Patience, Tenacity and the Mental Seedling

Novel writing, in most cases, is a labor and time-intensive pursuit, with countless hours of frustrated musings over word choice, plot intricacies and character development. Not only is it necessary to carve out writing-time, often intermittently available as family needs and financial obligations allow, but once you sit, fingertips poised, in front of the computer, the cursor blinking rhythmically on the screen, it is also a matter of maximizing the efficacy of that golden moment seized.

I have come to the conclusion that it is a matter of trust. Of self-trust. The novel, like a seedling, germinates within the rich mental earth; establishing itself with  delicate root-tendrils that burrow through the neural cortex with ethereal intricacy. Then it is purely a matter of nourishment, sun and water for seedlings...and patience and tenacity for writing. Often one talks of the literary muse and the inspiration that accompanies it like some kind of celestial grace that endows the writer with elevated abilities, elegant prose delivered with enviable ease. Alas, that muse is a stranger to me - much as I would give to make her acquaintance. (I will adhere to the Greek tradition and proclaim her a she of three).

So regardless of whether the writer has twenty minutes snatched from the obligations of routine and necessity, or whether they are so fortunate as to have a half-day set aside for the creative endeavor, or (blissful thought!) the leisure of a writing day all to one's self (for Virginia it was a room, but today, perhaps it is time) the key, I believe, is simple perseverance. For the humble mortals of us, the muse is a capricious companion that cannot, ultimately, be relied upon. She might flit through our minds with gossamer rapidity, briefly illuminating a suggestion that, like the seedling, might become something fine. But she will not condescend to write the novel. I cannot imagine her undertaking a labor of sweat (or would she delicately perspire?) and regardless of how talented and prolific one might be, certainly, the work of a novel does, at times, require a Herculean effort from us all?

Each novel is a product of our allotted time; the duration of which depends upon numerous extraneous obligations that define our lives - excepted are those oh-so fortunate few that make their living at this extraordinary endeavor. The time constraint sits heavily upon me. I have, by some marvelous achievement, obtained a quiet hour in which to work - so, fingertips poised, cursor blinking, the seedling waits in the dark. Waits for some dim illumination that pale green leaves might uncurl themselves and swelling buds might burst into bloom. So even if, within that narrow band of snatched-time, I formulate a single phrase that possesses something within it - something alive - then that is a progress that I am delighted with. In an era of instant-gratification and headlong-onward rush, the writer, I believe, must practice a patience with production and  a tenacity with the craft, however slow-moving that process might be. The novel is there waiting, as surely as the well-watered seed will grow into a tree - it is just a matter of time, trust and tenacity.

The Verbiage Disorder: Method in the Madness?

Phrases perpetually run through my mind; some streak through the darkness in a comet-cascade of light, brilliantly illuminating literary possibilities, terminal ends shrouded in darkness...the beginnings of something, the suggestion of something; like genetic introns that were long maligned as mere redundant code. I am sure this is an affliction common to writers - the verbiage disorder. Symptom: an obsessive preoccupation with words and how they can be manipulated, combined and associated to best express an improvised schematic.

Other phrases tease with the glimmerings of something, but never really materialize... subsiding into the mental depths with barely a ripple marring the surface, remaining obscure despite my best conscious efforts to examine them, turn them over in my mind, with the intent of utilizing them to best effect. But at times, it seems, when one approaches these dim utterances one must do so on the sly, stealthily from a dark corner as if one must seize them unawares; for caught in the full glare of light they can evaporate into nothingness. Isolated words, like individual amino acids in the formation of proteins, are imbued with potential. Some can be teased into existence and others remain stubbornly elusive.

