Self-Deprecation + Blogging?

I've convinced a few people I know to take a look at this book blog of mine, and some short stories I've written, and "self-deprecation" came up more than once. I apparently think more meanly of my (slender?) skills in fiction writing than do my friends and family... not that I don't value their opinions.... That said, I won't be posting my prose here in the foreseeable future.

Self-deprecation can be tolerable if drenched in irony - and through this exercise, I've (again) discovered that conversely, if coming from a place of true uncertainly, self-deprecation can be uncomfortable( and ANNOYING!) to endure.

There is, unfortunately, little affliction of false modesty when I say I'm daunted by (and in awe of) the work and my readings of great novelists. I don't write these things with any latent assurance that I may one day accomplish that which now seems so beyond what I know of my talents. Perhaps this has been my learning to keep these doubts to myself.

I will have been blogging here for four months by late June and am still grappling with and groping for the right tone. The issue is, as things now stand, I have no other outlet to express or exorcise my thoughts, feelings, fears, and opinions about the things I read and write.

This passage from Nabokov's "Good Readers and Good Writers" (Lectures on Literature) better articulates one aspect of my fear of insipidity (it has many facets):

Time and space, the colors of the seasons, the movements of muscles and minds, all these are for writers of genius (as far as we can guess and I trust we guess right) not traditional notions which may be borrowed from the circulating library of public truths but a series of unique surprises which master artists have learned to express in their own unique way. To minor authors is left the ornamentation of the commonplace: these do not bother about any reinventing of the world; they merely try to squeeze the best they can out of a given order of things, out of traditional patterns of fiction. The various combinations these minor authors are able to produce within these set limits may be quite amusing in a mild ephemeral way because minor readers like to recognize their own ideas in a pleasing disguise. But the real writer, the fellow who sends planets spinning and models a man asleep and eagerly tampers with the sleeper’s rib, that kind of author has no given values at his disposal: he must create them himself. The art of writing is a very futile business if it does not imply first of all the art of seeing the world as the potentiality of fiction.

That covers what could excite or sedate upon a macro-reading... Then there is the matter of writing WELL. This from a girl who feels her writing hasn't matured since she was 17 years old, when it was still novel and impressive.

I'll be back to writing about reading in no time.... so ignore my venting. No comments on this one because I don't really want to know what anyone thinks of this rant - in all its sincere, more than likely inappropriate disclosure.

Unrelated: I may be developing something of an affinity for Yates' work.

graphophobia!

The fear of writing!

Do first drafts always read like excerpts from The Young Visiters? Or is it just me?

I'm exaggerating, but by how much I'm afraid I can't yet tell.



read The Young Visiters by 9-year-old Daisy Ashford here

The writing reader vs. The reading writer

I'm stuck. For now, I'm a writing reader. I read great writing and write (here) about what I feel makes each piece great - in hopes that these studies will (soon) make me a reading writer, someone who can take what she has observed and apply it to her own work.

If the writer is an artist, the writing reader draws from sight, from a model... and I'm still studying anatomy, trying to locate the bone and muscle structures under the flesh of the thing. The masters have the biology internalized and have moved forward to establish unique styles. Master writing readers can each interpret the same model brilliantly, but the resulting works remain distinctive to each writing reader's own hand.

The reading writer draws from her imagination. She may refer to the rudiments of form when conceiving a work, and her art remains true to life, but is based on no one model. Her subjects are fictional.

I'm struggling to find the point where figure drawing, portrait painting, interpretation end - and illustration, conception, TRUE creation begin.


Analysis and observation are fine (and very instructing) for now. But I'm a fiction writer at heart.

Literary Present Tense

Does anyone else in the world have TENSE ISSUES????

As I reread some of my posts - some from as recently as yesterday - I realize that the tense issues I've always noticed in my writing are, when I don't take care to curb them, as prevalent as they ever were.

This 'literary present tense' doesn't come naturally to me.

WORKING ON IT.

...So if you're reading this blog, try to overlook whatever inconsistencies in tense you may encounter. I'm *fixing* them now.

