On literary cannibalism
A pretty aggressive article by Laura Miller on Salon.com on her problems on NaNoWriMo. While I won’t go into the ironic ridicule with which Miller is covering herself ranting against writing when she herself has already been published, as if to say ‘Ah… you know, it’s actually not that interesting’. But we’re not looking at the Mona Lisa here, rather the opposite.
First off: I like her point. I don’t like her writing, much too verbose for what she’s saying, or rather repeating over and over that reading is more important than writing, because – after all – writing will out on its own.
But see, the lady has a point. Or half of a point. Because without reading how can anybody aspire to actually write anything decent? Miller is right in emphasising:
I say “commerce” because far more money can be made out of people who want to write novels than out of people who want to read them. And an astonishing number of individuals who want to do the former will confess to never doing the latter. “People would come up to me at parties,” author Ann Bauer recently told me, “and say, ‘I’ve been thinking of writing a book. Tell me what you think of this …’ And I’d (eventually) divert the conversation by asking what they read … Now, the ‘What do you read?’ question is inevitably answered, ‘Oh, I don’t have time to read. I’m just concentrating on my writing.’”
That, I personally find shocking. While I’ve been struggling to keep up my reading pattern of at least one book a month ever since getting pregnant and juggling a full time job, I would never one minute put my writing in front of my reading. Both are symbiotic and I realised that the first time I thought ‘wow… you’d think this is Lord Byron’s soggy writing’ when reading something old of my own feather. We are fundamentally influenced by what we read and even more so immediately after we’ve read something. This influence is proportional to the length of the book or the length of the author phase that we are going through. I am sure others have witnessed this slow tendency to start writing in large, expressive sweeps after reading a Brontë novel.
While I don’t savour Ms. Miller’s venom as much as other commenters have, I do salute her drive and her message: we need to encourage people to read more.
Ask yourself, would you like to read an epic three part novel by an author that hasn’t read Shakespeare and is almost illiterate in terms of world literature and writing?
I wouldn’t.
There used to be this rite of passage that in order to write, you had to read the classics to understand the finer workings of good plot, of good character depiction etc. and namely to what my mother (and Rilke) used to call ‘form your mind’. This, of course, is an ongoing process and at the end, the things we write at the end of our lives are fundamentally different from what we write as teens. But that’s the point. Without progression, a novel can neither be good nor bad. It would just be a very boring play. Called Waiting for Godot.
Godot never came.
Hence no progression.
Makes for a bad novel. But a great play.
Without knowing these subtleties, without referencing them, we lose this fundamental and important element of human culture that makes progress even possible: mental and literary cannibalism. Without it, everything will become just an occurrence. A singular event in the minds of currently living persons. As opposed to a literary act that is realised within a set of events lined together through time and that through quotation and citation becomes a strand that makes up the fabric of human creation.
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Complacency
Has it already started then?
That place of the inbetween when silence replaces whatever was there first.
Commitment, companionship, proximity… love.
Once and for all?
For ever and ever?
Over longer or shoter, harder or sensible,
over time and over that space that’s already expanding,
over hearts and stone,
blood and that visceral heartbeat that is the most solitary thing,
there is a change to come.
Soon. And when it’s done.
There will be nothing left.
Of that link. Bond. Heart.
Those oathes, these vows, this ring, this finger.
There won’t be anything but this insurmountable silence,
that unbearable weight of nothing at all.
When nothing’s wrong, and nothing needs to be shared.
Just another day in paradise.
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Blog Award: Me? Are you talking to me?
I was awarded my first ever blog award which I find completely humbling. I do live a rather isolated life on this blog an and a lot of the feedback that I get, is not published in the comments, simply because the authors prefer to send them to me over twitter, plurk or Facebook instead of using the already slightly outdated ‘Comment’ function directly under the post.
So, I was really surprised this afternoon when in my inbox I found a comment that was entitled: I’ve awarded you a blog award.
To be entirely honest, I thought it was a spam at first until I read from who it was of course. This was no spam, but a small lovely blog love sent to me by Inge. Thank you very much Inge for the award. You’re a star!
This award seems to be organised in form of an avalanche across the internet and even if normally I do not support anything that even remotely smells of chain mailing, I will make an exception with this one. 
