It rings this bell for me: Ten years ago I left a long term relationship in Maine because all I wanted to do was write, and my practical partner didn't think my writing would pay any bills, and, of course, she was so correct. I had no choice but to move out (twas her house) and move to the PNW, the only other place in the country I could imagine living. The kids were grown and paid for, I had a meager SS income, etc, so no more excuses. I cleaned house, which included throwing 5 or 6 novels into the recycling bins - this was going to be a fresh start, after all, bought an rv, and here I am, living on a boat. At first I wrote the way I always had, competent, even accomplished to a degree, but work that nevertheless still took a path to the dumpsters. ( Actually, by this time, to the hard drives of defunct computers).
Then, about five years ago I stumbled on something. It's hard to describe, but without thinking about it I let go of something and just let my mind drift. Maybe there's a way it related to the transient lifestyle of living on a boat, I don't know. (Also, when you're in your 70's, you can't separate anything that happens to you from the fact that you're in your 70's.) ( But that's another topic.) Then whatever was happening intersected with Story Club, and then Mary g's What Now. Writing became fun, and not forced, like George says, I got lost in it. I felt it happening, and, one time, excited, tried to describe the process to a writer friend, but ended up tongue tied, unable to express it. Thanks to Story Club I understand now, sort of, what I experienced.
It's been a pleasure to read this and realise that I've been privileged to have, as its happened, been tracking - in my somewhat staccato way - your writing since 'the shift' whatever it was happened Tod. Never a dull read offered by you, no more than by Mary g or George S.
Well enough Tod, thanks. Improvement post-stroke is proving to be slow but steady no small thanks to being able to read superb pieces on my personal Substack selections and actually to sense that I'm getting back on the path towards writing in, let's say, somehow more allowed and permitted ways.
Reminds me of how Vonnegut wanted to write about his WWII experience and by telling his story in a slightly askew manner, it was unlike any other WWII book and still, one of the best. He took artistic license to awesome places in all his books, and there created a truth and realism that made his stories legends.
Theme parks, a ubiquitous phenom in America, ripe for the picking, and this last SC story was eloquent and exciting to read!
Oh, yeah. My best writing is when I allow myself to let loose. Even in my memoir (which has a sad/ugly/horrific abuse side to my upbringing) I used humor. Humor to sideline the horror. It took a while longer in the fiction. I spent way too much time exorcising my familial specters. I studied with the now deceased poet Larry Fagin and he recognized the fiction writer in me. He gave great prompts using art work, music, but the best advice he ever gave was to write with abandon the craziest story I could imagine. And I did. It's a rift of auto fiction that went to crazy land in a Pentecostal Church with a lunch hosted by a Socialist Workers Party (all true). But the shenanigans are total fiction including a clown who keeps stopping a children's music game to salute Hitler. I sent this story everywhere and it was turned down by a well known journal who wrote me to say how wonderful the characters were but yaddah-yaddah no. I began to think it would never find a home in the US of A (part of the story is about hysterical wokeism) but I found a magazine in Europe whose fiction editor wrote me back 24 hours after I submitted it asking to publish it. And...it pays! The funniest footnote is I was drawn to the magazine's name & staff but didn't notice much else. In the editor's note he said, You do realized this is a socialist communist magazine. Ah, I thought, that's what the hammer & sickle were for. Heh.
It comes out this year. So, yeah, to bells.
Stay safe on the book tour. And thank you for the note about the poet Ali Asadollahi. May they be released safely soon🧿🪽
Salvage (English). China Mieville is the editor. It's a very heady mag so I was delighted they wanted my story, which is subversive satire. It will be in the next issue which hasn't yet gone to print. I may frame the payment🏴 Oh, and it only took 14 years to get it out there. So, as Frederic Tuten told us, "Stand in line and you will be served." 🕶️
🌷❣️how lovely of you,Ian. Pls let me know what you think of the story. I didn’t mean to say it took 14 years to write, but from the story’s inception. I also got an MFA during that time. Honestly, though Story Club has taught me more. And cheaper‼️🕶️🎶
Hi George, I was one of those who asked you about theme parks after your event in LA. As a theme park proselytizer, (been to Disneyland over 400 times!) I frequently see an intellectual mental exercise occurring in its audience. Once you’re inside the berm, you’re asked to buy into an artificiality that might be the most detailed simulacrum of a physical space ever - be it the Old West, sci-fi future, or some foreign country. It’s a narrative that exists in the space, but it isn’t linear, it’s embedded within the details and ideology. You ask yourself, “Should I surrender myself to this, or should I look for an intellectual out?” As to your belief that it adds color to your situations, I completely agree that a themed space’s departure from ordinary life is what supercharges, and helps magnetize, a story’s intentions (there is a whole study on the neuropsychology of themed design, I recommend the book “The Architect's Brain: Neuroscience, Creativity, and Architecture”). This isn’t limited to theme parks, but applies as well to living historical museums, immersive VR exhibits, themed dinner theater shows, escape rooms, landscaped gardens, and on. In recent years, the application of themed design has come full-circle from its 1950s car culture days and is trickling back into creaky old institutions like art museums, challenging them to evolve past their traditional paternalistic Victorian pedagogy of staring and regarding at things in glass cases and mounted walls. An upcoming memoir by my favorite Imagineer, Joe Rohde, entitled “Floating Mountains”, will also shed light on his approach towards weaving intellectual literary narratives into built environments.
