Hardy, Dickens and Deconstructing the Character-Driven Novel

I remain somewhat wary of literary categorizations - binding novels within an ever-tightening hierarchy of type and genre, as if they were biological organisms that can be labeled, pegged and defined, neatly nesting with others of similar attribute. While it worked for Linneaus, novels - to my mind - remain creatively elusive. While the application of specific designations to a literary work indubitably facilitates marketing, and communicates some broad notion of content to consumers, the conventional differentiation between 'action-driven' and 'character-driven' novels seems to me an erroneous one - intimating as it does
that the pursuit of one such strategy precludes the utilization of the other.

Whether from ignorance of particular literary theory, or a stubborn persistence in my own particular perspective (which tends to fluid inclusion, spanning and encompassing genres, rather than rigid categorization) I cannot say. It might simply be a reiteration of what is already blatantly apparent - that novels are more complex creatures that refuse to obediently conform to prescribed perimeters; a vibrantly-hued Jack-in-the-box that will not be contained. Across the lid of this literary box wherein Jack is wedged is transcribed the phrase (in grandiose letters) - 'Character-driven' or 'Action-driven.' The larger the box, the broader the categorical brush, the more inclusive the members, and the less useful such distinctions become. Frequently encountering this fundamental polarization between action-propelled novels or those in which characters sit firmly behind the literary wheel, I ponder upon its validity. Perhaps it would behoove me (before discarding the notion entirely) to deconstruct the particular attributes that define a literary work as one or the other.

The assumption is that these proposed dichotomies are representative of all narrative works, that each novel can and must be placed in one box or another. Unlike the gregarious wanderings of subatomic particles (which can occupy not just two locations but an infinite number simultaneously), the slimmest of novels must (or so it seems) be definitively defined according to one or the other. Choose your box.

Perhaps the underlying notion is that within a given novel the thematic threads of action or character comprise the structural integrity of the given literary work. When one peels away the location and its associated atmospherics, the attendant details, the extraneous threads, what lies at the heart of the novel? What element can a reader, intent on some nefarious dissection, remove without compromising the integrity of the whole (assuming for arguments sake that such a thing can indeed be done)? What provides the quintessential foundations for each particular work? What serves to fundamentally propel the narrative onward? What, if the vehicular analogy can be strained a little further, fuels the literary engine? Can it indeed be such a simplistic reduction of two?

I have, these past months, been revisiting an old friend - Thomas Hardy; and particularly several of his lesser known novels The Woodlanders, and The Laodicean. Like Charles Dickens, his works were serialized; segmented pieces published monthly by Harpers Bazaar among others. Both authors penned novels peopled with profound fictional personalities, their works (as far as I am aware) falling decisively into the 'character-driven' category. I wonder if this form of installment publication lends itself more readily to character-rich narratives. In Dickens' initial segment of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, one is thrust into the grim darkness of Jasper's opium-induced dreams, encounters the complacently-gullible Edwin and is left with the whimsical girlishness of Rosa; these powerfully-rendered characters, accompanied by the fastidious Mrs Twinkleton and the eccentric Mr Durdles, are the gleam and glimmer that light the way; it is these fictional individuals that loom large in the imagination, that engage and enthrall the readership while it waits impatiently for the next monthly installment. Besides the obvious difference in reading-habits between contemporary readers and those of the early nineteenth century, I do not believe that a novel devoid of such engaging fictional characters would have survived the monthly-publication interim.

In the opening of Hardy's Woodlanders, serialized in Macmillan's Magazine, Grace Melbury returns from a genteel urban academy to the rustic simplicity of Little Hintock and the quiet attentions of the taciturn Giles Winterbourne; the early chapter depicts the latter awkwardly awaiting Grace's arrival at the marketplace, his apple tree sapling beside him, eyes on the dirt, a man of the turf and hillock who possesses an intuitive understanding of the natural world but easily bewildered by the feminine one. And she! She is a 'flexible young creature...coming on tiptoe through the mud...and she held out to him a hand graduating from pink at the tips of the fingers to white at the palm.' Again, as in Edwin Drood the contrast is delightfully apparent from the onset - this moment of awkward reunion encapsulates the dilemma that will plague Grace for chapters to come - how to reconcile her acquired urban polish with the woodland rusticity of her youth, of which Giles is a part.

Implicit in this dichotomy of character-propelled novels versus those relying upon action to power forward momentum, is the notion that they are mutually exclusive. Action or character and never the twain shall meet. I defy any readers to proclaim Les Miserables lacking in dramatic dash and physicality, or to find its deficit in The Mystery of Edwn Drood (a taut page-turner, by Dickensian standards, fraught with dark intrigue). The turmoil, when it comes, is all the more dramatic for our utter engagement in the characters who comprise a part of it; no languid sighs here, nor long-winded melancholy perambulations, but action enough to bring the heart to a heated fever, to quicken the breath, send eyes anxiously scanning the page ahead - Does he die? What happens next??? The evoked anxiety of the reader exists in direct proportion to their degree of identification with the characters who are thus beset; Valjean's flight through the murk and mire of subterranean sewers, the desperate retreat of Rosa with the malevolent Jasper on her heels in Edwin Drood. So it is not necessarily so that the action of these 'character-driven' novels is of the subtler sort, or that it is confined to emotional entanglements rather than physical combativeness.

