An update. Semi irked, I guess. Finished a new novella, and realized that it didn’t properly capture the world (or the story) that I was trying to explain. I’d got the story arc nicely created – but much like the Fairyland book – the complexity of the world I created was just too vast to fit properly into a little 40-something page creation. With hindsight, looking over it, I can see that I need to take more time with the unfolding plot, especially given that there’s a huge amount of theology and backstory involved. So what I’d created was almost a precis of the actual events.
And now I need to revisit the ‘world’ and rewrite it properly.
What have I learned? ‘Writing’ teaches patience.
Taken the almost unheard of step of taking a day or two off. Naturally I’ve already started the new tack at the story. And now, on day 3, I’ve also started writing something else. Not entirely sure what it is, or where its going, but its emerging and so I’ll go with it and see where it takes me. I have a vague idea of some of the moods I want to evoke, but as to the actions, conflicts and the like, no clue.
I was thinking idly about the upcoming Brown University jaunt, and more specifically about having to talk with the students – and that’s going to be a fun and weird thing. I can picture the question: How do you plan your stories/plays? I dont. The stories emerge and I write them down. I try not to get despondent at my own exhaustion as I do my best to keep up with the story as it plays in my head. What advice can you give? Put yourself in harm’s way. Discover discomfort. Get real life experience. Face some life threatening stuff above and beyond being handed the wrong kind of coffee from the waitress. Discover the delicious clarity which comes from facing the possibility of not getting out alive from the situation you’re in. Assuming you live, the work you’ll do after this will probably be of a higher order than the mindless navel-gazing variety.
At the same time, I’m aware that a lot of good writers were comfortable middle class people, who merely used their imaginations. Dickens never starved. On the other hand, Joe Orton lived in a way that closely parallels my ideas of ‘putting yourself in harms way’ – and being true to yourself, regardless of how weird, sleazy, repulsive, or mischievous that might seem to everyone else in society. If you don’t know Orton, source the film ‘Prick Up Your Ears’ and learn a little something.
Side thought, I can feel my subconscious mulling over the half written play, whose characters are standing with their arms folded, waiting for me to point the way. Again, I know the story arc, and more importantly, the mood I want the audience to have by its end – but for now its still gestating. Like that character says in Bergman’s Serpent’s Egg (when describing the rise of Nazism) ‘you can see the egg, and the thing within, dimly visible – but its still not properly formed yet.’
Hmm, other things to perhaps raise with questioners – like ’sometimes you just have to write what you want to write, and its irrelevant whether or not you think the market will like it.’ I suppose that’s one of the issues I have politically with some ideas of ‘good art = what makes money’ – one ends up in a situation where people trudge along the same old footsteps creatively-speaking, believing that when you’re making money from art, or mass media ‘notices you,’ this therefore means that what you’re doing is ‘good.’ The primary difference between Culture in the EU and Culture in the US.
I think its lovely if/when ‘recognition’ happens, but there’s no way I’d ever want to be having those sorts of thoughts or motivations of fame/recognition in my head when making things. And trying to persuade people that there’s a technique which everyone can learn to ‘make good art’ (ie: stuff that makes money) is a slow dive towards scraping the bottom of the barrel, wearing weird glasses that have distorted the perspective. Hey, is that the surface I’m approaching? No, its the ocean floor – you’re upside down. The Aimee Mann line about ‘you’re on the ground and moving down…’ comes to mind.
I’m curious to see the kind of rehearsal process that’s going to unfold, and what the actors might need to know, in order to achieve the roles. Ditto seeing the other playwrights ‘process’ – as there’s no single one way that is ‘right’ – there’re many ways to skin a cat, and my approach is merely one of an infinite number of them, en route to the cast standing on stage, saying the words in the right order – and having fun with it, too. ‘No one gets out of here alive,’ after all…
And, now I think of it (re the ‘many ways to skin a cat’ line), what were the circumstances around the original unfortunate cat, which gave rise to that faintly sinister saying?
What were the original humans up to, which gave birth to that creepy line?
Who came home at the end of a long day, and muttered to their significant other ‘Damn, there are many ways to skin a cat.’
Why were they doing it in the first place?
Had they only been skinning cats in one standard way up until then? Just what were they doing with cat skins?
Hm, I suddenly notice that this is a rather kinky feline-sadism version of Brecht’s (I think it was) ‘thoughts of a person studying history.’
Good grief.
Its a gloomy day in Connecticut. Soft rain. Perfect writing weather.
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