“When you start working, everybody is in your studio—the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas—all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you’re lucky, even you leave.” —John Cage
Interesting quote Mary. I'd always linked the name John Cage with music. Now you've connected him with painting. Point I take away is generic: that creating an original artwork - in sound, or image, or as words placed and spaced black and white across an otherwise blank white page - is, most often, a solo creative endeavour.
That final full-stop, of the finalised draft is surely when the writer, having 'the luck' to have achieved 'a finished' story is the point where s/he walks towards the 🚪, tipping his/her top 🎩in fond hope, rather than absolute expectation, of 👏 to come from reviewers and readers.
Here's 'Water Walk' ... https://youtu.be/gXOIkT1-QWY ... what a script, what a moving image, what a warp and weft of sounds, what a performance ... what a story, tall as a jackanory, genius craft or just plain daft?
I once saw Cage perform. This was a long time ago. I had no idea who he was or what kind of music he played. I spent the evening somewhat in shock. I didn't know what to make of the whole thing. I kept asking, he is joking? Is this for real? What is this??? I'll never forget it! (Loved Water Walk-thanks for the link.)
I was at a party in NYC to celebrate a dancer friend's opening night. A nice man wearing overalls asked me to dance and we talked about mushroom hunting together. It turned out to be John Cage. He was very sweet and had a curious mind. I will never know what prompted him to ask me to dance. Perhaps he was kind? I wasn't a good dancer. Everyone else there was a dancer.
My husband recently downloaded a tape recording we found once, in the basement of my father's house. It was labelled "Kids 1978." Beyond that, I had no idea what was on it.
On the tape was first the voice of my father (recently gone), in a semi-serious voice, as if he were in an office: "Testing-one-two-three." Then an awkward pause, lots of shuffling sounds, followed by the voice of my grandmother (long gone), in her soft West Texas accent, clearly speaking directly against the microphone: "This is a tape recorder, girls. You talk nice," she adds, and I heard her chuckling as she and my father seem to walk off.
Then my sister (still here, fortunately), announcing her name, address, age, and that she likes cats.
A pause.
Me, screaming: half of my name, claiming to 350 years old, and announcing, "I am... a POET!"
A longer silence.
And finally the evidence: "I am a horse;" I begin. A pause. "Horse-Dorse!" I proclaim.
"Ohhhh," my sister whispers.
"I know," I whisper back. "THAT's what poetry is!"
I resume yelling into that tape recorder with more "genius."
Your post is so touching in so many ways. My sister and I made so many crazy reel-to-reel recordings in the day, but I’m afraid they only exist in memory.
Maybe you can see if the reels are just packed away somewhere? An attic? Old box in the corner of a garage? Or maybe, instead, there is a (fiction) story in this for you, in which you do discover the reels, and you discover how things were and were not as you remembered.
In our case, my children, as toddlers, had spotted the cassette first and accidentally torn the cassette tape (after all, what is this strange contraption?!:) I thought it was beyond repair, but my husband studied YouTube videos to repair it, and he got a contraption to record the fragile tape onto a USB drive... And then I heard the first sounds: my grandmother again - and my dad, as if they were right here. I missed them so much, but I don't know if I really remembered them - how gentle my grandmother could be, and how shy my dad could become. How he was a great son to her. My older sister was the orderly one and polite, it was clear (at least if elders were in earshot ;) and I discovered that I was one rascal of a kid.
I wish for all of us to find our rabbit holes and dive deep; whether memory, fact or fiction await, it's the magic in this world.
So true. I love your suggestion. I’m pretty sure the tapes are long gone, but the magic remains. Thank you for sharing all of this. It must have been such a poignant moment, to suddenly get to hear those voices again.
Heading out with Alice now, giving chase to rabbits!
I think Freakification should be on a T shirt :) I can relate. Whenever I'm not writing, it's usually because I'm thinking it should be good, it should be serious, it should be beautiful- should, should, should. Should is a dreadful word to stamp on our writing. When we think of what we should do, it's usually pretty joyless stuff (go to work, go the dentist...) Why are we then surprised if we put off writing? It's like the difference between books we really want to read and the ones we feel we should read (which ones do we gobble up, which stay on the bottom of the pile?..)
Time to jettison the should monster. ( Meet George Jettison!) It’s such a great story that when George stopped trying so hard to be profound, profundity sprouted up everywhere, as though it needed his attention to be elsewhere, out playing in the dirt. This is rain, fresh air, sunlight.
George is so fantastic at shooing out that should monster; it is like someone putting a window in a wall. Light, a fresh view - phew, finally. It feels kind of like somewhere we can soak up the idea that writing being playful isn't approved. I get scared & rein in. I've found these posts so inspiring I suddenly started a story I didn't intend to (& don't think I'm supposed to) yesterday. It feels a bit odd, a bit dark & funny but I know I'll finish it. I want to go on that wild ride & feel the breeze. I forgot that feeling, so grateful to George's posts for reminding me it's OK to think is this a bit weird? & just write it anyway.
Aye Angela, the weirder the better, ya can always par it back a bit later. In Theatre an exercise is to find that extreme animal version of your character, go wildly weird, then tone down as much or as little as needed.
