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pameladeanDavid is fond of referring to the joke, or parable, or whatever it is, that begins, "I wish I could afford an elephant." The victim or interlocutor then responds, "Why do you want an elephant?" and the perpetrator replies, "I didn't say I wanted an elephant, I said I wished I could afford one."
All right, put that up on the shelf where it can wave its little trunk at you in a beguiling fashion from time to time when my sentences get too long.
When I looked at my Friends list entries today, I saw that both![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
matociqualaand melymbrosia both have links to this set of remarks by Anne Rice about her working methods:
Discussion is quite brisk, and, the last time I looked, pretty universally condemned Rice for self-indulgence and having an elevated opinion of herself, or at least of her work. Since I have written and deleted about four responses as being too long and possibly too heated for other people's comments sections, I'm putting them here.
I don't actually like Anne Rice's work and never have liked it. This does mean that no matter what I may hear about her working methods, I will not have that moment when I realize why I had such a sense of betrayal when I read this or that work. I don't have any personal stake in whether she has gone off the rails or off the deep end into some mirrored cave, wasting her substance on navel-gazing and self-satisfaction rather than being humble enough to write better books; or whether she has made a difficult decision to trust herself and be true to her work as she understands it. I have in the past felt about once-adored writers that they had taken the trip over the cliff into the cave (miraculously not breaking any mirrors, metaphor being the flexible thing that it is), and it is indeed a painful sensation.
However, my sympathy in this matter is almost entirely with Rice. Writers operate along an infinite number of continuums, one of which has to do with what one might call feedback, or outside input, or merely consultation. Some can hardly function without it; others can bear it only at certain junctures in the work; others can hardly bear it at all. Some can move from state to state, depending on their mood or, more often, I suspect, on the work in question. That is the case with me -- I have finished some books only because I got constant encouragement, and others only because I completely disregarded all commentary.
Where I sympathize with Rice, however, is in her description of how she writes, of how everything is put into its proper shape as she goes along, everything is related to everything else as she conceives necessary; so that the finished work is one whole thing, not readily susceptible to requests to make this character older or add more stage directions to long conversations. I don't work the way she does, because I do in fact do successive drafts, recognizable as such to me and others. But my sense of the work as a whole thing, of its parts as connected at every level, so that a lack of stage directions here points up a plenitude of them there, and a character's stated age forms the way in which zie sees the world, is similar to what she describes.
This sense of the whole five-dimensional object is very fragile. It's hard to hold it in one's head. The very best and most necessary commentary disturbs one's grasp. I've refused to make changes to keep my grasp on the object I had made, and I have hared off eagerly to make changes I acknowledged as essential, and then found that there was no longer a whole object there and that in a number of ways I needed to start again from the beginning and envision the book all over again. This process is difficult and scary, and I have lost my grip on several books I was working on and had them plunge into the abyss, never, or at least not yet, to return.
I want my books to be good, and I understand that my conceptions of goodness in books, even in my own, are incomplete and askew and flawed. But sometimes it feels more important to retain my grasp on the whole living object, even if it has six eyes, than to let it go and make something with only two. I don't think that this is self-indulgence; I think it's a hard choice among imperfect outcomes.
I wish I could afford to do what Anne Rice has done. And because she can afford it, I am really not at all sure that it was the wrong choice for her to make. Some people really do want an elephant.
Pamela
All right, put that up on the shelf where it can wave its little trunk at you in a beguiling fashion from time to time when my sentences get too long.
When I looked at my Friends list entries today, I saw that both
matociqualaand melymbrosia both have links to this set of remarks by Anne Rice about her working methods:Discussion is quite brisk, and, the last time I looked, pretty universally condemned Rice for self-indulgence and having an elevated opinion of herself, or at least of her work. Since I have written and deleted about four responses as being too long and possibly too heated for other people's comments sections, I'm putting them here.
I don't actually like Anne Rice's work and never have liked it. This does mean that no matter what I may hear about her working methods, I will not have that moment when I realize why I had such a sense of betrayal when I read this or that work. I don't have any personal stake in whether she has gone off the rails or off the deep end into some mirrored cave, wasting her substance on navel-gazing and self-satisfaction rather than being humble enough to write better books; or whether she has made a difficult decision to trust herself and be true to her work as she understands it. I have in the past felt about once-adored writers that they had taken the trip over the cliff into the cave (miraculously not breaking any mirrors, metaphor being the flexible thing that it is), and it is indeed a painful sensation.