Perhaps the 'action', in these novels, actually encompasses a broader canvas; defined not only in terms of the ongoing physical momentum of events, but also supplemented by the internal ruminations and angst of a poignantly-drawn, complex character. The action of intent and motivation. In the conventional form of an 'action-driven' novel, I understand this means essentially and specifically a sequence of action-packed scenarios - much as one would expect to see in a modern Bond film - with the daring hero proceeding from one life-threatening engagement to another, with looming conflict and the desperate attempt to overcome it, being a central theme. Perhaps in these novels the dramatic plot sequence forms the primary structure of the novel itself, with characters formulated but essentially secondary to the maelstrom through which they are propelled. It is not that the characters are two-dimensional, as much as their particular roles within the narrative could be fulfilled by a certain, relatively generic type; authorial time and attention being bestowed on dramatic sequences that ideally enthrall a reader eager to escape quotidian demands. I do not mean to say that these novels are less enjoyable, or less worthy than their more literary counterparts - I merely wonder as to the accuracy of such polarizations in their interpretation. Perhaps the allocation of 'action-driven' for these novels is in fact quite appropriate, if it did not imply a dearth thereof in 'character-driven' works.

Within literary landscapes (such as those evoked by Hardy and Dickens) where plot progression cannot be imagined sans the complex creatures drawn with much authorial forethought (no generic hero-type will do) the action is just as prevalent but broadens to encompass a wider range of dramatic eventualities; not only the pant and grunt of physical struggle, but the mental agonies of Somerset as he yearns after the coolly reserved Paula in The Laodicean, or the ferocious malignity of Jasper in the quiet school garden in the Mystery of Edwin Drood, or the final death-scene of Giles Winterbourne gasping out his last in the dilapidated home he had relinquished (at the cost of his own life) for his Grace, even when she was no longer his own. To my mind, this is action of a much more powerful sort.

I do not think it is entirely a matter of length either - of spatial emphasis within the novel to one or the other; side-characters that populate Dickensian narratives are deftly portrayed with a minimum of pen-strokes. The disquieting Princess Puffer of Edwin Drood is portrayed within a few short paragraphs in the opening chapter, and despite her later reappearances within the novel, she is little-enlarged upon but remains a vividly memorable character within the Dickensian compendium. The unscrupulous Dare of The Laodicean is most indelibly portrayed via his laconic encounters with Captain De Stancy, where a brief dialogue serves the turn, or a glimpse into the mental machinations as he devises schemes to libel and undermine Somerset in his pursuit of Paula. There is no lengthy exposition of his character, or his background, but instead he is immersed within the ensuing action, his aspect vividly apparent in conversational asides. There is scarce narrative space devoted to these supporting cast members but they are indubitably critical in the rendering of each imaginative world, and give credence and incentive to the ensuing action.

Some advocating this polarization of action versus character writers even go so far as to ascribe a neural predisposition towards one kind of writing or another - not only are there novels propelled, with some degree of exclusivity, by action and others by characters, but each are produced by authors who depend upon, and utilize, one side of their brain in preference to the other.  This implies a level of biological predeterminism, but one that is, I feel, negated by authorial choice - either one wishes to focus primarily on a thrilling escapade, complete with villain and hero counterparts, a rollicking narrative entertainment which many readers enjoy; or they wish to convey fictional individuals that are more than the sum of their parts, characters that transcend the page, and whose actions (subtle, mental and otherwise) impel the forward momentum of the novel. They are not opposite ends of the spectrum, nor does one necessarily exist independently of the other - character-novels are hardly devoid of action, and there are indubitably works of escalating action that contain characters both luminescent and memorable (I found Stephen King's characterization via dialogue - from the admittedly few novels of his which I have read and those some time ago - quite superb).

Perhaps, as in many things, it is in the extreme reductionism where the error lies; it seems imbued with a simplicity which finds little correlation in the complexities of any given literary endeavor. I do not mean to say that any writer can simply select his or her preferred modus operandi and blithely proceed with one kind of novel or another. A writer conveys in words that which is within, the giving of voice to an internal compulsion, the narrative colored by their own particular vision, one that itself evolves and morphs with passing years. There are writers of all literary tint and hue, catering to an audience just as diverse; but each of us shares the restless imperative to self-transcribe the palpitating adventure that thrums in our blood and resounds in the beat of our heart. It is not to say an action-writer cannot delve into a character-compelled narrative, and vice versa, or even that one exists in isolation of the other, but it is a question, perhaps, of authorial motivation. Rather than isolating specifics that drive the plotline, perhaps instead we should make reference to what compels the writer behind the pen.

Jung, Tesla and the Evocation of Inter-Character Atmospherics

I have been contemplating the fictional construct of characters; not their own particular complexities as such, nor the manner in which they evolve through the course of the narrative, but the effect they have on other inhabitants of their literary realm. In the process of beginning a new work my attention is primarily bestowed upon the individual rendering - transforming the skeletal shadows that exist as nebulous, half-formed notions of themselves, into the heated pulse of life with all the emotional turbidity that coils and pulses beneath the facade. In short I am intent upon the literary life-giving properties that transform a fictional individual from the two-dimensional imprisonment of page to the soaring expanse of an imaginative reality. For there are innumerable fictional characters that, for one reason or another, do not succeed - they remain flatly unengaging. Dull and lifeless beneath the turn of page, until the reader tires of their insipidities and the book is returned, barely skimmed, to the shelf. I remain fervently of the opinion that the formulation of character, with all their attendant complexities, is critical to the literary success of a novel.

