On the high ambitions writers entertain of their works, applied to writing in The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard:

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance a palace or temple on earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed with them. -- Thoreau


& Dillard's thoughts on retaining and exposing substandard work, typically early drafts, out of the sense that just because you wrote it, it belongs there, or that someone needs to read it:

How many books do we read from which the writer lacked courage to tie off the umbilical cord? How many gifts do we open from which the writer neglected to remove the price tag? Is it pertinent, is it courteous, for us to learn what it cost the writer personally? -- Annie Dillard



Nope... nor is it relevant. Or responsible. Or disciplined. Or even really very creative, if you think about it. At best, it's laziness, lack of vision & lack of reach.

(Encouragement for myself this morning, as I revisit unanswered questions in the current chaper, which I'm tempted to cop out of...)

I know it’s a habit left over from college, when ALL of my time & attention were spoken for: I had mountains of required reading and there was just not room in my head for anything that would generate a single irrelevant thought. This was especially true at Michigan, where academia was crazy-intense. The result of such restrictive restriction has carried over into civilian life as a sense of obligation to enforce limits on what I “can” read.

I sometimes make impulse purchases of fluff reading then feel bad about it. I shouldn't. Fluff is fine from time to time. Go ahead & have a slab of chocolate cake for breakfast once in a while.

So when I recently discovered a chick lit author I’ve enjoyed because she’s funny as hell, I kept reading her stuff. It had been a while since I'd read any real junk, and this stuff was undeniably junk. She's only published non-fiction making fun of herself, though, so it’s impossible to miss a few truly…unsavory personal characteristics of her own because she writes about them. I won’t get into details, but her interests & politics are so distant from my own that it’s likely we have not one thing in common aside from a kindred irreverent, nasty-ass sense of humor. And that I find thoroughly delightful. It makes me want to by her beers.

Also it seems to have been enough to hold my interest, despite the author's admission to having affection for Ann Coulter. She writes about her own political positions on controversial issues and while much of this aggravates me, and I don’t see things any differently having read her thoughts on the issues, haven't learned anything new from her, and don’t even feel anything's been substantiated by what she’d had to say about it, I kept reading her books only because she was fiercely nasty, and so very, very funny.

Apparently, a vile sense of humor trumps my moral sensibilities.

Uh. Okay. So how influential is what I read?

Restate assumptions: One. Content alone can affect me, obviously; a story, or a character, or an argument.

Two. Logic, position, or the method of an argument may affect me. How the author has handled her material.

Three. A writer's raw talent can affect me. What I mean when I say talent is certainly objective, but I'm referring to literary skill, an ability to convey thoughts in words in a way that demonstrates the author's creative intelligence and stylistic felicity.

Style that makes an author's work immediately distinctive isn't unique, but raw talent boosted by distinct style is.

A deft literary hand artfully manipulating ideas new to me -- that's forceful. It can sway my interpretation of what I'm reading, can open the door to my revisiting my own opinions.

Writers of this magnitude of skill have given me the richest, most rewarding reading experiences I’ve known. Their work is as impactful and delightful as laying eyes on someone painfully beautiful. You know what I mean; not just good-looking, but the extreme degree of beauty that’s jarring.

Now, I’ve always paid attention to this caliber of author, someone who could stop me in my tracks, so to speak, with the way she wields a word. Admittedly, there haven't been many: the only authors to have impressed me so thoroughly so far are Diane Ackerman & Annie Dillard. If I could possess the works of only two authors on a desert island, these would be my two. And if I had to choose between them I’d take Annie Dillard because I cut my teeth on her, learning to read – really read – as a freshman in college, when I had the supreme good fortune to stumble upon The Writing Life when it came out.

I'm startled, frankly, that I didn’t realize that a sense of humor could command if not my admiration, then at least my full attention in the direct face of content to which I am openly hostile.

& you know, there’s another characteristic that will do the same thing, keep me reading... sense of authenticity and compassion, generosity of heart.

Just thoughts.

Understand that you cannot keep out of your writing the indication of the evil or shallowness you entertain in yourself.

If you love to have a servant stand behind your chair at dinner, it will appear in your writing; if you possess a vile opinion of women, or if you grudge anything, or doubt immortality, these will appear by what you leave unsaid more than by what you say.

There is no trick or cunning, no art or recipe, by which you can have in your writing that which you do not possess in yourself.

Walt Whitman


Well stated, sir.

There's been precious little posted here lately on the progress of the book, but there are a few new details to put up:

I'm still slogging through daily, tweaking and buffering. For every few thousand new words I add, I remove the same, or close to it. As a result, the plot's action is kept lean and spare; the atmosphere, groomed. It would be easy, what with the simple mass and volume of the concpets at work in this book, for things to get messy and bulky and awkward. I've been finding it's a real challenge to maintain sleekness of flow, and this has been one of my main goals lately.

The title The Bible of Hell is definitely on it's way out. If there's a subtitle, there may be room for it, but on the whole, the story has widened so much, and the scope with it, that that title no longer fits.

All that the original concept was meant to include is still here, but there's much, much more than I started with. I don't want to give anything away, but it's been fun and fascinating and exasperating and depleting and utterly mind-wrenching. I was discussing it the other day with friends, and I told them writing this book has easily been the hardest thing I've ever done. It really has been.

I think this book grew so far beyond its original scale because of the nature of the story. There might in fact be (as was the original intent, before the original BoH was ever begun) a series here. If there is, I'll worry about it later. Right now, all I care about is making the story sound and maintaining momentum.

What a tremendous luxury to have the time and means to do all that I need to do to get it as right as I can make it.

I am learning, in the writing of The Bible of Hell (soon to be retitled, due to changes in the story), how to make decisions.

