So often I hear an author’s powers of observation praised, perhaps as a “keen observer” of people or places. I’m not. Most often, when people compliment my writing, it’s for capturing the emotions we all feel or making the reader feel something. I’m intelligent, but not brilliant. I read reviews praising the layers of a novel. I don’t layer. I’m a straight forward storyteller. Perhaps someday I’ll have more facility with all the things authors are praised for but, right now, storytelling will have to do.
What can I offer as a writer?
April 22, 2011 at 7:13 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: book reviews, storytelling, writing
Your Life’s Work
April 21, 2011 at 10:29 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: time, writing
I recently heard someone say that if you don’t start your life’s work by the age when Christ died, you never will. That sounded rather profound, until I started thinking about it.
What about Grandma Moses? Her enduring legacy is her paintings but she didn’t start that until much later in life. She had done many other creative endeavors in her life but the painting came late.
So, what do they mean by starting? I’m not making a living off my writing but I’ve been writing since I was 10 or 12. I wrote a middle grade mystery novel when I was twenty-something that I’ve submitted to a few agents and editors but haven’t sold yet. I’ve started other novels that I’d like to continue.
And just how old was Christ when he died? That seems to be a matter of some debate, depending on what calendar you’re using.
Isn’t time relative to our existence here on Earth and our individual lives in particular? Grandma Moses lived to be 101. I don’t expect to. Guess I’d better get writing.
Torment or Comfort?
April 8, 2011 at 5:11 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: grief, writing
I’ve been listening to The Power of Myth, the conversation between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell recorded back in the eighties. Bill Moyers brings up a version of the story about Satan being cast out of heaven. Joseph Campbell elucidates it, explaining that Satan refused to bow to humans though God had ordered him to. The reason, though, was because he loved God too much and could bow to no one but him. The greatest torment of hell then was the echo of God telling Satan to leave his presence, the memory of the beloved he could no longer be near.
Now, later on, they touch on the concept of eternity and the loss of loved ones. Joseph Campbell explains that he realized at some point that everyone he has cared about is still with him because of the part they played in his life. In effect, the memory of the beloved is a comfort.
So which is it? Is the memory of a lost loved one a torment or a comfort?
So often, when a romantic relationship breaks up, the memory of the beloved is a horrible torment at first. That can change over time, either because we begin to forget or because with distance comes the realization that the beloved was not as perfect as we once thought. When a loved one passes away, the memory of the loved one can be a torment or an immediate comfort. Why? Is it our culpability in the estrangement? Is it the distance between the person and the lost beloved? (If they’re still on the planet, there’s a chance we’ll see them again.)
It would seem that the memory of the beloved can be both a torment and a comfort, at the same time.
A coworker lost her husband in the past year and it dealt her a terrible blow. It seems to me that the amount of pain is often measurable by the nature of the relationship, closer relationships cause more pain. Distance of the relationship, or of time, allows us to remember the good times over the pain of our loss.
Of course, it’s not a simple equation. There are too many factors, and when it comes to good writing the unusual, as long as it is plausible, is often preferred. I think we have to be careful about reaching too far though. The stages of grief are well documented and the more creatively we can play them out in a story, the more interesting they are likely to be, while still being plausible.
Melora Johnson's Muse 