beyond pleasure
It's Canada Day (formerly Dominion Day). Kimmie has the day off, so we slept in till about 7:15. I had lain awake for quite a while after 2:55, finally dozing off again by around 5:00 or so. Cluttered mind.
A dull, cool day, no shadows cast.
Robin was off to a couple of hours' orientation at the Continuum Medical Centre in West Van for her new medical office assistant job there. I printed off a couple of transit itineraries from the TransLink website for her. The suggested route had her catching a Park Royal bus down on 3rd St., and transferring from that to a Horseshoe Bay bus at Park Royal--about a 35-minute trip. Robin was out the door at 8:40. Felt like some kind of mill-town family whose youngster has finally got on at the mine, old has-been parents excitedly sending daughter off, watching her head down the sidewalk. "Bye! Don't miss your bus!"
I typed notes: one thing I can do on automatic pilot. Rubicon and From Eden to Exile. Copy, paste. The encyclpedia grows. Do I know any more than I did? Can I make use of this stuff?
I spent some time hopping around some lit-blogs. The usual fascination-repulsion. I spent more time than I wanted to at Bookangst 101, which I found via Amanda Mann's Confessions of an Author. Couldn't pull away: it's irresistible to read authors' experiences with their publishers and agents. However, the problems of the published are not (yet) my problems. I've got my own problems. Like how to get motivated to take up cudgels again for my own magnum opus.
In some ways, writing is like marriage. Writing something big, that is: something that requires commitment and dedication. (Orwell said that writing a novel was like going through a long illness--we all grope for our own similes.) There are many things that might tempt one off the truth path--sometimes, damn near anything will tempt one off it. Mere commitment is not enough. For commitment in and of itself has no value, I think--you can commit to selling more rocks of crack than anyone in the neighborhood, but it would be better if you didn't. There needs to be some kind of vision--a reasoned commitment.
In about 1992 Warren and I did a 1-day workshop with screenwriting guru Linda Seger. One of the movies looked at as an example of excellence was Witness, written by Earl W. Wallace and William Kelley. Warren and I both liked this movie, as did Linda Seger. There's a scene in the movie between the little Amish boy (Lukas Haas) and his grandfather (Jan Rubes) in which they talk about guns. The boy, who has witnessed an execution, wonders whether it might not be OK to use guns against "bad men". The grandfather, engaging with the boy, says, "What you take into your hands, you take into your heart."
When we watched this scene on the class TV, Linda said that she felt the scene was redundant, since we already know that granddad is a pacifist. But Warren and I both felt the scene was good and belonged in the script. Warren summarized the case well:
"We see that the old man is not just a pacifist. It's a reasoned pacifism--not just something he's accepted from his community. He's thought about it, and he reasons with the boy."
Exactly--he hit it dead on. It dimensionalized granddad's character, and showed that he was not just an Amish droid parroting cultural platitudes, but was committed to his values through conscious choice. This is important not only at the character level, to humanize this person beyond what might be stamped from an Amish cookie-cutter (if there is such a thing), but also at the level of theme, since values that are consciously chosen by characters will necessarily bear on the meaning of a work.
OK--"reasoned commitment" was what got me on this illustrative sidetrack. I seem to be saying that I think marriage (and writing major works such as this novel of mine) needs to be more than just a commitment for its own sake, but a commitment that matters because of what it stands for, because of why it exists. I need to feel that what I'm expressing matters: to me and to the world, in some sense. The value of marriage does not derive from its being a nonstop pleasant experience--because it isn't. The value is higher than pleasure: personal growth, self-discovery, perhaps. And so with writing: If the writer is doing his or her job (and here I mean the writer as artist), then it's not just about pleasure either, or merely "sticking with it". There is some sense of creation as a spiritual act, one which, if undertaken with integrity, can have a liberating or enlightening effect--can help others with their own personal growth and self-discovery.
That may seem like a tall order, but I don't think it is, particularly, for a creator who puts the highest value on the integrity of his or her work--above things like money, fame, acceptance, and so on. Those things are seductive--like all pleasurable things. But the highest values are beyond pleasure.
So my stumbling with motivation (following my own logic here) presumably is a symptom of my lack of faith in my own integrity. I'm seduced by thoughts of odds, or the necessity of conforming with others' ideas of what is suitable as a created work. Hm, have I pepped myself up a bit?