In the solitary endeavor that is writing, it is easy to misunderstand, particularly if you are of medical leanings, anxious to prescribe, to cure, to rehabilitate. For we must appear to be quite mad - muttering under one's breath, considering phrases, rejecting them, tasting and savoring the sounds of words as they are formulated on the tongue, as they are expelled in breath. For Shakespeare has set us a precedent (as have many others) for the poetic expression of voice and I stubbornly maintain the most impossible of standards and aspirations for myself. The words strung together need to express something exquisite - the breath of life - the infusion of humanity...these are simply ink on a page after all. With the right words we create in our reader's minds something more - something three-dimensional and breathing that simply enthralls.

Often it is the simplest of impressions that can be the most powerful; Hemmingway referred to the smell of 'swept dust, wineglass rings and coffee spoons' in a morning cafe, and despite none of these items typically stimulating the olfactory apparatus, one can imagine this scene so vividly -the early light streamed through opaque windows and cast pale golden squares across rumpled tablecloths stained with coffee spills; dust motes (the unswept ones) are caught, held and gilded in the sunlight; the very air seems infused with a heavy fatigue: of revelers departed, of conversations faded, of the diminishment of things. And for the aproned man, who now wearily washes coffee cups behind the counter, there is the languid notion of having seen it all, done it all and still being confronted with the dawn necessity of rising to the task yet again. A winebar that does double duty as a coffeeshop - catering to the late and early trade. Sisyphusian labor. All of these literary extensions run through my mind in response to Hemmingway's incandescent phrase, a coupling of seemingly commonplace words that together invoke magic of some kind or another - magic that stops the breath in my throat and makes my fingers itch. And I want, more than anything, to write, to attempt to capture just a little bit of that magic, to weave the story, create a scene, that evokes so much more than the simple words themselves are able to express.

It is an unceasing matter this writing thing. It haunts my sleepless moments. My characters (who have yet to be fully formulated) hover in my mind like translucent ghosts, gossamer promises of what can be if I can harness the magic of that incandescent phrase. So I mutter to myself, a hopeless victim of the verbiage disorder, with less method than madness I fear - but in utter awe of the transformative lucidity of language.

Phrase-Envy: Linguistic Ability and the Genetic Code

It seems the normal state of being for an aspiring writer is one of abject fear and trepidation. I am referring most particularly to literary intimidation of the most paralyzing kind: the golden halo that envelops the perfect phrase. The linguistic equivalent of the sweet spot on the tennis racket. We encounter this kind of exquisite expression on a daily basis within the pages of eloquent authors both ancient and modern. So how do we overcome our own self-doubt, resist the rasping wheeze of our resident Golum, and muster the courage to create?

I have lately been musing on studies by behavioral geneticists and the rather clichéd debate between nature versus nurture. Our genetic assemblage provides a certain disposition to words, a facility with language; however, much of this can be instilled by a nurturing book-centered environment. Parents prioritize literature when their children are very young, read to them constantly, demonstrate their own inclination for books, are actively engaged in promoting an environment where reading and writing are greatly esteemed. This, in turn, encourages a child to make the best of their genetic predispositions - enabling them to reach the highest potential as prescribed by their genetic code. The nature versus nurture debate, I believe, is a rather tired old-fashioned diametric. Molecular interactions are exquisitely complicated, and while the presence of a 'depression gene' for example might trigger a depressive episode in the individual carrying it, it might only do so in conjunction with early childhood trauma. So, sans childhood trauma, that 'depression gene' carrier might be no more or less prone to depression than another for whom that particular genetic combination is different. While our genes determine an available spectrum, it is our own particular environment and choices we make in regard to it, that influence where on the spectrum we fall at any given time.

So my point here, albeit much belabored, is that regardless of whether we have an intuitive, instinctive facility for language, I believe that the ability to learn, to study, to acquire that literary ease, is a possibility for us all. To read these eloquent authors with a thoughtful studied perspective, to deliberately break apart their sentence structure, to examine the rhythm and flow of their syntax; to ponder deeply the particular combination of words that evokes such dramatic response in us the reader. We can enhance and improve our own linguistic expression, and that when assailed by phrase-envy, console ourselves with the understanding that producing a powerful phrase is also within our reach.

