Forum / your writing: are you knotting a net, spinning a thread or turning out pebbles?

Marcus Speh
Jan 02, 07:27pm

meaning: how conscious are you (or: are others) about building an opus rather than writing individual pieces.

are you conscious of any themes, recurring symbols, characters etc. - probably because of fictionaut, the "net", i think stephen king even calls it the "universe" that his stories and heroes inhabit, is more visible to me than it would be if i'd just write, publish, write more.

i post a story & i suddenly see the repetition of a word, a symbol, a situation, an archetype.

in my case, examples are: the ruby, little people, (absurd) death, the trickster.

what about you and your stories?

James Lloyd Davis
Jan 02, 08:44pm

If I were to write nothing but 'flash fictions' they would likely be pebbles, pretty little pebbles in the bottom of a clear mountain stream, destined to eroded down to their smallest form as words of sand beneath the weight of an ocean ... eventually.

Sometimes, I view writing, the art of it, as casting a net. Years ago, as a boy living on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, I learned to capture minnows for bait in order to catch larger fish. I caught the minnows by using a weighted net, a wide, circular thing. You cast it out in such a way that it forms a circle and falls on schools of the tiny fish, an inch and a quarter long, so amorphous themselves that you can see through them, see their feces forming in their tiny alimentary canals. How much less visible they were as a school, conscious of the slightest shadow, moving as if they shared one mind among their number. An amorphous school of tiny amorphous minnows whose Latin name probably stretched out longer than their bodies.

Ideas are like that, elusive, difficult to see, hard to catch. Writing is like the net. You have to learn to cast it ... acquire skills like a hunter. But why are you there?

Little fish lure larger fish. I invariably wanted to catch a dogfish, a kind of shark, but to catch a dogfish, I needed a spot or a croaker. Either would do, a few inches long, big enough to interest a dogfish. To lure a spot or a croaker, I needed a minnow on the end of a hook, skewered well enough to hold it, yet not so much as to kill it. You want your bait to squirm a bit.

Similarly, I cast my net of fiction around an amorphous idea, but why? Perhaps in hopes of capturing larger ideas. But why?

Why write fiction at all. To entertain? Hopefully. I want my story to lure and capture a number of readers. But why?

Is that the question, Marcus?

If so, I think it's because some of us become writers for the purpose of preaching, though in a subtle way. We could stand on a stone in Central Park and decry the evils of an unjust world, but where would that get us?

We are intellectual guerillas, camouflaged in art, changing the world one reader at a time.

Or not.

Maybe we are merely channeling spirits who play us like marionettes. Maybe we are the unwitting instruments of some enormous plan.

My symbols? My themes?

War, death, evil, crime, passionate women, burning saints and deniable miracles. It's an Irish thing, I think.

Matt Dennison
Jan 02, 09:07pm

damn, james, that was beautiful.

Julie Ann Weinstein
Jan 02, 09:09pm

I sometimes channel sprits when I write or ghosts of past themes in my stories that need to be further explored. other times I write riddles and the fun part is finding out what the riddle is or is not. I have that with my current story collection. It was originally a story collection with the same body of characters and now it's linking various riddles together, but which are elusive and haunting to me. Yesterday, I wrote about a key to a lock that's in the attic. I'm yet to know what it's a key to but have gathered that my neighbors in my story share the same friend ghost who is informing them about this lock. But somehow there is a dragon and a snake symbolism there on new year's day that I'm writing about and am curious yet about the lock. In time I will write of this lock exactly. That's often how my muse works. Other times it's more direct with a flash fiction story that has a distinct beginning middle and end.

Marcus Speh
Jan 02, 09:12pm

ah, the writer as preacher or, andrew bowen said that (he of the http://projectconversion.com/ - worth checking out even if you don't have religious issues), as a psalmist. kind of did not expect this answer.

of course, my question was perhaps too terse, too open. but your response is very interesting, and " We are intellectual guerillas, camouflaged in art, changing the world one reader at a time." is a splendid mission statement. i do favor a more "channeling" view.

as for the pebbles vs. nets issue: i don't think it depends on the form at all. personally i am extremely broad with a large hole in the centre: i don't much care for proper short stories, both as a reader and as a writer. i like the very short and the very long form.

even when i write flash, and perhaps this is what i wanted to say, i always think of something larger. mostly unconscious while i write. but afterwards i detect patterns, which often give rise to groupings or collections. or i work (as in the case of "The Whole World" piece or the 1000 penguins) in the context of a large frame to begin with.

about your list: the women, saints and miracles have the greatest appeal. but i'm an honorary irishman.