400 times to Disneyworld ! That might belong in the Guiness Book. Where do theme parks go from here, in a world where what's real isn't real. AI, I'm afraid, is transforming old analog reality into experiences 100 percent manufactured. We can see the difference now, with a foot in both worlds, but what will it mean for children who grow up into it and it's the only world they'll ever know.
Something themed designers are now wrestling with is the very definition of "virtual reality". If we are to define VR as a computerized, mechanized, digitized method of simulating physical environments, then themed attractions may be the apotheosis of VR. Take the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland - the animatronic animals, the exotic flora and fauna, and the circulation of the river are kept alive by a master control system. Turn off that computer and within a month, the gears will rust, the rubber skin will harden, and the plants will completely wither away and die - like turning off a TV neutralizes the electrical connections that make pixels.
Yet, if the infrastructure is maintained with enough attention to detail, the level of immersion may override the brain's BS detector. In essence, the internal details must hang together. In writing, as George has often said, this is done at the level of editing. Take Charles Dickens's Hard Times, for example. The opening paragraph, which takes place in a classroom, is written with the constant repetition of squareness, hardness, geometry, rigidness, stone, brick, flat - adjectives that reinforce a theme and tone the author is trying to get across. This is (in my opinion) a masterclass of thematic editing! Theme parks do this through calculated applications of architecture, landscaping, urban planning, lighting, scent, color design, human performances - physical manifestations of literary editing that magnetizes the color of the narrative being told...
Thanks for this- really got me interested (never having been to a Disney park) as I have friends who are architects wherever we are, love pointing out little features someone designed-in, that usually go unnoticed because they are working so well! I listened to the podcast another Story Clubber provided from The Rest Is History on Disney's parks - super for context and the last 10 mins or so on the clever design and architecture (including Umberto Eco's opinion, among others) is fascinating.
Victor, Your comments about being in a themed space and looking for an intellectual out reminds me of beloved episodes of The Twilight Zone. So many themes, moral dilemmas, emotional components factoring into decision making, manufactured possible futures where we are made to confront our doubts and fears.
i’m learning to play jazz piano and your spontaneous prompts to yourself remind me of the ideas i use to make music. sometimes it’s a poem, or if that’s too restricting, i’ll turn to a conversation i’ve had and see how it sounds in a series of notes and potential rhythms
Yup, that rings all my bells. When I'm surprised by some element that just jumps into my mind and I put it in the story with no idea why, that is often when the best things happen. When I was writing my first published story, a girl had gone to hang out with her boyfriend at some other guy's apartment, and she saw little cans of playdough all around the apartment. I have no idea where the playdough idea came from but it evolved into a story that included a shy boy who made copies of the sculptures of Camille Claudel (model, protege, and lover of Rodin) out of playdough. That's still one my favorite self-surprises.
I don't know how to get myself to surprise myself like that. George's question- "How do I get myself profitably lost" is a great question. It's almost like you have to be a little kid again and just play.
Surprising myself when writing is fun and challenging and almost spiritual. When my wife quit production and joined me as a writing partner for 4 fun screenwriting years, I made her, according to her, "love me exponentially more by writing the line of dialog opening line of "You know he's going to be under that chicken waiting for you." My takeaway that I still have was in resposne to her asking if I knew what the line meant before I wrote it, or figured it out after (because I do sometimes write things I just love, but have no idea how or if they'll fit in down the line.). My mini-piphany was that the writing of the line and the meaning of the line, explained much later, happened in the same instant. Neither preceded the other.
The story has to reveal itself to you. That seems to happen when we let go of the notion of it having it have to be “about something” re:familiar themes that your reader will recognize immediately. That’s marketing stuff that tries to paint us into the proverbial genre box. I’d rather play around and see where it goes!
I love the notion of constantly striving to destabilize oneself, to disrupt the usual routines/practices so that nothing (or as little as possible) becomes rote. This is largely the utility of writing prompts/exercises of any kind, which I'll seek out when the process is feeling to staid or samey----the creative spirit rebels against the constraint of the prompt, and so instinctively reaches for a way to violate the spirit of the prompt without violating the letter, producing something fresh and rendering the constraint imposed/adopted into a tool of liberation.
