writing

“Endings that Hover”: On Stories and Resolutions

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I really, really enjoyed reading Nelly Reifler’s essay “Endings That Hover.” It’s about our (human) need to tell stories, create narratives, and come to terms with endings in short stories/books/movies.

The need to tell stories, to create narratives, grows from the weird essence of the human condition: we are conscious, and inextricable from consciousness is the awareness that we are going to die. This knowledge makes simply living kind of a crazy act. Plus, life is chaotic, and most of what happens during our short time alive just happens to us. Most of what happens occurs by chance or through the will of some outside entity; occasionally we are able to exert power, but usually with compromise and adjustment. So we narrate our lives as we live them, making sense of the chaos by organizing our experiences. Forming our lives into plot, we can pick out certain patterns and see some cause and effect. We learn to navigate the chaos, sometimes, little by little. We believe we are moving forward.

On our need for resolutions:

Within every story with a moral was a story with resolution. The role of literature has changed over the centuries, and it no longer carries the burden of reinforcing our social structure and codes of behavior. But even now — after modernism, after postmodernism — we’re still looking to narratives to provide us with a sense of resolution.

Like the author, I appreciate stories with ambiguous endings, where we’re forced to rattle our brain to come up with interpretations:

I’ve noticed that stories that appear to have resolutions don’t give me the satisfaction I want them to, and I imagine that’s true for some of you as well. Even if we crave resolution, it only satisfies us briefly. I’d say that the popularity of sequels and serials speaks to the fact that as humans we know that nothing resolves.

We writers have the urge to wrap up our stories, to provide our characters, ourselves and our readers with a sense of completion. For a while I had trouble ending my stories because I thought that I needed to somehow contain or recap everything that had unfolded in the preceding pages; I thought an ending had to be the end. It was befuddling for me. I hoped that in my fiction I was talking about the awkward, ineffable, eerie, and unresolvable aspects of life, and coming to a conclusion felt contradictory to what I understood as fiction’s purpose. It felt like lying.

This is wonderful:

To my mind, a story’s ending ought to acknowledge the ever-moving quality of life; that is, I want it to engage change rather than finality. Your final word and the void following it on the page are as close as you’ll get to conclusion. The best endings to stories have a sense of hovering in space and time; even a dark ending can be uplifting, exhilarating, as long as it seems to hover in space and time — because then it reflects life to us as it is: unresolved, eternally unresolvable.

Worth reading in entirety. I also endorse Nelly Reifler’s claim that Chekhov’s story “The Lady with the Dog” will take your breath away. It’s one of my all-time favourite short stories.

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(Thanks to Jodi Ettenberg for the recommendation)

 

C. D. Hermelin on Being a “Roving Typist” and Dealing with Internet Trolls

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C. D. Hermelin has published a wonderful, personal post on what it’s like being hated on the Internet. As a struggling writer, he went out to various locales in New York City with a vintage typewriter (he dubbed himself a “roving typist”) and offered to write short stories for people on the spot, asking for a modest, voluntary donation in return (“Stories While You Wait”):

I started at Washington Square Park. My cousin joined, which was particularly nice, since it started raining and he held an umbrella over my head. Barely anyone stopped, but there was a grand piano player and dancers to contend with. So I tried the 5th and 59th street entrance to Central Park, and was lost among the Statues of Liberty, the bubble guys, the magicians, the stand-up comic, the free hugs guy, the jugglers. At the Hans Christian Andersen memorial statue, I was writing post-card size stories for grade schoolers, mostly in the vein of Pokémon and Disney. I didn’t make a lot of money—only enough money to grab a slice of pizza on the way home.

When I set up at the High Line, I had lines of people asking for stories. At seven to 10 minutes per a story, I had to tell people to leave and come back. It surprised me when they would do just that. I never had writer’s block, although sometimes I would stare off into space for the right word, and people watching would say, “Look! He’s thinking!” Writing is usually a lonely, solitary act. On the High Line with my typewriter, all the joy of creating narrative was infused with a performer’s high—people held their one-page flash fictions and read them and laughed and repeated lines and translated into their own languages, right in front of me. Perhaps other writers would have their nerves wracked by instant feedback on rough drafts, but all I could do was smile.