I keep thinking one post is my favorite until the next one comes along. Such a great thing to read today, just dink around and see what happens, like improv.
Oh boy we had some serious fun two nights ago. Hung a sheet in the hallway and with a backlight did inprov. shadow puppet theatre with props cut from cardboard, accompanied by pipes and drum, and a brass symbol called "The Symbol of our Times"
My tiny experience with improv, before the pandemic swept in and shut it down, was that it was possibly the most magical, liberating thing I’d experienced since being fourteen and simultaneously discovering soul music and hitchhiking. As with the John Cage quote above, when I left the room, anything was not only possible, but likely.
Once, standing on a highway meridian strip in a snow storm with both thumbs out not caring which way my next ride took me, sweet Janice Joplin on my walkman, a silver Datsun 240z cruised out of the gloom and stopped. I had to beat my coat before I could fold myself into the passenger seat so frozen was it. The driver was a gorgeous French Canadian (it was Quebec, 1984) and she took me to a motel...and we 'improvised' all night long. I left the room.
It was something else. My wife and I did it together. So much fun to see and hear each other transform into someone else and back again. I remember her saying something like, “I never want to do this beforehand but afterwards I’m always so happy I did.” One thing that completely blew my mind was when twenty of us each came up with a little phrase or sentence or piece of a story; we lined up in order somehow and one by one in sequence told a fun story that actually made sense. Strange, beautiful magic!
When I was a kid, I wrote a series of little plays with my family as characters. Everyone (even the dog and cat) had lines that demonstrated their quirks, except me—I came off as the sane and reasonable one. When I performed these playlets for my mother (I had to play all the parts myself, as no one else would co-operate), she laughed so hard she cried, and I think my desire to become a writer was probably formed then. Now that I’m a supposedly mature grownup, it is sometimes a challenge to keep that playful feeling when writing, but I do try. If I’m not having fun, if I feel like I’m forcing things, I stop. My best (weirdest, most idiosyncratic) work was invariably the most fun to write, and not coincidentally, the easiest to get published.
When I was a kid I had a "dance act" I'd put on for the neighbors (poor suffering neighbors). Think Isadora Duncan meets the Rockettes. Couldn't dance then, can't dance now, but, boy, was that fun. Ditto, James, about the stuff most fun to write (fun for me akin to being engaged/engrossed) being the stuff easiest to have published.
That makes sense. What is the method of freeing the soul and mind? Sometimes it helps to have a four-year-old around. He will try anything, put his body into the most convoluted possible pose, just to see what might happen next.
Love your one-man-play story. Once upon a date a fashionable young woman read me the entirety of The Importance of Being Ernest, playing all the parts herself. Within a week of that we found ourselves discussing hypothetical names for a theoretical child, who appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, some 18 months into the future.
If it's not fun it's not done. I ask myself all the time, Am I having fun here, now? if the answer is no I stop doing it, or, if the thing is absolutely necessary, like drowning a sack of wild kittens, find the fun in the doing. Make their end spectacular, throw them into a wild rapid.
James, What's the title of that work? is it on your site? (Though I could probably guess, once I read more.)
By far, the most rewarding (and difficult) writing experience I've had was working through my novel, RUDE BABY. The short stories linked in my site, jameswmorris.com, were all enjoyable to write, but my favorites are probably "Wife" and "Trivial Pursuit."
I have to celebrate understanding a story "as a series of relatively simple actions" as a way to handle the "anxiety and pre-worrying we all tend to do." [Quoting George of course.] This morning with a new story I love I decided to try it: going backwards, from the ending, and flagging (with comments) each action. Brilliantly helpful in building the story, soothing "the hornet's nest that is the artist's mind" [GS again.} Some "simple actions" are just a few words; others are a half page of dialogue.
On Tuesday, my sister sent me four hours worth of home movies that I had never seen before. I watched them back to back and found myself cropped out of every shot, the camera moving subtly away from my four-year-old self doing jumping jacks on the front lawn, the voice of the woman behind the camera suggesting that I go play somewhere else, again and again over eight years of footage. Since Tuesday, I've stumbled into several adjacent areas such sending mean haiku to my therapist. I imagine this is refilling my well with something.
That's a marvelous scenario for a life of abject emptiness! My mother, when relatives were around, worried that something "difficult" might crop up, always sat next to me at dinner and jabbed me in the thigh if I spoke up about anything. She would turn surreptitiously toward me (as if the entire table weren't aware of everyone's every move), and utter a staccato "hssst!" to accompany the jab. A sweet, hostessly smile was on her face the whole time. Then she would perform micro-adjustments to her placemat and silverware. Lawdy me. I should add that in other areas of life, she was a great Mom; just a bit wired up.
Great idea for a story: two guys talking about their mothers. One says, Do we have the same mom? They do. She’s been living this double life in two households. That’s why she’s so wired and hypervigilant.
Turns out she has many households, which seems impossible until they figure out she's a clone, one of hundreds of identical moms, possibly thousands, all hypervigilant because the original one was. Nature trumps nurture, apparently. Then the question arises, how many, if any, of her husbands, and even offspring, are also clones? Are there any "originals" left?
