The Return of The Return of the King

"You WILL suffer me!"

Today, alas, I am fatigued, so I wont be writing much; and that, I'll be writing about reading, which is not technically in my job description.  Let's be honest, though: anyone who is/wants to be a good writer is always a nerdy reader first.

I have great news! Finally, after 7 years, I have moved on from the half-way point and have finished The Two Towers! I know, I can't really be a more horrible Catholic. Somehow I got lost as a teenager in the tangents that Good Ol' JRR takes.....perhaps that's why I put it down and let it get dusty....

Now I've cracked open The Return of the King, which I literally made my mother hide from me back in my sophomore year of high school so that I wouldn't read the end and find out if Frodo made it to Mordor to destroy the Ring or not. Well, I've watched the Peter Jackson movies about 1,395 times, so I do already know the end.

I'm still going to read it, so I can enter the realm of well-versed Catholics. Now all I have to do is catch up on Chesterton....

Numbing Faceless Nameless Lifeless Abstraction

I'm going to try to be shorter winded today:)

"You are a person, not a number. You don't see digits in the mirror, you see a face. And you don't see a crowd. You see an individual.  So you and I relate more powerfully to the reality of a single person than to the numbing faceless nameless lifeless abstraction of numbers*."  - Paul Slovic, as taken from Paulo Coelho's Blog

This is the hardest part for me as a writer: essentially creating a character who is a dimensional person.  Often I need a character to fill a role in a plot, and so I'll give them a personality that fits what choices they'll make or who they will influence, etc. But I don't want them to turn out like this:

 I don't even remember this character's name - and, neither does the person who uploaded the pic to the web (the url includes her as "transformer's 3 girl.") Really, that is my point. Now, I didn't see the second movie, I skipped it, but in the 3rd movie I saw no reason why the main character was in love with her at all, other than the fact that she was hot and wanted to sleep with him: what she looked like and what she would do for him were the only motivations for his "love," and for her being in the movie at all, really.  "Numbing faceless nameless lifeless abstraction."

Had I a grave, I would roll over in it if a character I created came out like this: dry, dimensionless, unreal. Of course, the characters I would create/have created indeed are NOT real and never will be, nor were they ever.  However in order for the story to take on meaning beyond what I could write in an essay, the people in it have to be realistic as persons.  Otherwise, it's just a soapbox rant or a text book.

If you and I think about all of the stories that meant something to our lives, whether they be from our childhood or later, we would always admit that the ones that are the most powerful are the ones with "real" people in them. Characters we believe could actually exist and who are people who we can relate to as incommunicable** beings.

That is my fear, but also my inspiration to search for and convey unique, irrepeatable, individual human persons in a story that I write. So that people of all ages and all times can know him and befriend him, like this immortal character:

*I love that last bit. It's almost an excessive description, but as it causes the emphasis that was intended which no sole word could convey, it seems perfect. The Jews would think so too, with their "holy holy holy...." but that's another train of thought.

**Incommunicable is a word used in philosophy to describe the uniqueness of each human person: essentially how "no one can take your place" no matter their identical qualities and aspects.

Awesome People Ruin Lives

Today I was talking with one of the new Army Chaplains with whom I work.  In process of chatting, he ended a sentence with a preposition and then apologized jovially.  It was then that I knew I was going to get along with him just fine. We continued the conversation about people in our lives who correct such verbal flaws instinctively and how their presences have finely tuned our speech.

He then proceded to tell me that his English teacher in college ruined his life. (He paused dramatically. I turned my chair away from my desk and fully faced him.) Continuing his story, he spoke of how this professor forbade every one of her students from beginning a sentence with the word "there." (Again, convicting silence.)

(My face contorted into a quizzical expression.)  "It's not grammatically incorrect, but she wanted us to take the time to think of another way to state what we wanted to say." (Light dawned on my face, maybe even intrigue.  This time he bolted out the rest of his explanation.) "So, instead of saying "There are many..." you would write "Many of the...." Now everytime I read a book or hear people speak and they start a sentence with "there," I see how lazy it is.  Now that I've been restricted from this First Word, I realize that it's made me have to be much more creative in my sentence structure."*

"Great. Thanks, Chaplain. Do you know that you have now bonded my soul for all eternity to never begin a sentence with the word "there?" Thanks for passing on the ruining of lives. You just ruined mine!"*

I actually can relate to his burden of well-motivated restriction, but first through the challenge of dressing myself.  [Conglomerate "Hell yeah!" from women reading this.] If I had a dime for all the times I've overheard or taken part in this conversation, I would probably have....about 10 bucks.  Ok bad analogy. But at least I could go to a movie.

My point here is that belonging to a long suffering group of women who like to dress modestly but also dress well (I'm not really talking about the whole "men's-T-shirt-with-a-denim-jumper" crowd) is, well......long suffering! It's rough to go out to a store, finally find that dress that is perfect, or even stuff yourself into a dressing room with so many options, and then once the fit of the garb is truely revealed, you realize that it shows all your girl parts. It's too low cut. Or too short. Or too tight. Or practically transparent.

We all know the boys don't need to see it all with their eyes to be able to see it all with their minds.

