...I've set myself a goal: to write a short story of moderate length-6,000 words-set in a foreign land, or psychological clime far removed from what I usually write, where the end-goal charisma of the story isn't horror or melancholy-which has permeated all of my previous work-but enchantment. I want to enchant readers. Discover the original copy of "The New Yorker" where "The Thing in the Forest" is published. Look at the Romantic panel beside the short story. I want to create a lliterary version of that. I want to create a story which parallels this sort of mysticism. But here's the sticky wicket: I've been poring over my copy of "The Best American Short Stories of the Century" and it seems that an earmark of the past and present masters is an ability to say something in an uncomplex way. I find my writing lacks this aspect. I'm not talking about economy. I'm positive I can write with economy if I want to. Here. It's easier for me to illustrate with a textual sample from the anthology:
"He dreamed that he was in the ranch house but all the furniture had been removed from the rooms and in the yard troops in dirty white uniforms fought. The concussive reports of huge guns were breaking the window glass and forcing the floorboards apart, so that he had to walk on the joists. Below the disintegrating floors he saw galvanized tubes filled with dark, coagulated fluid."
- Paragraph from Annie Proulx's "The Half-Skinned Steer"
Now contrast this from a brief sample from my latest debut:
"The kids stoned me with their glares, scoured me with their acid whispers, beat me until anything which could feel turned to powder and blew away, leaving nothing but slag and bone. My first adult years ran together, like oil paints, congealing into a grotesque blear of psychiatrists who oozed arrogance like slime on a snail, zombifying anti-depressants with lots of Xs, Ys and Zs in their names, a suicide attempt and a Christmas stay in a mental hospital, other sucidals roaming the halls at night, like ghosts sheathed in the amber of their own despair."
Proulx uses a handful of polysyllabics in her writing, but there's a lot less figurative language and a more conversational tone. It's exhausting to write the way I do and I don't like to do it. My hands shake as I begin each writing assignment and I prolong them once they start cooking, to put off when I'll have to conjure a fresh batch of verbal sleight-of-hand. The problem is: I want to write great literature. I want to tell lasting stories, and the masters I read - Annie Dillard, Lorrie Moore, John Updike, Vladimir Nabokov, Thom Jones - all write in the head-swimmingly figurative manner that I do. In an effort to gain, notice I...well, I don't want to say that I imitate them because, frankly, I think I've evolved far enough aesthetically to be to consider a stylist who can hold his own. But I have a feeling the best way to get recognized is through my verbal dazzle. This is partly because I'm not a very confident story teller. Other people can just go out and make up thousands of details and every one seems credible. I've had some experiences in my life, but when I try to depart from the secure shallows of memoir, and write of familiar strife on alien soils, I question every nuance, every detail, every look. Every gesture is supposed to have a thousand meanings, and the theme is supposed to be like a collection of mirrors reflecting off each other, revealing greater and greater depths. With every word I write, I feel a buzz of hectoring disdain aching in my skull: "This is derivative, this is old hat, this is cartoonish, this is morose." I freeze up. My muse turns glacial. My mind petrifies. I start seizing at fragmentary ideas which lead nowhere. All of the masters tell these resounding bizarre stories, populated with eccentrics and grotesque detail. But the more imaginative I try to be, the shallower and showy my writing becomes. Well, I'm chuffed and befuddled and confounded as what to do. I have 10,000, little details saved on my computer. I could tell the story of my little sister's elementary school vice principal, who was unfairly osctracized for alleged sexual advances made to his colleagues, banished from his church and, so distraught, he kidnapped his wife, took her to a motel, blew her head off and then soul-kissed the shotgun barrel himself. Or the tragedy of my 10-year-old cousin accidentally hanging himself. But I'm absolutely bewildered as to how I could imbue these scenes with quiet eloquence. Besides, I'm an unmarried sexual cipher who's still in college. I know nothing of a father's grief, although I do know a little about being given the communal, cold shoulder (see my latest work, heck, see the above paragraph). Simply, put, I want to enchant my readers, but I don't want to have to show off to make the story substantial. Maybe my life as an anti-social has fogged my ability to create human interaction. And, while I've experienced a GREAT deal, it's all a muddle when I try to recall it. So, simply put, again, I want to enchant, to transport, but I don't want to resort to parlor tricks. So
"He dreamed that he was in the ranch house but all the furniture had been removed from the rooms and in the yard troops in dirty white uniforms fought. The concussive reports of huge guns were breaking the window glass and forcing the floorboards apart, so that he had to walk on the joists. Below the disintegrating floors he saw galvanized tubes filled with dark, coagulated fluid."
