“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”
Hannah Arendt
Quote of the Day
All posts by Mike
Creative Borrowing
In my post Writing with Creative Constraints, I confessed the following:
“In the past couple of months, I’ve broken through writer’s block by writing stories for themed anthologies or contests. In other words, I was out of ideas, so I followed the lead of someone else. “
Confession? Nothing to feel guilty about. After all, nothing new under the sun, right? Besides, since there are only seven basic stories, every work of fiction is only a variation or combination of them. So creative borrowing is simply what we writers do. Look at Star Wars. It’s just another space opera/fantasy/western/World War II/heroic quest tale.
Even the best look to other authors for inspiration. Take William Shakespeare, for example. The Cultural Tutor has compiled the source materials for all 38 of the Bard’s plays, from All’s Well That Ends Well to Titus Andronicus. So recycle those borrowed ideas with abandon, but don’t forget to infuse your creation with your own special style .
Quote of the day
“To be bitter is to attribute intent and personality to the formless, infinite, unchanging and unchangeable void. We drift on a chartless, resistless sea. Let us sing when we can, and forget the rest.”
H.P. Lovecraft
(Why pessimists are typically happier than optimists.)
Writing with Creative Constraints
Dashiel Carrera, author of The Deer, has some great advice for beating writer’s block: Realize that every work of art requires constraints of some kind:
“For writers, it may be the case that the magic of creative constraints doesn’t lie in the constraints themselves but in the ways in which they counteract some deleterious impulse. The creative constraint may also be a means of helping writers understand the wants and needs of a particular project. Certainly for the five projects in this collection—spanning the genres of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction—creative constraints elucidated the shifting boundaries that circumscribed the writing process, and revealed a path forward.“
This reminds me of one of my favorite aphorisms from Marcus Aurelius: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” I firmly believe this. In the past couple of months, I’ve broken through writer’s block by writing stories for themed anthologies or contests. In other words, I was out of ideas, so I followed the lead of someone else. Too much freedom can get in your way, blinding you to possibilities.
The result? I’ve signed a contract with one publisher, and have submitted two additional manuscripts to other venues, pieces I believe are some of the best work I’ve ever done. (One, by the way, was sent to another publisher rather than the one who proposed the theme. Just another example of how writers find inspiration where they can!)
Creative constraints are everywhere, not just in themes mandated by publishers. The genre you write in imposes its own unique constraints, requiring you to invent fresh ways to work within or around them. A worthy challenge sharpens your craft, makes you approach your project in unexpected and original ways. And of course the form you choose (poetry, essay, novel, etc.) also provides creative constraints. As Robert Frost once put it, writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down. Obstacles bring out the best in us.
Quote of the day
“The act of writing this book made it clear to me that history, folklore and fiction are actually more similar than they are different. Each uses storytelling as a means of reckoning with the world, of processing trauma—both individually and collectively—and of finding one’s place. At the same time, these stories, whether fictional or factual, bind us to something greater, some shared understanding of where we have come from, of who we are, and of who we might become. “
The Quarter(ly) Myths, Fables, and Folklore
I’m thrilled to announce that Quarter Press has released the second volume of The Quarter(ly) Journal. It offers fantastical poetry, fiction, comics, and art by award-winning authors and artists, and includes my story “An Alignment of Wood and Water.”
Zach Benson is a master carpenter who builds special projects for special clients along the North Carolina coast. He returns to a client’s house to handle a complaint, something he absolutely dreads having to do. The disgruntled client is a newcomer to the area who lives in an isolated bungalow on Pamlico Sound. She’s a novice witch who claims Zach did not make a witching floor according to her specifications.
As Zach inspects the floor’s enchanted shapes of ash, oak, and cedar, a mysterious figure shows up outside. It takes Zach a while to get his nerve up, but he decides to confront the intruder.
It’s a scary/fun story featuring a creepy familiar, a dreamy shoreline, blue-collar stoicism, and a magical showdown. It also includes my thoughts on malignant do-gooderism. Please check it out! Quarter(ly) Journal is now available at Amazon.
The Quarter(ly) Myths, Fables, and Folklore
Quote of the day
“The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.”
Colette
Reading for life
It’s a distressing trend: Only a minority of adults reads for pleasure. COVID (while ruining everything else) has only made things worse. Seeking escape, folks drift toward the brain-numbing distractions of booze, video games, and binge-watching TV.
That’s dire news for writers and publishers. What to do?
There’s a great article I want to recommend about the reading crisis in the latest Vox titled How to fall back in love with reading. Step one on the road to reading recovery is to remind yourself WHY you should read instead of blotting out your consciousness with passive entertainment. The Vox piece reminds us that reading is associated with longer, healthier lives. Reading also enhances social skills.
Of course, there’s a deep cultural bias at work, which associates recreational reading with social ineptness and sissiness. That couldn’t be further from the truth. As President Harry S. Truman once put it, “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” Think of Teddy Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and John Kennedy, all energetic, life-long lovers of the written word.
As for the stereotype of readers as puny, we have the vital examples of Ernest Hemingway and Yukio Mishima, just to name a couple. Author John Irving, pictured above, was a wrestler in college, so pugnacious that in his younger days, he’d take a seat at a bar with a book and a beer and wait for someone to pick on him. A few did, to their dismay.
Quote of the day
“Life, even on a quiet day, happens so densely and quickly around us and most of it is about seeing, feeling and thinking in a not-strictly verbal way. Writing translates all of this into words but paradoxically the most powerful writing uses words in a way that transcends language to become more true to life; it mimics how we live in a world that is constantly changing and moving before our eyes.”
Social Network
Flash Fiction Magazine has published my story “Social Network.” This piece represents nearly three weeks of writing and re-writing. I’m quite pleased with how it turned out, and I have to thank editor Shanna Yetman for her guidance.
Most of my stories arise from an image I can’t get out of my head. The only relief is to transform that image into a story, and that process inevitably taps into deep-seated concerns. When I recently re-read H.P. Lovecraft’s classic Nyarlathotep, one vivid scene stuck in my imagination:
And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished; for the small hours were rent with the screams of nightmare. Never before had the screams of nightmare been such a public problem; now the wise men almost wished they could forbid sleep in the small hours, that the shrieks of cities might less horribly disturb the pale, pitying moon as it glimmered on green waters gliding under bridges, and old steeples crumbling against a sickly sky.
“Social Network“ imagines a malignant presence just as frightening as the one Lovecraft described, though in the form of a technological pandemic no vaccination can stop.
M.C. Tuggle, Writer 