Nobody made me want to be a Writer

I just happened on a blog post by Neil Gaiman.  I do not actually know who he is - except that others interested in the fantasy genre seem to assume everyone will know him.  Well, I suppose it is because I read only for work now.  Writing is my pleasure, my outlet, my need.

Anyway I started to read through a speech this Neil Gaiman fellow gave to the Mythopaeic society a few years ago and had just posted to his blog.  He begins by describing how he encountered the Narnia books.  Then he writes:

C.S. Lewis was the first Person to make me want to be a writer.

I stopped there and had to come in here to write my reaction to that statement:

Nobody made me want to be a writer.

I can remember quite clearly the first thing I wrote - an essay actually - and I wrote it because I had to, not because I had read some other writer's work that inspired me.  I don't mean it was a school assignment; I do mean the thoughts that found their way onto a yellow lined pad of paper in pencil, just had to come out of my head. I wrote many essays in those years - the first being when I was 13.  I also wrote poetry, and tried a few [very bad] novels.  I wrote one absurdist play that my High School English teacher thought superb.

But I wrote because of an inner compulsion to write - it was a need.

It is a need.

Indie or not

The Indie book list blog decided the other day to stop posting. It was a long explanation to which I will post a link after I get to my laptop. But the gist of it was that the word 'indie' presupposes 'crap' in most people's minds. I believe the word was borrowed from Indie films - which have the reputation of being experimental, pushing the boundaries of art and so on.

Ok!  On my laptop now.....

So the use of the word 'indie' to label independent, self-published books was [is?] an attempt to catch some of this cachet of beyond the boundaries experimentation - of brave individuals with good ideas and good products but not the big bucks to package and promote their work.  The indie list site seemed to be a place where this could be put into effect.

Apparently not - according to the last post of the blogger there, they were inundated with crap - more books listed than ever purchased.  Rather than becoming a Sundance cyber festival for independent authors, it became a dumping ground for bad books.

Read it here and decide:

http://www.indiebookslist.com

As for myself, perhaps the blogger had a good idea, but it needed honing itself - rejecting books that were badly written or badly edited but allowing those that were, if perhaps a bit rough, a chance to shine.

More from John Ruskin

More prose from John Ruskin. This is from Volume II of The Stones of Venice, where he leaves discussion of the science of architecture behind to paint a word picture of the city. I allowed the sensations to take over and ignored his word brush stroke technique:

Well might it seem that such a city had owed her existence rather to the rod of the enchanter, than the fear of the fugitive; that the 

waters which encircled her had been chosen for the mirror of her state, rather than the shelter of her nakedness; and that all which in nature was wild or merciless,—Time and Decay, as well as the waves and tempests,—had been won to adorn her instead of to destroy, and might still spare, for ages to come, that beauty which seemed to have fixed for its throne the sands of the hour-glass as well as of the sea.

John Ruskin and the language of the heart

Persentio ergo sum is my personal motto and descriptor.  When I write I do only rarely use logic in constructing mental images for others to experience.  Rather I write feelings and emotions.  This is why my prose often blends into poetry and sometimes my poetry in prose.   John Ruskin's style leads me to believe he wrote in this way too. The excerpt below is from Volume II of The Stones of Venice, where he leaves discussion of the science of architecture behind to paint a word picture of the city. I allowed the sensations to take over and ignored his word brush stroke technique:

Well might it seem that such a city had owed her existence rather to the rod of the enchanter, than the fear of the fugitive; that the 

waters which encircled her had been chosen for the mirror of her state, rather than the shelter of her nakedness; and that all which in nature was wild or merciless,—Time and Decay, as well as the waves and tempests,—had been won to adorn her instead of to destroy, and might still spare, for ages to come, that beauty which seemed to have fixed for its throne the sands of the hour-glass as well as of the sea.

time

Finding time to write in any of the ways I practise this art is difficult for me.  A long time ago and in a galaxy far away I made a list of ongoing projects.  I am glancing at it now - in print format - and realize that some of those have dropped off.

So here is the updated list [and I will produce it is order of priority]

1. teaching [three teaching contracts this term - which starts Wednesday] 
1. Religion & Society in the Modern World - online at the University of Guelph  124 students, 2 Teaching Assistants
2. Religion & Society in the Modern World - online at the University of Guelph/Humber  89 students no teaching assistants
3. Judaism, Christianity, Islam at the University of Guelph/Humber  56 students no Teaching Assistants
2. Religions of the World for Northern Blue Publishing - preparing section on Islam to test iBookauthor app - aimed now at the iBookstore
3. The Man who fell from the Sky - multimedia eBook fiction/fantasy
4. Book of Dreams - poetry multimedia eBook and also website format
5. Religion and Society in the Atlantic World since 1500 - multimedia eBook - History
6. family history project for a friend - already paid me in a bottle of Welsh single malt whisky - Penderyn  VERY NICE!
7. revisions to Apple a Day - a project cancelled by James Lorimer Publishers right at the point of setting the text and photos!

Question is...... how do I fit all this in... other than setting a list of priorities.  Teaching will take most of my time as that is immediate both in terms of weekly deadlines and bi-weekly pay.  Religions of the World will get next as that promises to be realised in a concrete fashion by year's end.  The others, I have reverted to my rule of at least one sentence a day....

The Muscle in my Head

I decided to write this post because I haven't been doing what I decided to write about here:  the necessity to write everyday - even if only one sentence.  I was going to hedge my instruction to myself by saying that reading over previously produced bits would qualify, but no, that is a cheat.

Writing is a product of that muscle in my head - of ideas and of imagination.  Like any other muscle, you must exercise it on a regular basis.  You must also let this muscle feed on the senses that bring sustenance, that allow it to be supple and vigorous.

So, once again, I pick myself up, dust myself off and return to the fray.

Leonard Cohen, Mordechai Richler, Margaret Atwood: Random Thoughts

While exercising this morning I was listening to Leonard Cohen's recent album Old Ideas.

This started me thinking about the role of social environment in creativity.  Two of Canada's greatest writers, Leonard Cohen and Mordechai Richler both came out of the Montréal Jewish community.  Was their talent nurtured by this?  Would they have been great writers if they had grown up in, oh say, Windsor, Ontario?  Or in farm country?  In Canada, Margaret Atwood is usually lauded as Canada's leading literary luminary [sorry for the lapse into alliteration!  It is a disease!  I can't help myself!].  For myself, when I read her books [and a book of poetry of hers way back when] I feel like I am in a university lecture hall being told what to think by a left-leaning professor.  Mordechai Richler and Leonard Cohen make other universes real in my mind... the wall between writer and words and the reader dissolves and you enter an alternate universe.

Hmmmm.


[post scriptum:   when I googled Leonard Cohen to link to a brief biography of him, only commercial sites or wikipedia came up... so I lined to wikipedia.. then when I search The Canadian Encyclopedia I did indeed find an entry for him, but decided the stay with Wikipedia, not sure why Google didn't put the better source on the first page of search results]