Friends

What are your favorite poems about endings?


Here's a poem so this isn't only a request post:

Mona Van Dyun, "Part II"

Setting the V.C.R. when we go to bed
to record a night owl movie, some charmer we missed
we always allow, for unprogrammed unforeseen,
an extra half hour. (Night gods of the small screen
are ruthless with watchers trapped in their piety.)
We watch next evening, and having slowly found
the start of the film, meet the minors and leads,
enter their time and place, their wills and needs,
hear in our chests the click of empathy's padlock,
watch the forces gather, unyielding world
against the unyielding heart, one longing's minefield
laid for another longing, which may yield.
Tears will salt the left-over salad I seize
during ads, or laughter slow my hurry to pee.
But as clot melts toward clearness a black fate
may fall on the screen; the movie started too late.
Torn from the backward-shining of an end
that lights up the meaning of the whole work,
disabled in mind and feeling, I flail and shout,
"I can't bear it! I have to see how it comes out!"
For what is story if not relief from the pain
of the inconclusive, from dread of the meaningless?
Minds in their silent blast-offs search through space--
how often I've followed yours!--for a resting-place.
And I'll follow, past each universe in its spangled
ballgown who waits for the slow-dance of life to start,
past vacancies of darkness whose vainglory
is endless as death's, to find the end of the story.

Tweet? Tweet! It never stops, that bird.
( Cut in case I have a 100 tweet day and scare the British at their morning tea )
Will there be more tomorrow? There will be more tomorrow.
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Noticed a couple of pieces of good news...

gumprich and querldox both have birthdays today, and I'm hoping that this year's installment has been good to the both of them!

On the job front, steve_roby landed one that he's comfy with! Hoping it lasts a good long while for you!

More notes to follow on other stuff...

And before I forget...whoever sent that v-snowflake? Thank you!

In my recent interview with John Kessel I asked him:

You've taught at Clarion many times. Do you see one reoccurring problem that new writers face that seems the most difficult to overcome?

Learning what makes a story different from a collection of paragraphs, scenes, vigorous but not-meaningful action. You can write, even sell, a lot of fiction without grasping what makes a good story. It took me years before I began to grasp this. I suppose some might say I still haven’t.

Another way to cut it: Figuring out what it is you can write that is not completely derivative, that somehow expresses your individuality but also connects with an audience. It takes time to do this.

In the comments after the interview, John's answer to this question garnered some genuine interest. So I thought I'd tackle this important aspect of storytelling craft and give readers here a chance to voice their thoughts on what constitutes a story.

There are no absolutes in art, but there are guidelines and "rules" that can be broken when one understands what the rules are. Mainstream and/or literary fiction often breaks the conventions of traditional storytelling, as many modern mainstream stories are basically vignettes where there is no resolution at the story's conclusion, but I'll deal mostly with genre fiction and traditional storytelling here which usually strives for some kind of resolution. More importantly, one should at least understand (if not master) traditional storytelling first.

When I first tried my hand at writing fiction back in the 1980s, the first story I wrote was one where I drew from my musical experiences on the road. It wasn't very good since it was my first attempt, but I lucked out and actually wrote a real story with a beginning, middle and end, a story that arrived somewhere in the end with most of the needed plot and character arcs. I accomplished this because I had a personal story I wanted to tell and I had a basic gut-level instinct of what makes a real story. But I wanted to write science fiction, so after that I began coming up with ideas. And that's when I got into trouble. My problem was that I didn't know how to turn an idea into a story.

I remember my first personal rejection; it was from George Scithers who was editing Amazing Stories at the time. He'd obviously read my story (the third one I'd written) in its entirety because he told me I didn't have one, a story that is. He told me I was "touring a world." What he meant was that my protagonist was there mainly to walk around as a viewpoint character so I could show off this "cool" world I'd invented. I'm thankful to have learned this lesson early on, but it was still something I struggled with over the years. Occasionally I still have this problem, but I've become better at identifying it in the first draft, usually while plotting. Nowadays it's become second nature, but when a story isn't working it's usually because I wasn't keeping my eye on the ball.

One definition of story is where the protagonist goes up against impossible odds, wrestles with a problem or a dire situation, and in the end comes to a win, lose or draw outcome. More importantly it's where at the end the protagonist has a change. It doesn't have to be a great change, but for me I like a story to arrive somewhere important in the dénouement. Where for me as a reader, light is shed on the human experience.

As I said there are always exceptions. In James Joyce's collection Dubliners, many of his stories focus on what is called the Epiphany story. In this type of story the character has a special moment of self-understand or illumination. But it doesn't always have to be in the character. In an Epiphany story the character can go unchanged and only the reader can have an epiphany. A modernist technique, "The Lady and the Tiger" is an early example of this. Sometimes it's just where the change in the character is slight, but the reader is enlightened by the events in the narrative more so than the characters. An a ha! moment where the reader sees what the character couldn't.

Of course there is also metafiction, fiction where the fictional process itself is examined, but for the more traditional story most readers—or at least this reader—like it where the story comes to some sort of resolution. One where the journey through the fictional landscape produces some sort of emotional effect, and that effect usually has to do with the character (and thereby the reader) learning something of what it means to be human, of choices and their consequences.

