Quotable Tuesday, IV

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." Samuel Becket, from Worstward Ho


Dareisay: hopeful?  Perhaps: inspiring?  Heartening?  The sentiment here is quite out of line with our modern sentiments with just its acknowledgement of the prevalence of failure.  But it strikes out far beyond that with its implicit assertion that, beyond prevalent, failure is indeed the only possible result.  Only levels of failure, only failures of different qualitative value, but failure nonetheless. 


When I read this my mind turns, perhaps I should say "of course turns", to writing, to making art.  I venture to say that any creative writer who takes their work seriously shares the experience that they never, ultimately, are completely satisfied with their work.  Yes, they may be at times be satisfied and think that they have written something awesome.  Perhaps as they are writing it they are thinking how great it is.  But guaranteed, in 24 hours, or a couple of years, there will come a time when they re-read it and want to throw up a little bit in their mouth.  We see our flaws, our authorial tics, we are our harshest critic.  Even Pulitzer Prize winning bestselling authors likely look back at their oh-so-successful book and find at least parts of it that they feel have failed.



And this quote, to me represents all of that, represents that urge we have to continue in the face of daunting and repeated failure to do something we love, even if, ultimately, we're only failing better at it.

Quotable Tuesday, III

"Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work." - Chuck Close

This quote motivates me.  It inspires (haha) me to approach my fiction writing with a workmanlike attitude.  Because ultimately, any large artistic output requires sustained effort, and that "rest of us" needs to keep in mind that a painting, or a novel (as is my case), or whatever, is a long haul and we have to be in for said long haul.

I will disagree with this quote, at least a little because, well, hey, inspiration is great.  But it is also fleeting.  And when I read that quote I feel that he is referring to that momentary flash, maybe the initial germination of the story idea, to those first few lines or paragraphs that are written under that special magical feeling of inspiration.  And yes, someone working on a novel needs to remain interested in the idea, and that is a form of inspiration, but not the type that he's addressing in this quote.

Perhaps this quote resonates because it seems to directly combat the way I once worked and approached writing.  Before college and during college the vast majority of my writing came because some momentary light of inspiration, the muse of old perhaps, struck me.  I would write the line, the paragraph, or if I was feeling particularly frisky and caffeinated, maybe a whole few pages.  Most of my finished output took the form of vignettes or short shorts.  I considered a ten-double-space-paged story to be a herculean accomplishment.  Anyway, that mode of production is certainly amateurish to my mind (maybe because I was such a true amateur at the time?).  That mode of production is hardly a mode of production at all - my total ouput, both "finished" pieces and even just notes etc. is minuscule.

I think now of my wife, who might initially balk at this quote though I don't think she'll ultimately be against it.  She is a fiction writer of luscious, dense prose.  She tends to work very slowly, revising each line or paragraph over and over again.  She often speaks of her need to have in her mind the voice of the story, the particular and unique way in which the narrator/characters speak, the particular way the prose is flowing.  And she seems to need that for a story to reach its maximum.  If she loses it, she'll often not be able to finish  the story.  Would Chuck Close tell her to just get to work?  I don't think so... I think he might respect her process if he got to know it, respect it as I do.  She works hard at her writing and her process is a different sort of thing...  Well, now that I think about it, she's probably gonna hate this quote...:)

I'm not one who really feels comfortable prescribing things to others, or making grand sweeping statements.  So, to each his or her own on this, but:  I do think that through consistent work you can create your own inspiration, you can create the mental atmosphere, the feeling, that cradles your creative work and sustains you in those endeavors.

Quotable Tuesday, II

"My only job is to be talented, that is, to know how to distinguish important testimony from unimportant, to place my characters in the proper light and speak their language." - Anton Chekhov

Ok, so here's the whole quote which is what I've always liked, but since I felt it violated the idea of my discussing the power and meaning of short quotes to throw that up initially, here it is:

Is it me, or does he look like Ed Norton here?

In my opinion it is not the writer's job to solve such problems as God, pessimism, etc; his job is merely to record who, under what conditions, said or thought what about God or pessimism. The artist is not meant to be a judge of his characters and what they say; his only job is to be an impartial witness. I heard two Russians in a muddled conversation about pessimism, a conversation that solved nothing; all I am bound to do is reproduce that conversation exactly as I heard it. Drawing conclusions is up to the jury, that is, the readers. My only job is to be talented, that is, to know how to distinguish important testimony from unimportant, to place my characters in the proper light and speak their language. — To Alexei Suvorin, May 30, 1888

Above quote was found here here - a great page with a bunch of Chekhov quotes on writing.  So much great stuff there, but this one wins the blog post since it is one that I saw long ago and that stuck out to me.  You know, there's no such thing as a free lunch.  (Oh, wait... that doesn't apply to this.)

I think Chekhov is the greatest short story writer ever and he is also one of my favorite writers.  So when he talks about craft, I sit up and listen.  Do I think that great literature can be created that violates what he is saying, absolutely.  There's probably a ton of it out there and I look to you literati to list some for me in the comments :)  So, I don't think that this is the only way to write, but it certainly seems like one way of considering craft that could take a person a long way.  Concerning oneself with the real people of the earth, representing them and their concerns honestly will take a writer very far.  The further I get from undergrad and adolescence the further I get from trickery or novelty in form and subject matter and the closer I get to a more honest and realistic (at least I hope...) depiction of representavive/significant events with realistic characters.  (well, to the best of my ability, etc, of course)


What do you all think of this quote?

Quotable Tuesday, I

Matthew 22:37-39

"And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

I thought that I would start off my "series" with what might be my favorite Bible quote.  There's something about it that has always struck me as a beautiful moment.  The simplicity of it.  The command sounds like something simple and reasonable.  And indeed, it seems that for someone of faith it would be only reasonable to love God with all of your everything.  But alas, (and yes, I just used alas) it's not so simple as all that.  And, I suppose, that is why it's a commandment, because it's something that even the truly faithful need to work towards, and maybe, no matter who you are, you will never truly achieve it.  Maybe some have, some can, I don't know.  But we have so many roadblocks to such a deep and true love of God.  Not the least of which is vanity.

Another aspect of this quote that I enjoy is the clear emphasis on love.  Especially the second part, that we must also love our neighbors as ourselves.  In another place, this is shown to subsume the other commandments, because if we did love our neighbors as ourselves the others would naturally fall into line.

Finally, going back to the first half of this quote, it calls to mind another part of the New Testament, John 14:21: "Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.  And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him."  This, I believe, helps us to more deeply understand the above quote.  We are told here that we show our love of God through our actions and thoughts, by being in line with his desires for us, by holding his commandments.  His commandments, as seen above, can be boiled down into loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves.  We seem to come in a circle, but I truly don't believe that it's a tautology.  I don't know if I can work it out more deeply here in this post (especially as I try to finish this within my deadline of Tuesday and I need to go to bed relatively soon, lol).  I might not be able to express it, but I understand the truth here, and it's not such an easy one either.  I hope that you've found this interesting, and that it sparks in you some beneficial thinking on the topic.