For the writer beginning anew, fictional individuals are essentially conceived in isolation: each circumscribed bundles of human frailty arriving fresh in the narrative, influenced by their own particular past and propelled by their own particular agenda. Memorable characters, however, do not adhere to a linear progression through a given work, evolving according to some predetermined parameters to come to some tidy resolution. As much as I focus on the attributes, the proclivities, the mannerisms, the essential aspects of a given persona - I wonder if the greater magic lies in the spaces between; in the literary ether that permeates between one character and another.

Perhaps a visual analogy might be found in Tesla's lamps where plasma filaments extend in an arcing stream of colored light from the inner electrode to the outer glass sphere. Might it not behoove us to think of characters in this way? Not themselves so much - but the manner in which they interact with others - the electricity that arcs between; the fear and the passion - that which exudes from the very pores, exhaled in sharp breath, inhabiting the air as a charged emotive force independent of both parties. A scene of my recently completed novel (and one which emerged unaltered despite the multitude of revisions) comprised a confrontation between two protagonists, where one nursed a legacy of hatred nourished and intensified by generations of economic and social oppression. The encounter was fraught with tension; the escalating, almost primal, anger of one charged the atmosphere with a barely-restrained ferocity that to some extent defined the relationship between the two for the remaining part of the novel. Perhaps this particular chapter survived intact when its neighbors were heavily revamped due to this inter-character frisson that does more to compel and engage us than any straightforward recitation or revelation of attributes might do.

The precise nature of these atmospherics are often as elusive as they are varied, and might just as readily be defined as a languid ease than a snarling hatred. Cause and effect - the vehicle of which is not always visible to the naked eye - is perhaps all the more dramatic for being so imperceptible. Seeking clarity and inspiration in physical analogies my mind drifts to inter-cellular communication: the ebb and flow of ions, sugars, and amino acids that permeate the phospholipid bilayer; air-borne pheromones that communicate sexual desire; compounds emitted by trees suffering an insect-onslaught that evoke a similar defensive response in arboreal bystanders; or the enigmatic dark matter that populates interstellar space and can be inferred from the rotation of stars and the gravitational tug on emitted light - in short what happens between!

Jung expressed it beautifully: "The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed." To expand upon this metaphor (harnessed as it is to a literary imperative), a character isolated exists and proceeds in a fashion essentially predictable (a substance inert), governed by genetic and cultural predispositions and environmental context; but when others of uncertain motive and intent intrude upon the scene there ensues the excitement of uncertainty. What Jungian reaction might manifest, and how might such a fictional synergy impact subsequent narrative development?

One of the most vividly expressive character-interactions recently perused was that between the Machiavellian Jasper and young Rosa in Dicken's Mystery of Edwin Drood. Jasper, the seeming-devoted uncle (a smilingly villainous Claudius prototype) to the ominously-missing Edwin, threatens dire repercussions if Rosa refuses his amorous advances. Assuming the presence of onlookers, (situated as they are in the school gardens) Jasper's languid poise assumes dramatic counterpoint to the brutal nature of his communication. The dominant personality in this scene exists not within the malevolent Jasper or the cowering Rosa as much as the sense of atmosphere charged, caught, and held between the two; it acquires a degree of physicality irrespective of flesh, bone, and blood, a quivering tautness that inhabits the air like an electrified charge - an emanated sense of menace that excites one and utterly oppresses the other.

Perhaps this is merely an effusive reiteration of the obvious, but words are my stock in trade...and the perpetual quest to make myself understood (and indeed to understand myself) in a cascade of verbiage is, indubitably, an occupational hazard. Self-indulgence aside, my focus, insofar as character development is concerned, has been primarily a linear one - fabricating the fictional individuals within the confine of plotline, establishing a sense of them - from whence they have come, their literary travels within the novel, and the resolution to which they will find themselves at journey's end. But much of them, indeed the elusive qualities that render them something more than words on a page, arises not from authorial forethought, as much as the engagement with a fictional 'other' and the frisson that arcs between. I have been thinking primarily of characters as a progression, wending their way through the novel - perhaps a closer examination of the dynamism that ebbs and flows between one and another, the flux and flow of engagement, might prove beneficial to a writer ever-seeking to improve her craft. Ironically, as reliant as I am upon a profusion of words, this frisson of interaction might be utterly mute, dramatically conveyed by what remains unsaid and undefined.

This evocation of atmosphere seems something key within the formulation of a novel. Not so much who or what the characters are, but how they will engage, what might arise from the mix, from the exchange, from the chemical transformation that Jung alludes to. For after all, what are we alone? Growth potentials are limited; the trajectory a relatively dull and lifeless affair. But there is magic in interaction, an uncertainty in a previously unimagined combination. The atmosphere that lies without. A poignant, and ofttimes wordless, conveyance that elicits an equally visceral response. And to take that elusive dark literary matter that pervades the inter-character gap, to shape it, mold it and keep it warm between the palms, to be dispensed as required like fairy dust - the atmospheric additive that enables literary flight.

