"Writing is utter solitude." -Franz Kafka
"Writing is a struggle against silence." -Carlos Fuentes
"Writing makes no noise." -Ursula LeGuin
"Writing gives you the illusion of control." -David Sedaris
"Writing is like prostitution." -Molière
"Writing is revising." -Joyce Carol Oates
"Telepathy, of course." -Stephen King
King's statement is what I'm most interested in.
I was assigned a presentation on interiority in literature for an English class, but due to my wife giving birth the day it was due and the responsibilities that come with that, I ended up turning it into a presentation on 'free indirect discourse,' which was less of a compelling study of why it's used, and more of a sort of look-at-me-I-read-these-books-and-I-noticed-they-used-free-indirect-discourse kind of presentation. Needless to say, I got less than my best mark.
But I haven't stopped thinking about the topic. I read an essay called, "Criticism and the Experience of Literature," by Georges Poulet, in which he speaks of interiority not as that moment in which the narration enters the mind of a character (or however you want to define it), but as the act of reading as an interior action. His claim is that the author sets forth these words, and the reader opens itself to them and allows them to take over its own thoughts. An intriguing concept, to be certain.
This, I'm sure, is what King means when he says writing is telepathy. He gives an example by describing a table, a cloth, a cage, and a rabbit with a carrot and a blue number 8 painted on his back. He claims that by reading his text, you have allowed him (and now me) to place these objects in your mind, and it is this action that makes writing telepathy.
For me, as a writer, the concept is humbling.
Recently, I Tweeted Margaret Atwood (in an act of shameless self-promotion, I won't deny it) and asked her to look at my blog (my other blog: Found Dialogue), and she ended up re-tweeting it to her three-hunderd-thousand followers. I'm assuming this means she read it (would she blindly promote someone else's writing?). Obviously, I was more than excited; I had nearly 1,000 people read my blog that day, and a load of new followers, and I was thrilled. But then I thought about Margaret Atwood, with her curly grey hair, and her blue eyes, and all her years of experience and knowledge, and her list of bestsellers, and her countless lectures, and her influence across this country and around the world, and this image—of Margaret Atwood pushing up her glasses to allow the words I had written to flood her mind, and then the hundreds of others that did the same shortly after—made me feel very small.
It gave me a greater respect for writers and the act of writing and what it is able to do. Writers place these images in their readers head, some of them staying there for a really long time. I have an image in my head of Aslan singing Narnia into existence, of Pi drinking turtle's blood, of Stephen King's wife digging Carrie out of a trashcan, of countless other things, all of which are colorful and active and changing, all of which came from some black and white splotches on a page.
If a picture can paint a thousand words, a thousand words, in the right hands, can paint a picture more vivid, more extraordinary, more lasting than any brush could.
It makes me wonder if the words I have written, am writing, are words I am confident I wish to push into others minds. It made me rethink what writing is. When people ask me why I want to write, I often say, 'For the fun of it.' This is true; there's nothing I enjoy more than a good writing session. But that can't be the only reason. If I wrote simply for the fun of it, I could be satisfied with filling my moleskins and stashing them away in my drawer. I am not. I want people to read what I've got to say. I want people to think about what I've got to say, to think about it and to talk about it.
In that case, I don't write for the fun of it.
I write because I feel (whether it's accurate or not) that I have something worthwhile to say—about life, about love maybe, about the world I live in.
I want people to hear it, to see it in words.
.
Tuesday 28 February 2012
Thursday 16 February 2012
Quote of the Month.
'The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.' -Neil Gaiman
I am quickly coming to respect Gaiman's thoughts on writing more than almost anybody's.
I am quickly coming to respect Gaiman's thoughts on writing more than almost anybody's.