A dull, cool day, no shadows cast.
Robin was off to a couple of hours' orientation at the Continuum Medical Centre in West Van for her new medical office assistant job there. I printed off a couple of transit itineraries from the TransLink website for her. The suggested route had her catching a Park Royal bus down on 3rd St., and transferring from that to a Horseshoe Bay bus at Park Royal--about a 35-minute trip. Robin was out the door at 8:40. Felt like some kind of mill-town family whose youngster has finally got on at the mine, old has-been parents excitedly sending daughter off, watching her head down the sidewalk. "Bye! Don't miss your bus!"
I typed notes: one thing I can do on automatic pilot. Rubicon and From Eden to Exile. Copy, paste. The encyclpedia grows. Do I know any more than I did? Can I make use of this stuff?
I spent some time hopping around some lit-blogs. The usual fascination-repulsion. I spent more time than I wanted to at Bookangst 101, which I found via Amanda Mann's Confessions of an Author. Couldn't pull away: it's irresistible to read authors' experiences with their publishers and agents. However, the problems of the published are not (yet) my problems. I've got my own problems. Like how to get motivated to take up cudgels again for my own magnum opus.
In some ways, writing is like marriage. Writing something big, that is: something that requires commitment and dedication. (Orwell said that writing a novel was like going through a long illness--we all grope for our own similes.) There are many things that might tempt one off the truth path--sometimes, damn near anything will tempt one off it. Mere commitment is not enough. For commitment in and of itself has no value, I think--you can commit to selling more rocks of crack than anyone in the neighborhood, but it would be better if you didn't. There needs to be some kind of vision--a reasoned commitment.
In about 1992 Warren and I did a 1-day workshop with screenwriting guru Linda Seger. One of the movies looked at as an example of excellence was Witness, written by Earl W. Wallace and William Kelley. Warren and I both liked this movie, as did Linda Seger. There's a scene in the movie between the little Amish boy (Lukas Haas) and his grandfather (Jan Rubes) in which they talk about guns. The boy, who has witnessed an execution, wonders whether it might not be OK to use guns against "bad men". The grandfather, engaging with the boy, says, "What you take into your hands, you take into your heart."
When we watched this scene on the class TV, Linda said that she felt the scene was redundant, since we already know that granddad is a pacifist. But Warren and I both felt the scene was good and belonged in the script. Warren summarized the case well:
"We see that the old man is not just a pacifist. It's a reasoned pacifism--not just something he's accepted from his community. He's thought about it, and he reasons with the boy."
Exactly--he hit it dead on. It dimensionalized granddad's character, and showed that he was not just an Amish droid parroting cultural platitudes, but was committed to his values through conscious choice. This is important not only at the character level, to humanize this person beyond what might be stamped from an Amish cookie-cutter (if there is such a thing), but also at the level of theme, since values that are consciously chosen by characters will necessarily bear on the meaning of a work.
OK--"reasoned commitment" was what got me on this illustrative sidetrack. I seem to be saying that I think marriage (and writing major works such as this novel of mine) needs to be more than just a commitment for its own sake, but a commitment that matters because of what it stands for, because of why it exists. I need to feel that what I'm expressing matters: to me and to the world, in some sense. The value of marriage does not derive from its being a nonstop pleasant experience--because it isn't. The value is higher than pleasure: personal growth, self-discovery, perhaps. And so with writing: If the writer is doing his or her job (and here I mean the writer as artist), then it's not just about pleasure either, or merely "sticking with it". There is some sense of creation as a spiritual act, one which, if undertaken with integrity, can have a liberating or enlightening effect--can help others with their own personal growth and self-discovery.
That may seem like a tall order, but I don't think it is, particularly, for a creator who puts the highest value on the integrity of his or her work--above things like money, fame, acceptance, and so on. Those things are seductive--like all pleasurable things. But the highest values are beyond pleasure.
So my stumbling with motivation (following my own logic here) presumably is a symptom of my lack of faith in my own integrity. I'm seduced by thoughts of odds, or the necessity of conforming with others' ideas of what is suitable as a created work. Hm, have I pepped myself up a bit?
posted by paulv at
5:24 PM
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