Today I have two things to say about writing.
1) About the Inner Critic
We all know this person. Smiler had an interesting post about this figure a little while back, and it made me think about the ways in which he (for many people it seems to be a he) is and isn’t useful.
Obviously, the kind of abusive self-criticism that stops us from being creative isn’t helpful. As I remarked to Smiler on her site, my voice coach, who is a very wise woman, once remarked that this inner critic is actually ego in a very sneaky disguise. When he tells you that you’re not “good enough” — what does that mean, exactly? What standard is he using? Probably the standard he’s using is other people’s work. And it is indicative of self-inflation to gauge self-worth against other people.
This isn’t particularly helpful in any facet of life, but it’s spectactularly destructive in creative life. We are not here to emulate, imitate, or surpass anyone else in the method of our creative expression; in fact, these types of yardsticks are meaningless. The only standard we are called to surpass is our own; the only comparison we should be making is to our own work and our own truth.
So the next time that critic pops up, interrogate him about his agenda. Is he pushing you to outdo yourself, to dig deeper, to refine for the sake of better learning your craft? Or is he telling you that because so-and-so got published, you should be too, because you’re better? It’s the latter voice that will trip you up six months from now, when you’re still not published. The first voice is the one that will tell you to go on because you’re pushing your own limits, and other people’s accomplishments are irrelevant.
2) Truth is Stranger Than Fiction, and Therefore …
… if you’re using it as the basis for your fiction writing, you’d better be careful.
As a writer, I have never based any of my fiction on actual events in my life. That doesn’t mean there’s no truth in what I write, but it is not literal truth; it’s a different kind of life interpretation. Many people I know, and many people whose work I have edited, write what I would call memoir-fiction, in which actual life events are thinly disguised, or used as a jumping-off point for the imagination.
The trap in doing this is that real life follows different logic (or illogic) than the logic of art … and fiction based on real life events is often less believable than fiction that is fully, or largely, imagined. Part of the reason for this is that when we are too close to the source of our inspiration, we cease to see it clearly, and we leave things out when we’re explaining it. Another part of the reason is that real life is three-dimensional, and fiction on the page is not; we understand the events of our lives to have underpinnings and outcomes that cannot easily be conveyed when telling a story.
But the real problem is that truth really is stranger than fiction, and often has to be taken down a couple of notches before it can be swallowed as fiction. I often hear “But this really happened!” as justification for a fictionalized version of the truth that just doesn’t work for the reader. The fact of its really having happened is actually the problem. Fiction has a higher standard of verisimilitude than real life does. Strange but true.
Bonus Feature
I am anxious to dispel any impression of being more virtuous than I actually am. I think several of my readers got the impression that I enjoyed reading to Julio yesterday. In re-reading the post, I didn’t say I enjoyed it, but I can see why this impression would have been given.
I think it’s a worthwhile thing to do, and I’ll continue doing it, but I didn’t enjoy it. I found it exhausting and disorienting, and I’m dreading going back next week. I had no idea that half an hour could last so long. I am not a good person to be around children; my energy and patience are far too limited. I knew this when I volunteered, and I was right — it’s a bad match. I also found it deeply depressing to realize what a rocky start this kid has in life … he’s almost eight, and he really can’t read, except for the simplest words. I could extrapolate from there, but I won’t.
Since I will not have children of my own, I feel that it’s my duty to contribute somehow to the lives of children who are already stuck here and not getting what they need. Like all things perceived as a duty, this is a burden. I am not the sort of person who takes on a duty lightly, and so I was as fully present for this child and as fully engaged in the situation as it was possible for me to be.
But I didn’t like it.
Now, I have a theory, based on my own memories of being a child, that Julio probably knows this about me, and might tolerate me better than he would the nice motherly type sitting next to us who just looovvvveeees children. At least I’m not condescending to him. I don’t like what I’m doing, but the fact of my not wanting to get anything out of it myself makes me oddly honest. Some of the volunteers are emotional vampires, but they don’t know it. I see it, but there are so many things I see that I wish I didn’t see quite so clearly.
Anyway. The kid knows I don’t want anything from him. He probably knows I don’t even want to be there. But I’m there anyway. That’s worth something.
March 12, 2008 at 6:00 am |
Beautifully put, David.