However, my sympathy in this matter is almost entirely with Rice. Writers operate along an infinite number of continuums, one of which has to do with what one might call feedback, or outside input, or merely consultation. Some can hardly function without it; others can bear it only at certain junctures in the work; others can hardly bear it at all. Some can move from state to state, depending on their mood or, more often, I suspect, on the work in question. That is the case with me -- I have finished some books only because I got constant encouragement, and others only because I completely disregarded all commentary.
Where I sympathize with Rice, however, is in her description of how she writes, of how everything is put into its proper shape as she goes along, everything is related to everything else as she conceives necessary; so that the finished work is one whole thing, not readily susceptible to requests to make this character older or add more stage directions to long conversations. I don't work the way she does, because I do in fact do successive drafts, recognizable as such to me and others. But my sense of the work as a whole thing, of its parts as connected at every level, so that a lack of stage directions here points up a plenitude of them there, and a character's stated age forms the way in which zie sees the world, is similar to what she describes.
This sense of the whole five-dimensional object is very fragile. It's hard to hold it in one's head. The very best and most necessary commentary disturbs one's grasp. I've refused to make changes to keep my grasp on the object I had made, and I have hared off eagerly to make changes I acknowledged as essential, and then found that there was no longer a whole object there and that in a number of ways I needed to start again from the beginning and envision the book all over again. This process is difficult and scary, and I have lost my grip on several books I was working on and had them plunge into the abyss, never, or at least not yet, to return.
I want my books to be good, and I understand that my conceptions of goodness in books, even in my own, are incomplete and askew and flawed. But sometimes it feels more important to retain my grasp on the whole living object, even if it has six eyes, than to let it go and make something with only two. I don't think that this is self-indulgence; I think it's a hard choice among imperfect outcomes.
I wish I could afford to do what Anne Rice has done. And because she can afford it, I am really not at all sure that it was the wrong choice for her to make. Some people really do want an elephant.
Pamela
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A slightly different view
Date: 2003-09-28 09:09 am (UTC)I'm sorry; I must disagree with this. I know we're on a discussion of writing, but I think all of the creative arts require one to 'haggle open a vein' (great phrase, by the way).
I do realize that most people here are rather biased towards writing, but any creative art, taken to its highest level, requires bargaining with the muses every morning. Requires bleeding all over the page, canvas, piano keys, camera lens . . . (I am minded of a short story by Jane Yolen that I encounted in her collection Tales of Wonder -- I forget what it's called, but the painter's method of painting was, literally, to bleed on the canvas. Obviously a metaphor for the creative process, but universally applied.)
When one is a performing musician, one generally practices one's art (which is also a craft; as are they all) six to eight hours a day, if not more. The beginning of every practice session is scales and exercises. It's as if a writer sits down and types out the alphabet and simple phrases ("THE CAT SAT ON THE MAT") for an hour before starting to write. Beyond that, one must pray and hope for the knowledge to do something absolutely impossible -- to realize something emotional out of an instrument. (While still, of course, remaining within the boundaries of a piece. And here I'll do a bastardized quoting of Wordsworth: "In truth, the prison unto which we doom ourselves no prison is" [can't remember where the line breaks are]. One chooses to write in a certain universe. One chooses to play the G-minor Ballade by Chopin. One must therefore keep the workings of said universe consistent, or at least the breakings consistent, or something like that. One must not add any notes that Chopin didn't put on the page. Unless, of course, one can go research the manuscript and come up with a good musicological reason otherwise. But I digress.) I honestly can't describe the process of creating music out of little inkspots on a page any better than that; it gets into the realm of mysticism. One must have a vision; one must try and portray it in the music. And one must hope that it is either within the realm of 'right', or at least a good and convincing 'wrong'.
I suppose a painter or a potter or whatever must mix their paints or clay to get started and all sorts of other little things. However, I am neither a painter nor a potter, so I don't feel as qualified to comment.
Everyone, I'm sure, feels that his or her own field is the hardest -- just look here (http://www.zompist.com/amercult.html/) at other culture's views of their own language as the hardest to learn (Finnish and Japanese, I remember), and remember what we're all taught, that English is the hardest to learn because it's so irregular. Doing anything to greatness is hard. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be worth it. (end stupid cliches.)