Friday 10 February 2012
So Many Words
For a second, I couldn’t see. I had been pointing to the sky, wriggling my fingers through the air, hugging myself and pretending to shiver. I would point to our large van parked a few yards away and spell out W-A-R-M with my fingers. Katie refused to look at me. She sat on the pavement, curled into a ball with her hood over her face, rocking. Soon, neither of us were pretending, both hugging ourselves and shivering. I grabbed one of her elbows and pulled her up, but she wasn’t impressed. She started flailing her arms and grunting and screaming and trying to scratch and slap me. Eventually, I got hold of her wrists and tried to communicate, somehow, that she should relax. She stood staring at me through streaming tears. Then she spat in my face, in my eye. And for a second, I couldn’t see.
I was hired to work for the group-home for “at risk” youth where Katie lived a few months after she had moved in. My unit manager explained that she had been clinically deaf since age 3. She had grown up on a reserve in northern Saskatchewan, Canada, and at fourteen, she knew the alphabet and maybe twenty to thirty words which she would spell out, ten to twelve she could sign, several of which were swear words. My manager said the existing staff had taken a brief course in American sign language and that it would be good for me to try to learn the alphabet, at least.
At the time, I was reading nearly a book a week and was just beginning to take writing seriously and was—indeed, I still am—interested in the ways in which we communicate through words and languages. I would often drive around, staring blankly at signs throughout the city, trying to imagine what it would be like to be illiterate—all these foreign pictures which ought to mean something, yet mean nothing—forever forced to simply react to your surroundings instead of engaging with them. Illiteracy, I’ve always felt, is a type of blindness. There’s a reason the Dark Ages is characterized by its lack of literature. Until I met Katie, I hadn’t even imagined being essentially mute, unable to form more than thirty words.
I spent much of my time on my first shifts trying to memorize the alphabet. During down time and when the kids were in their rooms settling down for the night, I would practice. The other youth had learned the alphabet, and we’d try to spell things to each other as fast as we could. Katie was cautiously aware of my attempts to learn, but didn’t seem too eager to communicate with me. Some of the staff had learned quickly, others had been frustrated and quit trying (one even called her a “bitch” when trying to tell her to “pay attention,” two signs that are similar, yet obviously different); Katie was apprehensive, to say the least, of these strangers, newly charged with taking care of her. She came up to me as I was reading the Signing Dictionary during a movie night a week or two into my working there. She pointed at the book, then looked at me and shrugged, as if to say,
“Why?”
I spelled the words, “I W-A-N-T T-O L-E-A-R-N,” and she shrugged again, this time saying,
“Whatever. No big deal” (the first I was aware of her mastery of her only functional language—body language).
Eventually, we became friends, or at least became friendly. We would learn new signs together. I’d point to things and she’d give me the sign, or if she didn’t know them, I’d look them up, and we’d learn them. I once pointed to a picture of an Eagle, and she spelled out, “B-I-R-D.” I nodded and spelled, “E-A-G-L-E.” She shrugged her “that’s interesting” shrug, so I spelled out, “A-N-I-M-A-L.” She shook her head and shrugged: “That’s too confusing.” I spelled, “B-I-R-D. A-N-I-M-A-L,” then pointed to a picture of a bear. “B-E-A-R. A-N-I-M-A-L.” I did the same with a wolf and a moose. Then I pretended to gather them all into my arms and made a circle in the air with my finger. “A-L-L. A-N-I-M-A-L-S.” We found the sign for animal in her book, and she added it to her repertoire. I left work believing hers to be a tragic life, never learning the word, “animal,” until her 14th year. Or “Eagle” for that matter. To her, an Eagle was a Sparrow was a Humming Bird was an Albatross was an Ostrich. Each was a Bird. None was an Animal.
It’s not as if she couldn’t learn. She had an incredible memory; I don’t think she ever forgot a new sign, and she was always eager and excited to demonstrate her learning. On a camping trip, we were hiking, and she came across a dead squirrel. She came running to get me and pulled me to the squirrel, just lying there, eyes open: “What are you looking at?” it was thinking, it might have screeched at us if it were living. Katie signed, “Animal. Animal,” then made a fist, stuck out her thumb and brought it from one side of her neck to the other. We laughed at that. Somehow we thought her sign for “Dead” was funny.