Could be parthenogenesis, but minimal mutation. Seems more perverse with thousands of nearly identical moms. And it's *spontaneous* parthenogenesis -- much better than worrying about thousands of clone dads. Or maybe monozygotic twinning. Yeah, that's the ticket.
I hate telling this story, but your lovely find reminded me. I put all of our children's audio and videotapes together and sent them off to one of those tape-to-DVD services. All of them. The company went bankrupt. I lost everything. It was to be a big surprise for my wife. That was 20 years ago.
It still hurts, but the memories do come back. I should write stories about those times.
Oh John...I am so sorry. I have a story like that, too. When my husband and I were moving, early in our marriage, the movers lost an entire box of photos. In it was a bag of childhood photos of my brother and me. Irreplaceable. It still hurts, almost twenty years later, to remember them. I remember some of them, but I know there are others that have been lost, even to my memory.
Fascinating about how we mourn this form of memory. Life’s present holds new memories, but being awake to living in the moment must surely trump even the best captures of the past.
Writers, too, seem better in the present than the past. I might be wrong about this, but while my memories spark stories the better stuff lands on the page as if it’s happening right now.
This is so very interesting because it also relates to science. My husband invented a new antibiotic that went on the market last year but it was decades in the making. He looks at molecules the same way you look at writing!
About your husband & the new antibiotic, bravo! Wow. Yay. Thanks. If he also had fun during the arduous years of development, well all's the more to him. Some in my family have owed their lives to the newest of the new so, again, thanks!
Thank you. His drug is called Nuzyra (Omadacycline) and also Sarecycline. I went to a dermatologist recently for a rash and he said, there’s a new drug out you probably have not heard of called Sarecycline and I laughed and laughed.
Books are more interesting to me than molecules, but both go through a lot of revisions and creative thinking.
George is, to my mind, still a mining engineer at heart Janice. You can take the young man out mine and environmental engineering, wash-rinse-spin him through a series of writing wringing and wrangling cycles at Syracuse, allow him due time to goof about as a writing professional, to evolve to be more, much more, than an emerging talent ... but he'll still at baseline be underpinned by his being a mining engineer at heart, which is surely a rock solid foundation to build short fictions and all that other 'fun' stuff upon.
I'm a yet to be writer, in terms of the terroir we are journeying along through, but my bedrock will should I succeed in string a sentence or three together will be my baseline education in geography.
I dare to suggest that what links your husband, George and myself (as a convenient, passing, sample of just three) is the notion of 'scale'. To focus in on George, as I'm typing I'm realising, part of what I think I'm so enjoying in getting to grips with his writing is his ability - paraphrasing William Blake, if I may - to
To show us a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild, story, flower
Hold infinity in the palm of our hand
And eternity in under a reading hour.
No simple way to say where the thoughts above came from, not least because I little clue, but I do wish your husband (and his team) bon chance with the launch of this new antibiotic and, stretching for stitching a needle thread George's way, hope that it brings its own form of 'Liberation Day' to those who have need and have access to it.
Here's you Story Worlding with George in this passing present and there's your daughter studying stuff such as rocks being igneous, stratified or metamorphic who'll pass out with good grades from CSoM and unexpectedly find herself working overtime in an Amarillo abattoir so that she can put sufficient funds by to turn the page and find out what her life adventure is really going to be.
Arrgh NO! "Surely can't be" she'll be heard to scream - much more in delight than horror - "not another fictioneer in the family!"
More seriously Janice, what a lovely coincidence ... do let's know if, carved onto a lecture hall writing surface she finds 'G.S. Woz Here' carved with bust biro points as a legacy find for future generations of mining engineers to find and wonder 'Who was G.S. and what did s/he do with her or his life?'
Well this comment is going to get lost at the bottom of this thread but I’m posting it anyway. Because I want to talk about this idea of fun. I keep harping here about this one story I wrote recently. In these threads, George said to me something along the lines of “ fun, right?” regarding the fact that I’d finally written something after several years in the desert. I read his comment and thought, is that sarcasm? Because no, fun is not a word I would use to describe the process of writing that story. I don’t find writing fun. I find it intense. I get so very focused. I get completely lost in the moment. I disappear in the way of the John Cage quote I posted. The story I wrote was ultimately triumphant for the character but her journey was full of sadness. I think most of what I write is about those kinds of feelings. Alienation. Aloneness. Trapped. Of course there is hope,too. But overall I am not having fun with the writing of these characters. I am heartbroken for them. Sure there is enjoyment getting a story on the page. It feels good. But not fun. Just…satisfying? So. Anyone reading this: do you feel the same? I want to say that sometimes I have fun with my writing. But mostly, no. (Maybe I should try the fun thing?)
This isn't specifically about fun; it's about the word happiness, perhaps a close relative. I first heard it in a JFK speech when I was young. I learned later that he borrowed it from one of the Greek philosophers, who defined happiness as "the full use of one's powers along lines of excellence." With the notable exception of the Paul Anderson exercise from a week or two ago, I can't say that writing has been fun for me in recent years, but there have been times when I have felt the kind of happiness the quote describes. The Paul Anderson exercise was pure fun. I felt unencumbered, and unburdened with my own expectations of myself. There is a valuable lesson in that, I think, one I am trying to learn.