And then he hit the front page of Reddit, and immediately the collective hive mind labeled him as a hipster (online bullying):

I woke up one day not long after I started “Roving Typist” to a flurry of emails, Facebook posts, text messages and missed calls. A picture of me typewriting had made it to the front page of Reddit. For those who don’t know, being on the front page of Reddit is hallowed ground—the notoriety of being on the front page can launch careers, start dance crazes, inspire Hollywood. In other words, ending up on the front page of Reddit meant a decent chunk of the million-plus people who log on daily saw my picture.

But the overwhelming negativity towards me, and the “hipster scum” I represented, was enough to make me get up from my computer, my heart racing, my hands shaking with adrenaline.

The author describes his reactions:

I did not ready myself mentally for a barrage of hipster-hating Internet commenters critiquing me for everything: my pale skin, my outfit, my hair, my typing style, my glasses. An entire sub-thread was devoted to whether or not I had shaved legs. It was not the first time I had been labeled a “hipster.” I often wear tight jeans, big plastic-frame glasses, shirts bought at thrift stores. I listen to Vampire Weekend, understand and laugh at the references in “Portlandia.” I own and listen to vintage vinyl. The label never bothered me on its own. But with each successive violent response to the picture of me, I realized that hipsters weren’t considered a comically benign undercurrent of society. Instead, it seemed like Redditors saw hipsters and their ilk as a disease, and I was up on display as an example of depraved behavior.

The whole thing is worth reading, but this paragraph was a sigh of relief:

For all the hateful words that were lobbed at me, it barely ever bubbled over from the world of online forums and websites. I received zero angry emails, only a few mean tweets. My Facebook was never broken into and vandalized—my typewriter remains unsmashed, no one has ever threatened violence towards me in real life. Instead, there are these pockets of the web that are small and ignorable, filled with hate for a picture of me, for this idea of a hipster—for the audacity of bringing a typewriter to a park.

A great story. If I were in NYC and saw C.D., I’d definitely offer a few dollars for a short story. I think this kind of creativity is awesome and welcome and these accusatory Redditors boggle the mind.

If you enjoyed the story, I suggest going to the Roving Typist site and supporting C.D. by ordering a story of your own.

Farhad Manjoo on the Defense of Email

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Farhad Manjoo, a departing columnist at Slate, pens a piece praising email. He writes: “Nobody gives email its due. We all kvetch about how much mail we get, how little of it is important, and how difficult it is to sort the good from the bad. Filtering and responding to email is one of the most annoying parts of my job. But I wouldn’t ever give it up.” I’ve read too many pieces espousing how email is terrible and/or evil, so this was a refreshing read.

I think the best point in Manjoo’s piece was about email being democratic and non-discriminating:

One thing people hate about email is that every message shows up in your mailbox pretty much the same way—you see the sender, subject line, and a small preview. Emails from your boss aren’t accorded better placement than messages from an intern or from some schemer in Nigeria. Smart email services like Gmail and Outlook do offer lots of tools for automatically filtering mail, but in general, if you get a lot of messages, your inbox looks like a big mess every morning.

Another way to say this is: Email doesn’t discriminate. Because anyone in the world, even strangers, can email me, and because a message that comes from my boss looks exactly like one that comes from an intern, email is the most egalitarian, accessible communications tool in your office. When every message looks the same, you’re forced to confront lots of viewpoints. Email gives newcomers to an organization just as much of an opportunity to join the conversation as old-timers. I suspect this would be less likely on social networks like Yammer, where richer profile information—follower counts, pictures, and such—clouds out content.

Excellent. I’m going to miss Farhad’s columns at Slate. He is definitely departing in style.

David Schickler on How His Writing Career Began

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David Schickler, in reference to J.D. Salinger’s “For Esmé,” describes how his writing career launched in The New Yorker:

When I was in college, I read J. D. Salinger’s “For Esmé—with Love And Squalor” and adored it. I loved the relationship between the lovely, affecting young Esmé and the (eventually) jaded, shell-shocked male narrator. The story made me want to write short stories, but back then I also thought that I was going to become a Jesuit Catholic priest, and that took precedence. Priesthood was my goal in life.