"It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present."
Edith 'Little Edie' Bouvier Beale
Grey Gardens

"The finder of his theme will be at no loss for words."

The quote in the subject line is one of J.V. Cunningham's.

In Yates' Revolutionary Road, Cunningham's assertion is proven on every page and in every word. I can't say whether or not Yates had a difficult time writing his masterpiece, but nowhere in Revolutionary Road is his theme forgotten or absent, either from the writer's intention or the active reader's interpretation.

I've been doing far more reading than writing lately, (the only writing I've done has been on this and my other blogs) but when I (finally) decide to create, the instructions I've gleaned from all I've read will be invaluable.

Virginia Woolf's success in creating 'Modern Fiction'

Inspired by Amateur Reader's post - Herman Melville's Mardi was written by Herman Melville:


Read Virginia Woolf's essay Modern Fiction HERE, The Mark on the Wall HERE, and To The Lighthouse (Chapter 6 - Starting with the words "He was safe..." to end of chapter) HERE. Because To The Lighthouse is a novel, I figured it would make the most sense to tackle a representative except for readers not familiar with the book.


I love to read because the things I learn from books inform the choices I make when writing. A close reading of any great piece of literature can guide its reader through the author's processes and intentions, can influence (not define) an aspiring writer's style and motivate him or her to take care that each word tell. Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite authors for this reason. She not only provides the active reader stimulating and instructing fiction, but in her essay Modern Fiction, she outlines criteria by which modern fiction should be evaluated - and holds herself to her own standards. By her own definitions, Woolf creates, in varying degrees of success, modern fiction.

In 1921, Virginia Woolf's The Mark on the Wall was published, in 1925, her book The Common Reader, which contained Modern Fiction, and in 1927, To the Lighthouse. In this 6 year period we see Woolf's work progress from exemplary, but aimless, to challenging and purposeful - and have her own words as the bellwether by which to measure that progress. I consider these my formative literary years, and what better example than Woolf for taking literary matters in one's own hands can a girl have!


In Modern Fiction, Woolf defines two types of fiction, that which is concerned with the body, and the most desirable - that which is concerned with the spirit. Novels concerned with the spirit, she claims, are "what it is we exact." If that is true, then we as readers get exactly what it is we exact from Woolf's To The Lighthouse - and while we come closer to the spirit, to "life" in The Mark on the Wall than in what Woolf terms as "materialist" fiction, the piece still does not satisfy the readers quest for "the essential thing" it is we search for in fiction, "whether we call it life or spirit, truth or reality." For that reason, I believe Virginia Woolf truly becomes VIRGINIA WOOLF in To the Lighthouse - and in The Mark on the Wall, she is well on her way. Woolf assigns properties to what she considers fiction concerned with both the body and with the mind - and believes that "life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small." In that sense, both To The Light House and The Mark On The Wall contain some aspect of "life" by Woolf's own definition - but To The Lighthouse succeeds in adhering to more of the properties that readers now know to be hallmarks of Woolf's best work.

In To The Lighthouse, the character Mr. Ramsay contemplates his place in the world while in real time observing his wife read to his son. In The Mark On The Wall, Woolf's speaker chronicles random thoughts while in real time looking at the titular mark on the wall. In exploring the thoughts of their respective speakers, both pieces capture the "myriad impressions" that Woolf claims "the mind receives" in Modern Fiction. However, these impressions are to an end in To The Light House, whereas in The Mark On The Wall they seem scattered, and to have no specific purpose.

In being concerned with the spirit, a piece of fiction must focus on the abstract rather than the concrete and in The Mark On The Wall, the speaker's thoughts are centered on physical objects (trees, birds, wood); in To The Light House Mr. Ramsay's abstract thoughts are only spoken of in concrete terms to make tangible abstract concepts. Just as with the literal body and spirit, both can be perceived, but only the body physically.


To The Lighthouse, while it employs a stream of consciousness style is less self-concerned than The Mark On The Wall. Because The Mark On The Wall is written in first person, with phrases "I like," "I understand," "I should," "I feel," repeated as often as they are, the piece seems selfish and "never embraces or creates what is outside itself or beyond"; it has "the effect of something angular and isolated", all of which are qualities Woolf attributes to "materialist" fiction.