- Paragraph from Annie Proulx's "The Half-Skinned Steer"
Now contrast this from a brief sample from my latest debut:
"The kids stoned me with their glares, scoured me with their acid whispers, beat me until anything which could feel turned to powder and blew away, leaving nothing but slag and bone. My first adult years ran together, like oil paints, congealing into a grotesque blear of psychiatrists who oozed arrogance like slime on a snail, zombifying anti-depressants with lots of Xs, Ys and Zs in their names, a suicide attempt and a Christmas stay in a mental hospital, other sucidals roaming the halls at night, like ghosts sheathed in the amber of their own despair."
Proulx uses a handful of polysyllabics in her writing, but there's a lot less figurative language and a more conversational tone. It's exhausting to write the way I do and I don't like to do it. My hands shake as I begin each writing assignment and I prolong them once they start cooking, to put off when I'll have to conjure a fresh batch of verbal sleight-of-hand. The problem is: I want to write great literature. I want to tell lasting stories, and the masters I read - Annie Dillard, Lorrie Moore, John Updike, Vladimir Nabokov, Thom Jones - all write in the head-swimmingly figurative manner that I do. In an effort to gain, notice I...well, I don't want to say that I imitate them because, frankly, I think I've evolved far enough aesthetically to be to consider a stylist who can hold his own. But I have a feeling the best way to get recognized is through my verbal dazzle. This is partly because I'm not a very confident story teller. Other people can just go out and make up thousands of details and every one seems credible. I've had some experiences in my life, but when I try to depart from the secure shallows of memoir, and write of familiar strife on alien soils, I question every nuance, every detail, every look. Every gesture is supposed to have a thousand meanings, and the theme is supposed to be like a collection of mirrors reflecting off each other, revealing greater and greater depths. With every word I write, I feel a buzz of hectoring disdain aching in my skull: "This is derivative, this is old hat, this is cartoonish, this is morose." I freeze up. My muse turns glacial. My mind petrifies. I start seizing at fragmentary ideas which lead nowhere. All of the masters tell these resounding bizarre stories, populated with eccentrics and grotesque detail. But the more imaginative I try to be, the shallower and showy my writing becomes. Well, I'm chuffed and befuddled and confounded as what to do. I have 10,000, little details saved on my computer. I could tell the story of my little sister's elementary school vice principal, who was unfairly osctracized for alleged sexual advances made to his colleagues, banished from his church and, so distraught, he kidnapped his wife, took her to a motel, blew her head off and then soul-kissed the shotgun barrel himself. Or the tragedy of my 10-year-old cousin accidentally hanging himself. But I'm absolutely bewildered as to how I could imbue these scenes with quiet eloquence. Besides, I'm an unmarried sexual cipher who's still in college. I know nothing of a father's grief, although I do know a little about being given the communal, cold shoulder (see my latest work, heck, see the above paragraph). Simply, put, I want to enchant my readers, but I don't want to have to show off to make the story substantial. Maybe my life as an anti-social has fogged my ability to create human interaction. And, while I've experienced a GREAT deal, it's all a muddle when I try to recall it. So, simply put, again, I want to enchant, to transport, but I don't want to resort to parlor tricks. So