My new memoir, “The Dark Path,” is about how hard I tried—and how hard I failed—to become a priest. Pursuing that path cost me a serious love affair and then, to a large extent, my sanity. I drank way too much and practiced karate until I permanently messed up my hip and leg. I ended up with my faith shot—living in a severe, depressive, insomniac daze, and teaching English at a Vermont boarding school.

One night while there I had a talk with a female student (she was nineteen, a few years younger than I was) that deeply moved me. I never saw it coming, but that girl was my Esmé, and years later, inspired by her and that night, I wrote my short story “The Smoker,” which (to my joy) came out in The New Yorker’s Summer Fiction Issue, in 2000, and launched my writing career. This is the story of that night…

Read the story of that night here.

 

Jesse Eisenberg Should Stick to Acting

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Your mileage may vary, but Jesse Eisenberg’s short story titled “A SHORT STORY WRITTEN WITH THOUGHT-TO-TEXT TECHNOLOGY” published in The New Yorker is a clunker. I think he should stick to acting, thank you very much.

Jesus, I’ve written another loser.

…

That barista keeps looking at me. She’ll probably ask me to leave if I don’t buy something. She’s kind of attractive. Not her hair—her hair seems stringy—but her face is nice. I should really buy something.

Their divorce was remarkably amicable. In fact, John would often tell his parents, “Rebecca and I are better friends now than when we were married!” In fact, John looked forward to the days when he and Rebecca, with their new partners, would reminisce about their marriage, seeing it in a positive light, like two mature adults.

Maybe I’ll just get a pumpkin-spice loaf. That way I can still sit here without going through a whole production of buying a coffee and giving my name and feeling like an asshole while it gets made.

…

I’ll say something cool, like “The coffee’s not the only thing hot in here.” And she’ll probably be like, “I get off at seven.” And I’ll probably say something like “I don’t have a real job, so any time’s good for me.” Jesus, who am I kidding? I’m a loser. She would never like me. Even a stringy-haired barista with a slutty back tattoo would never like me.

Can you convince me the merit of the piece in the comments? Because I didn’t find it interesting or funny!

A Bookish Meditation

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I love this short piece written by Gaby Gulo titled “Dear Reader.” In it, if I am interpreting correctly, she anthropomorphizes what’s it like for a book to be neglected, passed over, ignored:

I am a book. Not a poem on a single sheet, not a sheaf of notes, not a paperclipped pile of papers. I am a book.

I am a book with writing, still being written. I have been glanced at, passed over, picked up. I have been many books for many people.

I was the book you didn’t pick up. My cover was too tattered, the font old-fashioned. My hardbound pages were too thick for sand and salt. You picked a paperback instead.

I was the book you picked up but never opened. You saw me on a strange bookshelf, touched me on a whim. You thought my jacket interesting, but other things came along and you forgot I was interesting too, once.

I was the book you opened but never read. I was gifted to you, and you obliged the giver by hastily flipping through a few pages. My words were unfamiliar, my sentences complex. Politeness only goes so far.

I was the book you read partway. You stuck bits of paper, receipts, coffee-stained napkins in my pages to mark your place when you returned. You didn’t. You picked apart my paragraphs with close readings and left me smudged with pencil.

And then the transition, short but poignant, which hits directly in the gut:

Then you. You stroked my spine with curiosity, traced the letters of my title with callused fingers. You picked me up, opened me, read me slowly and carefully. You brushed away the bits of paper, rubbed out the smudges. You lingered over my lines and marked them only with your fingertips. My stories and stanzas were enough to keep you warm.

You carried me with your hands, fell asleep with me on your chest. To you, my rough-cut pages were perfect for turning, my worn cover comforting. You read me chapter by chapter, found shades of meaning in my white spaces. You savored the writing in my beginning and middle, appreciated the blank pages of my end.

Beautiful, poetic writing.