Marcus Speh
Jan 02, 09:13pm

julie, i got that collection for my kindle today. i can see what you're saying and i enjoy hearing that you're so in touch with your inner magic.

stephen hastings-king
Jan 02, 09:27pm

interesting question.

i am working with approaches to constructing larger-scale narratives by making series of linked small pieces, experimenting with different ways to go about it.

in general, i find it interesting to think about the series as maps (and to keep in mind that the map is not the territory at the same time).

some projects are more or less ethnographic procedures in gathering material---they're quite otherwise in the processing (i cut out locating information, mostly---to this point, i never use names for example. only letters or pronouns. i'm interested in capturing class-specific viewpoints, say, but not in locating them explicitly--rather to let the pieces elaborate their own version, make their own world. this is something that the distiction map/territory opens up).

sometimes i go back to a more academic formulation (leaving that world is a process that will never end, methinks) and characterize this game as mapping the implosion of the american empire, which seems in general a kind of flight from the world into the blurry space where the line between non-fiction/fiction line moves hovers over more than divides and that developing procedures that perform this is interesting.

maybe they let you see things about the world as it is now that older ways of thinking erase. maybe not.

other series are oriented around a motif which can be either recurrent thematically (not so interesting to me) or within pieces are literal elements (more interesting)...

there are no doubt consistencies of voice and style that i'm variably aware of an which are therefore variably available as terrain to be tampered with and/or rearranged.

i like more traditional novel form and spent a lot of my academic energy on reading and analyzing them---but i think things have changed and that making stuff is a reprocessing of the ambient situation which is characterized---i think---by an increasing defunctionalization of traditional narrative forms and the conceptual frames that underpin them, a de-functionalization that extends all the way down the assumptions how grammatical relations mirror basic modes of being-in-the-world on the one hand---and the emergences of new and often quite radically different ways of thinking and doing that seem strangely fleeting, ephemeral. it's not easy to tell the extent to which this is an index of the collapse of empire/ideological paralysis that we collectively find ourselves moving through (on both sides)...

another way: it's not new to use fragmented forms (schlegel brothers anyone?) to explore things in depth (longer forms are not the only way to do this)...but i think that there are new possibilities for making more complicated notions of time, of passage (like whitehead called it) and the relations of them and by extension of thinking about and staging temporalities in narrative forms using prisms or fragments. because i think temporalities are different (they're social conventions, distillations of social history in a way)....

but i digress.

Carol Reid
Jan 02, 09:28pm

These wonderful responses start my mind spinning. James, you make music without even trying, don't you?

Me, maybe I'm trying to catch light in a jar. And why would I want to do that?

stephen hastings-king
Jan 02, 09:32pm

(an aside: i wish it were easier to edit these posts. i have a terrible time trying to say anything complicated in this format because i think more about what i'm saying than how i say it until i get to the end, then go back and fix the wonky bits. but i can't see them in these little boxes. and edit function would make me seem way more literate. just saying.)

Marcus Speh
Jan 02, 09:37pm

it's no use, stephen, you won't deceive us. we're way too clever not to notice you can barely read and write. seriously though i do second these sentiments - there's a thread for that somewhere on this forum...

Roberta
Jan 02, 09:39pm

I like this question. I also find it quite a satisfying/comforting sort of a question. For the most part I write - short - individual pieces and on occasion that can feel a bit disjointed to me. But actually I'm aware of ideas/images/archetypes and so on that'll reoccur when I write. And I like that idea of some overarching nature to some of them.

I tend to think in terms of some writing coming from a particular 'universe.' Most Magic Realist writers I like tend to create universe/s that are very singular, very much their own.

...For me, certain things I write very much belong in the same universe - and I like that, because I feel like once I can get deeper inside my own writing, I'd like to thread that all into a longer piece, or a collection of coherent ones. And the recurrent themes feels relevant to that. And I very much like the idea of a universe I can map out, explore, delve into.

My recurrent themes or images vary. At any given time, they've been snails, spiders, wings, apples, and one I hadn't noticed but had pointed out to me (and liked very much) - girls in metallic dresses.

Also, sometimes I'm aware I'll write about certain themes as a way of working through things. So (one I've noticed) if I've been in a phase where I find I'm writing about sex a lot, sometimes it means something obvious like I'm in a relationship and it's on my mind. But other times, I think I'm writing about sex because actually I'm thinking about how people communicate - or miscommunicate.

...Or if blood, say, pops up with regularity in what I'm writing, I don't necessarily think it's because I'm literally thinking about blood a lot, but I might be wondering about attitudes to menstruation, or about what exactly blood in myth and fairytale stands for, and it makes me want to write bloody fairytales of my own.

So lots of pebbles, some from the same pond(s.)

I feel incredibly self-indulgent for having typed out this entire answer.