And so, if we are the kind of women who feel dejected, unfeminine and like wimpy turltes recoiling in our shells when we are faced with a challenge, we load all of the clothes on to the Target employee's counter and slump out of the store. Or worse, we buy the stuff anyway and cause nice boys to think bad things.

BUT! If we are vibrant women who love all things Beautiful and understand our true identity as daughters of the Lord of All Creation, then we pick out what we like and march over to the thrift store, stocking up on camisols and tanktops, scarves, stockings, and all those other fun little things that we can use to adapt our objectifying clothing into subjective-wear.

Not what I'd wear to the beach today, but she's still beautiful.

We're utilizing much more of our creative juices and gels to put together an ensemble; no longer are we the automotons who wear whatever the department store stocks for us, no longer do we look just like every other girl who goes out to shop, our body parts (which, by the way, are not super unique) displayed like ducks hanging in a chinese store window. No more - we look like individuals. We display our individuality, something that is individual, irrepeatable, and profound: make us manifest our not entirely physical selves in the physical world....

I could go on. Maybe I will. (I just read this blog entry and it's making me think too much. More later.)

This brings me back to writing.  It makes us look like individuals too.  Take what my chaplain said about "there" and imagine if someone wrote a descriptive paragraph with every sentence beginning with it! It would be mechanical, objective and annoying as all get out! Partly because of its repetition, but also because it would be so fixed, so non-interpretive. Anyone, or anything could do it. It's not identifyable as human, as personal.

Also, if I have any dignity as a writer, how can I not take up a challenge to be more creative? How can I let the beauty of language slip by? I would beat myself up if I devloved into a state of misspelling or saying "me" rather than "I." This is about self respect, folks!

Yay! So, I now have enslaved myself to the "No 'There' Rule." Hopefully it will make me be more creative, and more of who I was made to be. If not, no one else will notice.

Cheers


*This is paraphrase. I do not have a recordic memory.

"You can't write such a comedy without some conspiracy." -Chris Rice

Surely a writer would never admit to not having a point to their poem or story.  Absolutely, everyone who creates art is filled with the vision, exact execution and stunning plot wrap-up before they even begin! Is that not the Source of all motivation for dipping quill in ink in the first place?
I agree, that there might be some authors who experience this.  Perhaps even every time they write, and of course that includes God Himself (of course, for Him, this sentence would be preterite).  But I say that I just don’t believe that the “what it takes” of author-dom resides only in those who have the foresight for every (or even most) of their plots and character developments.  I surely don’t possess this.

Whenever I walk into Barnes & Noble or the like, I feel a sudden overwhelm of insignificance. It’s like being at the Pacific Ocean shore at night, when you are enjoying the warm salty air and suddenly a wave of water powerful enough to rip you out to sea before you have time to say goodbye to your mamma slams into your knees (of course soaking the jeans you so practically rolled up), pushing your thighs backward while simultaneously lifting your feet up into its swarthy jaws, and you stumble, tripping and panicking, up the sandy dune, screaming….

Except when you're in a bookstore, all of that happens just in your chest and lungs and whatever gland it is which throws out hormones to the rest of your body and resides at the bottom of your brain.*

There. Are. So. Many. Books.

And so many authors! Those modern books and authors which will definitely become classics (such as The Kite Runner) and those that become pop-culture so quickly that movies are made before the final book of the series is even written (I do love Harry Potter), and then those that are famous only for those who like that sort of genre but famous nonetheless (think Beverly Lewis), hard cover books, reflections and spin offs and remakes of classics (try Pride, Prejudice and Zombies), books that are so much like the other 300 written by the same author that the cover design begins to resemble all of Stephen King’s novels, (John Grisham, anyone?) memoirs of presidents and founding fathers and the marginally well-known,  fiction books about non-fiction, non-fiction books about fiction…..

Don’t get me started on those that stock the shelves of “Classics,” I’m already out of breath just re-reading what I wrote.

In sum, I always am hit with the Surprise Pac-Coast Water Wall and Foot Sucker of identifying myself as white noise.  That same feeling overtakes me when I begin a new story, and brushes my forehead over and over again as I fight to create a character, or devise a plot that makes sense and makes change. Who am I to think my little inspiration will stand out when I cannot even lace together the shoes of my story?

I have come to the realization (or perhaps it is a justification, I haven’t really asked anyone else) that the story must unfold as I write, as if it exists in reality outside of my own mind; as I grope and battle for a point.  The beloved girl child learning to swim whom I can’t seem to really discover; the hellion for whom I can’t outline a travel plan; the nihilist who I can’t get to shoot at nothing: I think I won’t know their full stories until I have bashed out the dents of my initial inspiration.

Am I too sanguine in asking, ‘How can I?’ As I write, I have to fit things to make sense, and everything that is not trivial effects and changes the story of or the character himself.  The reader won’t know the real Betta or John before the last page, why should the author?

Perhaps that’s the comedy of being an author-who-is-not-God (or one of many): our lives and the stories we help to compose are not conspired by us from the beginning, but we merely discover them.

How glad I am that He is God and I am not!

Now, please help me conspire……

*I have never actually retreated from a bookstore screaming. Perhaps some have. I was thinking of the “I’m having fun” scream anyway, but there must be those who let out a blood-curdle at some point in bookstore history.