The Problem with Medium as a Platform

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In her most recent post, Cheri Lucas Rowlands pondered where her writing lives. Outside of blogging on WordPress, she published something on Medium:

I finally published my first post on Medium — a two-minute read called “Trashing Photography.” I’d been working on a longer piece weaving two threads on the death of album listening and my process of taking digital photographs, the latter of which ultimately won the battle. But I was unhappy and frustrated with what I wrote, so I ripped the piece apart and ran the remaining 300 words that didn’t completely suck.

After publishing the post, however, I realized it was an abridged version of something I’d already written on this blog last year — regurgitated musings on the new way I take photographs. So I wondered: What’s the point of setting up an account on another publishing platform? Am I saying anything new? Does this space offer a different angle of me — an extension of the Cheri you encounter here — or am I just repackaging my thoughts?

I liked this analogy:

A writer who publishes on various platforms on the web is like an animal peeing in different places. I’m simply marking my territory — expanding the Cheri Lucas Rowlands brand far and wide. While this analogy makes me laugh, it also makes me feel rather dirty, but I get that that’s what we do these days.

I have an account set up on Medium, but as of yet, I haven’t published anything on there. I’m wary. Why? Allow Kenneth Reitz to summarize my hesitation:

Once I flipped the switch, I excitedly started a few dozen draft posts, serializing all the half-baked ideas I had been collecting in my notebook. As months went by, I found myself happily writing as my traffic slowly declined.

This isn’t the end of the world, but here’s the kicker — I couldn’t do anythingabout it.

  • I couldn’t embed any content in a post.
  • I couldn’t track referrers to know where my readers are coming from.
  • I couldn’t search Twitter for my posts because of the massively shared domain.
  • I couldn’t pick my own URLs.

These are deal-breakers to me. I want to be able to embed content (videos, tweets, etc.) into a post. I want to be able to customize my URLs. And I want the analytics to figure out how people are finding my blog. WordPress allows all of these things; Medium does not.

I guess if you don’t care for all of those things and just want to publish something, Medium is a good choice. But not for me. Not yet.

On Luck, J.K. Rowling, and the Chamber of Literary Fame

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I had a conversation today at lunch with a lady about the role of luck in her career. We both agreed that we shouldn’t underestimate chance encounters and how certain circumstances bring us opportunities. Too often we attribute success to diligence and/or hard work, while we (strongly) discount the role of luck that played in our successes.

In this spirit, I thought this was an excellent piece by Duncan J. Watts on the discovery of J.K. Rowling’s pseudonymously published novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling:

In the real world, of course, it’s impossible to travel back in time and start over, so it’s much harder to argue that someone who is incredibly successful may owe their success to a combination of luck and cumulative advantage rather than superior talent. But by writing under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith, an otherwise anonymous name, Rowling came pretty close to recreating our experiment, starting over again as an unknown author and publishing a book that would have to succeed or fail on its own merits, just as Harry Potter had to 16 years ago — before anyone knew who Rowling was.

Rowling made a bold move and, no doubt, is feeling vindicated by the critical acclaim the book has received.

But there’s a catch: Until the news leaked about the author’s real identity, this critically acclaimed book had sold somewhere between 500 and 1,500 copies, depending on which report you read. As they say in the U.K., that’s rubbish! What’s more, had the author actually been Robert Galbraith, the book would almost certainly have continued to languish in obscurity, probably forever.

“The Cuckoo’s Calling” will now have a happy ending, and its success will only perpetuate the myth that talent is ultimately rewarded with success. What Rowling’s little experiment has actually demonstrated, however, is that quality and success are even more unrelated than we found in our experiment. It might be hard for a book to become a runaway bestseller if it’s unreadably bad (although one might argue that the Twilight series and “Fifty Shades of Grey” challenge this constraint), but it is also clear that being good, or even excellent, isn’t enough. As one of the hapless editors who turned down the Galbraith manuscript put it, “When the book came in, I thought it was perfectly good — it was certainly well-written — but it didn’t stand out.”