I guess the hope is to be able to combine the two. Happiness in the full use of your powers while allowing yourself to write freely and without expectations.
Lately, after years of writerly agony, I do find writing fun. Exploring all the parameters of a story, letting go, trying this and that. Recently I dug out an old work I'd set aside in frustration. There were three versions and dozens of rewrites of each. This time, I saw that I had the same character in the middle, the same arc, the same or nearly the same focus point. But I had put in and taken out various side characters, details of background, and so on. I had side characters I loved. But the story just didn't . . . whatever a story does when it goes "aaah." I had recently beefed up the voice of this egotistical country doctor who thinks he's the bee's knees and made it a bit boppy and quick, because he doesn't think or feel deeply and uses his keen observations of bits to keep himself from that and make himself feel good over nothing. And suddenly I saw the light. I stripped out all the side characters I'd loved, the Yankee doctor, the nurse wife, both of whom I liked a lot, another nurse who gives him his comeuppance. And concentrated on the central three. The doctor, a midwife, the patient. And it was fun. Like rearranging a room, putting away some old furniture, and having it all come together in the light.
Hi Sallie. Thanks for responding. I've found that many times when my husband and I are disagreeing on some point, it's because of semantics. Once we agree on what certain terms mean, we find that we agree on the very point we were earlier arguing! When you say that you found it fun to explore all the parameters of your story and "trying this and that," I think perhaps you are feeling what I feel when I'm focused and attendant to the words on a page. I just don't call that feeling "fun." You write that you "suddenly saw the light," and that you "concentrated" on certain characters. Yes, that is exactly how I can feel when I'm in the moment of writing. And it's great that you find all of that fun. My topics tend to bruise my heart, so the word "fun" just doesn't work for me. But I think I do get what you are saying--that feeling of satisfaction that comes from things falling in place. Again, perhaps semantics. Thanks for your comments here.
Okay, so it IS a semantics thing. The word "fun" to me means something more like light-hearted enjoyment. Certainly a scary roller coaster ride makes me feel both fear and excitement and i suppose I'd get off and say "wow, that was fun!" So maybe I'm just caught up in definitions here, which is typical of me. In many ways, I'm very literal and i can get caught up in the details that don't seem to bother other people. It can be a struggle to live this way. I'm well aware that we live in the gray areas, but my brain goes directly to black and white and then I have to dial it back. So, I'm guessing we are really saying the same thing, which happens over and over in my life. Hope you're having a great day, Sallie!
Scary roller-coaster ride? Yikes. But yes, that is writing for me, often. And isn't writing really all about semantics? I am having a great day, Mary, thanks! It is not unbearably hot for a change, and the forest within smelling distance is not on fire! I'm trying, so far with no luck, to find a writing group concentrating on short stories. Any ideas how to find such a thing?
I haven't worked with a group in years, but i remember finding people whenever I took a writing course of any kind. Seems you always can find other writers that way and latch onto a group. Maybe put out a shout in these threads and see if anyone is interested? Sorry, i'm not much help.
Less seems to be, as it so often does, turning out to be more (at least in terms of number of characters) Sallie. I hope you find one of those elusive ''aaahh' moments waiting for you not too far down the track your on now.
I wonder if your concern about how you feel when you describe the alienation, aloneness means that you’re still working through your story? Do you feel your ending was the end of the story? Or, is it the beginning of a longer story?
“When you start working, everybody is in your studio—the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas—all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you’re lucky, even you leave.” —John Cage
Interesting quote Mary. I'd always linked the name John Cage with music. Now you've connected him with painting. Point I take away is generic: that creating an original artwork - in sound, or image, or as words placed and spaced black and white across an otherwise blank white page - is, most often, a solo creative endeavour.
That final full-stop, of the finalised draft is surely when the writer, having 'the luck' to have achieved 'a finished' story is the point where s/he walks towards the 🚪, tipping his/her top 🎩in fond hope, rather than absolute expectation, of 👏 to come from reviewers and readers.
Here's 'Water Walk' ... https://youtu.be/gXOIkT1-QWY ... what a script, what a moving image, what a warp and weft of sounds, what a performance ... what a story, tall as a jackanory, genius craft or just plain daft?
Cage was speaking to the painter Philip Guston.
I once saw Cage perform. This was a long time ago. I had no idea who he was or what kind of music he played. I spent the evening somewhat in shock. I didn't know what to make of the whole thing. I kept asking, he is joking? Is this for real? What is this??? I'll never forget it! (Loved Water Walk-thanks for the link.)
I was at a party in NYC to celebrate a dancer friend's opening night. A nice man wearing overalls asked me to dance and we talked about mushroom hunting together. It turned out to be John Cage. He was very sweet and had a curious mind. I will never know what prompted him to ask me to dance. Perhaps he was kind? I wasn't a good dancer. Everyone else there was a dancer.
Looks and sounds exactly like what my young son does every minute of the day (sans watch)!
Pure energy vibrating, giving off heat and light. Love love love this!
