Writing less

I was remarking to someone last night who has kept reams of notes over her life, as have I, that there is less of a need for me to create words on the page.

It's an interesting phenomena since the written word has been how I have tried to make sense of things in the main.

For months now I have noticed that words wash over me, and that when particular words sparkle for me, capture my attention, I embody them. There is not the slightest need nor desire to write them down. The rest I can let go, like leaves blowing in the breeze.

To this end, this journal is less used now. I write far less in a nutting out kind of way.

I am hoping this opens the door to write, when the time and space is available, in a more creative and fiction oriented way. I had to let that go as I worked through things in my own mind.

Still, it's not over until the fat lady sings and who knows when I will feel an impulse to record something here.

Life certainly isn't always as I'd like it to be. Yet, my heart and my mind have developed this deep sense of compassion - not worry, but compassion - for others, including myself - that I find myself living in a very quiet space most of the time; calm, relatively relaxed.

For whatever I've gone through, so have we all gone through challenges in our own unique and personal way. It is the human condition.

And yet we rise. We rebuild. We heal. We are all amazing.

Navigating our inner worlds

A  Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara came to my attention this week. In an effort to make a decision as to whether to purchase a copy of the novel I am reading reviews by people who have read it. Goodreads is a great site for this sort of thing. One reader listed the many things he liked about the novel and the things he didn't like about the novel. On the negative side, he mentioned that he found something narcissistic about a story that only detailed the landmarks of the characters' lives and not the landmarks of the historical time period. As an example, the characters were living through the 2001 time period and yet there is no mention of the economic downturn or of 9/11.

Obviously I can't yet have an opinion as to whether not including a more external world for the characters to inhabit was a good idea or not, but I am wondering about this strategy in a more general sense. For example, I rarely mention the world at large in this web journal, perhaps thinking it more appropriate not to do so. I doubt anybody cares about my opinion of the American Presidential election, for example, even though I follow the events quite closely and was thrilled for Hillary Clinton to finally have the Democratic Party nomination. She is more than qualified for the job. She is level headed with an overwhelming desire to do good. And, as I see it, there's no viable choice. But, that's an aside. The world I present here is my internal world, by and large unconcerned with the material world just outside my door.

As I think back to Nora Webster, Colm Toibin directs his focus to Nora's inner world, and the world of her family; her private life. She goes to work and we learn of the office politics, giving us a greater understanding of the substance of Nora, but by and large, that's about as far as it goes. Certainly, we learn of the slow explosion of Ireland through what Nora sees on the television. We understand that just beyond the borders of Enniscorthy there lies an unreliable and conflicting world, but it's backdrop to the story. Our concern is Nora; what she thinks, who she is, and the decisions she makes.

I wonder if it holds any importance for a reader here to know my physical world; perhaps my choice of clothing or the kind of furniture in my house. Co-incidentally, I happened to read a short piece of writing this morning that suggested that we should be aware of the energy in used objects before we buy them, and this resonated since I often have a reaction to an pre-owned object that compells me not to buy it.

I am at this moment sitting at a dining table that we bought from a newly divorced woman in Connecticut who was moving to New York City, thirty-five years now. She told us that her family had sat around it for many happy and momentous occasions and she asked us to take good care of it. It's always had a good vibe and we've never considered replacing it. But, it's rare for me to feel this way about pre-owned objects. Somehow, on a visceral level, I understand this idea of 'energy' that surrounds objects, and people.

If objects give off energy then surely so do people, houses, neighbourhoods, news reports, the weather, the events that surround us as we go about our day. It would be a difficult thing to write about me, or perhaps anyone, without an understanding of how fast my mind thinks, and changes, moment by moment according to my environment. I might look out onto the garden and feel a glow of satisfaction that my lilly pilly hedge has finally begun to mature into a lovely shape but a minute later in walking into the boys' bathroom I may despair that they will ever be aware enough of their own surroundings to want to keep them tidy.

In terms of world events, it can be problematic to ascertain if we come to know more of a person in terms of how they relate to their world at large. I may hear of a sad event on the radio but not allow it to disrupt my day or bring me down. Whilst one interpretation is that that sounds heartless, some people can't afford to take into their soul sad news because to live so close to their skin is too painful. I suspect this is what is happening to my daughter. So much like me, she worries about the children with whom she works. On an intellectual level she knows she can't protect the children once they go home, but she would if she could, and that makes her job hard.

(Note: A day after writing this post a family member found it a part of his job to attend the aftermath of a 20 year old man who had taken his life by jumping in front of a train. I'm 'wearing' this tragedy today. It's hard to take it off and put it away, but with virtually no control or input into the lives of others unknown, we are forced to do this every day of our lives and to content ourselves with making any small impact that we can for the benefit of others.)

I remember the time of 9/11. I remember the following Saturday and talking to parents on the sideline of a childrens' soccor match and that sense of gloom that hung over the world as we talked of an event so far away, and yet we had all been in the building. 'There but for the grace of God go I', we all thought privately, I am sure. There's a natural response to keep your loved ones particularly close at such times.

At about the same time, one of my sons was attacked but the other perpetrators called the man off, thank God. Soon thereafter, someone tried to steal his backpack in the city and by then he'd had enough. He punched the man in the nose and that made him drop the backpack and run off empty handed. Now, these events did have a bearing on his state of mind and how he responds to the world. It's hard for anyone, I think, to relate to events in a meaningful way or for the events to significantly and permanently alter him or her, unless there is some sort of personal experience with those world events. We can feel real empathy and compassion for others going through traumatic experiences but it's hard to crawl inside their skin and their minds unless we've had something akin to that experience ourselves. I think it is why we read, to crawl inside other peoples' skins.