Each of us is a unique product of hereditary predispositions infused with specific cultural, parental and economic influences; our perspective is utterly distinct. For the creative writer this produces a voice, a style, an exclusive literary vision. So the imperative is to find that voice, trust in it, and then engage in a deliberate exercise to refine it as much as we are able. And your creative output will be unlike any other - and is it not that distinct, thought-provoking perspective that is most revitalizing in the literary endeavor? It is doubtful that any other than Thomas Hardy himself could have penned Mayor of Casterbridge, or Dostoyevsky The Idiot. These writers are a particular product of their own cultural and chronological milieu, as are we of ours. So for all of us rendered mute by phrase-inferiority fears we must remember that our voice too is a distinct one imbued with literary possibilities.

Word Choice and the Plasticity of Language

There are those novels that one always comes back to: the ones that sit snugly on your shelf, time-mellowed, like a particularly fine wine: bindings worn, the pages softened and thinned with repeated readings, their edges yellowed. I have lately pulled an old copy of The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad from my bookshelf.

 I have always adored Conrad's haunting prose: his paragraphs have a reverberating resonance that linger in your mind like subsiding ripples in a pool. T.E Lawrence said of Conrad: his writings are not formulated with the usual rhythm, but "on something existing only in his head, and as he can never say what it is he wants to say, all his things end in a kind of hunger, a suggestion of something he can't say or do or think." Perhaps Conrad's unique style stems from his linguistic diversity: he spoke both his native Polish language as well as French fluently from childhood, and only acquired English in his twenties. When asked why it was as an 'Englishman' that he wanted to be a great writer, Conrad responded: "Ah… to write French you have to know it. English is so plastic — if you haven't got a word you need you can make it, but to write French you have to be an artist like Anatole France." English, Conrad wrote, was "the speech of my secret choice, of my future, of long friendships, of the deepest affections, of hours of toil and hours of ease, and of solitary hours, too, of books read, of thoughts pursued, of remembered emotions—of my very dreams!" Conrad, however, did not write merely to entertain, like so many great novelists he raised critical questions about loyalty, about the barriers we erect against nothingness, against corruption and his perception of evil.

Conrad's exquisite rendering of the English language (even more profound given it was not his native tongue) and his comments regarding the plasticity of English in particular made me think of Orwell and 1984 where language is systematically minimized via severe censorship in order to ideologically align thought and action with the political principals of the 'Party'. Insofar as Orwell was concerned it was the obliteration of words that would subsequently result in the loss of associated ideas: if the word 'revolution' and 'rebellion' are excised from the linguistic corpus, those individuals prone to political protest will have difficulty understanding and communicating those ideas if the words traditionally associated with them no longer exist. My question, however, is that given the plasticity of language that Conrad refers to above, given humanity's propensity for invention (writing itself having developed out of economic expediency in ancient Sumeria) and our constant linguistic evolution (from Shakespeare who contributed 1700 new words to the English language by changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, connecting words never before used together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and devising words wholly original to Dr. Suess' wonderful wordplay) do we not just invent new words when old ones don't quite meet muster? And don't we all infer meaning not only from the words themselves but also from the linguistic context in which they are found?

Words are carefully chosen by the writer for maximum effect, and are, ultimately the product of our particular intention: evoking a dynamic emotional response in our readers, examining the nature and pathos of humanity within the framework of our particular society. Orwell said that political prose was formed "to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." A thought-provoking perspective in the midst of an election campaign in America. Joseph Conrad, like Orwell, was disillusioned with the practice of politics, and The Secret Agent depicts a corrupt society where there is less of a diametric moral opposition between 'police' and 'people' than one might suppose, or indeed, wish for. And isn't that the role of great literature: to raise the fundamental questions, to critically examine our ideological selves in the mirror? These best-loved books that sit on your bookshelves will similarly inhabit your children's and their children after that. Because they are timeless in their exquisitely unique examination of the human condition; unique because of the way a particular writer chooses their words and strings them together.

