. Spinning .

As I’d hoped, Steve Ersinghaus has expanded on my post on the idea of getting out of character and getting into new character in enabling a writer to go beyond his own experience and values.

It is all such a pressure cooker of experience, where the reading, watching tv and movies, formal study, listening to people all eventually make the potatoes take on the taste of the corned beef. But as we absorb and become or reject, what takes its shape as our personality and ideology need not be all we can write.  In making a personal decision on whether or not we could be a potential Jeffrey Dahmer, if we choose one way the other is not closed to our imagination.  It is the experience of what can be rather than what would be. If I wrote about adulterous relationships, abortion, menage a tois, you need not know whether my experience was first hand or accumulated observation.  I recall a Spanish class where we were often asked to offer three statements about ourselves, two true-one false.  No one ever guessed mine correctly.

I think that while we necessarily draw on experience in writing–all experience, regardless of manner of input and regardless of personal opinion–we can extend ourselves further, as Steve suggests, into the unknown areas.  Things need not be concrete or real, although in keeping with the element of verisimilitude they need be believable within the world that is created. 

The study of character and especially the notion of perception and its diversities, the absolute adamant sense of rightness held by opposing views, is a fascinating area to explore.  One way to explore is to observe.  The other is to write.

We’re fortunate to have an English Professor numbering among our little writers group, and a point was made at the night’s meeting of stretching beyond ourselves to create character; to become (as is necessary) someone we might write about that is not of ourselves, but to expand upon what we might do as that character.  Yea, it shall bring out the blackness of heart!

I have been stifled in my own writing by what I was and what I am.  The good little Catholic schoolgirl that rebelled only explored through the secretive means and often got caught to find guilt in the scowls of the cowled faces of penguins.

And family; afraid that my writing may yet confirm their suspicions of the oddness of child number three.  But family is gone, by death or by choice, and the freedom I sought is untested.  Still trembling with memories of secrets and worlds, still intimidated by the associative dismay, yet I am too much in my stories as not what I was, or I am, and sadly, not what I could but would not, but an image of should that should not be.

I must take myself out, cover my ears and my eyes and let she or he who would take my place be.

Ah, we have more voice than one in our writer’s mind, though I sought, thought I found truth in a whisper unraveled through time and practice.

Yes, I’ve grown a bit weird as I age–quickly through dedicated study in the past couple years.  But the free thinking writer shall write straight from the mind, and these two delighted this morning as they roamed from the tense and the tension of language:

Mark, at Clear Lake Reflections:

An hour behind, this sleepy mind stayed in bed faking dead, sight unseen for the next dream, a goodbye theme. Sad to report, under covers did I sort the hows and whys and wherefore of byes, till a chilly clock began to mock me up at last, out of the past, or from what might come, who knows where from.

Loretta, at Pomegranates and Paper:

This is what is waiting for me in my art room, she thought:

silken ribbons
swaths of velvet
in the hues of emeralds, rubies, and sapphires

Tis the moon or the season, the turkey or rum, or a sign that we grow into ourselves as we age.

I suppose style (of the writer) ecompasses the elements of narrative structure, voice, story, etc.  It is the addition of learned skills as a refinement to whatever basic talent with which a writer may naturally be blessed.

In reading some more of the stories in Ploughshares, I have come across a gem of writing style (and will share some of it in a post in a bit) that has me reeling once more with this strongest of self-doubts:  I really don’t even have a "way with words."

The style of an author can shine through any narrative voice to leave its mark on a story.  Whether it is seen as a technique visible and identifiable in itself, such as Margaret Atwood’s underlying irony or if it is the whole package of clearly thought out narrative that includes flawless use of the tools of imagery and story arc, it will be what carries the reader along in the book seeking each page as a trip through a tale.

I just don’t have it.  I recognize it when I see it, am awed by the particular phrase or paragraph or scene or plot that is uniquely contrived to its best possible use of each word, but I’m now seeing my own writing as awfully dreary and dull.  Even as I evaluate and rewrite, the right turn of words just doesn’t come to replace the blahness.

I wish there were a way to get what is in my head magically onto page in a form that says Wow.  Or maybe it just isn’t there.  I am a believer in that most things can be learned, but all will not put into practice that learning to the same degree and most will never reach the highest point though they will be the best they can be.  I may have reached my apex, and it just is not that good, at least for narrative story.

Maybe I’ll go back to shooting my bow and arrow.

I saw an old man in the city the other day.  His face carved to gauntness, his grey beard long and unkempt but full face with watered down sky eyes staring out and no mouth I could see but an aquilined nose that was sharp red at its tip from the cold.  One leg in baggied colorless dark trousers was folded under him for comfort but I saw a well-worn pointed-toe boot sticking out from behind.  The other, half empty and tied at the knee, splayed out and shoeless, footless onto the sidewalk.  By his side, a china mug, pink delicate flowers and a tarnished ring of silver around the rim held a few coins, a few dollar bills.  I don’t remember his coat, and he wore no hat on the shoulder-length grey waves of his hair.  It stood around his head like an angry sea, a dim tangled cloud that the wind barely moved.  It was the first week of the sudden winter that comes in November, and my first day on the new job.

I slowed as I approached him and stopped when he met my eyes with his own.  A shiver ran through me and I said It’s a cold one today while I opened my purse and sought something to offer while at the same time avoiding his look.  I pulled out a dollar, then thought and pulled out another, folded them together and reached down to drop them into the large china mug.  Straightening up I looked back to his face.  He was glaring and I hurried away.