P. S. I believe the hyperlink meant for Brody's tweet actually goes to "The Falls" on the New Yorker's website!
To offer a personal example, very much influenced by SC, and these ideas which have been coming up recently:
I had an idea for a story about a racist cleaning woman whose coworkers are trying to unionize, and the story was basically going to be that she bristles at first, then thinks about it, but then the bosses subtly appeal to her sense that she's not "one of them," so she rats out the organizer, no union, but then guess what her life still sucks. And I liked the idea, but as I started really writing it, it felt flat. It felt too much like I was trying to make what is ultimately a pretty surface level political point, and inventing a character to be mean to to do it.
So I added a scene early on where as she's walking down the hall, she sees a man in dickensian pajamas holding a candle, who doesn't really look, speak, or act like he belongs in this world. And that knocked me out of the lame moralizing I was stuck in, and allowed me, upon revising, to really just be present with, ok, what do I think is cool here.
Okay, I’m a little nervous to admit this. I’ve only ever said it out loud to a close relative who’s taught English at Northeastern for years. She laughed (kindly!) and said she could see why I’d feel that way — but also reminded me that meaningful art doesn’t have to live and die by strict realism. It doesn’t owe us a purely rational, objective world. Then she said, “Maybe that’s just his way of stepping on the gas.” Aha!
So here it is: I used to think George’s turns into the silly or supernatural were… kind of a cheat. Like he was dodging the hard realist work by tossing in a ghost or an unhinged theme park. (I know, I know. I’ll see myself out.)
But I had it backward. It’s not an escape from reality, it’s a way of shaking the rest of us who think we already have reality all figured out, like we’ve got a good bead on things. The absurd park, the ghost, the people hanging on a wall all serve to short-circuit that over-serious, over-planning brain and in that destabilized space, something more honest can sneak through.
Once you go exaggerated or supernatural, I don't think you can lean on the usual realist crutches. You actually have to earn the emotional truth. The silliness strips away the illusion of control. What’s left — ideally — is something rawer. A way to get at something realism alone might not quite reach.
It’s funny — I think I used to equate gravity with depth. But maybe depth sometimes needs a little earthquake first.
I think it was Hannah Arendt who wrote about the shared reality we all live in and how fragile it really is. Are we all really seeing the same world or just agreeing to pretend we are so things don’t completely fall apart? Honestly, some days it feels like we’re all just winging it and hoping no one notices.
Well, he was dodging the 'hard realist work' of, say, Hemingway, et al, so your weren't totally off base. And isn't the world of books and readers and writers, hell, the world in general, so much the better for it?
It rings a gong or something very reverberating for me. Because, first of all, like Tod Cheney above, I've learned so much on Story Club (and on mary g's stack), that has dragged me away from programmed "intentional" writing (though it's hard, really hard, to banish feeling staisfied because "this fits with that" or "that's a neat way of getting where we want to go..."). Also because of what's happened to me since this year began.
I have (occasional, more's the pity) recurring dreams about a place, call it almost a country, and every time I land there I'm happy and want the dream to go on. I've come to call it "good place to be".
That place came to me in awake time a few weeks ago, along with a basic narrative and a voice. I wrote a first part that seemed to write itself. It was shaping up, out of elements my back-brain was reconfiguring out of my past (including the great myths anyone has interiorized who has known an Evangelical childhood). I have never felt better writing that than anything previously, and I have written reams of "intentional" stuff. I opened my substack with a part one and a part two ('here' 1.1 and 1.2) and was then stuck with enough matter for a novel when I needed to come up with a closer, if for no other reason that I'd at last been called to get my cataracts fixed (now done, and how wonderful to see the world without a grey pall!). So I tried a couple of "intentional" solutions, and they were either going off at a (quite good) tangent more for a book-length story, or something that felt so "on the nose" there would have been blood all over. Then I did something that was still too much "active mind" picking up on a major theme of the protagonist's life. I let it run and it grew legs and led to something... But not as good as the two first-part sequences. I posted it all the same. ('here' 2.0). I think I'll give it a kick and see if it reacts.
It's great to hear of your experience with both "methods" or states:
Then I did something that was still too much "active mind" picking up on a major theme of the protagonist's life. I let it run and it grew legs and led to something... But not as good as the two first-part sequences.
Hope it comes together (or not, if that is better) at some point.
Thanks, Brian. I did a fourth part that remained within the same relatively brief time-scale. It's nice and offers an "ending". But it's not enough. The story is worth better (I think). I'm leaving it at that for the moment. Perhaps the story will tell me where it wants to go!