Rusurrecting Yorick: The Bones of the Book

"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio." Shakespeare's Yorick, a fellow of infinite jest and merriment has been reduced to the grim visage of a hollow-eyed skull. 'Tis the season of the macabre, and my thoughts turn to bones.

The bones of my book that is: the skeletal framework on which the muscular content will hang. An outline. The analogy that has presented itself is a grim hunt of sorts, a hunt for bones that can subsequently be pieced together to form a full-fledged skeleton. I am assisted in this endeavor by a residual archaeological propensity for an appreciation of moldering bones, but also by the literal process of attempting to fit a scarcity of remains together in some coherent fashion, in a way that suggests a logical overall picture of things.  My olfactory apparatus is in overdrive sniffing out the dramatic potential of the various historical personages and incidents that I come across during the course of the research.

I am currently examining personal memoirs left by the earliest settlers of San Fransisco, and specific individuals or their archetypes leap off the page, imbued with a brilliant halo of dramatic possibility; and of course there is the quotidian dust of the time (of the gold variety to a novelist) which provides the almost passed over details such as the cost of beef, the scarcity of vegetables, the wild cattle that would, at times, race, eyes-rolling and panicked, through the streets of the township. The prefabricated iron houses that were shipped from New York to address escalating rental costs; they were assumed to better withstand the raging fires that periodically consumed the town, but in fact were not only suffocatingly hot and piercingly cold as the weather dictated, but had an overriding tendency to collapse under flames burying its tenants in sheets of scalding iron. These are all little phalanges (I need 206 after all!) that will comprise a hand or two...although archaeological training suggests (a furtive whisper in one ear to which I most reluctantly pay heed) that I may indeed have more than one skeleton on my hands (and thusly more than one novel) and some bones may need to be left in the mud for a subsequent story.

I have recovered only a few bones, a tibia here, a vertebra or two almost completely obscured in the surrounding narrative; the little nuggets of gold that were literally swept from the mud-caked streets of San Francisco in 1849. So at present my outline resembles a rather poor partial skeleton with major features still absent; I am still seeking primary components, the pelvis, the skull, the more robust bones. But beyond the bony scaffold, beyond the gaping deficiencies there is the suggestion of the lively Yorik, a hint of the potential of a full-fleshed narrative in all its vibrancy. Closing my eyes I cannot quite see the jovial jester who hath born Hamlet on his back a thousand times, but if I strain sufficiently I would swear I could make out the childish laughter of the young Prince as they gambol and play.

Addiction of the Bean - Coffee and the Writer

There are writers who do it - who thrive without the java-crutch; how they manage genuinely perplexes me. The libretto for Johann Sebastian Bach's Coffee Cantata expresses my perspective perfectly: "If I can't drink my bowl of coffee three times daily, then in my torment, I will shrivel up like a piece of roast goat." It is one of those bizarre maxims that despite all evidence to the contrary, I believe most fervently to be true. I have as yet, retained an unshriveled human form but I have also been utterly paranoid about keeping the bean jar at maximum capacity...

Ancient chroniclers award the discoverer of the coffee bean with sainthood, an addition to the canonized pantheon who, in my humble opinion, is utterly deserving of top tier accolades. As depicted in the Abd-Al-Kadir manuscript  (penned in 1415)  Sheik Omar, exiled to a desert cave and beyond ravenous, chewed berries from a nearby shrub but found them unpalatably bitter; roasting rendered them hard, but boiling yielded a fragrant brown liquid -which subsequently revitalized and sustained him for days. Upon broadcasting his discovery, Omar was not only redeemed but rewarded for eternity.

Coffeehouses have been in existence for over 500 years. Paris' first, the Café Procope, still exists today and was a major meeting place of the French Enlightenment; Voltaire, Rosseau, and Diderot frequented it, and it is arguably the birthplace of the Encyclopédie. The Green Dragon in Boston was one of America's first coffeehouse/tavern combinations and provided clandestine opportunity for John Adams, James Otis and Paul Revere to plan rebellion. Coffeehouses today fulfill a less-revolutionary purpose (at least insofar as we humble literati are aware) but have, curiously, been known to stimulate creative output in a resident bean-imbiber. The Journal of Consumer Research has recently concluded that the moderate level of ambient noise in the average coffeehouse "induces processing disfluency, which leads to abstract cognition and consequently enhances creativity."

