Exhuming the Dead
I had touched upon the idea of the lifespan of a writer’s greatness (the idea lay in shambles and fragments up in my head, and I apologize for the shards that follow,) when I updated my book list. I’ve picked up an old John Irving book to pass the time now (The Water-Method Man). It’s his second novel, which he wrote eons ago at the tender age of twenty-nine. Anyway, I got to thinking while I was wandering the underground on my way to a meeting downtown and there seemed no way out of the train of thought except to do it up as a full entry.
[Yes, I know, March 21st and I still can’t bring myself to walk in the daylight! The digital thermometer on the corner of Bay and Adelaide confronts me each time I exit my building. Today it read 4C. I won’t walk above ground until it hits 10C – because until then the concept of spring is still just a hallucination, like some whim James Joyce dreamt up one night while on a drinking binge in Dublin at the turn of the century. Until the thermometer hits 10C, we are all still Winter’s chumps around here. And while I’m thinking about it:
Dear Winter,
We talked about this two weeks ago and I thought I had made myself clear. I don’t think we should see each other anymore. We’ve had some good times, but I think I need to move on. I think I need to give Spring a chance. I thought you understood. So why do you keep showing up on my doorstep each morning all fluffy and white, all “I’m so pretty. I promise I’ll be good this time. Won’t you take me back?” The answer is still No.
What about “Don’t call me” DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?
Sincerely,
Nerdifer
End of digression.]
Where the hell was I? Irving. Right. I consider myself a respectable fan of John Irving’s work. I haven’t read all his stuff, but I’ve read the biggies: A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Hotel New Hampshire, The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules and Setting Free the Bears. He started out with Setting Free the Bears in 1968 and he was only twenty-six years old. Twenty-six! And it’s a pretty darn good piece of work, if I do say so myself – full of goofy characters and tangent stories that could only evolve from the brain of a young man whose sole purpose was traveling around Austria until he had enough material for a lifetime. I read the book when I was 17. I actually read it aloud and taped myself reading it, so that I could mail the tapes to my then-boyfriend who was on exchange in Japan. (Awwww. Yeah, get over how sweet that is, because dude ended up marrying his Japanese sister.) And I remember bursting out into fits of giggles and periodically having to stop the recorder because I was snorting and kafuffing about so much.
It must have been some burden on Irving, showing that much promise at that young age. He must have been bogged down by the responsibility of having to act the part of the writing ingénue. You know, being the token young writer at all those socials, having to wear tweed jackets everyday, rolling all those anecdotes about New England out for every single cocktail party. Exhausting. It was that sort of tweed-wearing credibility that I envisioned for myself four years ago. Only I substituted Japan for Austria. But I could never summon up the energy required to fix up all the dropped plotlines and the under-developed characters populating the graveyard that is my unfinished manuscript – let alone do the necessary research to make that proposed ending, you know, believable. Yeesh. It makes me tired just thinking about it. And, of course, the thought of facing rejection upon rejection was not something I was ready for. So, the manuscript still lays and waits for me to dig it up. And every once in a while I plot out a new character diagram. And then, more often than I care to admit, I just think about scrapping it all and starting anew with an even more screwed-up story, with even more screwed-up characters. But maybe not.
Maybe later. After Setting Free the Bears, ten years went by before Irving created anything of real substance again. A whole decade lay between Bears and Garp. (And I don’t even like Garp because it was just so damn full of its own bad self, and sometimes Irving likes to cram his books with the disturbing not because it, you know, makes sense for him to do that, but just because he figures he can and that it will get more of a reaction out of the public if he does that. But I do have to admit that, even though I didn’t like it at all, Garp had a hell of a lot more substance behind it than The Water-Method Man, which is kind of annoying thus far.) It’s like with Garp he decided to stop writing characters that were exclusively unlikable. He stopped relying on infidelity as his only device to drive the story. Which, okay, I’ll grant you that Garp did have that one aff– … oh well, you know, there goes that theory. Like I said, I didn’t like Garp. The point being: for a decade Irving was not interesting and not living up to his potential. And you can just feel him withering under the weight of some editor’s cruel deadline schedule. And he was in his late twenties and early thirties, and he was probably quite the jackass at the time. And then came Garp, and then followed Hotel, and then the beautiful character study of Cider House and the crown jewel of in-depth quirk: Owen Meany. From ’78 to ’89, Irving was experiencing a glory period that comes from growing up.
