Bibliography XIV

“The Starless Sea” – Erin Morgenstern

Beautiful imagery, enchanting vignettes, compelling story, too many twists and turns. I got lost three-quarters in and felt vaguely cheated at the end. Maybe I missed something. Maybe I expected too much—and yet the writing itself did not disappoint.

I confess, I was in a scattered state of mind when I read the book. In that respect, I disappointed myself. Still, the main storyline intercut with seemingly unrelated stories would have confused me anyway. Just as I fell into the rhythm of the protagonist’s tale, the momentum was interrupted with a story from another realm. Sensing that these unrelated fairy tales were relevant to the main theme, I trusted all would be revealed as I read deeper into the book. But in the end, I missed the point.

Don’t get me wrong. The writing is beautiful, as magical as in “The Night Circus”, but depending on the passage, there is either too much unnecessary information or not enough where necessary. I admire the author’s ability to put me in a scene where I can hear the merest whisper and smell the faintest trace of cinnamon, so I appreciated the experience of being there. I just don’t know why I was there in the first place.

Yes, I do. This is Erin Morgenstern’s second novel, and I loved her first so much that I’ve read it every Christmas since 2012. Eight years later, I still look forward to the annual delight. Expectations were high on this one; perhaps she felt the pressure and overcompensated. There is a lot of writing in this book. I think it could have been shorter and thus made more sense ... but perhaps, as I say, my expectations were too high. I just don’t know.

I will read a good book more than once. Sometimes it’s simply because I enjoyed it so much the first time. More often, it’s to get a better grip on the story itself. As with a movie, the first round is spent getting familiar with the characters, following the action and trying to predict the outcome rather than noticing nuances. Knowing how “The Starless Sea” ends (sort of), it may make more sense to me the second time.

Am I trying to avoid disliking a book I was so eager to read?

Maybe. I was so confused at the end that I couldn’t tell whether or not I liked it at all.

At least I’m willing to give it another try.

Thunder-struck

I’ve not been writing much of late. It’s typical at this time of year, when fiscal-year-end eclipses life outside the office. I’ve been reading instead, seeking inspiration to keep from freaking out that I’ve lost my gift. Honestly, it happens every spring, and every spring I must remind myself that this ain’t my first rodeo. After Easter, I’ll have time that I presently don’t have to create. In the meantime, read, read, read. I’m almost finished with Lestat and have borrowed Station Eleven from a friend after reading kudos for it from GRRM and Erin Morgenstern.

I’ve also scored a copy of She’s Got Soul—a compilation CD from the Starbucks collection that features Nina Simone, Amy Winehouse, Etta James, and a host of other soul sistahs. It’s squaring off against Diana Krall’s Wallflower for air time on my stereo. I’ve played around with opening scenes and story ideas on Tuesday nights, but have been totally disinclined to boot the writing rig on my days off. I did discover that I can stream whole episodes of X Company from cbc.ca, however, and I’ve baked a lot of muffins in that downtime. Ter and I were also supposed to travel to Vancouver for the Flyers/Canucks game on the 17^th, but the energy required to get there, plus the inconvenience of losing two workdays at this critical juncture, convinced us to stay home and watch the game on TV.

It’s the worst time to wrestle with my muse. I am easily frustrated by alluring fragments for new works and reminders of those that have stalled. I realize that I haven’t finished anything since January, when the speed picked up at work, and have recently (irrationally) wondered if I will ever finish anything that isn’t about vampires. This prompted me to consider, for the nth time, unraveling the novel to the first eight chapters and writing it in another direction though the only thing wrong with what I’ve written so far is me.

Ter and I saw Celtic Thunder perform on March 11. The lads came to Victoria on their “Best Of” tour, and with Damian McGinty returned to the fold, I was taken back in time to the early days of my Fixed Fire series. The first few volumes were driven by Def Leppard and Sarah McLachlan, but a good chunk of the next generation was fuelled by the Celtic boys and “Celtic Woman” before them. Hearing the songs that sparked so vibrantly in my imagining a handful of years ago was a welcome jolt to the system last week. At this point, I’m either winding down at work or completely desperate to escape it, because seeing the show brought back all the passion I felt for my Castasian characters and their wild green mountainous magical world. This past weekend, I dragged out the novel again, reconnected with the story, and have committed to finishing the f***er or die trying.

This is volume 7. I’ve got material for one more after this, and part of my motivation to finish Reijo’s story is so I can get to Aurelia’s. Make no mistake; I adore Reijo. He’s my white knight in dented armour and he deserves a happy ending. I’m just not very good at happy endings, so doing right by him has been a struggle. I need him now, though, to prove to myself that vampires are not my sole strength, to get me through year-end and give me a project for a much-needed writing holiday planned for some time in April.

