The Elegant Variation: GUEST: SCRIBBLING

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September 30, 2005

GUEST: SCRIBBLING

One reader writes: What about writing habits? Oh yes, writing habits. Me, I begin each writing day with a large bottle of single-malt Scotch…kidding, kidding. Sort of.

I was lucky with The Ice Beneath You: although a multi-year project, the one year that I did most of the heavy lifting I was home. Not so for Voodoo Lounge. Most of Voodoo Lounge required a 5 or 6 am wakeup and an hour or two of writing before day-job work…a very long, tedious, frustrating way to write a novel. It usually takes half an hour just to get your head right, not leaving a huge amount of time for actual forward writing. But, you know, we do what we can do, yes?

Let’s be real here: very few published novelists can afford to do nothing else. It is possible, through circumstances of marriage or lifestyle decision (i.e., choosing to live very poor) or the very occasional bestseller. But most of us have to work, at least part time. Best way to go about this is to teach, that’s what the smart ones do. You get your summers off, you get a fairly light schedule (don’t even start with me about your meetings and heavy teaching schedules…you’re not lifting boxes, are you? I’m the son of a college professor: you’re not fooling me). It’s good for writing, the academic life. Unfortunately for me, I don’t have an MFA. Nor an MA. Nor even a BA. And so, I am 100% not qualified to teach creative writing. Published novels, good reviews, an NPR gig…none of that counts. I am unedjumacated, so ergo cannot be trusted with the unformed minds of college kids (for the best, really).

These days, I find myself copywriting. As Augusten Burroughs so aptly put it, the advertising world doesn’t give a tin shit about your degree as long as you can sell bad shampoo.

Any closeted work writers out there? Let’s hear your stories of woe and manuscripts-found-by-boss…tell all, friends, tell all... blmcwb at att dot net.

These days, as in now, this month, I am finishing my third book, or trying to. The novel is called In Hoboken, and is set (um, well, you know…) in Hoboken. In 1995. In a community mental health center. More I cannot say. It will be on shelves, God and Simon & Schuster willing, maybe late 2006. The title, besides being simply obvious, is a tip of the hat to Penelope Fitzgerald (At Freddy’s) and Bruce Chatwin (In Patagonia).

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Oh yes, the 5 a.m. wake-up call. I never manage to get all that much written, but it does help me get my head screwed on straight and keep the story in the front of my mind during the day. I'm actually doing this 10 p.m. start-time right now, with the 5 a.m. wake-up call. I will be glad when the thing is written.

Posted by: Gwenda | September 30, 2005 at 08:07 AM

http://www.chekhovsmistress.com/2005/08/on_writing_the_.html

Posted by: lob lolly | September 30, 2005 at 10:52 AM

Oh yes, I have the obligatory day-job to pay bills, but want to have the teaching job so I can have a better day job while I write. I'm working on publishing short-stories and right now, i'm so tired by the time I get home, it's cutting into my creative time, the commute . . . so I will re-apply to MFA programs next year, but have already been accepted once a couple years ago, but unfortunately didn't have my s*** together so . . . in the meantime, I'm writing or rather thinking about how I should be writing.

Posted by: Angela | September 30, 2005 at 11:17 AM

Wow, I just posted something, or so I thought and it's not here. If it shows up later, sorry 'bout that. What I said, essentially was, I have a day job but I want the teaching day job so I can have all the things the teaching environment provides, however, I will be re-applying to grad school for the MFA next fall. Meanwhile, I'm trying to write short-stories to be published when I'm not in my car from my hour commute to/from work! But you're right about college degrees. Aside from teaching, so many places don't care if you have a degree or if it's in a field that you are working in. Pretty sad, isn't it?

Posted by: writergirl | September 30, 2005 at 11:21 AM

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MY NOVEL

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The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal by Rob Riemen

This slim volume by the president and founder of the Nexus Institute, a European-based humanist think-tank, stands as the most stirring redoubt against the ascendant forces of know-nothingness that we've come across in a long time. A full-throated, unapologetic defense of the virtues of Western Civ – in which "elite" is not and never should be a dirty word – this inspiring exploration of high art and high ideals is divided into three sections: The first looks at the life of Riemen's great hero Thomas Mann as a model for the examined life. The second imagines a series of conversations from turning points in European intellectual history, populated with the likes of Socrates, Nietzsche and others. The final section, "Be Brave," is nothing less than an exhortation to dig deep, especially in times of risk. The notion of nobility of the spirit might strike some modern ears as quaint but it seems more desperately necessary than ever before, and there are worse ways to read the accessible Nobility of Spirit than as a crash refresher in the Great Thinkers, free of academic jargon and cant. As a meditation on what is at stake when the pursuit of high ideals is elbowed aside by the pursuit of fleeting material gain, however, Nobility of Spirit might well be the most prescient book we've yet read on what's at stake in the current election cycle and in the developing global situation. Agree or disagree with Riemen's profound, ambitious and high-minded plea, you will be thinking about his words for a long time. It's been ages since a work of non-fiction moved us this way. Read it. Discuss it. Argue about it.
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Dictation: A Quartet by Cynthia Ozick

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Diary of a Bad Year by J. M. Coetzee

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*Now in Paperback*

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Home Land by Sam Lipsyte

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SECOND LOOK

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald's second novel is the tale of Florence Green, a widow who seeks, in the late 1950s, to bring a bookstore to an isolated British town, encountering all manner of obstacles, including incompetent builders, vindictive gentry, small minded bankers, an irritable poltergeist, but, above all, a town that might not, in fact, want a bookshop. Fitzgerald's prose is spare but evocative – there's no wasted effort and her work reminds one of Hemingway's dictum that every word should fight for its right to be on the page. Florence is an engaging creation, stubbornly committed to her plan even as uncertainty regarding the wisdom of the enterprise gnaws at her. But The Bookshop concerns itself, finally, with the astonishing vindictiveness of which provincials are capable, and, as so much English fiction must, it grapples with the inevitabilities of class. It's a dense marvel at 123 pages, a book you won't want to – or be able to – rush through.
The Rider by Tim Krabbe

Tim Krabbé's superb 1978 memoir-cum-novel is the single best book we've read about cycling, a book that will come closer to bringing you inside a grueling road race than anything else out there. A kilometer-by-kilometer look at just what is required to endure some of the most grueling terrain in the world, Krabbé explains the tactics, the choices and – above all – the grinding, endless, excruciating pain that every cyclist faces and makes it heart-pounding rather than expository or tedious. No writer has better captured both the agony and the determination to ride through the agony. He's an elegant stylist (ably served by Sam Garrett's fine translation) and The Rider manages to be that rarest hybrid – an authentic, accurate book about cycling that's a pleasure to read. "Non-racers," he writes. "The emptiness of those lives shocks me."

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

September 30, 2005

GUEST: SCRIBBLING

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MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

September 30, 2005

GUEST: SCRIBBLING

TrackBack

Comments

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MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism