Tuesday, January 28, 2014

"Of course you're a writer."


I recently overheard a published novelist badgering his friend, "You have to write: it's the only way to express yourself and work through your emotions!"

I later found out that the recipient of the hassling was an excellent water-color artist and a decent saxophone player...as if he couldn't express himself through art AND music? Surely, the writer was a bit stuck in his own world...making me wonder how often we look at others but only see what our own field of view permits us to see?

Now, that's a nice twist to use in a story: the flawed character, the narcissist who cannot really see anyone else with clarity--he superimposes his own image and experience. Sadly true: we fail to see others for lack of looking beyond the end of our own nose!

How do you get inside someone else's life? Their experiences, their feelings?

Part of the answer, of course, (duh,) is to be a good listener: don't solve their problems, don't criticize their actions, don't reprove their emotions--just listen.

Here's another part of the answer, one I'll bet you didn't expect--be a good reader.

Didja expect that? Ha! It's not really my own idea (really, how many truly original ideas are invented every year? Not many!)...but I sorta synthesized it from thinking about Stephen King's dictum that to be a good writer one needs to both read a lot and to write a lot!

My point is...the well-read person has a great breadth of (second-hand) experience. The reader is more likely to have met a similar person or problem in print, and can truly better understand their friend's plight.

That's what I think...what are your thoughts?

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Poetry, it's good for me! Or, is it?

Poetry is the hallmark of exalted life--it is our intended/natural speech. It is because we are broken that we must speak prose.
 
-G.K. Chesterton
 
=- =- =- =- =- =



Well, do you agree with old GK?

Why?...or, why not?

As for me...I'll let ya know tomorrow.



comments below.

(altho the Smothers Brothers sang, "Let's fuggetabout tomorrow, for...tomorrow never comes...here we are!)


Clearly, GK Chesterton had either a high view of poetry or a low view of humankind's current status...or both!

When I read good poetry, that is, something that's polished to a high sheen, not merely an ensemble of words that rhyme...it does beat prose all to pieces. Here's a fav:

Nothing Gold Can Stay

  by Robert Frost
Nature's first green is gold, 
Her hardest hue to hold. 
Her early leaf's a flower; 
But only so an hour. 
Then leaf subsides to leaf. 
So Eden sank to grief, 
So dawn goes down to day. 
Nothing gold can stay. 

Something that's got more than one layer of meaning, something where not only the words but the thoughts rhyme, now THAT is poetry.

I think of the scene in Lewis' THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH where the various eidola are descending into Ransom's house, and the humans are swept up into ecstatic utterance beyond their own capacity to utter or (previously) to even understand--now, that was poetry. "They all agreed that it was the most, the best..." if only they could have written down those words.

So, I agree with Chesterton...if our words flowed like those of the great poets, we'd need to be renewed, rejuvenated, somehow rebooted ... hmmm, sounds nigh-theological.

Monday, January 6, 2014

Happy New Year.

So what?

What's new about it? Have you tried anything, done anything, mastered/read/studied/disciplined yrself for anything yet?

If not, why not? Get off yer duff and go and DO!

What? Whattabout me? yer asks?

Unfair--I'm playing the role of Mr. Interlocutor! Really.

Oh, phooey. Well, since you insist:

This is the yr when I study in much greater depth the fascinating world of investing. This is the yr that I sit back and re-evaluate myself as a writer. This is the yr that I--wha? What am I doing now, today, this week?

Okay, I'm making lists go away: I'm doing or consolidating, acting and/or discarding...fewer potentials and more actuals. Today I threw out several pages that needed transcribing, several scrids of paper after actually performing the prescribed action, and prioritized what remains. I'm tracking things in my email by using draft copies--I can update and save the draft and it's right there at hand, easily edited and saved...nice.

Oh, and my resolution to do a poem a day? Doing it.

My annual read thru the Bible? Yep...on track with this plan, which is a new one to me:
http://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-reading-plan/thematic.html

My next goal is to start reading more serious works and less fluff...just copied down a great-books list and hope to get going on that soon. Inspired after reading A MIND FOR GOD by James Emery White...a brief but compelling book about the need to train the brain.

Howzabout you? Where are you at in this "new" year? Anything truly newly happening? Lemme know, below, ya know?