No More FGTs

Erin Morgenstern’s final Flax-Golden Tale was posted today, five years almost to the day from when she posted her first one. She says she started them when her blog was “newish and I wanted to show I was a proper writer who wrote things.”

She also wanted to do something inspired by the Mysteries of Harold Burdick—I had no idea what the Mysteries of Harold Burdick are, so I clicked on the link in her post and found myself at Chris Van Allsburg’s website. I don’t know who he is, either (I reckon he’s a writer, there are so darned many of us, mostly unknown to each other), but the history of the Mysteries is there, and wow, is it a creepy/cool story.

Read it here. Me paraphrasing would do it no justice anyway. The point of this piece is that, after July 11, there will be no more FGTs at erinmorgenstern.com.

Rats.

Her weekly ten-sentence stories have been a staple in my routine since I first read The Night Circus. Just as she was inspired by the Harold Burdick story, so have I been inspired by her Flax-Golden Tales. They are primarily why I decided to do my writing exercises, those odd little pieces attached to a photograph and often left dangling for the reader to finish in his/her imagination. I haven’t set myself the same parameters, though I try to draft something wonderful in twenty minutes or less. Some hit, some miss, all are me stretching my skill and imagination beyond my comfort level. Almost all of my writing is inspired by pictures, other writers’ works, music, lyrics, poetry, movies—if someone else has produced it, I can springboard from it. I can even do some things better, though at present I am no longer sure (if I ever was) what my preference really is. Is it personal non-fiction? Fantasy? Urban fantasy? Short fiction? Serial work? The never-ending novel? I know what I like to write, but I don’t want to be locked into a genre, either.

I am just a writer who wants to write things.

Handwriting ...

.. or writing by hand, otherwise known as longhand, in which I used to write before I bought my first computer in 1994. At the time I thought it would make writing easier, but has it?

Erin Morgenstern’s blog on the 13th referenced an article by Daniel Kraus (read it here) about the joys of writing by hand and the agony of writing by computer. Curious, I clicked over and was inspired by a number of contributing writers to get back in touch with the organic over the mechanical method of wordplay.

I once stockpiled reams of loose leaf paper and Shaeffer ball point refills, but I wrote by hand the way I write by rig: chronologically with no tolerance for errors. If I misspelled a word or disliked a sentence, I’d trash the whole page and copy everything previous to the offending item (not fun when the goof occurred at the bottom of the flipside). Even then, I edited as I wrote, so given how much energy was expended redoing what had already been done for the sake of a pristine page, going electronic eliminated the anxiety of gaffing and enabled me to keep the page clean.

I also ceased to write my journal, and correspondence stalled until I met Nicole a few years later. I’d rarely scrawled more than a sticky note before I started blogging in 2013. That’s when I discovered anew the practical joy of composing by hand. Knowing a post will be transcribed has freed me from the anxiety over keeping the page perfect. When drafting for CR, I’ll cross things out, scribble in the margins, draw arrows and asterisks, black out whole sentences—and spelling? HOO KARES? I’ll get it right in the final, no thanks to spellcheck, either.

“Computering” has made it easier for my crippled paws to keep up with my brain, so I’ll never say that longhand trumps a desktop except that it has an advantage in the mobility department. I see people plugged in at Starbucks, texting their thumbs numb or tapping out characters on a laptop’s cramped keyboard, but I absolutely love the sensual flow of a Sharpie nib over a sheet of bleached bond. Though my precondition makes writing by hand uncomfortable—and illegible—after a while, I’m intrigued enough by the challenge to try writing a story by hand and see how/if it differs from blasting it onto a screen. Every writer has a preference, of course, and I think I know what mine is, but I’ve begun making notes since my memory has grown less reliable. Could be these old-fashioned fuddy-duddies may be on to something …

Suffering for Art

Unless you count emails at work, my plan to write daily isn’t going very well. You might count the goings on in my imagination, I suppose, as there’s always something brewing in there. I am more productive if I get the scene/story ordered in my head before I tackle the computer. Going in cold rarely achieves ignition.

I wonder why I do it at all.

At the beginning of January, Erin Morgenstern posted a piece on her blog that struck a chord. She intends to write her follow up to The Night Circus in 2014, but expressed some doubt about how to accomplish it. She’s much happier with life now than she was then, so liking the world outside her head is interfering with the world inside her head. She finally confessed that she started writing to escape a sadness that no longer exists. At the beginning, she wrote to escape.

So did I.

