Sunday, May 31, 2009
Let the Write One In
The late great Kurt Vonnegut once said, "Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia." I don't know how I let that escape me. I should have burnt it into my mind with a branding iron. My writing has become utilitarian, possibly tawdry. Some time during the last draft, I'd lost my way. I forgot that unwritten rule of writing. Kurt Vonnegut cited the book The Writer and Psychoanalysis written by Dr. Edmund Bergler. Bergler believed that every writer, whether known or unbeknown to them has a person in mind who they're writing for. This is the person who they would like to be entertained and emotionally and/or intellectually affected by their novel. A person who would appreciate all of the references, all the jokes, and get what the writer is trying to accomplish in each line, each segment.
I am no exception to that unwritten rule. I have mine. I might not have thought too hard about it, but I realize that when I'm trying to figure out what's right and what isn't, hiding in the back of my skull is the quintessence of my perception of this person's predilections. It's [D. Cranium], an old high school classmate. I would not say that [D. Cranium] and I were ever friends, and when I look at some of the people who I currently call my friends or who I have called my friends in the past, I seriously have to wonder why. I don't doubt my intelligence, nor do I overreckon it, but [D. Cranium] is smarter than I could ever hope to be. In high school, we'd talk every once in a while, and at a time when I was starving for literature which wouldn't bore me to tears, but wasn't schlock, [D. Cranium] supplied me with the perfect road map, an encyclopedic knowledge of odd, dark, and obscure books to read. From there, I was able to surf the waves of the world wide web and discover a bottomless ocean of books and authors in the vein of the ones that [D. Cranium] supplied me with.
I saw [D. Cranium] walk into [Pages] a week ago, and decided to show some of the treasure I discovered. These ones were all new to [D. Cranium], my mind patted my taste on the back. Then [D. Cranium] picked up my map, dusted it off and scribbled down some new directions locating more books, and more authors, who probably would have slipped my radar. So now I've made it a point to head off and search for those books once I'm done digging through the infinite chest of books I have to read for now. As I read, I'll be analyzing the aspects of these books that, to my observations would impress [D. Cranium].
At the end of the day, I honestly don't care too much about what other people think of me, and I don't look at any man or woman as an idol or anything of that sort. It doesn't mean I can't appreciate the better qualities in other people and use them to hope to bring out my own. Let's hope that when I resume the write-a-thons, I will keep this in mind and keep it... well... not simple, but keep my audience down to one.
[The Obscure Opus] is hard to classify if you were to give it a genre. It's philosophical, "literary", and has elements of surrealism, science fiction, horror, satire, gothic romance, black comedy, and Lynchian logic. I make no apologies for its lack of or overabundance of nomenclature. However, in doing so, I tried to make it feel too much like many of the aforementioned genres and tried in some way to appeal to people who would be interested in them, while making it all my own thing. It's deranged. The short stories that I wrote, and tried to write suffered from this too. The content will see minimal changes. However, the execution will need some sharpening. Instead of trying to walk in one million directions at the same time, I will have one guiding beacon in the path of darkness.
See everyone in hell!