Here are the rules:
1. The winners can add the logo to their blogs.
2. Add a link on your blog to the one awarding you.
3. Sent the Award to at least seven other bloggers who stand out because of content, themes and designs.
4. Put the links of these sites on your own blog.
5. Leave a comment on their site.
And here are my favourite seven:
- Hunk of Junk: Joel – my husband’s blog on the various things life hold in store for him or rather he for the world. A must read on it: his quotes of the month collection. He copied the idea from me, but, dear, oh, dear, he’s made an art out of it!
- The World according to Taquoriaan: Inge’s blog on everything that she goes through or makes. Loved it from the start and always a pleasant read. Particularly her considerations on green living and cooking.
- Will Wheaton in Exile: Don’t remember the name? Really not? And when I say: Wesley Crusher? Aah, see. Knew it. Well, on his side of the world, Will has been busy becoming a splendid writer that has brough more than one tear of both categories into my eyes. His blog is the collection of his change in life as an child star to isolated geek programmer and eventually freeing his poetical soul and father within. A touching story and if you check it out: worth every second you spend in his archive to get the whole story.
- The Happiness Project: Gretchen Rubin’s blog that started when she was writing a book with the same name. She explores the small things in life that might cast a small smile on your face and the ones around you. Quotes, projects and musings. What’s not to love?
- Solvitur Ambulando: Greg’s fairly new blog that good me immediately hooked onto his life story and the retelling of the various stages a man goes through when finding his place between faith, family, work and adoption.
- nBlog: Nike’s blog. She’s a nymph, a medieval storyteller, a mother, a photography and photoshop artist and so much more. The blog is in German and English and worth every second spent on it.
- Mark Johnson’s Blog: My friend and collegue’s personal non-thomistic blog And even though he’s not as active on it as others, ever post brings a small thought where it’s needed.
- Amorphismen: Manfred G.’s – my oldest moderator buddy – first try at a blog (he ended up using Livejournal. *sigh*) and I am so glad he made the jump. His insight and openings on art and German literature, religious studies is fresh and ever time a small surprise is hidden in a new post.
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Symphony
When do we really dare to know, dare to care?
There is a silent whisper whenever the clouds separate themselves,
torn apart by insensitive finger of windy heights,
blown to the extremes of this world,
a whisper that prolonged and minded, speaks of eternity.
With words that no language can bear nor hold,
a symphony of continuous harmony,
creating ever on, like the waves that continue to roll
one after the other, into and onto this land,
into my heart and your eyes.
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Creativity matters: To write or not to write…
Funnily enough I have been writing three different posts these last four days, but haven’t gotten around to either finish or published only one of them.
At first I thought that it’s the usual “something always gets in the way” thing. Then I thought it was because I had chosen such heavy topics. And then of course I started to think about how I wanted to change the style of my blogging and writing all together.
It seems that I am not the only one having these issues at the moment. Reading Wil’s thoughts on the matter struck a cord in me. I have been feeling like that a lot lately. And I mean: a lot.
Not only does it affect my writing or my blogging. It also affects my work and all the things I should do throughout the day (and night). It’s not something I am entirely unfamiliar with, since it has happened to me before. And while Wil is trying to just write something to get over what I call the pause phase, what I need to get out of such a mode is inspiration.
I strongly believe that such a thing like writers block as a simple blockade does not exist. I find the concept appalling. I cannot believe in any writers block to just dissipate to get me going again. A writers block is nothing else than your mind telling you: I need time to think. Or: I need another piece of the puzzle to finish the thought. And like with any other problem that can be solved in dreaming or sleeping, by letting our subconscious take care of it, most slowdowns like this can be solved in the same way: take your mind off it. Find some other inspiration. Get passionate about something. Read something else, something new. Watch a new movie. Or have a good discussion with someone around you.
And then…
Sleep. Dream. And then start writing again.
Thanks Wil, for proving me right within the hour.
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One sad columnist may hide some serious issues
My local newspaper (Basler Zeitung) comes with a special ‘Culture’ magazine every day complete with all the latest music, cinema and theatre critics and columns. Once a week the magazine has some additional columns and appreciations.
Now it seems that we don’t have any decent columnists in Switzerland any more and so the BaZ has decided to bless us with the German author Sibylle Berg. She has got to be one of the most pretentious and foul mouthed columnists this world has ever seen. On top of that she really seems to have some serious sexual frustration bottled up. I have rarely read someone so belligerent, insulting and plain rude in a printed newspaper. Is this what happens to the so-called German ‘new avantgarde’ authors once they’re passed their ‘best before date’? If you have a look at her homepage you’ll get my drift…
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