I did not know I didn't know how to make decisions. What I've discovered is that making decisions is about exclusions. I've learned, however, that I have a natural tendency to exclude everything. What isn't so easy is finding anything left to include.

I hear so much over-romanticization by fiction writers mooning over their inspiration and characters, making public disclosure of embarrassing platitudes that sometimes make me embarrassed to admit I write fiction at all.

Trotted out most often:

The story tells itself.

I was only the typist.

The characters tell the story.

I had no choice in the matter.

It has its own ideas.

I cannot force it.


Give me a break.

Fiction -- even most writing, I'd go so far as to say -- comes pretty easily when all you're doing is gussying up some fantasized version of your own experience. This is the stuff that wants to go a certain way, because it happened a certain way, and for whatever reasons of your own, you feel loyalty to the events or people you've based your characters upon, or whatever. Whatever contortions writing is put through by a writer, really self-indulgent stuff makes demands about its own nature because you are writing about something true. All fine and good, if that's what you're doing. But not, I would argue, necessary.

I, too, can write all day and night, story after story, piece after piece, telling my own experiences embellished to make them more dramatic or flashier or somehow notable. This is utter self-indulgence. It's not valuable on its own merits because of how it's being done. It's not the way "art" is created. There is no Prima Donna's First Law of Asininity -- surprise, you'd never know it -- which requires the levels of pretension and posturing you see so often of people who claim to be artistic or literary or somehow absolved of responsibility for the quality (or lack thereof) of their work, those whose embarrasing carrying-on implies that they believe their work is somehow mysterious and beyond the ken of mere mortals.

Bullshit.

I'll do it the same as anyone else sometimes; Theory of Relativity is at least half this sort of fiction. But I'm not about to try to foist regurgated repurposed swill about nothing so much as myself, with no thought granted for any reader, particularly in book form, then go make loud poses about it, about how I can't afford to think about readers and how demanding my characters, or books, are. Judas Priest. Get over yourself.

The fact is, I've found real fiction -- utterly created writing, story, plot, character and all -- to be some of the hardest writing I've ever done. Each plot turn and step clears intense vetting before it gets into the story. All primary ideas are rejected out of hand, with few exceptions. Anything that could occur to me that easily isn't likely to be original enough to maintain the standard of surprise and novelty I seek.

And damn right I'm thinking about my readers. I'm serious about what I'm trying to do. If I'm going to put another book into the world, it's going to be the most creative, deeply considered, carefully wrought thing of which I am capable. I'm not of the self-entitlement school of assholes who feel that those who read it owe something to it, and that any failures or gaps or lackings otherwise are only the responsibility of the reader. This is such a howling shitstorm of self-righteous precious crap that if you've ever been guilty of it I'd slap you if I could reach you just on principle. It's the sort of gratuitous thinking of parents who believe they possess rights to behave any foul way they please with their own children just because they're the parents.

There are many exceptional writers and thoughtful, worthy books out there. And there is plenty of entertainment-value stuff, intentionally (and exclusively) commercial. So saturated is the literary marketplace that the actual state of affairs is this: any writer who is published is privileged to have readers at all and don't you forget it, Princess. If you don't like what they think of your writing, they're no more at fault than you. Comes with the territory. Like it or not, you have no right to get your panties in a twist because you don't get stroked by everyone who gave your book a shot.

I have goals I may not be able to meet: to make certain my readers get something decent from the investment of their time and attention. To provide intellectual interest and human authenticity. To tell a new story. Why should I expect people to PAY for something I hadn't worked my ass off to make as rewarding, unique, and smart as I can? Why would I not pour heart and soul and sweat and tears and hours upon HOURS upon DAYS of thought into something I absolutely DO intend to be read by -- which is, in fact, by its nature, intended for -- others?

This novel has been a real labor of love for me. Once it's done, it's done forever. It honestly does feel like a thing being birthed. I want to look at it and know I could not have worked harder on it, could not have made it better. Now, to an extent, this isn't possible, because over time, your tastes and abilities and so on will evolve and you'll probably always find things you might treat differently, when seen from more mature vantage points -- but for the most part, getting it as right and as good as possible is how I've done two previous books, one of poetry and one of essays, neither marketable in the least. And I am still deeply satisfied with both of them, 15 and 12 years later.

In other words, after unapologetically trashing whatever doesn't make the cut, finding the valuable parts that are left is WORK. It is fucking HARD.

And it is magnificently rewarding when I've held out for the right stuff.

I refuse to write pompous, inflated intellectual crap with no sense of humor. I also refuse to pander the content of my books down to the lowest common denominator for simple salability.

Unfortunately, pompous, inflated crap seems to come easily to me, so I have to pay careful attention to the pace of the plot as well as language as I go.

I'm consciously trying to appeal to a wide audience: pleasure readers who want entertainment as well as intellectuals who want substance and thought-provoking payoff from even their pleasure reading without it being too heavy. Influences: Donna Tartt, Diane Ackerman, Annie Dillard, Joyce Carol Oates, Joan Didion.

I've already decided to pitch the first novel as fantasy (much easier to sell these days, I hear, and therefore one deliberately profit-minded decision) instead of science fiction, which shouldn't be too hard because so many people think space and aliens when they hear science fiction and there's none of that sort of... content in my stuff.

Is that polite? No? Screw it.

I guess if you can call Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle science fiction, you can call BoH science fiction. But we won't. (If you've read Surface Properties of the Moon, you'll see what I mean about the division between fantasty and sci-fi.)

H wants to take a trip to Whole Foods soon, and I suppose we will, but I've been writing this morning, which means asking questions and resolving issues and answering questions and thinking at least as much as actually tapping out words and adding them to the word count. I hate to interrupt the momentum...