Later, on the same trip, it started to rain. She pointed to the sky, excited. She stuck her arms above her head, palms toward the ground, then wiggled her fingers as she brought her arms down. “W-A-T-E-R,” she spelt. I nodded and spelt “R-A-I-N.” She furrowed her brow. I signed the falling water, “Name. Rain.” She signed Rain, then spelled “R-A-I-N” and looked at me, head tilted. “Yes,” I signed. She shrugged, “Cool.”
So many words no one had bothered to teach her.
As a youth care worker, I meet kids from across the country, from Newfoundland to Alberta to Nunavut to right here in Regina. Many are functionally illiterate. The majority function much lower than their respective ages or intellectual levels should allow for. They often lack the family support, not to mention the quality of education, needed to learn how to read and write and communicate effectively. Still, they can hear. They are taught by their ears. Katie, evidently, had no one to show her what the other kids were learning. Someone, anyone, should have shown her Rain, or Animal. Or Death.
But it isn’t the business of judging people; it couldn’t possibly last if it was. And to be fair, Katie was not the ‘easiest’ of youth to accommodate. She was in countless fights at school, with girls, with boys, with teachers. I remember having a hand mirror smashed over my shoulder, a 400 page Harry Potter novel heaved at my head. The night we were out in the rain, she had shoved the unit’s computer off of the desk, smashing it.
Ten days before, Katie’s mother had called to say Katie’s grandfather had passed away, and she would be picking Katie up after dinner to take her home for the funeral. As a staff, we had decided it wasn’t necessarily our responsibility to tell her of her grandfather’s death (a decision, in retrospect, I regret making). We told Katie her mother to take her home for a visit. When her mother arrived, Katie could tell instantly her mother was not well.
“Why Sad?” she signed.
“Have you told her yet?” her mother asked me.
“No...uh...not yet.”
“What?” she said, obviously annoyed.
Katie kept asking what was wrong.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “We weren’t sure how you wanted to tell her.”
“I can’t tell her! I don’t know how to tell her.”
“Why Mad?!”
I was flustered, but I eventually signed, “You. Grandpa.” I asked his name. “You. Grandpa George,” and then I paused before giving the only sign I knew for Dead. I made a fist, stuck out my thumb, and brought it from one side of my neck to the other, not at all funny this time.
She let out a shriek I hadn’t heard from her before, and I left her and her mother in the entrance to cry and hug and slink to their knees on the floor, unable to console each other.
My first day back on shift, the day after she had returned from her ‘visit,’ she spent the day crying and threatening to kill or hurt other kids, herself. She would pretend to stab people with her butter knife. She tried to run away from the staff while on a Walmart shopping trip. She refused to talk to anyone, and when the kids were having “room-time” at the end of the day, she was getting louder and louder and more and more agitated until she ran out of her room and pushed the computer as hard as she could. The rest of the youth hurried to see the commotion, so I took her outside, hoping the privacy would help her talk.
It was late, ten o’clock, early spring. I was tired from trying to communicate with her all day. I was cold, and I could see she was too. I wanted to move to the warmth of the van. But she spit in my face, in my eye, and I’m more than slightly embarrassed to say I nearly lost it. I grabbed her shirt, as if this was some sort of bar fight, she, some thug, and I, a hooligan, raised my fist. She stared, unflinching, into my eyes, waiting for the blow, welcoming it, inviting it. I opened my fist and brought it down in a sort of karate chop on my other palm, the sign for “Stop.” I karate chopped my hand as hard as I could at least a dozen times, until she had pulled her hood over her face again and had curled up on the pavement. I curled up beside her. We sat.
After a long time, she pulled her hood down and started signing, no spelling, all signs, down to the pavement. “I Miss Grandpa. Grandpa. G-E-O-R-G-E. I Miss Want Go Home. I Miss Want Grandpa. Mom. Home. Mad. Tired. Mad. Miss.”
For a second, I couldn’t see. For a lifetime, she couldn’t hear. Or speak. Or communicate. But in that moment, as the rain poured down around us, as she signed to herself on the driveway, I understood.
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