I’ve been rediscovering the pleasures of uncomfortable fiction. And uncomfortable fiction tends to be disreputable fiction, in some way or the other. I’ve been pairing my reading of Ulysses with transgressive horror short stories (queer and otherwise), and I watched Tromeo & Juliet today, which makes disreputability a veritable virtue.
It’s still comparably easy to enjoy a lot of these things at a distance – books like Ballard’s Crash or Ulysses have been rendered respectable with time (or, like Story of the Eye, come bearing academic analysis as defence). And on the other hand, with transgressive horror, or with bizarro fiction, the discomfort is built in – like a musical without songs, you’d be disappointed if you read these without any discomfort.
It’s also, as a writer, not something you can necessarily think your way into – these things have to come from within, by you confronting your ghosts or your demons. The things that bother you, and the things you’re a bit scared that they don’t.
Almost all of these examples have moments that strike the wrong note – parts that make me think, I wouldn’t have gone there if I were writing this. But the problem with writing such stories is – I don’t think you can get one without the other. You can’t transgress without going too far.
It struck me particularly today, because I just read a short story whose central concept I had come up with independently when I was a teenager. I never wrote my story, because I felt, at the time, that it went too far, that it was too strange and unpalatable. And I finished the story I was reading, and I figured that I liked my version better, because the one I read didn’t go nearly far enough.
#journal #writing
I couldn’t really get anything done today – it’s 11:30pm, and I’m just sitting down to work. I know, I know, it’s Saturday, and I shouldn’t be working, but I just have 20 minutes of emails to send out, and yet it took me all day to get here.
I slept badly, woke up at 1pm, and then went back to sleep at 4pm. While I’ve always worked from home, and managed a decent routine, it’s been a bit difficult to maintain it since I don’t have the option to get takeout, or to have the cleaning lady take care of cleaning the house and the dishes.
The writing has suffered too – I don’t think I’ve written a new word in a week. But I’ve been keeping in touch with friends a lot better, which is nice.
My work backlog’s steadily rising, since my productivity is down, and I’m hoping to cover it up in the coming week. I dunno. Cut me some slack, okay, there’s a pandemic outside.
#journal
Thinking about this drive to diversify what one does. Whether it’s writing too many things at once – be those fiction or my attempts to maintain this log and a newsletter – or the desire to create in various media.
I know people who just write, or just draw, and that’s it. I don’t know if they have better or happier creative lives, but I do know that some of them have a more consistent output.
But then, is the idea to put out as many things as possible? I know writers who write too many books too fast, and too much of the comics medium works around this idea of compromising between quality and quantity.
I have no conclusion here – I struggle with the right number of books on my plate to letter, let alone the other things I do with my time.
I do know that I wouldn’t be happy simply lettering and then being an audience member the rest of the time. I’d need to create something or the other. The question is: is it better to think more deeply about what that something is before I do it, or is it better to do and figure out while doing whether it was worth it?
#journal #writing
I have a fascination with moments, and how moments carry meaning from other moments within them.
All those memories we carry with us – the truly intense ones – come along not simply because of those moments themselves, but because of what happened around them, or what they meant later. And I’m not talking about the obvious stuff. It took me ages to start enjoying Sudoku again, quite recently, because I associated it with an old, long-lived trauma.
But it could be something less direct, like my most enduring memory of my late uncle being watching him shave in front of the mirror when I was a kid, because that was when he offered to buy me a bicycle that my mother couldn’t afford by herself – a bike that, sadly, was stolen a few months after I got it. But that image of my uncle shaving – that’s a moment that speaks to me of love.
I keep coming back in my writing to such moments. I think I’ve finished or started at least five stories entirely about moments like these, of illumination or elision.
Here’s one such story that I posted to my blog. A few readers assumed it was autobiographical, because of the kind of detail chosen. It’s not, but I like to think of that as a compliment in this case.
#writing #fiction
I’ve been reading a book to a friend for a bit, and it’s an unexpected pleasure. It’s something to do in the quarantine, and my friend was having trouble reading my recommendation – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s Cat’s Cradle – and I offered to read it to her over video call.
I do need to figure out how to vocalise from the diaphragm rather than the throat, because three sessions in, I can feel it. And other than that, I’ve realised that a lot of Vonnegut’s rhythm was uneven – not someone who would read his prose out loud, I think – although when it works, it really works.
I’ve never read something to anyone – always looked enviously at the people who’ve read each other Harry Potter and the like – but way back when, my dad used to read me comics before I learnt to read for myself (from those same comics). After that, I read quietly and fast, but recently, when I switched over to audiobooks, I learned to enjoy the specific flow of a book read out loud, and it’s nice to share that with someone.
#journal #books
Trying to do a daily log sort of thing here. Preferably less than 300 words, definitely never more than 500.
Started reading Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. You know sometimes you read a paragraph or two of a book and just know you’re gonna love it? You get that feeling … that “Where has this book been all my life?” feeling. I’m getting that with this book.
The way the narrator thinks, the way every sentence is written simply but with care. I picked up quickly that the seemingly random capitalisations were meaningful, and then they are explained just when you need it.
I’m only around 30 pages into it, and I don’t even know the plot of this (I picked it up on recommendation, and dived right into it), but I have a feeling this is going to be a book I reread. Hell, I want to reread the beginning and I’ve barely left it.
#journal #books