My husband recently downloaded a tape recording we found once, in the basement of my father's house. It was labelled "Kids 1978." Beyond that, I had no idea what was on it.
On the tape was first the voice of my father (recently gone), in a semi-serious voice, as if he were in an office: "Testing-one-two-three." Then an awkward pause, lots of shuffling sounds, followed by the voice of my grandmother (long gone), in her soft West Texas accent, clearly speaking directly against the microphone: "This is a tape recorder, girls. You talk nice," she adds, and I heard her chuckling as she and my father seem to walk off.
Then my sister (still here, fortunately), announcing her name, address, age, and that she likes cats.
A pause.
Me, screaming: half of my name, claiming to 350 years old, and announcing, "I am... a POET!"
A longer silence.
And finally the evidence: "I am a horse;" I begin. A pause. "Horse-Dorse!" I proclaim.
"Ohhhh," my sister whispers.
"I know," I whisper back. "THAT's what poetry is!"
I resume yelling into that tape recorder with more "genius."
May we all horse-dorse as often as we can.
I admire this kid from 1978. Would have liked to know her.
I like her, too; I am trying to find her, again. I will.
Maybe she’ s already there? Have a look!
Personal archaeology. But MVM, the same light shines in the adult that shone in the child.
That is so beautiful, thank you. What a find! Time for more dorsing around.
Wow, David, thank you -- as always you are so kind.
Your post is so touching in so many ways. My sister and I made so many crazy reel-to-reel recordings in the day, but I’m afraid they only exist in memory.
Maybe you can see if the reels are just packed away somewhere? An attic? Old box in the corner of a garage? Or maybe, instead, there is a (fiction) story in this for you, in which you do discover the reels, and you discover how things were and were not as you remembered.
In our case, my children, as toddlers, had spotted the cassette first and accidentally torn the cassette tape (after all, what is this strange contraption?!:) I thought it was beyond repair, but my husband studied YouTube videos to repair it, and he got a contraption to record the fragile tape onto a USB drive... And then I heard the first sounds: my grandmother again - and my dad, as if they were right here. I missed them so much, but I don't know if I really remembered them - how gentle my grandmother could be, and how shy my dad could become. How he was a great son to her. My older sister was the orderly one and polite, it was clear (at least if elders were in earshot ;) and I discovered that I was one rascal of a kid.
I wish for all of us to find our rabbit holes and dive deep; whether memory, fact or fiction await, it's the magic in this world.
So true. I love your suggestion. I’m pretty sure the tapes are long gone, but the magic remains. Thank you for sharing all of this. It must have been such a poignant moment, to suddenly get to hear those voices again.
Heading out with Alice now, giving chase to rabbits!
you know ya gonna fall...
My sister was a horse, too. Joan the Roan.
Yessss!!! I can imagine us meeting: "I KNOW you..." following by neighing. :)
I think Freakification should be on a T shirt :) I can relate. Whenever I'm not writing, it's usually because I'm thinking it should be good, it should be serious, it should be beautiful- should, should, should. Should is a dreadful word to stamp on our writing. When we think of what we should do, it's usually pretty joyless stuff (go to work, go the dentist...) Why are we then surprised if we put off writing? It's like the difference between books we really want to read and the ones we feel we should read (which ones do we gobble up, which stay on the bottom of the pile?..)
Time to jettison the should monster. ( Meet George Jettison!) It’s such a great story that when George stopped trying so hard to be profound, profundity sprouted up everywhere, as though it needed his attention to be elsewhere, out playing in the dirt. This is rain, fresh air, sunlight.
George is so fantastic at shooing out that should monster; it is like someone putting a window in a wall. Light, a fresh view - phew, finally. It feels kind of like somewhere we can soak up the idea that writing being playful isn't approved. I get scared & rein in. I've found these posts so inspiring I suddenly started a story I didn't intend to (& don't think I'm supposed to) yesterday. It feels a bit odd, a bit dark & funny but I know I'll finish it. I want to go on that wild ride & feel the breeze. I forgot that feeling, so grateful to George's posts for reminding me it's OK to think is this a bit weird? & just write it anyway.
Aye Angela, the weirder the better, ya can always par it back a bit later. In Theatre an exercise is to find that extreme animal version of your character, go wildly weird, then tone down as much or as little as needed.
That’s great, Angela! Keep on with the weirdness; hope to be able to read it someday when it’s ready to be read!
Dang the shoulda's!
I keep thinking one post is my favorite until the next one comes along. Such a great thing to read today, just dink around and see what happens, like improv.
Oh boy we had some serious fun two nights ago. Hung a sheet in the hallway and with a backlight did inprov. shadow puppet theatre with props cut from cardboard, accompanied by pipes and drum, and a brass symbol called "The Symbol of our Times"
Like life aye! we're all just winging it.
Theatre Sports is a thing here too.
Sheet/hallway theater! Fun!!!
Each post is better than every other post!
My tiny experience with improv, before the pandemic swept in and shut it down, was that it was possibly the most magical, liberating thing I’d experienced since being fourteen and simultaneously discovering soul music and hitchhiking. As with the John Cage quote above, when I left the room, anything was not only possible, but likely.