“We are not here to emulate, imitate, or surpass anyone else in the method of our creative expression; in fact, these types of yardsticks are meaningless. The only standard we are called to surpass is our own; the only comparison we should be making is to our own work and our own truth.”
Of course… I probably could have said that better.
March 12, 2008 at 6:39 am |
Truth is stranger than fiction and needs to be taken down a notch in order to be believed….
Very interesting, given my post today. You’re making me hesitate here. Thinking….hmmm….
And I never enjoy reading to children either. But your post yesterday was still the best thing I’ve read in a very long time.
March 12, 2008 at 7:56 am |
I can’t express it well, but I once read an interesting article about Henry James. It basically said that he gave up having a life in order to be a great writer. That’s kind of a heavy price to pay.
March 12, 2008 at 9:12 am |
Angela — I was thinking specifically of certain types of fictional stories that are based on unusual real life coincidences, or stories in which an extreme real life event is taken out of context in a way that makes it hard to believe.
Truth as truthful memoir is usually quite easy to believe. Even fiction couched as memoir is oddly easy to believe, as we’ve seen with several scandalous fictional memoirs lately. The literal truth sometimes gets lost in translation to fiction, though. True events, when translated literally into a fictional context, often seem oddly contrived. It’s like …hmmm. I’m trying to think of a good example offhand. *thinking*
OK, here’s an example of what I mean. Bear with me, this may take a while. And it may not actually be a particularly good example, but it’s the first one I can think of.
A couple of years ago, I had an online conversation with a woman who had made extra money working as a phone sex operator while she was going to college. I’d also had a friend who did this to make extra money, and so we got to chatting about the ups and downs of the phone sex industry. My friend worked from home, but the person I was talking to actually worked in kind of a bull pen situation in an office … very odd. The mechanics of phone sex operation are such that once you’ve done it a few times, you can do it without paying much attention. So she’d bring her homework and do other stuff while the guy on the other end of the line got off. Most of the time, she was only half-listening. One night, she kind of “woke up” toward the end of the call to realize that the voice sounded familiar. By the end of the call, she was absolutely sure that she’d been talking to her own brother.
OK. Now, if I were to write this as a fictional story, unless it were exceptionally well done, most readers would roll their eyes a bit and say it was “over the top.” And as fiction, it would be … because the affect focus would be abnormally shifted. What we do in fiction is create deliberate imitations of life — simulacra, if you will — to illustrate or examine ideas, or to mirror reality in a way that illuminates. If I were to write a fictional story with that point as a climax, the actual capacity to make a point would be undermined … because the beauty of that situation is the dramatic irony, and the strangeness of simultaneous intimacy and disconnect. As a story, it has more potential for thematic development if the person on the other end of the line is someone she knows and hates, or her boss, or her best friend,or even her boyfriend … the ramifications can be explored differently than they can if it’s her brother. As fiction, that climax would seem somewhat deliberately shocking — contrived, perhaps even a bit of an emotional cop-out. And so,if I were going to use that event as an inspiration, I would turn it down a couple of notches to get at a different truth that would work better for fiction.
I’m not sure whether that made more sense, or less. At bottom, I think what I’m saying is that memoir and fiction are separate things, and it doesn’t do much service to either art form if that fact isn’t recognized by the writer, and if the intended audience isn’t taken into consideration during the writing process. An audience for something “true” has different standards than an audience for fiction. A discerning fiction reader is harder to win over. I think that fiction based on true experience can work very well, if it’s done thoughtfully.
March 12, 2008 at 10:27 am |
David, I home-school my children, and every second of it is grueling and exhausting. My oldest is pretty capable of self-direction and motivation, but is still struggling with her phonics a bit. My second daughter I am beginning to think may be having trouble with ADD, because it is incredibly difficult to keep her focused and on task, unless you are right there with her every second, and if she thinks it’s too hard she will stubbornly resist so she doesn’t become frustrated. I plan to take her in to the pediatrician and get a referral to have her screened. My son is pre-k and fortunately sticks to activities such as counting, letter identification, and coloring.
