Joel’s Improved Personal Website
We Will Haunt and Hunt Our Own Creations
Listen to this smattering of writing advice from the book No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty:
“Pick out a character that’s causing you no end of grief, and do something reckless with them. Have them exiled out of the story or get swallowed by a wormhole while waiting for a bus. If you’ve hit a standstill in your efforts to bring two obviously perfect romantic leads together, kill one of them. Your readers won’t see it coming, and in figuring out how to fix the mess you’ve just made of your story, you’ll give your imagination the fertile improvisational environment it needs to thrive.”
What we have here, in miniature, is the ‘problem of pain’ made simple. When we take up our pens to write our own stories, a god-like quality shows through. What so many people deride in God as unjust – his willingness to allow, or even (dare I say it) to introduce pain and suffering – they blithely and even jokingly accept as best practice in the stories they write for their own fame and enjoyment.
Here’s another example. In author Janet Fitch’s recent Top 10 Rules for Writers in the LA Times, her tenth tip is:
10. Torture Your Protagonist
“The writer is both a sadist and a masochist. We create people we love, and then we torture them. The more we love them, and the more cleverly we torture them along the lines of their greatest vulnerability and fear, the better the story. Sometimes we try to protect them from getting booboos that are too big. Don’t. This is your protagonist, not your kid.”
When we write the story, we sit in the seat of God, and our understanding of God betrays itself too well. We will haunt and hunt our own creations to the limits of their lives, and set lions on them to spur them running in fear the last mile to victory – our stories would not be worth telling if we didn’t. But not God. Surely not God.
This post is part of a podcast, syndicated from the original episode at jdueck.net where you can listen online.
(Music cues are Neptune, the Mystic from Holst’s The Planets, and The Pines of the Appian Way from The Pines of Rome by Respighi)
(You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or RSS, or see past episodes.)
The Tape of Nature's Anomalies
Radio address for March 27, 2010: a weather report of sorts. Nature always skips skips skips the beat. Ending music is from a recording of Nadaka & the Basavaraj Brothers: “Live in Paris“.
You can download a PDF transcript today’s address, and print it out and keep it in your filing cabinet like I do with the originals.
This post is part of a podcast, syndicated from the original episode at jdueck.net where you can listen online.
(You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or RSS, or see past episodes.)
One Take Only
I had an opportunity of doing a letterpress workshop at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts again on Tuesday.
I had only three hours to set the type, buy paper, do my printing and clean up, so I thought I would aim low by setting up one of my marquee fiction pieces, a series of short fictional vignettes each exactly 256 characters long (so they could fit in the Windows “Marquee” screensaver). Next time I am so limited for time, I will just do a business card.
As it was, with a three-hour limit, I was scrambling to get the type set and by the time I was (barely) ready to print, I had only an hour left. I bought and cut my paper, snatched some chocolate brown ink out of the cupboard, locked the chaise into the press, and slapped my paper in without really aligning it except by eye, and started printing. I think the attendant was a little appalled by all the details I seemingly cared little or nothing for, but I was in too much of a hurry to sit down and talk it over with her.
I was especially fortunate that I had no bad letters and no typos. As you can see, it has a kind of hurried, authentic quality to it (” – he said, ironically”). I’m thinking of another run, more carefully prepared, but only if I can sell them, since it would cost me more to rent time on the press. As it is I may end up just putting all the pieces away and make this an extremely limited edition.
Good Night Irene, Scene Four, set in 18pt Goudy Roman, 16/18pt Bembo Italic, and 36pt “Unidentified” type, printed on Crane Lettra 300gsm paper
Thinking in Ribbons and Smudges
Radio address for February 17, 2010, guest-starring my Smith-Corona Super Sterling (not, as it might sound, a gun, but a typewriter). The excerpt at the end is from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens, Book I, ch. XV.
A smudgy PDF transcript of today’s address is available.
This post is part of a podcast, syndicated from the original episode at jdueck.net where you can listen online.
(You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or RSS, or see past episodes.)