Once, standing on a highway meridian strip in a snow storm with both thumbs out not caring which way my next ride took me, sweet Janice Joplin on my walkman, a silver Datsun 240z cruised out of the gloom and stopped. I had to beat my coat before I could fold myself into the passenger seat so frozen was it. The driver was a gorgeous French Canadian (it was Quebec, 1984) and she took me to a motel...and we 'improvised' all night long. I left the room.
This is where leaving and arriving become one. Great story about letting go!!
Improv? I knew it! So cool and courageous of you.
It was so soul-opening. I read the write-up in the Olympia Parks and Recreation brochure and I was like, we can’t not do this.
You did improv? Cool! So many fun things shut down. Thankfully we have this, otherwise I’d be pretty bummed out.
It was something else. My wife and I did it together. So much fun to see and hear each other transform into someone else and back again. I remember her saying something like, “I never want to do this beforehand but afterwards I’m always so happy I did.” One thing that completely blew my mind was when twenty of us each came up with a little phrase or sentence or piece of a story; we lined up in order somehow and one by one in sequence told a fun story that actually made sense. Strange, beautiful magic!
I used to house manage for a group called "Theater Sports." It's where I met my husband. It is magic!
And a great place for meeting fascinating people!
Improv! See? I'm going back in to edit, against our rules.
Your punishment is to write something crazy and freeing.
Ok!
I so look forward to these notes! They're a mind stretcher in a most relaxing way. Thank you
When I was a kid, I wrote a series of little plays with my family as characters. Everyone (even the dog and cat) had lines that demonstrated their quirks, except me—I came off as the sane and reasonable one. When I performed these playlets for my mother (I had to play all the parts myself, as no one else would co-operate), she laughed so hard she cried, and I think my desire to become a writer was probably formed then. Now that I’m a supposedly mature grownup, it is sometimes a challenge to keep that playful feeling when writing, but I do try. If I’m not having fun, if I feel like I’m forcing things, I stop. My best (weirdest, most idiosyncratic) work was invariably the most fun to write, and not coincidentally, the easiest to get published.
When I was a kid I had a "dance act" I'd put on for the neighbors (poor suffering neighbors). Think Isadora Duncan meets the Rockettes. Couldn't dance then, can't dance now, but, boy, was that fun. Ditto, James, about the stuff most fun to write (fun for me akin to being engaged/engrossed) being the stuff easiest to have published.
The neighbors loved it, I’m confident-- I know I would!
Yeah, well, they're all dead now, so you might want to re-think your endorsement!
You knocked ‘em dead, as they said in Vaudeville.
Yep, and where is vaudeville now? Dead! Ha!
Hahaha! Where’s the hook...
The more fun they are, the more they flow.
Until they stop. At which point, look out, here comes my single-time step!
That makes sense. What is the method of freeing the soul and mind? Sometimes it helps to have a four-year-old around. He will try anything, put his body into the most convoluted possible pose, just to see what might happen next.
Love your one-man-play story. Once upon a date a fashionable young woman read me the entirety of The Importance of Being Ernest, playing all the parts herself. Within a week of that we found ourselves discussing hypothetical names for a theoretical child, who appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, some 18 months into the future.
I'll read some more from your site James, and guess which work this might be.
If it's not fun, it's not done.
If it's not fun it's not done. I ask myself all the time, Am I having fun here, now? if the answer is no I stop doing it, or, if the thing is absolutely necessary, like drowning a sack of wild kittens, find the fun in the doing. Make their end spectacular, throw them into a wild rapid.
James, What's the title of that work? is it on your site? (Though I could probably guess, once I read more.)
By far, the most rewarding (and difficult) writing experience I've had was working through my novel, RUDE BABY. The short stories linked in my site, jameswmorris.com, were all enjoyable to write, but my favorites are probably "Wife" and "Trivial Pursuit."
I have to celebrate understanding a story "as a series of relatively simple actions" as a way to handle the "anxiety and pre-worrying we all tend to do." [Quoting George of course.] This morning with a new story I love I decided to try it: going backwards, from the ending, and flagging (with comments) each action. Brilliantly helpful in building the story, soothing "the hornet's nest that is the artist's mind" [GS again.} Some "simple actions" are just a few words; others are a half page of dialogue.
On Tuesday, my sister sent me four hours worth of home movies that I had never seen before. I watched them back to back and found myself cropped out of every shot, the camera moving subtly away from my four-year-old self doing jumping jacks on the front lawn, the voice of the woman behind the camera suggesting that I go play somewhere else, again and again over eight years of footage. Since Tuesday, I've stumbled into several adjacent areas such sending mean haiku to my therapist. I imagine this is refilling my well with something.
That's a marvelous scenario for a life of abject emptiness! My mother, when relatives were around, worried that something "difficult" might crop up, always sat next to me at dinner and jabbed me in the thigh if I spoke up about anything. She would turn surreptitiously toward me (as if the entire table weren't aware of everyone's every move), and utter a staccato "hssst!" to accompany the jab. A sweet, hostessly smile was on her face the whole time. Then she would perform micro-adjustments to her placemat and silverware. Lawdy me. I should add that in other areas of life, she was a great Mom; just a bit wired up.