Really hope it works out (or not)--somewhere it's been emphasized that one writer is a well-known "incompletionist," which may also have its value. It's great that you know what is what, and know what is preferable, at this stage, at least.
I think what George is describing is why my first impulse is usually poetry: it destabilizes the more ‘rational’ parts of brain and allows me to communicate with more immediacy and newness than I might otherwise. So much more difficult to do with prose, but I love the tactics George mentions here.
I have been inspired in my own writing by these wonderful theme park stories. I wrote a false utopia called Blissville about a theme park where everything is perfect and everyone is beautiful and the HR rep who has to "kill off" an employee for declining performance after 20 years of service. It was a hoot to write and it's being published in an anthology in October!
Sidebar again: A themepark/resort book that's as wild as it gets, might be Nicholson Baker's House of Holes. Not for the prim. I can't call it pornography (though some would, I suspect) because I think the guy's a borderline genius, but it's literate erotica for sure.
Baker's books fascinate me, and not only, or even mostly, the 3 that are unabashed erotica. VOX and the Fermata are great works of craft and story that definitely reach below the belt as much as they reach above the nose. House of Holes is utterly insane. But it's his mediation books on everyday life, a fathers thoughts feeding his baby....that's the whole book. Also Mezzanine, the entire books takes one escalator ride up through an office Mezanine in the mind and memory of the narrator. I was halfway through a screenplay on the same premise (minus the erotica) as The Fermata, and abandoned it upon reading the book. Plus I know there are some movies that do the premise: person who can stop time at their whim. Baker's hero is samrt, expressive, deeply feeling and intellectual person of high values who simply can't not use his "superpower" to peep and titillate others.
In a mimicry phase I once did an enjoyable free form short short called RAINBOW HANDS about a father not very different from me watching his daughter (not at all different from mine) practice piano at age 8, and all the thoughts that unfolded and enfolded the dad in those few minutes of a Bach piece and some Gershwin. It's a B- on my self grading scale. And derivative of Baker in concept, though not voice. But it has my favorite closing line I've ever written.
It’s is entirely unnotable out of context, I’d rather not belittle it as such. I do thank you for being interested enough to ask but I truly wasn’t seeking inquiry.
It wouldn't play here, I'm sure. It may not play in context in fact, for anyone other than me.
Everything about this rings a bell, especially this caveat -“whatever this “getting out of our own way” move is, it’s not simple. Writing is such a subjective thing and we long for formulas and mantras that let us switch off the constant doubt and just get to it.”
I loved that too. I found an old note recently that I may have written or purloined, to the effect of "you have to get out of your own way, and if you can't you have to find a way to get around yourself, no matter how stubbornly girthy, and leave that bloated, stubborn, lane-hogging version of you behind." Pass on the right if you need to. But you love MCU like I love MCU, it's always "on your left"
Definitely rings a bell with me, as I notice I've been putting a lot of aliens (i.e. extraterrestrials) in my stories. I can rationalize it by saying that aliens are useful metaphors for others with a global/cosmic/objective perspective on humanity. But really what they do is knock me out of my own local/subjective/neurotic perspective. They give the story energy, as George says.
This is your old neighbor from South Street, Pittsford from back in the day. Carolyn , Sam Bick and their daughter Louise were all at the Point Loma Nazarene University last night and heard your fabulous interview! It was fun to hear you talk about your beginnings, because that’s when we knew you and we knew a bit about how you started out. We have followed you since , and many of our friends and family are fans of your writing.
We now live in Point Loma in San Diego, just a mile from where you spoke last night. We had several friends there, and all enjoyed your discussion. I am friends with Marianne Reiner who owns La playa Bookstore
I learned a lot from your interview. I’m not a writer, but sometimes I think about it and I learned a lot from your talk.
Kudos to you and your family ! Both of our children live here in San Diego and asked us to retire here so we moved here right before Covid. We now have four granddaughters six and under.
It rings this bell for me: Ten years ago I left a long term relationship in Maine because all I wanted to do was write, and my practical partner didn't think my writing would pay any bills, and, of course, she was so correct. I had no choice but to move out (twas her house) and move to the PNW, the only other place in the country I could imagine living. The kids were grown and paid for, I had a meager SS income, etc, so no more excuses. I cleaned house, which included throwing 5 or 6 novels into the recycling bins - this was going to be a fresh start, after all, bought an rv, and here I am, living on a boat. At first I wrote the way I always had, competent, even accomplished to a degree, but work that nevertheless still took a path to the dumpsters. ( Actually, by this time, to the hard drives of defunct computers).