In my recent interview with Angela Slatter, I asked her how she approaches a story from initial idea to finished product and she offered this choice nugget:

Whenever I get lost, I ground myself by coming back to the one question that leads your plot along: what does the character you’re writing about want? It’s all about the driving desire—sometimes you lose sight of that when you’re getting caught up in writing back story, descriptions, etc. Your guiding light has to be desire.

Why this is so important is that it seems that many beginning writers overlook that their protagonist has to want something in the story. Not that all protagonists are "good guys," but that is often the case, or at least a main character whom the reader can identify with and care about. And wanting something can be looked upon as self-serving, and a self-serving character is one who we as a reader can't feel an affinity for, right? Wrong. All human beings have wants and desires and to ignore this aspect of their personality is a good way to create a mere viewpoint character, to tour a world.

Because this is the field of speculative fiction, I do think that having a fresh idea (or a unique twist on an old one) is important. But the best stories begin with character, not idea, not research into building a world, not fancy technique to show off one's linguistic talent and erudition. If first the characters live and breathe on the page and are presented with an interesting problem to overcome, then a dramatic narrative can be built to show the protagonist struggling with the story's problem. When done well it will be a story that sheds light on what it means to be human, which to me is the most important aspect of good storytelling.

So, as a reader what makes a story, one that keeps you turning the pages and satisfies you at its conclusion? Or as a writer what constitutes a story that you want to tell? What difficulties have you strove to overcome along these lines with storytelling?

I now have three virtual snowflake cookies.

Thank you, Second Anonymous Virtual Gift Giver and musicianatheart!

ETA: Four! Thank you, alice_montrose!

This poem came out of the December 1, 2009 poetry fishbowl.  It was inspired by a prompt from natasiakith.  This is actually the extra freebie poem you get when someone new participates in the fishbowl; sorry it's late.  New prompters this month were natasiakith, Anthony Barrette, Doug Edwards, and probably the Anonymous person.  The liturgies mentioned in the poem are colloquially called "The Egyptian Book of the Dead" and "The Tibetan Book of the Dead."  I have instead used the best translation of their original names that I could find.  These are real texts and should be treated with respect.





The Egyptians wrote a book of the dead,
Spells of Going Forth by Day,
scratched out on papyrus scrolls,
illustrated in gold leaf
and tucked into sarcophagi beside the slain.

The Tibetans wrote a book of the dead,
Great Liberation Through Hearing,
describing the passage through the intermediate state,
past the buddhas and dakkis and dakinis
into rebirth once more.

The Americans write books for the living,
not for the dead,
and then wonder
why the dead hang around
lost in the liminal mists between here and There.

This poem came out of the December 1, 2009 poetry fishbowl.  It was inspired by a prompt from beetiger and sponsored out of general funds.  You can read more about the five days of Divali and the masnavi form online.






On Danteras, Hindus shop for gold
To praise Lakshmi and her wealth untold.

Choti Divali is small and sweet;
Rice powder draws the goddess’s feet.

Lakshmi-Puja is the moon-dark night,
Welcoming Lakshmi with candle light.

For Annakoot, one hundred and eight
Types of food are laid on Krishna’s plate.

On Bhai Duj, each sister makes her mark,
Keeping her brothers safe from the dark.

I have a huge list of tasks to accomplish today, but I crave diversion. To that end, I present you, The Internet, with a request.

Some songs come with revelations. You realize what they're really about, and you can never hear them the same way again. Ryan North understands this. Now every time I hear "Wouldn't It Be Nice", I'm rooting for those sweetly idealistic polyamorous surfers.

A couple more examples from my own brain:

My attitude towards Rod Stewart's life and work changed forever when I realized that "Maggie May" was about Margaret Thatcher.

Also, the glorious revelation that "Hold Me Now" by the Thompson Twins is clearly narrated by a clueless auto mechanic, or maybe a clueless plumber. In any case, he's definitely clueless, and he's got a messy job. You can tell because when he says, "I ask your forgiveness, though I don't know just what I'm asking it for," he's obviously covered in grease and waving a dirty rag or wrench around. Quite possibly this relationship fell apart because he never cleaned up before dates, and he didn't know this was not the way to make his partner feel special. I feel for him, really. It's sympathetic laughter.

Now I must get down to work on mundane things, which are both boring, and time consuming. Please Internet, tell me about song revelations you've had, that I may have something to look forward to in between tasks.

P.S. Thank you to spectralbovine for the virtual snowflake cookie on my profile!

This week's posts over on Hypatia's Hoard of Reviews were:

Book Review: Bitter Night
Publishing News: Erotic Advent at Circlet Press
News: Black Quill Awards
Discussion: Friday Favorites 12-4-09
Publishing News: ChiZine Books
Author News: “Non est locus” is up
Calls for Submissions

So I'm watching Drag Me To Hell on the Monster Penis System, with surround sound Dolby. And the problem I'm having is with every goddamned horror film in existence:

Step 1: Can't hear actors speaking. Turn up sound.