Do we have the same mom?
Great idea for a story: two guys talking about their mothers. One says, Do we have the same mom? They do. She’s been living this double life in two households. That’s why she’s so wired and hypervigilant.
Turns out she has many households, which seems impossible until they figure out she's a clone, one of hundreds of identical moms, possibly thousands, all hypervigilant because the original one was. Nature trumps nurture, apparently. Then the question arises, how many, if any, of her husbands, and even offspring, are also clones? Are there any "originals" left?
Saunders-101: escalate.
Do they mutate with each parthenogenesis?
Could be parthenogenesis, but minimal mutation. Seems more perverse with thousands of nearly identical moms. And it's *spontaneous* parthenogenesis -- much better than worrying about thousands of clone dads. Or maybe monozygotic twinning. Yeah, that's the ticket.
They are taking over. Weird uniquely flawed Moms, rise up!
Parthenogenesis? Aphrodite from the foaming genitals of Ouranos, oh those Greeks, they've already done weird to death Aye!
Crazy stuff, but seriously, who wrote that story in which two families of the same man meet, for the first time, at his funeral?
Revenge motherhood. This makes my bones tingle.
You paint a vivid scene.
I hate telling this story, but your lovely find reminded me. I put all of our children's audio and videotapes together and sent them off to one of those tape-to-DVD services. All of them. The company went bankrupt. I lost everything. It was to be a big surprise for my wife. That was 20 years ago.
It still hurts, but the memories do come back. I should write stories about those times.
Meh.
Very bitter pill, John. Though I bet your children would treasure any stories you make of those memories.
A kind soul.
Oh John...I am so sorry. I have a story like that, too. When my husband and I were moving, early in our marriage, the movers lost an entire box of photos. In it was a bag of childhood photos of my brother and me. Irreplaceable. It still hurts, almost twenty years later, to remember them. I remember some of them, but I know there are others that have been lost, even to my memory.
Fascinating about how we mourn this form of memory. Life’s present holds new memories, but being awake to living in the moment must surely trump even the best captures of the past.
Writers, too, seem better in the present than the past. I might be wrong about this, but while my memories spark stories the better stuff lands on the page as if it’s happening right now.
Ugh, Brad. So sorry. Mean haiku is in my coping arsenal now, so thank you for that.
Mean haiku! Like a samurai sonata!
This is so very interesting because it also relates to science. My husband invented a new antibiotic that went on the market last year but it was decades in the making. He looks at molecules the same way you look at writing!
I wrote my comment today.. much later than you and I guess we are alike in our thinking. I am a retired nurse and I noticed the science in George too.
About your husband & the new antibiotic, bravo! Wow. Yay. Thanks. If he also had fun during the arduous years of development, well all's the more to him. Some in my family have owed their lives to the newest of the new so, again, thanks!
Thank you. His drug is called Nuzyra (Omadacycline) and also Sarecycline. I went to a dermatologist recently for a rash and he said, there’s a new drug out you probably have not heard of called Sarecycline and I laughed and laughed.
Books are more interesting to me than molecules, but both go through a lot of revisions and creative thinking.
Have made a note! We're at the dermo all the time. Again, many thanks!
George is, to my mind, still a mining engineer at heart Janice. You can take the young man out mine and environmental engineering, wash-rinse-spin him through a series of writing wringing and wrangling cycles at Syracuse, allow him due time to goof about as a writing professional, to evolve to be more, much more, than an emerging talent ... but he'll still at baseline be underpinned by his being a mining engineer at heart, which is surely a rock solid foundation to build short fictions and all that other 'fun' stuff upon.
I'm a yet to be writer, in terms of the terroir we are journeying along through, but my bedrock will should I succeed in string a sentence or three together will be my baseline education in geography.
I dare to suggest that what links your husband, George and myself (as a convenient, passing, sample of just three) is the notion of 'scale'. To focus in on George, as I'm typing I'm realising, part of what I think I'm so enjoying in getting to grips with his writing is his ability - paraphrasing William Blake, if I may - to
To show us a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild, story, flower
Hold infinity in the palm of our hand
And eternity in under a reading hour.
No simple way to say where the thoughts above came from, not least because I little clue, but I do wish your husband (and his team) bon chance with the launch of this new antibiotic and, stretching for stitching a needle thread George's way, hope that it brings its own form of 'Liberation Day' to those who have need and have access to it.
Agree. Interestingly our daughter attends his alma mater Colorado School of Mines. Lol. Small world.
Ha!
Here's you Story Worlding with George in this passing present and there's your daughter studying stuff such as rocks being igneous, stratified or metamorphic who'll pass out with good grades from CSoM and unexpectedly find herself working overtime in an Amarillo abattoir so that she can put sufficient funds by to turn the page and find out what her life adventure is really going to be.
Arrgh NO! "Surely can't be" she'll be heard to scream - much more in delight than horror - "not another fictioneer in the family!"
More seriously Janice, what a lovely coincidence ... do let's know if, carved onto a lecture hall writing surface she finds 'G.S. Woz Here' carved with bust biro points as a legacy find for future generations of mining engineers to find and wonder 'Who was G.S. and what did s/he do with her or his life?'