I highly recommend reading the entire thing where the author discusses a social experiment about the discovery of music by unknown artists.

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Recommended related reading: Nassim Taleb on the role of luck.

Writing Tips from Joyce Carol Oates

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This afternoon, Joyce Carol Oates took to Twitter and dispensed ten bits of writing advice:

10) Write your heart out.

9) Read, observe, listen intensely!–as if your life depended upon it.

8) Don’t try to anticipate an ideal reader–or any reader. He/ she might exist–but is reading someone else.

7) Be your own editor/ critic. Sympathetic but merciless!

6) Unless you are experimenting with form–gnarled, snarled & obscure–be alert for possibilities of paragraphing.

5) When in doubt how to end a chapter, bring in a man with a gun. (This is Raymond Chandler’s advice, not mine. I would not try this.)

4) Keep in mind Oscar Wilde: “A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.”3

3) You are writing for your contemporaries–not for Posterity. If you are lucky, your contemporaries will become Posterity.

2) The first sentence can be written only after the last sentence has been written. FIRST DRAFTS ARE HELL. FINAL DRAFTS, PARADISE.

1) Write your heart out.

I also enjoyed her addendum about writing workshops: “Something magical can happen in a writing workshop. Don’t know why–but I have seen it countless times: writers are inspired by one another.” I think it’s not just inspiration, but accountability that matters. When you’re presenting your ideas to (with) others, you feel compelled to do a good job (rather than procrastinate or give up altogether).

The best writing book I’ve ever read is Stephen King’s On Writing. Much of the advice from Joyce Carol Oates’s is explained deeply in King’s book.

On the Difficulty of Writing and Working at Start-Ups

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James Somers considers the worthiness of coders in Silicon Valley. But it was a section on writing that caught my attention from the start:

When, in 1958, Ernest Hemingway was asked: ‘What would you consider the best intellectual training for the would-be writer?’, he responded:

Let’s say that he should go out and hang himself because he finds that writing well is impossibly difficult. Then he should be cut down without mercy and forced by his own self to write as well as he can for the rest of his life. At least he will have the story of the hanging to commence with.

Writing is a mentally difficult thing — it’s hard to know when something’s worth saying; it’s hard to be clear; it’s hard to arrange things in a way that will hold a reader’s attention; it’s hard to sound good; it’s even hard to know whether, when you change something, you’re making it better. It’s all so hard that it’s actually painful, the way a long run is painful. It’s a pain you dread but somehow enjoy.

Some of this is existential angst that comes with working at a start-up:

When I go to the supermarket I sometimes think of how much infrastructure and ingenuity has gone into converting the problem of finding my own food in the wild to the problem of walking around a room with a basket. So much intelligence and sweat has gone into getting this stuff into my hands. It’s my sustenance: other people’s work literally sustains me. And what do I do in return?

We call ourselves web developers, software engineers, builders, entrepreneurs, innovators. We’re celebrated, we capture a lot of wealth and attention and talent. We’ve become a vortex on a par with Wall Street for precocious college grads. But we’re not making the self-driving car. We’re not making a smarter pill bottle. Most of what we’re doing, in fact, is putting boxes on a page. Users put words and pictures into one box; we store that stuff in a database; and then out it comes into another box.

He comes back to the difficulty of writing:

The price of a word is being bid to zero. That one magazine story I’ve been working on has been in production for a year and a half now, it’s been a huge part of my life, it’s soaked up so many after-hours, I’ve done complete rewrites for editors — I’ve done, and will continue to do, just about anything they say — and all for free. There’s no venture capital out there for this; there are no recruiters pursuing me; in writer-town I’m an absolute nothing, the average response time on the emails I send is, like, three and a half weeks. I could put the whole of my energy and talent into an article, everything I think and am, and still it could be worth zero dollars.

And so despite my esteem for the high challenge of writing, for the reach of the writerly life, it’s not something anyone actually wants me to do. The American mind has made that very clear, it has said: ‘Be a specialised something — fill your head with the zeitgeist, with the technical — and we’ll write your ticket.’

And so he will continue coding, coding, coding. Thoughtful piece.