Working out the Knots: Titles and the Difficulties of Summation

I recently completed my novel - a decade-long endeavor of wrestling, contorting, massaging and coaxing verbiage - the Muse and I sometimes operating in mellifluous concert, like creative wavelengths superimposed to new peaks, but more often at odds in a daily grind of teeth-gritted extraction; a tortured procession of words that finds literary ease only after additional toilings and perpetual revisions: the final phrase born perhaps more of a mutual exhaustion between the Muse and I; or an elusive process of working out the knots: a literary attentiveness that is reminiscent of the close-fingered deftness and focused intent required in disentangling water-swollen ropes yanked to tightness under a wind-filled sail - an undertaking made without recourse to the passage of time, requiring perhaps a year and a day. Or, in my case, in certain particularly entangled parts, a decade.

Amidst the restless search for the trailing sequence of sentences, the years have passed by with all their intervening crises, the geographical re-locations, the upheavals, the family expansions and the critical wage-earning expeditions that fettered the mind and stilled the literary pen. Characters and plot expanded like the complex whirls of a fractal, and page after page filled with the dark imprint of ink. Some paragraphs, of more ancient age than those adjacent, suggested a disparate expressive voice, an awkward shift - a younger authorial me that at times jarred and bristled alongside more recently penned neighbors. These sections were re-crafted and a few more years fell to the task.

But the word-hunt is, at last, over - for this novel. All now is quietude. The pen has been laid aside (the black one at least - awaiting the attention of the editorial red), and the simple words that adorn the last page finally are in accordance with the parental mind: 'The End.' Having suffered from the delusion that these two words signify the completion of the work, I have spent the last few months in the torturous mire of needful summations - acquiring a title; the one which had accompanied an earlier version of the work now seemed an ill-fitting appellation - and so subsequently began months of list-making, opinion-seeking, potentials written in and many more firmly crossed out. For the title is critical, is it not? A few words that entice a bookshop browser (virtual or otherwise), a short phrase that elicits a response...a tendril, a wisp, a light suggestion of something substantial to come. A literary come hither that might coax a pick-up, or a turn of page...the quick scan of an opening sentence or two. And of course there are innumerable restraints in the formulation of said title - erring on the side of short and pithy, uniquely unlikely to be muddled with another work of similar title, some loose connection to the theme of the narrative or a primary character within. For perhaps it is the condensing wherein the difficulties lie. Take this mammoth of a literary beast and reduce it to a scattering of words, distill it (as an alchemist of old) into something that glitters within the pen-calloused palm of one's hand. It perplexes me somewhat - that comparatively months can result in page after page of dense text but weeks upon weeks might yet be required to come up with a mere smattering of words.Three or four will do.

And it simply must be done. The novel without is a rather forlorn thing. Unnamed. Unfinished. And I begin to realize what a title contributes to a given work - it assigns personality before anything more is known. Just as olfactory stimulation quickens the salivary glands, the enticing scent promoting subsequent hunger, so does the naming of a book awaken the curiosity of the imaginative mind. Not only does it appear a succulent dish with its neat glossy binding and intriguing cover art (saving that angst for another post!) but the title itself emits a singular aroma - one that weaves a tantalizing thread of half-formed questions within the browser's mind, and, if successful, initiates a hunger that can only be quenched by reading the novel. A satisfying literary meal will, like well-loved dining establishments, be recommended and passed on. Of course the work within must rise to the occasion of the titillating title - otherwise it will be consigned to the bin of only partially-satisfied, the author to be avoided, subsequent works eschewed.

But perhaps I assume too much - perhaps, as was recently suggested within a Historical Novel Society newsletter, the title need not be so functionally encumbered, need not, in short, serve so many masters; indeed, the author contended that the title is an acolyte of the marketing god - seeking merely to entice - to enthrall - to incite purchase irregardless of contextual meaning or associative parallels within character or plotline. It complements the suggestive cover art and sells the novel. And that is all. So when I tax neurons unmercifully, engage in long fruitless list-making, wax lyrical (and not-so-lyrical) about underlying meanings, the whys and wherefores of title-fit in regard to the contents of the novel - perhaps I am missing the mark. Perhaps I should take my cue from Shakespeare's Juliet and be assured that like the rose the novel will still smell as sweet.

For of course like all writers I yearn to compose anew - the next novel waits impatiently for my attention, kicking its heels in the dusty outskirts, and like a quivering hound before the hunt I scent the promise of it, heart-quickened and breathless, fingers twitching in anxious accord. For the spinning of a new narrative, weaving a world and populating it - another glorious adventure awaits beyond the horizon, knots and all.

Imbuing Literary Life: Galatea and the Anthropomorphic Tendency

Glancing back upon previous posts I am struck by the compulsion to anthropomorphize elements of the narrative environment: cursors flicker with bestial intensity; disparate thoughts of doubt and uncertainty are given bone, flesh and insidious intent - lurking as sly Golems or Pragmatic Critics in the cluttered confines of the literary mind; blank pages experience existential angst, yearning for the literary inscription that confers meaning.