Then, about five years ago I stumbled on something. It's hard to describe, but without thinking about it I let go of something and just let my mind drift. Maybe there's a way it related to the transient lifestyle of living on a boat, I don't know. (Also, when you're in your 70's, you can't separate anything that happens to you from the fact that you're in your 70's.) ( But that's another topic.) Then whatever was happening intersected with Story Club, and then Mary g's What Now. Writing became fun, and not forced, like George says, I got lost in it. I felt it happening, and, one time, excited, tried to describe the process to a writer friend, but ended up tongue tied, unable to express it. Thanks to Story Club I understand now, sort of, what I experienced.
It's been a pleasure to read this and realise that I've been privileged to have, as its happened, been tracking - in my somewhat staccato way - your writing since 'the shift' whatever it was happened Tod. Never a dull read offered by you, no more than by Mary g or George S.
So kind of you Rob. And, like I've said before, I've enjoyed and appreciated your company along the way. Hope all's well with you.
Well enough Tod, thanks. Improvement post-stroke is proving to be slow but steady no small thanks to being able to read superb pieces on my personal Substack selections and actually to sense that I'm getting back on the path towards writing in, let's say, somehow more allowed and permitted ways.
Yes, I echo Tod's shout out to Mary G, who was a big part of getting me in the habit of writing just to see what happens!
Reminds me of how Vonnegut wanted to write about his WWII experience and by telling his story in a slightly askew manner, it was unlike any other WWII book and still, one of the best. He took artistic license to awesome places in all his books, and there created a truth and realism that made his stories legends.
Theme parks, a ubiquitous phenom in America, ripe for the picking, and this last SC story was eloquent and exciting to read!
"Silly, in the pursuit of the serious." 🔔🛎️
Oh, yeah. My best writing is when I allow myself to let loose. Even in my memoir (which has a sad/ugly/horrific abuse side to my upbringing) I used humor. Humor to sideline the horror. It took a while longer in the fiction. I spent way too much time exorcising my familial specters. I studied with the now deceased poet Larry Fagin and he recognized the fiction writer in me. He gave great prompts using art work, music, but the best advice he ever gave was to write with abandon the craziest story I could imagine. And I did. It's a rift of auto fiction that went to crazy land in a Pentecostal Church with a lunch hosted by a Socialist Workers Party (all true). But the shenanigans are total fiction including a clown who keeps stopping a children's music game to salute Hitler. I sent this story everywhere and it was turned down by a well known journal who wrote me to say how wonderful the characters were but yaddah-yaddah no. I began to think it would never find a home in the US of A (part of the story is about hysterical wokeism) but I found a magazine in Europe whose fiction editor wrote me back 24 hours after I submitted it asking to publish it. And...it pays! The funniest footnote is I was drawn to the magazine's name & staff but didn't notice much else. In the editor's note he said, You do realized this is a socialist communist magazine. Ah, I thought, that's what the hammer & sickle were for. Heh.
It comes out this year. So, yeah, to bells.
Stay safe on the book tour. And thank you for the note about the poet Ali Asadollahi. May they be released safely soon🧿🪽
In solidarity,
Lucinda
Lucinda! great news, let us know the name of that commie mag your crazy story will be in.
Salvage (English). China Mieville is the editor. It's a very heady mag so I was delighted they wanted my story, which is subversive satire. It will be in the next issue which hasn't yet gone to print. I may frame the payment🏴 Oh, and it only took 14 years to get it out there. So, as Frederic Tuten told us, "Stand in line and you will be served." 🕶️
Subscribed to Salva(hammer and sickle)e...(#16 out this winter.)
🌷❣️how lovely of you,Ian. Pls let me know what you think of the story. I didn’t mean to say it took 14 years to write, but from the story’s inception. I also got an MFA during that time. Honestly, though Story Club has taught me more. And cheaper‼️🕶️🎶
And, please, let me know when you've something published. Or even if you need eyes on something not published. 🌷logirlg@gmail.com
Hi George, I was one of those who asked you about theme parks after your event in LA. As a theme park proselytizer, (been to Disneyland over 400 times!) I frequently see an intellectual mental exercise occurring in its audience. Once you’re inside the berm, you’re asked to buy into an artificiality that might be the most detailed simulacrum of a physical space ever - be it the Old West, sci-fi future, or some foreign country. It’s a narrative that exists in the space, but it isn’t linear, it’s embedded within the details and ideology. You ask yourself, “Should I surrender myself to this, or should I look for an intellectual out?” As to your belief that it adds color to your situations, I completely agree that a themed space’s departure from ordinary life is what supercharges, and helps magnetize, a story’s intentions (there is a whole study on the neuropsychology of themed design, I recommend the book “The Architect's Brain: Neuroscience, Creativity, and Architecture”). This isn’t limited to theme parks, but applies as well to living historical museums, immersive VR exhibits, themed dinner theater shows, escape rooms, landscaped gardens, and on. In recent years, the application of themed design has come full-circle from its 1950s car culture days and is trickling back into creaky old institutions like art museums, challenging them to evolve past their traditional paternalistic Victorian pedagogy of staring and regarding at things in glass cases and mounted walls. An upcoming memoir by my favorite Imagineer, Joe Rohde, entitled “Floating Mountains”, will also shed light on his approach towards weaving intellectual literary narratives into built environments.