Whilst setting is a fundamental element of story, character development is what matters most in terms of a reading experience, I think. I am quintessentially Australian and that's part of my story, but how important is that to the reader when reading my words in a web journal? I suspect that the reader is more interested in the disgorgement of my mind, wherever it is placed in the world. Maybe I am blonde or brunette, skinny or wide hipped. I don't need to tell you since your imagination will fill in the gaps. You'll put me in a house of your own choosing and surround me with beautiful or garrish objects. This keeps the focus on the words and your engagement and agreement, or not, with the words.

I know that some readers want to be taken to a detailed visual world. It is something that I work on in my novel writing feeling that it has been a weakness, but still there is an instinctual part of me that feels that the intelligent reader does want to use their imagination; to relate on a personal level to the material, or perhaps simply to have a connection to the feelings expressed. It was a mistake, I think, for Hillary to wear that US$12,000 jacket because it takes the focus off her message and onto her personal choices. It says something about her, we figure; something that we'd prefer not to know. It feels like, well, it feels like a poor choice, and we don't want her having poor choices, not given the role she will play in the world. Still, if that's the worst of the choices, there is no harm done. It makes no sense to expect perfect people.

Each of us is made up of a gamut of choices; to be humble, aggressive, assertive, greedy, determined, caring; to impusively make choices for today or to take the long term view. Mistakes are inevitable. We never stop learning, if we choose to learn.  Some people have no interest in personal growth. It is a fact of life.

There is so much writing advice out there but at the end of the day, if you are going to write stories for the enrichment of other people, you just have to tell your story, exposing the complexity of being human in whatever setting your characters happen to live.

My journaling experience

My stats show that many people come to this web journal to read the post entitled My journal. Week after week this post is read over and over. I do wonder sometimes if an academic teaching some sort of writing course sends his or her students here. I can't think of another plausible reason why so many people read that particular post. I speculate that he or she wants to show his students the dangers of online writing, or the possibilities. The simple truth is that everything in this world can be used for writing and story fodder. I was told an anecdote by a woman yesterday as to how she knew that her husband was having an affair. I am sorry to say that my mind immediately said, 'Wow, what a great plot point!' It's what writers do, mine everyone and everything.

Since so many people do come to this web journal to read about journal writing, for whatever reason, I thought it might be time that I said something about journals. First of all, I adore them. I have kept them now for several years and it is a wonderful way of 'dropping' thoughts onto the page. It is said that an idea may come to you and if you don't write it down you may never have it again. Of course, anyone who reads here more than once or twice will have picked up on the fact that I am attuned to reasons to be fearful or anxious. You're not exactly a brain surgeon if you figured this out. So, fearful that this was true, I wrote lots of stuff down. I still do. Once or twice a week I brain dump into a closed web journal and one day I'll delete it because I don't want it read, ever.

Having said how much I love journals, I want to say this, that journals of all and any kind can be the writer's trap. When I first heard Colin Toibin say this, I didn't want to believe it. However, over the past few weeks I have come to see that what I was taught in my writer's course probably doesn't hold water. You don't have to keep journals to be a writer at all.

If you wake up with an idea, or go walking and see something that captures your interest, if you can't do anything else almost immediately than write a note, well then, for goodness sake write the note. But, recognize that it's less than a 50:50 chance that you'll ever refer to it again. Chances are high that by the time you go to use the idea, you won't find it anyway. I must have at least a dozen journals from the past few years and to try to find a single idea written some years ago is not likely. If I do read something over I often notice that the idea has changed; has morphed into another idea; changed as I changed. (Note: This is all debateable, of course. Woody Allan keeps scraps of paper in a drawer by his bed and when he is looking for a project he refers to the scraps of paper until he finds one that continues to resonate.)

Toibin believes that if you have to write a note for fear of forgetting the idea that means that you haven't taken it into your being. One way of taking a single idea into your being is to write a paragraph about the idea, perhaps the opening of a short story. Then file it in your Short Story file and return to it as the idea grows. Of course, I'm still not good at this. It's a very new idea for me. But, it has already released me from this awful notion that I will most likely forget my ideas. As you write into your story that's when you can mine what is in your head. If you have thought about it enough as you go about peeling the vegetables or ironing a shirt, the thoughts can be transferred directly from your head onto the page.

Ideas mull about in the head and need to be put down on the page eventually,  probably in the form of a scene or some dialogue or description. The exception might be, and I still do this: My philosophy of life = _____. This helps because it feels to me that at the core of a story is one's version of the meaning of life, in some form or other. So long as you have that embedded in your brain such that you can express it in a few words, you're good to go in creating scenes and characters, even if they are nothing like you.

To get better, I think one needs to write almost every day. It's not as simple as that but not much can be achieved without that starting point. I've been agitated lately at all the calls on my attention and my difficulty at getting to sit down with myself and write, until I remembered something. When I had no choice but to generate material constantly as a student, I put that first. I didn't go into stores except supermarkets hardly at all and I rushed through my household, wifely and motherly tasks so that I could devote my efforts to the blank screen. Of course, that's an unbalanced view and people count. They come first, at least for me. Yet, without some devotion to a craft - writing, painting, editing, acting, getting the tennis ball to the far back corner - how does anyone become proficient?

I offer one major exception to this advice of minimizing the practice of journal writing. There is a journal entitled '365'. Now, here's a quick way to a writerly life. Don't use this to rant but rather to sit with yourself daily and conjure your most compelling emotion. Ask: What am I feeling right now?' Then, do something with it. Give that emotion to a character on your mind. Perhaps a little dialogue, or a description of the character's internal world. There. Endless ideas all in one little journal that will ward off writer's block forever. Good luck with it, whatever your style of transferring ideas into prose of some form. No-one said it was easy.