Insentient objects that comprise my writing world are particularly prone to the receipt of such life-breath: ascribed with nefarious motivations to stall and thwart if the narrative is not proceeding well, and imbued with all the mellifluous ambrosia of the literary gods when it is. It has always been so - cars are named, computers cursed (I remain of the opinion that a good kick to the tower can solve all manner of tech-related ills), and houses redolent with the emotional vibes of their inhabitants. Flowers, bedraggled and aphid-infested, are necessarily distraught, their healthier companions a jubilant juxtaposition to their miserable fellows.

But perhaps this tendency comprises the heart of the matter. For are we not, after all, endowing our work, our clustered sequences of ink on page, with the quickened heat of life? With a vigor imbibed under the authorial pen? Where our imaginative practice of granting malicious purpose to cursors, pages and fleeting doubts perhaps serve a useful function. For we are gathering thoughts, accumulating utterances, hoarding phrases all to the intent of fabricating a fictional character, some aspect of a self; shaping with words the curve of jaw, the mobility of expression, the feverish, ferocity of an emotional intensity. In short we, like Pygmalion, are sculpting our Galatea and infusing her with the enigmatic flush of life - a faint blush beneath the marble, like the ghost of a face under a thick mantle of ice. The engaged reader releases her, and the literary work takes wing. For the bibliophile forms a critical partnership in this dance of two - as authors are Pygmalion to their literary work, receptive readers are the Venus that facilitates the final transformation from the cold immobility of marble into the warm receptivity of woman. For the narrative (flat and austere between the confines of cover - unread upon the shelf) becomes something else with the perusing of it.  Indubitably, the unopened novel contains all the subtle literary skill and nuances (unlike Schrodinger's cat it's existence is not in doubt) but for the reader who has yet to crack the spine, the glories of it exist as an expectant promise, a gleam in the parental eye that portends life to come.

This practice of ascribing malevolence to inanimate shadows, expectancy to binary-flickers, and depth and desire to the blank expanse of a white page (tendencies that alone might seem bizarre manifestations of a disturbed mind!) all operate in service to the Muse. Irritated cursors and disconsolate pages are the minor minions:  literary lackeys that facilitate a flexing of synaptic pathways, the exercise of which habituate us to the breathing of life into insensible things. They comprise the shadow characters that precede the actuality - the suggestion of what will be fully rendered within the narrative.

And this seeming-innocuous imaginative play hearkens back to childish days, to younglings immersed in their fanciful selves: a strewn coat in the dark metamorphoses into the humped silhouette of a nocturnal serpent, the damp leaf mold beneath a glimmering canopy of green becomes the provenience of fairies, gnarled tree branches are transformed into the seaweed-bedecked prow of a pirate ship. So when we, as adults, imbue the mundane objects of our quotidian surrounds with personality and intent, we are stripping back the veneer that conceals and subdues our own whimsical perspective. A habit that perhaps enriches, however subtly, our subsequent work; accustomed as we are to perceiving vigor in the glacial cold of marble or the inert stolidity of dark ink across a page. For we are life-givers by nature, this is where our yearning lies - to capture the elusive flutter of vitality, the quintessential quickening that comprises human engagements - caught like an exotic butterfly in our enveloping net of words.

The Next Novel: Cursor Battle, Momentary Stall and the Accustory Blank Page

After a decade of focused intent the deed is done - the novel completed and set aside; it undergoes another journey of dissemination (one in which the painstaking parental pen has no part) flung out to the virtual skies, buffeted by the vagaries of public opinion; at times, doubtlessly, utterly indiscernible in the dark pall of sullen cloudbanks, but perhaps, if I am lucky, to light incandescent in an intermittent stream of appreciated receptivity.

But now another thought-stream rises to the surface, a turbulent suggestion of fictional possibility...and the germ of the next novel is born - a rather small and indistinguishable thing as of yet, but imbued with the most glorious of potential. My literary focus shifts across the oceans, and backward fifty years in time to the mid-eighteenth century: the nutmeg hangs heavy and ripe beneath glossy leaves, cloves scent the winds, and the Europeans do bloody battle in their wallowing carracks seeking to dominate access and supply of a few dried seeds that grow nowhere else in the world.  A remote time and place that shifts and blurs in my peripheral vision, replete with an energetic frisson as if the past has been whispered in my ear, made manifest in a pictorial stream of sensory impressions - for I do not write the past as much as I perceive it from the vantage point of utter immersion. I taste it on my tongue, inhale it through my pores, feel it with a visceral intensity - and then attempt the oft-arduous task of depicting it in words - to cast it in black and white upon the blank page in the fervent hope that such sensory ferocity can indeed be so translated.

Several such scenes have come to rather satisfactory fruition. In a torrid of writing, in a frenzy of flying fingers and racing mind, the characters begin to take shape. It is, however, an outline of them, an alluring shadow, hinting at the elaborated dimensionality of flesh in chapters to come; an authorial promise made most solemnly, a pledge to the attentive reader: "Bear with me - there is something marvelous yet to come!" I have not seen yet how these disparate threads resolve, but the unraveling of it is a gradual and intermittent affair - coming in tentative half-thoughts, gossamer threads that glide through the recesses of my mind in the dim hours of half-sleep, or in a rush and noise of great enthusiasm, and I will fly to the computer - hunched and tense, laboring over word selection....feeling the performance pressure, as if the characters themselves examine my efforts from the shadows with crossed arms and critical gaze...