The only reward I get from it is that I have the assurance that they are learning what they need to and not what society feels that they should. It is my duty as their mother to be their primary educator, and to provide a fair and balanced education at the pace I know they are capable of proceeding at. It is not fun. It is not easy. After 4-6 hours of it I’m ready to send them to bed for a nap and lock myself in my bedroom.
The fact that you are willing to do it for someone else’s child despite how difficult it is, is commendable. I wish more of the world had the sense of duty to the next generation. Were I you, I would suggest an easier book to Julio next time. See if they have one that has a subject he’s interested in or can relate to. If it’s a subject he’s enthusiastic about, it may be easier to keep his attention, and help him identify the words. You did good with deconstructing a word to show him how you can use an ending to make other words. Honestly I don’t know how teachers teach phonics. Trying to explain all of the phonetic rules of English to my oldest daughter has been dizzying, and trying to explain why some words break those rules has been troublesome.
March 12, 2008 at 10:43 am |
You’re right about Julio. He probably senses that you don’t want to be there. And that is probably neat because he also knows you’re a volunteer that does not have to be there. Kids are smart. They put it all together. The fact that you don’t have to be there, you don’t like it, and you are still there, must mean something to him…or will before long.
March 12, 2008 at 7:01 pm |
Good morning David. Hope all is well with you.
Rose
xo
March 12, 2008 at 7:53 pm |
When it comes to remembering, we usually stack the deck…
March 12, 2008 at 8:10 pm |
Hmm… I am going to disagree with you on the fiction writing. My fiction is very much based on real events from someone’s life. I can’t see myself writing about something I don’t know about. It’s much easier (for me) to write about things that I’ve experienced. Plus, I don’t think I would do justice to explaining another’s existence. (For example, I’m not a lawyer or an astronaut, so I couldn’t write about being one.)
March 12, 2008 at 8:18 pm |
I’m glad to report that the critic and I are working on our relationship. It isn’t always easy, and I suspect we’ll be involved in this process for a long time, but at least he’s released his grip enough to let me explore and play a little bit.
About your second point, I discovered how “unreal” true events can seem once they’re put down on a page through all my years of journaling. Too often, I would start writing about the latest events and eventually question myself as to whether I was exaggerating events, which of course wasn’t the case. I used to joke that some events in my life read like fiction, but I know better now.
I certainly believe you when you say you didn’t enjoy your session with Julio, but have to say you’re either really into doing things that you hate doing or you’re more tolerant than I am because I wouldn’t even consider signing up to that sort of program. Just don’t have the inclination and certainly wouldn’t have the patience either. But it looks like you have a natural talent for it and you probably have the ability to make a bigger impact than you even realize.
March 12, 2008 at 10:17 pm |
Smiler — I’m glad that you and your critic are having a more productive relationship these days.
Your example with your journal is exactly what I mean about truth vs. fiction … life is very odd.
Pan — I didn’t say that fiction shouldn’t be based on reality, or that people shouldn’t write what they know; I said you have to be careful when you do it. Smiler’s comment about her journal is a perfect example of what I mean. Obviously many things translate well to fiction — but many things do not; extreme events, extreme coincidences … sometimes things that seem obvious in real life, but need a lot of explanation to be believable in fiction. The question isn’t whether something really happened, but whether it’s believable. Real life is, frequently,unbelievable.
I’m always intrigued by the “write what you know” advice … I think it would be more accurate to say “write what you understand.” Often,the things we “know” are the things we understand the least, because we’re too close to them; we don’t see them clearly enough to write about them well.
Vroni — I tend to think there’s no such thing as truly accurate memory, just as there’s no such thing as absolute truth.
Rose — Nice to see you!
Corina — Yeah, I’m hoping the fact of my continuing to be there will speak more loudly than the fact that I don’t want to be.
Square 1 — I have such admiration for people who homeschool … it’s more than a full time job, and harder, I think,than teaching a roomful of kids, because the demand on your attention is so continual and huge.
Regarding the ADD … this is just a thought, but it’s a thought I have frequently. I sometimes wonder whether ADD, especially in young kids, is simply an indication of a different learning style. Considering how kids are naturally wired,and the highly unnatural way we school them, it’s no wonder that kids whose minds aren’t naturally quiet and confined become restless and frustrated. I wish that we understood kinesthetic learning styles better than we do, especially for small children … our primary methods of teaching are visual/auditory, which just doesn’t click for kinesthetic learners. The question, of course, is how else things like reading and mathematics can be taught. There must be a way,though … we just haven’t figured it out.