Marcus Speh
Jan 02, 09:39pm

stephen, most interesting digressions. i still hold on to some ancient truths about theme, symbolism etc even though i agree that the situation, the whole literare playing field, has changed.

regarding your experimentation: FF wrote about this a while back when he struggled with similar issues, poor lad - http://flawntpress.com/blog/2010/05/22/3136/ - picking up on the term "pointillism" coined by gardner.

Marcus Speh
Jan 02, 09:42pm

roberta, thanks for indulging yourself. most insightful and inspiring (and i'm directly responding to "girls in metallic dresses" here).

no better time to ask gnawing questions than this early in the year.

stephen hastings-king
Jan 02, 09:50pm

marcus..thanks for the link. very interesting. the mapping idea seems to make it possible to use something beyond feel to arrange the elements though. but where gardiner is exactly right (and it's good to read this, to remember) is the danger of over-richness that collapses into a kind of sentimentality. this seems to me a hard balance to maintain until you get used to working at the micro-level first then at the series level and figure out ways to separate the two from an editing viewpoint. my theory of the minute is that collaborations would make this separation a whole lot easier to maintain.

btw, i don't not believe in more traditional notions of theme or symbolism...if i understand how the stuff i'm doing works correctly (and i might not---that's part of the fun of it) there are, say, symbolic possibilities. i just treat them in an entirely literal way and don't say anything to prevent a symbolic reading. and if that's what a reader sees, fine---so long as the piece works. the more levels a piece works on the better, i think. it's like a kind of upside-down counterpoint--maybe like the way some ostockhausen's piano pieces articulate and develop negative spaces. i like negative space.

and stockhausen brings me back to pontillism back to webern back to gardiner.

Julie Ann Weinstein
Jan 02, 11:41pm

Oh, thank you Marcus. I have fun with this magic realm. I did a weird interview talking a lot about the realm of other worldliness that is in my fiction and in my life. It was very out there on the Xzone. Oh gosh, that souned like a commercial. I didn't mean it that way. I'm fascinated by talking about where and how ideas emerge. I think that story ideas sometimes are gifts from spirits or our friend or whoever says a phrase to us that just absolutely inspires us to write.

Julie Ann Weinstein
Jan 02, 11:47pm

Roberta your themes and symbolism sounds fascinating. One time a friend suggested to me several years ago to research the symbolism of several of the animals and colors in my stories. I read the book Animal Speak that addressed the symbolism of animals from a Native American perspective. I found it very odd and quite metaphysical to see that much of the symbolism in my own writing had a meaning behind it. Many of the animals that appeared made sense on a conscious level even though there placement was on a subsconscious level.

I sometimes look up the symbolism of something just to see what it may mean in other cultures and context. I did that with the word dragon last night. I wanted to know the Chinese meaning and use of dragon and found that the meaning made sense in what I was trying to convey.

Jane Hammons
Jan 03, 04:57am

I think the thread might be spinning me, but I do see a thread in a lot of my writing. Place is the most consistent connection. Stories set in the west. People from the west displaced. Identity tends to be a repeated theme. And I also write a lot about or from the pov of women and children, sometimes mothers and children. Many years ago when I moved from poetry to fiction, I thought if I could write just one book, I would want it to be like Dubliners. (Nothing like aiming high!) Not that I thought I could write like Joyce. But I wanted then--and still do--to have a collection that looks at/creates a particular place, its people, what goes on there and why. I think now that I don't do this consciously; but more that my consciousness has been shaped by the stories I've written.

Martha Williams
Jan 03, 07:28am

Random splats.

I wave my pen, ink flies like a thought, and I eat like a pig. I don't tame the thoughts, the stories don't mock my disgusting keyboard/eating combo and we co-exist.

But my scientist innards scream, 'not real random' - because they all come from me, burst from my experience, lie within my limits, spread to the edges of my imagination, flow through my vocabulary. All of which evolve, but which are not random.

So just splats.

Marcus Speh
Jan 03, 08:11am

i like the notion of "negative space" that stephen has brought up. always yes to stockhausen. made me watch/listen to the helicopter string quartet again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13D1YY_BvWU - if you think this is akin to torturing cats by swinging them around at their tails you're spot on. some of us like it...i'm also a fan of cage's freeman etudes (one of 3 fans worldwide, i think)....

Marcus Speh
Jan 03, 08:13am

jane, i go for dubliners, heck, i raise the bar to ulysses. this idea of describing life at its fullest, using words to paint as it were, since i can't paint but also since words are so much more than color (to me anyway), is my idea(l) as well.

Marcus Speh
Jan 03, 08:17am

aww, martha, how deliciously disgusting. you added a new flavor & smell to the bundle of arguments. i don't buy "just splats", of course, my inner scientist speaking to your inner scientist (that's a nice alternative to "inner child", i like it...)

Linda Simoni-Wastila
Jan 03, 10:44am

So much luverly here to digest! Thanks for an intriguing thread Marcus, and all the fascinating responses.