Maybe the problem IS that writers don't sit down and write out "THE CAT SAT ON THE MAT" eighty times before they start writing. (Cassandra's father notwithstanding.) I mean, for a pianist, if nothing's coming, you can always just play scales for a really long time. For a music composer, yeah, it's different; if you can't bleed on the page immediately (and they have every single problem that a word-writer has, like trying not to write something that's already been done, trying not to sound cliche, while at the same time not being so outlandish that it isn't music, although they're encouraged to do that for a while . . .) then you just write down gibberish until something crystalizes. Or you stare at a blank page and wonder why on earth you ever thought you could compose.
So anyway. I disagree; I think the creative process is difficult no matter what art you're creating. It's all about the triumph of vision over human weaknesses. (That sentence originally read, "Dream over Despair".) Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
On the role of criticism
Date: 2003-09-28 09:40 am (UTC)Re: On the role of criticism
Date: 2003-09-28 11:40 am (UTC)The cat sat on the mat
Date: 2003-09-28 09:45 am (UTC)There's a whole school of learning craft that focuses on techniques such as that. (John Gardner used to recommend aspiring writers sit down and type out James Joyce's "The Dead," word for word, over and over again, until they understood it. There's also techniques such as "morning pages," free writing, and rewriting existing prose in one's own style, which in many ways are similar to the copying-of-old-masters techniques a lot of painters learn to use.
When I said that writing is more like opening a vein than other arts, I didn't mean it was more emotionally honest, or that it was more difficult.
It can't possibly be more emotionally honest that music: music is in some ways structured emotion. (Both my parents are musicians, FWIW.)
And it can't possibly be more difficult than any of the other creative arts. Writing more difficult than professional dance, for example? Oh, please. "Smile in pain."
I meant that due to its nature as narrative, discourse, and language-based communication, writing is probably more *specific and specifically personal* in revealing the artist's own life experience and deep emotional trauma than non-narrative art forms.
In other words, there's a lot of truth to the old saw about "write what you know." You can't help it, really, if you're writing honestly.
Better? More cogent?
Re: The cat sat on the mat
Date: 2003-09-28 11:36 am (UTC)I don't know. I mean, I know what you mean, and I see your point and agree with it to a degree, but I'm still debating. I think one must lump music composition completely in with writing, because it's exactly the same thing. If you're revealing emotion by composing music, then it's exactly as specific and specifically personal as writing, isn't it? Words can be used to obfuscate just as easily as anything else. (Ignore the fact that 'obfuscate' means 'to obscure using words'.)
I think if you choose it to be, then it can be. Quite easily.
(Note that I am not, actually, a writer. I've been known to do so, but I am at heart a musician.)
Maybe I should type out James Joyce's "The Dead" once a day. Lord knows I still don't get it.
(I didn't mean to imply that no one else understood music; I just used it as my example because I have specific knowledge of music and absolutely none in dance or painting or whatever.)
Re: The cat sat on the mat
Date: 2003-09-28 12:41 pm (UTC)Re: The cat sat on the mat
Date: 2003-09-28 04:13 pm (UTC)However, I do find (for myself) a great difference in the interpretive arts -- acting, singing, playing others' music -- than the fundamentally creative ones. Regardless of the media, it is hardest to create something from scratch, to make something that did not exist before and is not derivative of something else.
If I look at a piece of music, I can hear it, if I read a script I can see a person emerging (one hopes) from the text. The composer, the writer, is something like a friend giving you a guiding hand, and your responsibility as interpreter is to serve their vision well.
If I sit before a blank page, I experience a kind of terror I never do when acting or playing someone else's work. How do I fill this void, how do I tell this story, when I have nothing to guide me but myself?
If I play scales for several hours a day, I know my playing will improve, but I can type the entirety of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, and it won't give me the skill to put words together to tell a story well.
Re: The cat sat on the mat
Date: 2003-09-28 07:04 pm (UTC)Re: The cat sat on the mat
Date: 2003-09-28 07:19 pm (UTC)Re: The cat sat on the mat
Date: 2003-09-28 08:31 pm (UTC)Re: The cat sat on the mat
Date: 2003-09-28 04:44 pm (UTC)Oh my goodness. I think you have just solved a minor crisis of conscience for me with this statement. Thank you. I think I love you.
*fangirls*
Re: The cat sat on the mat
Date: 2003-09-28 08:15 pm (UTC)We have millenia of literature to steal from!