So the point is that the goal is not to be an ingénue. The point is to experiment and grow and work at the craft until the characters gain real depth. And the subplots exist for some purpose, other than that there ought to be some bulk to the story. And the resolution of the whole story feels like it is earned and deserved. Writers in their twenties are just babies. I’m just a baby. And my characters are unlikable and I’m relying on infidelity as a crutch to drive the story! Oh crap. Shame on me. So my fiction shall lie fallow while I populate my corner of the internet with other random babble, in the hopes of gaining that sense of wisdom that only comes with time.
Except…
Except a couple of things. I have a day job. (As, I’ve been told, writers should always have.) And I like my day job. But my day job right now just allows me to exist. It doesn’t afford me the luxury of any spare change to invest in buying a domain name or enrolling in a creative writing course. And it’s nine to five, so it occupies my peak inspiration time, which generally occurs between 11am and 4pm. This was not a problem when I was in Japan, since I worked evenings back then, but evening work that pays the bills and doesn’t bore me to death is scarce around here. And I’d be the only one doing it that way, and that would totally screw up my social schedule. And if advancement is the key to getting that luxurious spare change, well then that comes with a few side effects of its own. Namely – more effort and attention required for the job, longer hours that suck away at my creativity and replace it with mediocre exhaustion.
[Also, it would come with the distraction of having to work with that one guy in the company who is like this big fat Karmic joke on me. Like the universe is laughing and saying “here it is, everything you want in a man, all wrapped up in this cute smart-ass package complete with the smirk you can’t wipe from his face and YOU CAN’T HAVE IT! BECAUSE IT’S TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE and HE’S COMPLETELY UNAVAILABLE ANYWAYS! So just learn to understand that there actually is a difference between ‘bantering’ and ‘flirting.’ And have fun with that needle-in-a-haystack-adventure that is the search for another guy EXACTLY LIKE THIS ONE (whom you can’t have. Nyah. Nyah. Nyah.)” Sometimes I hate the universe.
Last digression over. Promise. How many of those side-bars could I actually write before you all completely lost track of what I was trying to say?]
Being a published author is always just this illusion I’ve had in my head. I’m not even the best writer my family has produced. And god knows we’d all like to see the Adjudicator follow through on his reservoir of potential, but it seems at birth he was not granted the gene for committing to his goals. So I’m left pulling up the rear, figuring that if the Adjudicator isn’t going to ever be able to get to “THE END” then that will be my duty. Except… Yeah, screw the “excepts.” I’ve got a plan.
[Yes, I know, March 21st and I still can’t bring myself to walk in the daylight! The digital thermometer on the corner of Bay and Adelaide confronts me each time I exit my building. Today it read 4C. I won’t walk above ground until it hits 10C – because until then the concept of spring is still just a hallucination, like some whim James Joyce dreamt up one night while on a drinking binge in Dublin at the turn of the century. Until the thermometer hits 10C, we are all still Winter’s chumps around here. And while I’m thinking about it:
Dear Winter,
We talked about this two weeks ago and I thought I had made myself clear. I don’t think we should see each other anymore. We’ve had some good times, but I think I need to move on. I think I need to give Spring a chance. I thought you understood. So why do you keep showing up on my doorstep each morning all fluffy and white, all “I’m so pretty. I promise I’ll be good this time. Won’t you take me back?” The answer is still No.
What about “Don’t call me” DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?
Sincerely,
Nerdifer
End of digression.]
Where the hell was I? Irving. Right. I consider myself a respectable fan of John Irving’s work. I haven’t read all his stuff, but I’ve read the biggies: A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Hotel New Hampshire, The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules and Setting Free the Bears. He started out with Setting Free the Bears in 1968 and he was only twenty-six years old. Twenty-six! And it’s a pretty darn good piece of work, if I do say so myself – full of goofy characters and tangent stories that could only evolve from the brain of a young man whose sole purpose was traveling around Austria until he had enough material for a lifetime. I read the book when I was 17. I actually read it aloud and taped myself reading it, so that I could mail the tapes to my then-boyfriend who was on exchange in Japan. (Awwww. Yeah, get over how sweet that is, because dude ended up marrying his Japanese sister.) And I remember bursting out into fits of giggles and periodically having to stop the recorder because I was snorting and kafuffing about so much.
It must have been some burden on Irving, showing that much promise at that young age. He must have been bogged down by the responsibility of having to act the part of the writing ingénue. You know, being the token young writer at all those socials, having to wear tweed jackets everyday, rolling all those anecdotes about New England out for every single cocktail party. Exhausting. It was that sort of tweed-wearing credibility that I envisioned for myself four years ago. Only I substituted Japan for Austria. But I could never summon up the energy required to fix up all the dropped plotlines and the under-developed characters populating the graveyard that is my unfinished manuscript – let alone do the necessary research to make that proposed ending, you know, believable. Yeesh. It makes me tired just thinking about it. And, of course, the thought of facing rejection upon rejection was not something I was ready for. So, the manuscript still lays and waits for me to dig it up. And every once in a while I plot out a new character diagram. And then, more often than I care to admit, I just think about scrapping it all and starting anew with an even more screwed-up story, with even more screwed-up characters. But maybe not.