@martha, yes, the scientist innards in me also screams -- random probability?

Indeed, my scientific and health proclivities pretty much dictate what I write about. I do a lot of epidemiological and health policy research. I work with HUGE datasets. I pretty much write about individual data points, because a multivariably adjusted model only tells a story adjusted for the outliers. I'm interested in those outliers: those who die, who end up in a psychiatric hospital, who take their meds, who don't take their meds, who become addicted, who fight their demons and live past the three year study period.

Almost all my work has a health angle. If you look closely, you will find it in nearly every story and poem. Not so much by design, but because it is questions of health which drive me as a human bean. Peace...

James Lloyd Davis
Jan 03, 02:00pm

Jane, the idea of "Ulysses" set in a western mode pickled my fancy this morning, made me crazy with possibility. Or maybe I'm just ... never mind.

- Stately, plump Buck Mulligan dismounted at the top of the canyon, held the reins in the crook of his arm and gazed out over the impassable snotgreen sea of prickly pear cactus in the desert below. He sighed. The posse sat like penitents on horseback, impatient either for vengeance or whiskey. Either would do for them.

Buck shook his head, put his foot in the stirrup, gazed one last time to see if there was dust ahead or open ground worth cutting for sign. There was neither.

"Not today, Bill Bonney, not today.' He said as he lifted his heavy frame into the saddle. "But justice? She's a patient ol' whore, Kid. One day. You'll see." -

hmmmm ... or "Portrait ..." set in El Paso ... oh, the possibilities.

-Tia Maria mocked Estevan and sang, "Ah, las águilas will come an' pluck out you eyes. Apologize. Apologize."-

Better write it, Jane, or I will.

Darryl Price
Jan 04, 04:35am

Boy this really got people to thinking, but that may be part of the problem--overthinking the fact that you are a writer. I mean what moves you moves you. The images have been building up inside you your whole life. You could say you drop them like pebbles but is it a trail to return home or a message for those to come or just a nervous tick? I find words amusing, interesting and challenging. I especially like to see what others will do with them. But mostly I think we are all frightened, all brave and all a little crazy. Anyway it's delightful to me to see the many ways we are brought up by the world and its crashing all around us symbols.Some stick so to speak well with some and not so well with others. Again that's what makes the world go round.Here's two pennies. Deal me in.

Matt Dennison
Jan 04, 06:11am

I don't think of my works as threads, or pebbles, or nets, but raisins, delicious, chocolate-covered raisins...

(picks one up, nibbles on it)

Yuck! Those aren't raisins!

Martha Williams
Jan 04, 07:55am

Matt! Nearly spat out my coffee!

OK, before I lower the tone any more (and I think I've done a pretty good job so far)... my work is a series of reflections. Reflections of personal relationships, readers' expectations (I write one story, readers each read their own version, inevitable), and reflections of being.

As a writer, my aim is to not exist, per se, but simply to provide windows and mirrors - in the short, the long, and the in between.

Sam Rasnake
Jan 04, 10:55pm

Spinning a thread - as in a spider - because I live there.

Roberta
Jan 04, 11:02pm

'As a writer, my aim is to not exist, per se, but simply to provide windows and mirrors - in the short, the long, and the in between.' This is really nicely put, Martha.

Sometimes when I'm writing, I feel that I want to find - or get a feeling for - the words beneath the words. I like playing around with myth and fairytale and so on. Obv those as a starting point aren't my own. Because they often tend to have been so sanitised, I'm curious to explore what's going on beneath the versions we've been handed down, what's been cut out and why. (Actually in life in general, I find I'm often curious about the words beneath the words.)

When I write as I tend to describe, rather than explain, I suppose mostly I'm exploring for my own interest. I guess that's my own web of sorts.

Susan Tepper
Jan 05, 11:17am

I have no idea what I'm doing. In writing or otherwise.

Marcus Speh
Jan 06, 05:54am

digesting this thread - not to come out with a "digest" or anything (though i am eternally tempted to 'just start' a mag) - especially contributions by darryl and susan, and writing "reading for writers" makes me think that i'd like to be a writer's writer. there've been others.

reading kierkegaard again over the past few days (winter diet. nietzsche is for hot summers) also brought me back in touch with a kind of serious fiction-non-fiction-fiction that i love so very much, perhaps that's why i posed the question in the first place.

also, everyone who, like me, was not cuddled by an MFA program or just found themselves in a writing scene in their 20s, has a good excuse and (i think) a need to reflect way more on their position than joe or jane writer.

and now i'm going to read me some "matchbook" and some "luna park review", mates.

Christopher Allen
Jan 07, 10:52pm

As I was going over my year's stories, I did see a common thread among the short stories: character-driven stories about family. Otherwise, I end up churning out whatever ideas occur to me on the train.
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