In both pieces, "emphasis is laid in unexpected places." Because Mr. Ramsay in To The Lighthouse grapples with his position in his own life and family, this emphasis is in unexpected, yet logical places - always keeping in mind the book's overall aim and maintaining an "obedience to vision." Historical figures of questionable importance, how a dying soldier will be remembered, the alphabet used as a concrete analogy for Mr. Ramsay's quest through his own mind - these seemingly disparate mentions all converge to illuminate Mr. Ramsay's existential musings. The emphasis in To The Light House don't seem to achieve any greater purpose than to "record the atoms as they fall upon the mind... however disconnected and incoherent in appearance."

Like the works of the Russian artists Woolf praises as "saintly" in Modern Fiction, To The Lighthouse appears "vague and inconclusive" only in that it asks many unanswered rhetorical questions. Similarly, Woolf states in her essay that "life presents question after question which must be left to sound on after the story is over". Mr. Ramsay's vacillating between a life dedicated to family and one to work constantly begs the question "Who shall blame him?" while suggesting his favoring the former. Of course, no one could blame a man for choosing his family over his work - though it's a question people struggle with every day.

The Mark On The Wall asks questions as well, but they are self-involved, have no larger implications beyond the story's speaker and give the reader no incentive to want to know their answers. They do not "endeavor to reach some goal worthy of the most exacting demands of the spirit".

To the Lighthouse is by Woolf's own definition a true work concerning the spirit in that it embodies "life" - which is what Woolf believes modern fiction should always endeavor to do. The Mark on the Wall was a valiant effort, but pales in comparison to Woolf's later work. In To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf becomes VIRGINIA WOOLF.



*The Amateur Reader said this would be a tricky post and it WAS! I'm not even sure I'm saying everything I mean to say, but this is my first go at explaining an author's coming into her own. I may rehash this later with more textual examples from TTLH and TMOTW - because I only used quotes from Modern Fiction in the post above.

IN OTHER NEWS - tomorrow is Becca's Book Blog's
ONE MONTH ANNIVERSARY!!!
So far, So good!

the PROFESSIONAL APPRECIATOR's fear of CREATING.

"You're making something. You - the critic, the professional appreciator - put something new into the world. And the second one of those things gets sold, you're officially a part of it."
From the movie High Fidelity.

I couldn't be called a professional critic by any definition - but am an active and avid reader and have a paralyzing fear of writing for that reason. I've described my reading style (macro vs micro) on this blog and why some books are frustrating to ENDURE because of it - and why, conversely, other books bring me so much pleasure.

I'm only 6 pages into Revolutionary Road and already, I'm WOWED by its density. Could I ever write with such mastery? I feel presumptuous even typing those words. And I think most writer-readers, and anyone in love with the ART of writing, can understand that feeling.

"The trouble was that from the very beginning they had been afraid they would end by making fools of themselves, and they had compounded this fear by being afraid to admit it." This quote from the opening pages of Revolutionary Road compelled me to nod my head in reluctant sympathy for the described Laurel Players and their collective fear that their seminal performance would fail. The only difference is that all I do is talk and write about that familiar fear - so at least it's not compounding upon itself, right?

Wrong.

It's daunting to know that you don't know much - and that knowledge of ignorance is crippling.

I've cited this Thomas Mann quote here before, but here it is again:
"A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." I'd have to add that it's no cake walk for active readers either.

Maybe it has something to do with my age and that I feel everything I write is somehow, or will be perceived as being, incorrect or foolish (I try not to betray any signs of that apprehension - but I'm writing about it now - so the cat's out the bag), because I LOATHE adamant inaccuracy and steadfast incompetence. In the presence (even the e-presence. read: commenting on literary blogs!) of those I admire, my tentativeness is amplified exponentially. I check and double check things and hope I'm making sense. But I'm in good company, Freud often fainted in the presence of scientists whose work he admired.

Whenever I do get around to CREATING something and submitting it to the court of public approval, I only hope it stands up alongside the kind of purposely written, dynamic writing that I so enjoy. In the mean time, I plan to continue, reading, writing, BLOGGING, and learning.