400 times to Disneyworld ! That might belong in the Guiness Book. Where do theme parks go from here, in a world where what's real isn't real. AI, I'm afraid, is transforming old analog reality into experiences 100 percent manufactured. We can see the difference now, with a foot in both worlds, but what will it mean for children who grow up into it and it's the only world they'll ever know.
Something themed designers are now wrestling with is the very definition of "virtual reality". If we are to define VR as a computerized, mechanized, digitized method of simulating physical environments, then themed attractions may be the apotheosis of VR. Take the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland - the animatronic animals, the exotic flora and fauna, and the circulation of the river are kept alive by a master control system. Turn off that computer and within a month, the gears will rust, the rubber skin will harden, and the plants will completely wither away and die - like turning off a TV neutralizes the electrical connections that make pixels.
Yet, if the infrastructure is maintained with enough attention to detail, the level of immersion may override the brain's BS detector. In essence, the internal details must hang together. In writing, as George has often said, this is done at the level of editing. Take Charles Dickens's Hard Times, for example. The opening paragraph, which takes place in a classroom, is written with the constant repetition of squareness, hardness, geometry, rigidness, stone, brick, flat - adjectives that reinforce a theme and tone the author is trying to get across. This is (in my opinion) a masterclass of thematic editing! Theme parks do this through calculated applications of architecture, landscaping, urban planning, lighting, scent, color design, human performances - physical manifestations of literary editing that magnetizes the color of the narrative being told...
Thanks for this- really got me interested (never having been to a Disney park) as I have friends who are architects wherever we are, love pointing out little features someone designed-in, that usually go unnoticed because they are working so well! I listened to the podcast another Story Clubber provided from The Rest Is History on Disney's parks - super for context and the last 10 mins or so on the clever design and architecture (including Umberto Eco's opinion, among others) is fascinating.
Dominic and Tom (The Rest is History) also love theme parks and I found this episode fascinating :) https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/disneyland-the-modern-american-utopia/id1537788786?i=1000735424953
Victor, Your comments about being in a themed space and looking for an intellectual out reminds me of beloved episodes of The Twilight Zone. So many themes, moral dilemmas, emotional components factoring into decision making, manufactured possible futures where we are made to confront our doubts and fears.
i’m learning to play jazz piano and your spontaneous prompts to yourself remind me of the ideas i use to make music. sometimes it’s a poem, or if that’s too restricting, i’ll turn to a conversation i’ve had and see how it sounds in a series of notes and potential rhythms
Yup, that rings all my bells. When I'm surprised by some element that just jumps into my mind and I put it in the story with no idea why, that is often when the best things happen. When I was writing my first published story, a girl had gone to hang out with her boyfriend at some other guy's apartment, and she saw little cans of playdough all around the apartment. I have no idea where the playdough idea came from but it evolved into a story that included a shy boy who made copies of the sculptures of Camille Claudel (model, protege, and lover of Rodin) out of playdough. That's still one my favorite self-surprises.
I don't know how to get myself to surprise myself like that. George's question- "How do I get myself profitably lost" is a great question. It's almost like you have to be a little kid again and just play.
Surprising myself when writing is fun and challenging and almost spiritual. When my wife quit production and joined me as a writing partner for 4 fun screenwriting years, I made her, according to her, "love me exponentially more by writing the line of dialog opening line of "You know he's going to be under that chicken waiting for you." My takeaway that I still have was in resposne to her asking if I knew what the line meant before I wrote it, or figured it out after (because I do sometimes write things I just love, but have no idea how or if they'll fit in down the line.). My mini-piphany was that the writing of the line and the meaning of the line, explained much later, happened in the same instant. Neither preceded the other.
The story has to reveal itself to you. That seems to happen when we let go of the notion of it having it have to be “about something” re:familiar themes that your reader will recognize immediately. That’s marketing stuff that tries to paint us into the proverbial genre box. I’d rather play around and see where it goes!
I love the notion of constantly striving to destabilize oneself, to disrupt the usual routines/practices so that nothing (or as little as possible) becomes rote. This is largely the utility of writing prompts/exercises of any kind, which I'll seek out when the process is feeling to staid or samey----the creative spirit rebels against the constraint of the prompt, and so instinctively reaches for a way to violate the spirit of the prompt without violating the letter, producing something fresh and rendering the constraint imposed/adopted into a tool of liberation.