My arthritis was diagnosed shortly after I discovered the joy of creating my own stories. I loved to read, as did (does) my whole family, but for me, writing took that pleasure to another, all-consuming level. After delivering the good news to my mother and me, the doctor added the bonus info that I’d have to cut back on the writing, as the physics of it were likely to cause more problems than the disease alone.

That very night, I started writing a new story. I recall nothing of it except that it was as much an act of defiance as of creativity. I had dabbled with words since age ten. At thirteen, I flung my arms around the practice and held on for dear life. From then on, writing was my escape, my sanctuary from a world where the struggle against pain reigned supreme. For years, arthritis was my real life and writing was how I coped with it. I actually did let up in my twenties, when the worst seemed over and my life got happier. I still use it as a coping mechanism, but overall, my inner world is darker and scarier than my outer one.

I understand what EM is saying. Great art, be it literature, music or painting, is often born of the artist’s suffering and subsequent urge to escape some form of pain—a broken heart, a broken child, a broken faith. Time and again, I’ve heard poets and musicians say their best work was done in their darkest moments. Happily, it’s not set in stone that beauty must come from pain. After all these years, writing is my habit as much as my escape. At times, I don’t even think about it; I just do it. Whether it began as a hidden part of me or it arrived later to save me from my angst, it’s very much a part of me now. If I had to stop, I’d as soon stop breathing.

EM says she must learn to write while she’s happy. She’s so gifted that I’m sure she’ll succeed. As for me … I’ll leave the suffering to my characters. I’m fine without it.

Bibliography (Part 1)

 

“The Night Circus” – Erin Morgenstern



I wrote nothing, yesterday. I had just finished revisiting The Night Circus, and trying to produce anything in the aftermath seemed futile. It’s one of those stories so brilliantly told that I am at once inspired and intimidated. All I really wanted to do after closing the cover was burst into tears and gush about how wonderful it is. Magical. Alluring. Poignant. Misty. Melancholy. Beautiful. Dreamy. Colourful. Dazzling. Romantic. Tragic. Sweet. Stark. Fragile. Masterful. Gorgeous. The adjectives are innumerable. I rarely happen on a novel that I want to read more than once. This one, I suspect, will become an annual event. It deserves to be read over and over and over again.

My first run last winter left me breathless and in awe. This time, though I knew what was to come, I was able to comprehend it better and that made for a richer experience. It’s like a glass box full of jewels, glistening and intensely-hued, so mesmerizing that you can’t look away. You want to lift the lid and inspect every facet, to see how the light plays off the surface and reflects on your skin while you hold it. She writes with an elegant simplicity that sets you right in the scene. Her description of a dining room where the candlelight is “deep and warm and bubbling” just sends me. There’s a poetry, an artistry, in being able to write like that, to paint so richly with language and yet not overwhelm the reader with pretentious stodge.

And the story itself? Where did she come up with this thing??? A challenge between magician instructors where their students are ignorant and the circus is the venue. Only one can win, but what happens when the opponents fall in love? And what happens to the circus when they do? So there’s a morality tale as well as magic and romance; mysteries abound until pretty well the last scene – a conversation between one of the challenge instructors and a boy who can read the past. They speak of magic in terms I completely understand, so … does it exist or doesn’t it?

If The Night Circus is any indication, it most certainly does.

Art is Made

I occasionally drop into Chuck Wendig’s blog over at www.terribleminds.com; he’s a novelist, screenwriter, and author with whose work I am completely unfamiliar, but one day Erin Morgenstern mentioned one of his posts and I clicked on the link. I don’t recall the subject at the time, but I wound up adding him to my Favourites and once in a while, I am prompted to visit.

A few weeks ago, I discovered Chuck’s take on a debate over “art happens” versus “art is made”. (see it here). I guess many people (probably critics or other “experts” on creativity who think they are but are not, in fact, themselves creative) believe that art simply happens. Once upon a time, I might have agreed with that, but Mr. Wendig argued so colourfully to the contrary that I had to ponder it before making up my mind for sure. 

 

His point is that inspiration happens and from that art is made. It’s gratifying when the flow is smooth and time ceases to exist in its throes, but making art is work. It takes thought and effort to get that inspired notion off the ground. It’s totally worth it, of course, but art does not spontaneously happen. The magic is in the idea: where it comes from, what inspires it, and how it manifests. I admit, I’m more in love with dreaming than doing. I envision scenes and hear conversations all the time. Getting around to transcribing them, however … boy, I can expend more energy avoiding the computer than it would take me to do the work. 

 

True, if you love what you’re doing, then it isn’t work – and I love to write. Most of the time. Sometimes it’s just too darned hard.