog has been such a helpful exercise, but it has caused problems too. It has helped me to focus, to write with less doubt and more speed, to start and finish something in one sitting. But it has made me lazy because it hasn't demanded rewrites or revisions or edits. It doesn't support the deliberate crafting of language, its more of a zen calligraphy kind of exercise in spontaneous creation. I need to work more on the balance.
Tonight, Fat Tony was reading a book on grammar called "Eats Shoots and Leaves" (a phrase, the meaning of which chaanges dramatically with the addition of commas) and I was reading a Hemingway biography. Fat Tony started things off with an excited explanation of the complicated and completely subjective status of the comma according to the author of the book. I lamented my own overuse of commas and how it got me in such big trouble with birdlady who, at one point, after much comma-brow-beating, said to me, pointing to a comma in a draft of the brief I'd written, "Justify your use of that comma! Give me the reason you chose to put a comma there." And she waited for an answer. This was not a rhetorical question.
After commiserating about commas, we started talking about Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast," which is a sort of memoir about his time in the '20s writing in Paris. I just finished it today and I was struck by the atmosphere he described. He spent his days writing in cafes and socializing with a stellar crowd of other authors: Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Ezra Pound. Fat Tony and I talked about how amazing it would be to be surrounded by other great writers and living in an atmosphere that encouraged and held our work. Instead, we're isolated and only see other writers in workshops that often feel stilted and unhelpful. We laughed at the thought of Hemingway, sitting in a workshop full of terrible writers, passing around copies of excerpts of his great works with a nervous, expectant face. "Well, guys... what do you think?" That would never happen.
There's so much bad writing out there -- really bad writing from people who actively identify as writers -- I literally cringe when I hear someone else claim to be a writer and I never, ever want to read their stuff. Unless I'm feeling completely selfless and uncharacteristically altruistic, nothing good can come from reading the writing of a casual friend or aquaintance. If the writing is bad, I will always think of that person as a bad writer and it will make me uncomfortable. However, if the writing is *good* (ie: better than mine) it will make me anxious and insecure. A lose/lose situation.
I have never wanted to read any of Fat Tony's stuff. Recently, he had a short piece published in a web journal and he heavilly publicized it among friends and even at work, which I would never have done and which made me feel weird. I avoided reading the story for a long time, but he finally wore me down and I finally googled the journal and read the story last week. I was worried that I would realize Fat Tony was a bogus writer. I was equally worried I would realize Fat Tony was the next Papa Hemingway and it would probably make me want to kill myself. Fortunately, the story was solidly mediocre. It was respectably clever with comforting room for improvement. It didn't throw my opinion of Fat Tony (or myself) towards either extreme, which is good.
"A Moveable Feast," and tonight's conversation with Fat Tony, for that matter, reminded me of something really important I had forgotten over the years: the value of honing one's craft. It's easy to focus on the wrong thing when you're writing -- easy to get too involved with the concept of the muse -- easy to wait to be swept up by something -- easy to feel carried away by awesome ideas or completely stagnant from the lack of them. It is easy to forget that there's a *craft* to writing. There is something slow and deliberate about it. There is value (incalculable) in the *how* as well as the what. *How* to tell the story, not just what the story will be. How to shape the narrative, how to use language. To write a paragraph and take it apart and put it back together again and know the function of each word, each comma.
Writing this blog has been such a helpful exercise, but it has caused problems too. It has helped me to focus, to write with less doubt and more speed, to start and finish something in one sitting. But it has made me lazy because it hasn't demanded rewrites or revisions or edits. It doesn't support the deliberate crafting of language, its more of a zen calligraphy kind of exercise in spontaneous creation. I need to work more on the balance.
posted by reasonably prudent poet at 12:31 AM
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