Then abruptly: a stall, a standstill, a grinding and unwelcome halt. The cursor blinks; the steady repetitive monotonousness of that perpetual wink - as if a literary eye opens and closes in sly commiseration. Well? the cursor seems to ask: Well? What now? What grand procession have you planned? For some it is the blankness of the oncoming page that terrifies....what does one fill it with? I find that I do battle with the cursor, the rhythmic flicker waits like some preternaturally forbearing beast, enduring in imperturbable silence, craving a succession of words. I will emerge triumphant, even if ten long years are required to do so. The beast (of which an infinite variety populate my literary world - indubitably preferred to the placidity of beauties) will be fed...and hopefully, at the end of such endeavor, conclude that the procession was worth the effort after all.

For the cursor pulses to a cadence echoed within our imaginative selves...poised on the brink, hesitating, searching, pondering, waiting, then in a burst of intensity, a spill of words, a gushing torrent that paint a scene...then a momentary stall, and the cursor again waits in silence...long-suffering, unwearied. It is appeased by a paltry offering, by a hasty phrase, incomplete and lacking in substance; for the cursor knows that while it hungers for words, you must be satisfied with the coherent quality of the whole - and those passages that linger unsettled in the authorial mind will be revisited, and unceremoniously booted or spruced up with all necessary spit and polish like a recalcitrant child before a grandparent's visit. For the writer will not settle. It is part of the authorial contract with all prospective readers - a commitment to the highest levels of literary ability. Perhaps then, the cursor is less an unfriendly accusatory than it is a patient ally - waiting, in magical symbiosis with our own literary sparks, to bring to leaping fire the marvelous narrative that dwells within.

Perhaps the conventional literary angst that revolves around the blank page is of a similar nature - and that the page also can be visualized in a more affable light: waiting with all eager expectation for the spill of ink that is to come...for inherently the cursor, or the page, find an existential angst in the blankness, emptiness, nothingness of un-inscribed space - and yearn to be written upon, to find the languid ease of an onward narrative flow, to facilitate a literary work, to ultimately be something more useful, more substantial, than an absence thereof. What is it that intimidates us about the blank page, the steadily blinking cursor? Is it the empty sterility of a broad white expanse? Perhaps it is the hovering expectation of meaningful fulfillment? The relentless quest for a literary achievement that silences our inner critic? That of all the sundry things written before, this phrase, this passage, this scene, this novel, has something worthwhile about it - a literary contribution worthy of the years of painstaking labor required to bring it to fruition. A pressure, however unconsciously felt, that gives pause to the pen.

As long as we have air to breath, and food (wine, and coffee!) to sustain us - we will be yet again and again drawn to the computer, wrenched out of quotidian tasks, the keyboards pulling with the unremitting gravity of a black hole (for do we not disappear to daily life when deeply engaged?)  For inevitably (given our own obdurate perseverance in the literary task) the tome will, one day, be done. And the blank page will thirst no more, and the cursor will finally be replete. And we? We will be the happiest of mortals.

The Linguistic-Numerical Divide and the Quest for Literary Validation

Having traveled the dark and dismal road of agent-submissions, increasingly burdened by a plenitude of form-rejections that steadily compile, accumulate and weigh heavy (my Golem counts them with ill-concealed glee), I have stumbled upon an unexpected truth. A truth that, like a child seeing the vast expanse of sea for the first time, widens horizons in a sudden realization of infinite possibility. It is indubitably a  subjective truth, but it is in the hope that it might prove pertinent to others that I expound upon it here...

Discerning literary agents, publishing representatives of the stiff and uncompromising ilk (as such they seem to us poor writers) are, in reality, quite a distinct species. A necessary one. They fulfill a critical function, as do we. Storytellers elaborate upon a theme, weave a fanciful discourse, cast a literary spell - words are our stock in trade, our currency, our estimation of self-worth: casting a critical eye over our previous sentence we ask ourselves how well that sounds on the tongue, how effectively we have communicated that particular emotional nuance. We do not need our Golem to whisper snide disapprovals in our ear - we are, indeed, our own harshest critics. It is words that validate us or cut us down to size - that scene you wrote at two in the morning in a frenzied burst of inspiration that is retained through draft after draft because there is something improbably perfect in it! And of course the profusion of passages that are worked and reworked until mind and pen are utterly weary of them.  But it all comes down to words. Just as cytosine and guanine make up essential nucleotides in the construction of the double-helixed DNA, so do conjoined words comprise the essential life-giving element of a writer.

Agents and Publishing houses, however, operate from a distinct premise - as with writers they are instinctively geared towards the survival of self. The evaluation of fitness, however, is an economical one. They must sell to survive; while we work in the aggregation of letters, in the sequence of words - so must they examine with all due intensity the numbers. For publishing houses, and subsequently agents who must woo them, are rightly concerned with the dimensions of things: the number of words and pages, the cost of printing, the depth, width and weight of shipping containers to transport said works, the trends of sale - all of which comes down to an association of numbers rather than letters.  That is not to say they do not appreciate the fine hue of this letter or that, or the artistry inherent in this particular collection of words, but they are prohibited from prioritizing such a subjective leaning, lest the Board, peering disapprovingly over graphs of revenue projections, should darkly mutter: "Yes, that is all very well, but the sales trends for this such a novel do not bear out your optimism!" or: "too long....too literary...the demographic too marginalized!" The numbers simply must concur for the Board to acquiesce. For they too must survive. And for an author untried, unproven, and uncertain - it is the numbers that provide the necessary bolstering, that tempt the Publishing House to take the requisite gamble - number of blog hits or twitter followers (assuming the length is suitably confined and the genre a well-selling one). For they do not like to hold their breath and hope as writers tend to do, this particular species prefers a degree of certainty, the solidity of evidential precedence, before they take the plunge.