P. S. I believe the hyperlink meant for Brody's tweet actually goes to "The Falls" on the New Yorker's website!
Ack. How's this:
https://x.com/tnyfrontrow/status/2026074012535980152?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
That one works! :)
Replaced it in the text - thanks!
Ha
To offer a personal example, very much influenced by SC, and these ideas which have been coming up recently:
I had an idea for a story about a racist cleaning woman whose coworkers are trying to unionize, and the story was basically going to be that she bristles at first, then thinks about it, but then the bosses subtly appeal to her sense that she's not "one of them," so she rats out the organizer, no union, but then guess what her life still sucks. And I liked the idea, but as I started really writing it, it felt flat. It felt too much like I was trying to make what is ultimately a pretty surface level political point, and inventing a character to be mean to to do it.
So I added a scene early on where as she's walking down the hall, she sees a man in dickensian pajamas holding a candle, who doesn't really look, speak, or act like he belongs in this world. And that knocked me out of the lame moralizing I was stuck in, and allowed me, upon revising, to really just be present with, ok, what do I think is cool here.
Sounds amazing!
Okay, I’m a little nervous to admit this. I’ve only ever said it out loud to a close relative who’s taught English at Northeastern for years. She laughed (kindly!) and said she could see why I’d feel that way — but also reminded me that meaningful art doesn’t have to live and die by strict realism. It doesn’t owe us a purely rational, objective world. Then she said, “Maybe that’s just his way of stepping on the gas.” Aha!
So here it is: I used to think George’s turns into the silly or supernatural were… kind of a cheat. Like he was dodging the hard realist work by tossing in a ghost or an unhinged theme park. (I know, I know. I’ll see myself out.)
But I had it backward. It’s not an escape from reality, it’s a way of shaking the rest of us who think we already have reality all figured out, like we’ve got a good bead on things. The absurd park, the ghost, the people hanging on a wall all serve to short-circuit that over-serious, over-planning brain and in that destabilized space, something more honest can sneak through.
Once you go exaggerated or supernatural, I don't think you can lean on the usual realist crutches. You actually have to earn the emotional truth. The silliness strips away the illusion of control. What’s left — ideally — is something rawer. A way to get at something realism alone might not quite reach.
It’s funny — I think I used to equate gravity with depth. But maybe depth sometimes needs a little earthquake first.
Begs the question of what is reality and whose reality are we living in?
I think it was Hannah Arendt who wrote about the shared reality we all live in and how fragile it really is. Are we all really seeing the same world or just agreeing to pretend we are so things don’t completely fall apart? Honestly, some days it feels like we’re all just winging it and hoping no one notices.
Well, he was dodging the 'hard realist work' of, say, Hemingway, et al, so your weren't totally off base. And isn't the world of books and readers and writers, hell, the world in general, so much the better for it?
Absolutely!
Yes! It forces us to peel back all the laters to see things from other alternate, often obscure perspectives. Fiction has that wonderful
”what if” aspect which allows us to twirl our mustache and raise an eyebrow al la Snidely Whiplash, if you get the reference.
It rings a gong or something very reverberating for me. Because, first of all, like Tod Cheney above, I've learned so much on Story Club (and on mary g's stack), that has dragged me away from programmed "intentional" writing (though it's hard, really hard, to banish feeling staisfied because "this fits with that" or "that's a neat way of getting where we want to go..."). Also because of what's happened to me since this year began.
I have (occasional, more's the pity) recurring dreams about a place, call it almost a country, and every time I land there I'm happy and want the dream to go on. I've come to call it "good place to be".
That place came to me in awake time a few weeks ago, along with a basic narrative and a voice. I wrote a first part that seemed to write itself. It was shaping up, out of elements my back-brain was reconfiguring out of my past (including the great myths anyone has interiorized who has known an Evangelical childhood). I have never felt better writing that than anything previously, and I have written reams of "intentional" stuff. I opened my substack with a part one and a part two ('here' 1.1 and 1.2) and was then stuck with enough matter for a novel when I needed to come up with a closer, if for no other reason that I'd at last been called to get my cataracts fixed (now done, and how wonderful to see the world without a grey pall!). So I tried a couple of "intentional" solutions, and they were either going off at a (quite good) tangent more for a book-length story, or something that felt so "on the nose" there would have been blood all over. Then I did something that was still too much "active mind" picking up on a major theme of the protagonist's life. I let it run and it grew legs and led to something... But not as good as the two first-part sequences. I posted it all the same. ('here' 2.0). I think I'll give it a kick and see if it reacts.
It's great to hear of your experience with both "methods" or states:
Then I did something that was still too much "active mind" picking up on a major theme of the protagonist's life. I let it run and it grew legs and led to something... But not as good as the two first-part sequences.