Ernest Hemmingway availed himself of this opportunity: "It was a pleasant cafe, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old water-proof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a cafe au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write." In a Farewell to Arms: "A wine shop was open and I went in for some coffee. It smelled of early morning, of swept dust, spoons in coffee-glasses and the wet circles left by wine glasses." Naturally enough the Journal of Consumer Research notes that this increase in stimulatory output is most evident in those already classified as highly creative. A designation for which Hemmingway is indeed an obvious candidate. 

For the rest of us perspiring scribes without regular access to the bustling coffeehouse, the morning espresso pot must suffice. For I shudder to imagine a morning without it, and am quite certain that upon that dreaded day the neurons will lack the  necessary lubricant for effective firing, my physical aspect will shrivel to disturbingly resemble that of a dessicated goat, and any associated literary endeavor will similarly dry up. For I have found that my diet of necessity is increasingly a liquid one: coffee to get through the day and wine to recover from it. So for all those similarly addicted to the bean in the writing profession, I raise my second coffee of the day in tribute: may your bean jar be always overflowing.

Through a Glass Darkly: Is You or Is You Ain't my Baby?

Okay so I have muddied the literary waters here - an uncomfortable juxtaposition between Lewis Carroll and old jazz, but I cannot completely eschew my archaeological origins where one was encouraged to consort with all manner of strange bedfellows with conspicuous consumption being the rule of the day - a multi-disciplinary approach (collaboration with botanists, historians, geographers etc) always produced a more coherent  view of the past than a purely archaeological interpretation.

Lately I have been pondering manuscript disassociation. Writers labor, often for years, over a particular literary work, and upon completion it feels much as a child to whom they have given birth. After a long arduous labor I have a five-hundred page tome. But as I examine its countenance with a narrowed eye I find myself unexpectedly dubious. The book can more accurately be represented by the teenage years - willful and determined to branch out in all kinds of independent directions despite your best efforts to tame and constrain. My Gollum moments. The novel has grown with me over the years, and I know it intimately, from the hair-growing-warts that I hope will be obscured in the dark, to the bright beauty of a moment perfectly captured. But now that my novel has reached maturity I am not sure I know it anymore. I see it through a glass darkly, a lens  that warps and magnifies much as those fun house mirrors at carnivals where your reflection is elongated and compressed beyond all recognition.

I read through the paragraphs and they are so familiar to me that I skip and waltz ahead, my mind filling in the rapidly scanned in-between. As I fuss and hover, readying my teenager for life on their own, I am plagued with doubts and fears. Will this piece of work stand up under scrutiny? Will it rise fearlessly to the occasion, or does it droop and wither in places a love-blinded parent cannot see? Regardless a child must eventually leave home, and you can only prepare it to the best of your ability, and then with courage and conviction (feigned if not felt!) open the doors and send it on its way.

Perhaps it is just a question of time. Perhaps a benumbed, bleary-eyed parent, chronically sleep-deprived, and over-zinged on the java, just needs a respite. A weeks vacation from a rebellious teenager whose merits temporarily elude you. Perhaps this lovely child is easier discerned and appreciated after a week of mutual vacation. Absence making the heart grow fonder, that sort of thing. Perhaps it is a close-acquaintance issue, inevitably individuals living closely together will have their combative moments, those battles over insignificant trivialities that are subsequently and rapidly forgotten.

So in a week or so I might eye my offspring again with a less-critical eye, and perhaps see it more clearly, and ultimately acknowledge that yes indeed, 'tis my baby. Warts and all - and how can I condemn those hair-growing warts when they all came from my side of the family?