Numbers that reassure them do but bewilder me. It is not that I do not understand their imperative, I simply to do not elevate it to the same degree. For intrinsically we are not mathematicians - we are writers and words are both the air we breath and the sustenance that nourishes our literary mind. And whilst one does not begrudge publishing agencies their economic imperative (for they must also veer clear of monetary deficiencies and economic red-ink) is there any wonder that there is such a frisson of unrest between the two? A disconnect felt more acutely, perhaps, on the writing side of it - seeking as we are entrance to the hallowed halls of traditional publishing. Or are we?  And this is where the unexpected Truth emerges from the dusty hinterlands like the fiercely guarded  treasure of a grouchy leprechaun. We covet traditional publishing approval because it serves as a widely recognized and esteemed form of literary-validation. We made it - in a stringently competitive arena - one of the select chosen few - and I do not, indeed, belittle such an achievement! I have naught but happy pride for those of my literary colleagues who have pursued such a course and been successful. I cannot claim such happiness for myself - but have found a different kind of joy - one which is perhaps more long-lasting and less dependent upon the vagaries of Publishing Trends or Editorial Idiosyncrasies because it is rooted in the essence of the writing self. It is, in short, the realization that a specific agent-publisher-acceptance is not the validation I seek.

In the dark, in the deep quiet pools where ofttimes truth malingers, I have always known it to be true - but only lately has it been recognized by my conscious self: the only validation that matters is that which we provide ourselves. And the growing awareness that there is a fundamental divide between writers and the agencies that seek to represent a select few of them; one who devour words with an insatiable appetite, and the other whose heartblood carries numbers which inevitably and indubitably, it seems, (from agent perspective) trumps words.  Is it any wonder then that entire books are written on the intricate art of  query letter composition alone? That formulations of synopsis are elaborately treated in this Indispensable Self-Help book for authors or that? For are these not the accepted mechanisms for crossing that linguistic-numerical divide?   Writers and Agents are each curiously dependent upon the other - but working within a divergent dynamic, framed by a distinct objective. For some lucky few common ground is found, but for the vast majority of us, we are stranded: with the wordsmiths peering out across the expanse of horizon at the number-sleuths who occupy the island "second star to the right and straight on till morning."

But then being so fortunate as to employ self-publishing options if the need arises (as indeed it does for most of us)  -granted with all additional fiscal and marketing management - we have the ability, utterly on our own, to give our novels flight! To send them out into the literary ether, proudly adorned with ISBN code and self-defined cover art. For where does the pleasure lie for a writer? In the agonized interlude as one awaits the interminably delayed response (if made at all) from an agent? Or, having secured one, the fearful apprehensions regarding sales performance - will they, with a delicate yawn, decide this genre, this style, this author, is not quite their thing when the graph lines dip a little lower than expected? Is THIS where the ecstasy is to be found for the inveterate teller-of-tales? Or perhaps it is the marginalized royalties where the fun abounds? Not that the pragmatic writer expects such economic bounty (we worship at the altar of words rather than numbers after all, do we not?) but there is something to be said, perhaps, after a decade of laboring to enjoy a slightly higher return on however slight an income stream - if only because it enables greater freedom to write rather than give unsquandered time to the cog and wheel, the bureaucracy that plumps the purse but does little to fulfill our passionate yearnings - or to satisfy our essential need for words strung together in an intrinsically unique way. 

Quite simply when one discovers the validation lies here - in the process of writing - in that delicate harmony of mind and pen - in the fluid expression of what lies deep within; in that crafting of the quintessential phrase which survives revision after revision because it retains some semblance of the literary divine about it; a sweet spot which evokes a heart-glow like no other. That is where our validation lies - and if we must needs seek our own methods of sharing those literary gems then so be it. For perhaps we need not be quite so hard on ourselves when we understand that agent-procural oft requires nothing less than a concurrent and unsurpassed fluency in both languages (words and numbers), and one perhaps, given certain popular trends, not even to be devoutly wished for. For if we can write, if we can formulate a phrase that gives us delight - if we can string them together in the weave of narrative - in the creation of a fictional world that pulses with life - is that not ALL? Does that not comprise the pleasure epicenter? So it was my stumbled-upon truth. One that doubtless does not hold for all - but perhaps for some. I have  (like Dr Suess' Sneetches) words inscribed across my belly, but unlike his covetous creations, I have no desire for species conversion - for the acquisition of numbers - because there is no joy for me there. My particular double helix coils and winds, scripting the genetic makeup, with all attendant mutations and base omissions, and surpluses, the complex convoluted curl that is me - all of which finds its base in A through Z.