About Julio’s book … he chose it himself, which the program likes to encourage the kids to do. The strange thing about it to me was that he didn’t necessarily seem disengaged from the book, although it can’t have been all that interesting to him. Personally I found it boring as all hell, so next time perhaps I’ll gently point him toward a different part of the room. There was a book about trains that I kind of hoped he’d choose.
March 12, 2008 at 10:49 pm |
Regarding the truth being stranger than fiction, you know that I have been grappling in my last few posts about fact vs fiction, and in my latest post on presenting PTSD in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, I’ve decided there are definitely ways to present the reality that is stranger than truth by filtering it through the various levels of distortions of memory, presenting it as the narrator not being sure what the truth actually was, and thus having leeway to present plenty of strangeness, in this case, in the context of the Vietnam war, but also in the context of child abuse and other horrific events. He convinced me it can be done and well, but you need to be a master writer and you need to be willing to play with the concept of memory. This is the specific post:
http://ritereading.blogspot.com/2008/03/war-stories-tim-obriens-post-traumatic.html
Writer Reading: Tim O’Brien’s Post-Traumatic War Memories
March 12, 2008 at 10:57 pm |
Gloria — Thanks for that; it’s an excellent example of what I mean … it can be done, but it requires great mastery of craft.
I think the litmus test is simply reader reaction, but I find that some writers aren’t willing to accept that something they’ve written is unbelievable, because they’re so focused on its having been based on reality. It’s my opinion that making unlikely reality believable as fiction is one of the hardest things writers ever learn to do … it’s the writer’s equivalent of learning to sing pianissimo high notes.
I sure as hell can’t do it, but I do know when I’m reading something that hasn’t pulled it off.
March 12, 2008 at 11:34 pm |
David wrote: About Julio’s book … he chose it himself, which the program likes to encourage the kids to do. The strange thing about it to me was that he didn’t necessarily seem disengaged from the book, although it can’t have been all that interesting to him. Personally I found it boring as all hell, so next time perhaps I’ll gently point him toward a different part of the room. There was a book about trains that I kind of hoped he’d choose.
Sometimes what we think we’re supposed to teach is not what we should be teaching. Maybe Julio has no idea of how to choose a book. I’ve seen this with my granddaughter. I took her to a library and she would choose a book that was completely inappropriate. Obviously she had some basis for grabbing something that made “sense” to her, but that didn’t mean it was sensible.
Thinking about it, it might be useful to provide Julio with about a dozen books (if this is at all practical–which may not be the case) and let him choose from the dozen or so, and let him change his mind in the middle of his choice, and so on. I don’t know if this makes any sense, but I think it’s worth contemplating.
In fact, this may have some relevance to your trouble with women. You seem to say I’ll choose this women because she pays attention to me or because she doesn’t pay attention to me or whatever, but does your choice in relationships make any more sense than Julio’s choices in books?
On the other hand, this comment may not make any sense at all. So why are you paying any attention to this comment, when you get so many comments.
My Uncle George, who is an obscurely renowned composer, told me once that a problem in modern music is that there is no particular reason to put one note after another, so composition becomes a purely arbitrary process. He was talking about John Cage. My uncle seemed fairly comfortable with this, which is perhaps why he won a MacArthur award. On the other hand, he was married several times, which may indicate he had no particular reason for choosing one wife over another. I will not put any more words in this comment.
March 12, 2008 at 11:49 pm |
I think once I understand the orientation of the room a bit better, I’ll be able to guide the book choice in a subtle way. My own level of confusion didn’t help the situation; I don’t really understand how the books are organized, and time is so very short (between walking the kids to and from their classes, the actual reading time gets cut down to maybe twenty minutes) that I just wanted to get on with it once he chose a book. I’m sure I’ll figure out a better system as time goes by. Or not.
March 16, 2008 at 11:09 pm |
I loved reading this post…especially the first one. I have a brutal inner critic. I’d like to punch her in the face sometimes. Your words made a lot of sense, and I plan to recall them the next time my inner critic tells me I’m not good enough. Thanks for these words, David.