Maybe later. After Setting Free the Bears, ten years went by before Irving created anything of real substance again. A whole decade lay between Bears and Garp. (And I don’t even like Garp because it was just so damn full of its own bad self, and sometimes Irving likes to cram his books with the disturbing not because it, you know, makes sense for him to do that, but just because he figures he can and that it will get more of a reaction out of the public if he does that. But I do have to admit that, even though I didn’t like it at all, Garp had a hell of a lot more substance behind it than The Water-Method Man, which is kind of annoying thus far.) It’s like with Garp he decided to stop writing characters that were exclusively unlikable. He stopped relying on infidelity as his only device to drive the story. Which, okay, I’ll grant you that Garp did have that one aff– … oh well, you know, there goes that theory. Like I said, I didn’t like Garp. The point being: for a decade Irving was not interesting and not living up to his potential. And you can just feel him withering under the weight of some editor’s cruel deadline schedule. And he was in his late twenties and early thirties, and he was probably quite the jackass at the time. And then came Garp, and then followed Hotel, and then the beautiful character study of Cider House and the crown jewel of in-depth quirk: Owen Meany. From ’78 to ’89, Irving was experiencing a glory period that comes from growing up.
So the point is that the goal is not to be an ingénue. The point is to experiment and grow and work at the craft until the characters gain real depth. And the subplots exist for some purpose, other than that there ought to be some bulk to the story. And the resolution of the whole story feels like it is earned and deserved. Writers in their twenties are just babies. I’m just a baby. And my characters are unlikable and I’m relying on infidelity as a crutch to drive the story! Oh crap. Shame on me. So my fiction shall lie fallow while I populate my corner of the internet with other random babble, in the hopes of gaining that sense of wisdom that only comes with time.
Except…
Except a couple of things. I have a day job. (As, I’ve been told, writers should always have.) And I like my day job. But my day job right now just allows me to exist. It doesn’t afford me the luxury of any spare change to invest in buying a domain name or enrolling in a creative writing course. And it’s nine to five, so it occupies my peak inspiration time, which generally occurs between 11am and 4pm. This was not a problem when I was in Japan, since I worked evenings back then, but evening work that pays the bills and doesn’t bore me to death is scarce around here. And I’d be the only one doing it that way, and that would totally screw up my social schedule. And if advancement is the key to getting that luxurious spare change, well then that comes with a few side effects of its own. Namely – more effort and attention required for the job, longer hours that suck away at my creativity and replace it with mediocre exhaustion.
[Also, it would come with the distraction of having to work with that one guy in the company who is like this big fat Karmic joke on me. Like the universe is laughing and saying “here it is, everything you want in a man, all wrapped up in this cute smart-ass package complete with the smirk you can’t wipe from his face and YOU CAN’T HAVE IT! BECAUSE IT’S TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE and HE’S COMPLETELY UNAVAILABLE ANYWAYS! So just learn to understand that there actually is a difference between ‘bantering’ and ‘flirting.’ And have fun with that needle-in-a-haystack-adventure that is the search for another guy EXACTLY LIKE THIS ONE (whom you can’t have. Nyah. Nyah. Nyah.)” Sometimes I hate the universe.
Last digression over. Promise. How many of those side-bars could I actually write before you all completely lost track of what I was trying to say?]
Being a published author is always just this illusion I’ve had in my head. I’m not even the best writer my family has produced. And god knows we’d all like to see the Adjudicator follow through on his reservoir of potential, but it seems at birth he was not granted the gene for committing to his goals. So I’m left pulling up the rear, figuring that if the Adjudicator isn’t going to ever be able to get to “THE END” then that will be my duty. Except… Yeah, screw the “excepts.” I’ve got a plan.
posted by nerdifer at 5:12 p.m.
2 Comments:
...AND...a night job would really break the tv watching (yes I know you could tape it, but it's not the same thing)
On another note...and I don't know much about writing...BUT shouldn't you finish the story you're working on when you're the person that wrote it and leave all that creative space for a new endeavor when you have new stuff to write, instead of applying the new stuff to fix the old stuff that was written when the old stuff made sense...?
(not sure if that made sense)
(Yeah, I'm not sure it did either.)
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