Well this comment is going to get lost at the bottom of this thread but I’m posting it anyway. Because I want to talk about this idea of fun. I keep harping here about this one story I wrote recently. In these threads, George said to me something along the lines of “ fun, right?” regarding the fact that I’d finally written something after several years in the desert. I read his comment and thought, is that sarcasm? Because no, fun is not a word I would use to describe the process of writing that story. I don’t find writing fun. I find it intense. I get so very focused. I get completely lost in the moment. I disappear in the way of the John Cage quote I posted. The story I wrote was ultimately triumphant for the character but her journey was full of sadness. I think most of what I write is about those kinds of feelings. Alienation. Aloneness. Trapped. Of course there is hope,too. But overall I am not having fun with the writing of these characters. I am heartbroken for them. Sure there is enjoyment getting a story on the page. It feels good. But not fun. Just…satisfying? So. Anyone reading this: do you feel the same? I want to say that sometimes I have fun with my writing. But mostly, no. (Maybe I should try the fun thing?)
This isn't specifically about fun; it's about the word happiness, perhaps a close relative. I first heard it in a JFK speech when I was young. I learned later that he borrowed it from one of the Greek philosophers, who defined happiness as "the full use of one's powers along lines of excellence." With the notable exception of the Paul Anderson exercise from a week or two ago, I can't say that writing has been fun for me in recent years, but there have been times when I have felt the kind of happiness the quote describes. The Paul Anderson exercise was pure fun. I felt unencumbered, and unburdened with my own expectations of myself. There is a valuable lesson in that, I think, one I am trying to learn.
I guess the hope is to be able to combine the two. Happiness in the full use of your powers while allowing yourself to write freely and without expectations.
Lately, after years of writerly agony, I do find writing fun. Exploring all the parameters of a story, letting go, trying this and that. Recently I dug out an old work I'd set aside in frustration. There were three versions and dozens of rewrites of each. This time, I saw that I had the same character in the middle, the same arc, the same or nearly the same focus point. But I had put in and taken out various side characters, details of background, and so on. I had side characters I loved. But the story just didn't . . . whatever a story does when it goes "aaah." I had recently beefed up the voice of this egotistical country doctor who thinks he's the bee's knees and made it a bit boppy and quick, because he doesn't think or feel deeply and uses his keen observations of bits to keep himself from that and make himself feel good over nothing. And suddenly I saw the light. I stripped out all the side characters I'd loved, the Yankee doctor, the nurse wife, both of whom I liked a lot, another nurse who gives him his comeuppance. And concentrated on the central three. The doctor, a midwife, the patient. And it was fun. Like rearranging a room, putting away some old furniture, and having it all come together in the light.
Hi Sallie. Thanks for responding. I've found that many times when my husband and I are disagreeing on some point, it's because of semantics. Once we agree on what certain terms mean, we find that we agree on the very point we were earlier arguing! When you say that you found it fun to explore all the parameters of your story and "trying this and that," I think perhaps you are feeling what I feel when I'm focused and attendant to the words on a page. I just don't call that feeling "fun." You write that you "suddenly saw the light," and that you "concentrated" on certain characters. Yes, that is exactly how I can feel when I'm in the moment of writing. And it's great that you find all of that fun. My topics tend to bruise my heart, so the word "fun" just doesn't work for me. But I think I do get what you are saying--that feeling of satisfaction that comes from things falling in place. Again, perhaps semantics. Thanks for your comments here.
Yes. Fun to me, I guess, is that sense of great excitement - fear, attraction, attention.
Okay, so it IS a semantics thing. The word "fun" to me means something more like light-hearted enjoyment. Certainly a scary roller coaster ride makes me feel both fear and excitement and i suppose I'd get off and say "wow, that was fun!" So maybe I'm just caught up in definitions here, which is typical of me. In many ways, I'm very literal and i can get caught up in the details that don't seem to bother other people. It can be a struggle to live this way. I'm well aware that we live in the gray areas, but my brain goes directly to black and white and then I have to dial it back. So, I'm guessing we are really saying the same thing, which happens over and over in my life. Hope you're having a great day, Sallie!
Scary roller-coaster ride? Yikes. But yes, that is writing for me, often. And isn't writing really all about semantics? I am having a great day, Mary, thanks! It is not unbearably hot for a change, and the forest within smelling distance is not on fire! I'm trying, so far with no luck, to find a writing group concentrating on short stories. Any ideas how to find such a thing?
I haven't worked with a group in years, but i remember finding people whenever I took a writing course of any kind. Seems you always can find other writers that way and latch onto a group. Maybe put out a shout in these threads and see if anyone is interested? Sorry, i'm not much help.
Less seems to be, as it so often does, turning out to be more (at least in terms of number of characters) Sallie. I hope you find one of those elusive ''aaahh' moments waiting for you not too far down the track your on now.
I hope so too.
I wonder if your concern about how you feel when you describe the alienation, aloneness means that you’re still working through your story? Do you feel your ending was the end of the story? Or, is it the beginning of a longer story?