Hope it comes together (or not, if that is better) at some point.
Thanks, Brian. I did a fourth part that remained within the same relatively brief time-scale. It's nice and offers an "ending". But it's not enough. The story is worth better (I think). I'm leaving it at that for the moment. Perhaps the story will tell me where it wants to go!
Really hope it works out (or not)--somewhere it's been emphasized that one writer is a well-known "incompletionist," which may also have its value. It's great that you know what is what, and know what is preferable, at this stage, at least.
I think what George is describing is why my first impulse is usually poetry: it destabilizes the more ‘rational’ parts of brain and allows me to communicate with more immediacy and newness than I might otherwise. So much more difficult to do with prose, but I love the tactics George mentions here.
I have been inspired in my own writing by these wonderful theme park stories. I wrote a false utopia called Blissville about a theme park where everything is perfect and everyone is beautiful and the HR rep who has to "kill off" an employee for declining performance after 20 years of service. It was a hoot to write and it's being published in an anthology in October!
Sidebar again: A themepark/resort book that's as wild as it gets, might be Nicholson Baker's House of Holes. Not for the prim. I can't call it pornography (though some would, I suspect) because I think the guy's a borderline genius, but it's literate erotica for sure.
Baker's books fascinate me, and not only, or even mostly, the 3 that are unabashed erotica. VOX and the Fermata are great works of craft and story that definitely reach below the belt as much as they reach above the nose. House of Holes is utterly insane. But it's his mediation books on everyday life, a fathers thoughts feeding his baby....that's the whole book. Also Mezzanine, the entire books takes one escalator ride up through an office Mezanine in the mind and memory of the narrator. I was halfway through a screenplay on the same premise (minus the erotica) as The Fermata, and abandoned it upon reading the book. Plus I know there are some movies that do the premise: person who can stop time at their whim. Baker's hero is samrt, expressive, deeply feeling and intellectual person of high values who simply can't not use his "superpower" to peep and titillate others.
In a mimicry phase I once did an enjoyable free form short short called RAINBOW HANDS about a father not very different from me watching his daughter (not at all different from mine) practice piano at age 8, and all the thoughts that unfolded and enfolded the dad in those few minutes of a Bach piece and some Gershwin. It's a B- on my self grading scale. And derivative of Baker in concept, though not voice. But it has my favorite closing line I've ever written.
which is...?
It’s is entirely unnotable out of context, I’d rather not belittle it as such. I do thank you for being interested enough to ask but I truly wasn’t seeking inquiry.
It wouldn't play here, I'm sure. It may not play in context in fact, for anyone other than me.
kwexler, let us know the anthology "Blissville" will exist in. (Title kinda reminds me of Lars Von Tres movie "Dogville")
Thanks, Iam! It's with Rat Bag LIT Magazine, and it will be their second print and digital anthology with a scheduled publication date of Oct. 15.
Everything about this rings a bell, especially this caveat -“whatever this “getting out of our own way” move is, it’s not simple. Writing is such a subjective thing and we long for formulas and mantras that let us switch off the constant doubt and just get to it.”
I loved that too. I found an old note recently that I may have written or purloined, to the effect of "you have to get out of your own way, and if you can't you have to find a way to get around yourself, no matter how stubbornly girthy, and leave that bloated, stubborn, lane-hogging version of you behind." Pass on the right if you need to. But you love MCU like I love MCU, it's always "on your left"
Definitely rings a bell with me, as I notice I've been putting a lot of aliens (i.e. extraterrestrials) in my stories. I can rationalize it by saying that aliens are useful metaphors for others with a global/cosmic/objective perspective on humanity. But really what they do is knock me out of my own local/subjective/neurotic perspective. They give the story energy, as George says.
Bell rung
Ding dong!
Hey George,
This is your old neighbor from South Street, Pittsford from back in the day. Carolyn , Sam Bick and their daughter Louise were all at the Point Loma Nazarene University last night and heard your fabulous interview! It was fun to hear you talk about your beginnings, because that’s when we knew you and we knew a bit about how you started out. We have followed you since , and many of our friends and family are fans of your writing.
We now live in Point Loma in San Diego, just a mile from where you spoke last night. We had several friends there, and all enjoyed your discussion. I am friends with Marianne Reiner who owns La playa Bookstore
I learned a lot from your interview. I’m not a writer, but sometimes I think about it and I learned a lot from your talk.
Kudos to you and your family ! Both of our children live here in San Diego and asked us to retire here so we moved here right before Covid. We now have four granddaughters six and under.
Carolyn! Good to hear from you, and that you are all doing well. Those were magical days, back on the Canal. Please give my love to all.