End rant.

there are two types of people in the world: those who ____ & those who ____

I just found a college entrance essay I wrote in 2005 in response to the (stupid) prompt: "There are two types of people in the world: those who _____ & those who _____." This is what I wrote. (Remember, I was 17 years old at the time! So be nice if this is all a bit ridiculous! lol)

Rebecca O'Neal
June 2005

There are two types of people in the world, those who know language to be a tool of persuasion, to be used with accuracy and precision, and those who use language solely as a tool of communication, as a means with no particular end in mind. Those who fall into the former group would cringe upon hearing their arduous journey toward enlightenment termed as "falling"; those in the latter would not know the difference. Like those Biblically born into sin, we are all doomed, for at least a time, to be among those not aware of the power held by language and do not know the latent error of our ways. Until we are taught differently, we remain oblivious to the prospect of MORE.

It has been my experience that those who are aware of the power of language also hold an affinity for it. Conversely, those who have not yet been awakened to that power tend to either be indifferent to, or even exhibit distaste for things related to extended or elevated uses of language, such as academic reading and writing, usage of proper or heightened spoken language, and leisure literary activities ( i.e. reading or writing outside of school). Because we all, more or less, begin in the latter group, levels of extremity differing, the question "How does one progress from one group to the next?" naturally arises. The answer is definitely a complex one.

In elementary school, with the exception of unnaturally precocious children, we are all the same, being expected to learn first the alphabet, how to write and read, construct simple sentences, and later to write cohesive pieces of academic literature, with the common properties of format being universally duplicable. These pieces are called, affectionately by some, resentfully by others, Five-Paragraph-Essays.

Once this archetype has been mastered, not much else is required of the student. Though there are variations from this format, persuasive, expository, narrative, etc, the blueprint remains the same: introductory paragraph, in which a thesis is explicitly stated, three body paragraphs, which are almost unwaveringly less poignant expositions of dependant clauses contained in the thesis, and finally the hardly-necessary conclusion, an often verbatim regurgitation of the introduction.

In high school (my knowledge can only speak of public, selective enrollment primary and secondary schooling), English I, expands to lightly graze over the most rudimentary of literary devices, only requiring students to identify them or use them in vacuums and out of context. English II, American Literature, attempts to encourage Literary Criticism, but never strays away from the Five-Paragraph-Essay. English III, British Literature, rather than tackling, merely settles to engage in requiring students to memorize the names of literary movements. These are the years in which students are given the tools and the option to make the transition into the former group.

With two roads diverged before them, most students are grateful to have taken the road less traveled by; my two roads were these: English IV or Advanced Placement Language and Composition. My choice was simple and it has made all the difference.

Everything I thought I knew about writing and literature was thrown out of the window in AP LANG. My general sweeping notions were sifted for kernels of usable information and concentrated to save room for the knowledge I was about to receive. Diction and syntax, the chameleons that they are, became my best friends. Jeanette Winterson, Annie Dillard and Virginia Woolf became my mentors. I was inducted into the group of those who appreciate the power of language.

It was a challenge to readjust to the rest of the world after the shift. My new friends in my new "group" and I have not since been able to read or write arbitrarily. As Thomas Mann so pithily stated, "A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." Other people, those who have not (yet) been exposed to language as art, as persuasion, are allowed to mercilessly take pen to paper by those who know better because there is no simple way to deposit this life changing information into someone's mind; there is no switch to be flipped. The only exception to this is the unexplainably gifted Emily Dickinson, who possessed a seemingly innate membership into the group to which I now belong.

Those unaware of the power of language cannot be faulted for their ignorance. For some people, the knowledge isn't desirable, just as complex science holds no interest for me. For others, the knowledge simply hasn't presented itself conveniently enough. I was fortunate enough to attend a school where there WERE two roads; most students my age are only offered one path. Because the road less traveled has led me to this state, which I enjoy immensely, I can only hope to once again visit the place where the two roads diverged and show more inquisitive minds the way.

Once I'm a successful, famous(, critically praised?) writer, I'll consider this my seminal work lol.