Hemingway, the Beast, and Bleeding on The Typewriter

I have seldom used a typewriter but often lament it's passing nonetheless. There is a romanticism inherent in the tapping of keys, in that echoing resonance of click-clacking that evokes a previous age;  this absorbed intensity of writer hunched, the crumpled discards littering underfoot, the furious symphony of pounded keys that echoes the tumultuous haste of the literary mind: a Hemingway moment poised over the typewriter as bombs thundered in the streets outside - the ferment of war, the thrum and pulse of a quickened literary imperative; a darkened alphabetic imprint implying a forceful keyboard jab, the damp brow, the fleeting fingers, the quick catch of breath...when writers described a moment in all its intensity before it was gone. One can readily imagine the drops of sweat, blood and absinthe that marred Hemingway's pages (metaphorically or otherwise), that accompanied the feverish vehemence of prose that hammered out beneath his keys. As he himself said: "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at the typewriter and bleed."

Somehow the interaction now, between writer and vehicle of prose, seems, comparatively, a rather mute endeavor; the quiet hum and whir of computer processing power, the silent acquiescence of a pristinely effective delete function, and the intangible narrative product that exists in the dark obscurity of binary code. It is there somewhere, encoded in ones and zeros, in dusty company with other long-forgotten files and jpgs. Saved and stored, it exists in the abstract - it cannot be seen, let alone bled on. But of course Hemingway was referring to the figurative outpouring of everything that is essential within us - to get down to the steady beat of heart, the visceral muscular heat, the lifeblood that nourishes and sustains...the darkly pulsating warmth that resides within. It is about becoming acquainted with the darkest parts of ourselves, the unacknowledged failings, the ignored and unclaimed, the proclivities we deny, the secrets we bury deep. In short - letting loose the beast that resides within; for it is only when we have a passing knowledge of these subterranean undercurrents, these sluggish Stygian marshes, that we can attempt to write them. To find the words that capture, entwine, and depict the beast- which is, in essentials, an emotional, bloody, visceral thing. For we are attempting a portrayal of humanity, are we not? And when pushed to the brink, when cornered and threatened, do we not bare our teeth and snarl? Retaining some instincts of Sahelanthropus tchadensis, our last common ancestor with chimpanzees....

It is not an easy thing - to recognize or depict - when something is so deeply felt and hardly understood; the translation of which seems more appropriate to a Viking-growl or the fierce facade of Gothic warriors, then to words. This collection of letters in of themselves seem fairly mundane articles, poor conveyers of what seems a much greater thing. Perhaps it is the attempt of such that Hemingway refers to.

And as for typewriters - this poignant yearning for past things might also be indicative of the technologically-driven rate of world-transformation. Life oft seems to hurtle forward at an unimaginable velocity - the nature, shape and manifest inner workings of binary chip technology rapidly transforming into something else...nanotechnology, virtual reality...three-dimensional...touch pads...e-books... perhaps the typewriter is a stable iconographic image of the engaged writer - the hunched absorption, the auditory scales of keys forcibly punched, the intensity of prose sounding out an accompanying rhythm in flying fingers and furiously working mind. Click click clack. Perhaps the writer's innate tendency to retreat is a psychological reaction, in part, to the perpetual haste, the onward rush of things. For when we stop to muse, to ponder a word, to savor it on our tongue like the literary equivalent of a fine vintage...do we not ease that headlong momentum just a little? We take deliberate pause. There is time to catch one's breath so to speak.

Perhaps the typewriter is gilded with the sepia-brush of nostalgia, belonging to a golden age of something impossibly pristine, and this is why it maintains an unsurpassed literary significance (or perhaps this is merely an archaeologically-driven idiosyncrasy of my own particular mind); that it must inherently be bygone and bypassed to be so appreciated. When we see a writer sweating over the keys in a movie...the pages impatiently torn and crumpled, the ink-stains, the blots, the smudges...does one not, even for a moment, wish for that visceral closeness with the text? With words that can be tangibly smeared, that seem more intrinsically a part - and thus reluctantly parted with; grimaced and winced, a pained tortured affair - as if we were wringing words from their preferred abode of quiet-ether to the solid imperfection of ink on a page. Coercing them with gritted teeth and determined mien, a bloody-forced progression, words shoved and contorted, bribed and coaxed until they spill out upon the page like animals in the circus obediently lining up for the opening act. The beast within. Does Hemingway tame it with his blood-sacrifice? Or does it merely cooperate for its own amusement?

So if it is all about the beast, and perhaps the portrayal of it (blood-spilling seeming a requisite to the process) then the crux is less the mechanism (typewriter) than the implied emotional investment behind it.  Indubitably writers today are similarly intensely engaged in the literary endeavor...perhaps, for us, the emotional ferocity of typewritten novels might stem from the frustrations of inadequately inked-keys, or the half-hearted effectiveness of the white-out function, or the reams of paper crumpled on the floor in a visible reminder of literary failure. It is not that I do not appreciate the quiet efficiency of the computer, I just wonder whether the ferocious click-clacking of an intense narrative immersion facilitates bleeding Hemingway-style to a greater degree....whether somehow the beast is himself attuned to the clatter and rhythm of keystrokes; if he is, to a greater degree, repulsed by our stark efficiency, by our quietly humming immediacy and our limitless electronic databanks.