STEP 2: SCARY THING HAPPENS, WITH BOOM-STING THUNDERCLAP THAT GINI HEARS THIRTY FEET AWAY IN HER ROOM WITH THE DOORS CLOSED.

Step 3: Turn down sound. Dab excess blood from ears.

Step 4: Actors are saying something. What? Probably relevant to whatever's passing for a plot. I should hear this.

STEP 5: SHRIEK! WHAM! BAM! GINI YELLS, TURN THAT DOWN.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

and, apparently, seven pounds heavier. This despite using the stairs all the time instead of the lift, and swimming or gymming every day.

Unlimited free food is not necessarily a good thing. It will probably take several weeks to get back to the weight I was two weeks ago.

Pictures of fishfeeding and the like later in the week. In the meantime... let me know in comments if I've missed anything super-fanatstic in ljworld!

John Burnside
Echo Room

All night, the long-eared bats
flicker from tree to tree
through the scent of rain;

The luckiest survive for fifteen years,
quick, in the swim of the air
or skimming the earth

Where cats from the village
pluck them entire from the darkness.

To the Ancient Chinese
they meant luck;
to the Flemish, affection;

But here, what they most resemble
is desire:

All skitter and echo,
gathering, then forgetting.

(From: John Burnside, The Hunt in the Forest, London: Cape, 2009.)

Courtesy of rm , the world of the year 3000 looks back at the Beatles:

Apart from doing a little writing over the past couple of days, I also finished reading Aliens Among Us, edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. This is a reprint antho published in 2000 containing stories from 1950 to 1997, from many of the big names. In terms of content, it delivers what the title promises: stories of aliens living in disguise on Earth.

Have to admit that this one was a bit of a disappointment, despite the obvious ability of the writers involved. Simply stated, the emphasis here was on writing as opposed to concept, meaning that the interesting stories were often passed over in favor of "better written" ones. I seem to having this feeling more and more often as I read in the genre, and it worries me. SF is supposed to be the literature of ideas, and while the prose should be at a professional level, it is not the place I go for literary rapture - in that case I'll go for litfic, or victorian writing or even, god help me, Yeats.

Best of the bunch were probably "Eight O'Clock in the Morning" by Ray Nelson and "Expendable" by Philip K. DIck, both older stories. The only one I'd read before was "Angel" by Pat Cadigan.

When I picked up "Rules of the Game: Master the Art of Attraction in 30 Days" in the airport bookshop, I bought it for snark value. I'd already read everything in my carry-on bag thanks to a delayed flight, so why not laugh at the pickup artists?

I knew some of their techniques, made infamous by Barney on How I Met Your Mother: the "neg-banging" of women to lower their self-esteem and make them receptive to compliments, the canned anecdotes passed down from member to member like sacred treasures, the ludicrous formulas they devise ((C - R) + Q + SE = A) to measure attraction (that's the A). So I settled down, readying myself for an analysis of misogyny and male cluelessness.

Imagine my surprise when what I actually found was good advice.

Before I continue, though, let's be honest about the nature of manipulation: everyone does it, and nobody wants to admit it. Some people are really lucky in that manipulating others' reactions comes naturally: they know when to smile, know the right thing to say at a given time, instinctively understand how to make polite small talk. They're naturally gifted in getting other people to like them, which is a wondrous advantage; in many cases, they're no more aware that they're manipulating their audience than a cute baby is aware that he's inspiring "awwwwws" from the crowd.

Then there are the outcasts.

You know these folks, because they come in both male and female flavors. When they walk in to your party, you can feel that awkward pause wash across the conversation. They want to be nice - they are nice - but their smile's a little stiff, they nod their head at all the wrong times, and when they interrupt to say something they either get talked right over or their anecdote, laboriously told and having little to do with what you were talking about, brings an animated discussion to a screeching halt. You dread getting stuck in an elevator with them, because they're too sweet to blow off but they're somehow just a little... off.

They've hardly ever dated. They're continually told they're nice, they'll get their day in the sun - often by the same people who are blowing them off, because they're not evil, but do you want to spend an evening trapped under that awful, expectant gaze?

They don't know how to get people to like them. They suffer for this. They're 24-year-old virgins, wanting wanly to date, making spasmodic attempts at finding a partner and then giving up for increasingly longer periods of time.

"Just be nice," people say. But they've been nice. That generic advice they've been getting for two decades? Hasn't worked. They need specifics about how to make eye contact, how to tell a story, how to stand so they don't emanate that beaten-puppy aura.

And yet, because there's a clear hierarchy in society that hardly anyone ever talks about, if you weren't naturally gifted with charisma and have to develop it on your own, you must be a creeper. People in the know fucking hate hearing about the techniques that break down the fine details of getting people to like you - whether it's that Hooters waitress reading how touching you on the shoulder boosts tips, or the salesman who now knows that mirroring your body posture gets you far more likely to close the deal.

In other words, if you don't know it instinctively, the fact that you had to work to learn what the gifted do naturally is just skeevy. A Hooters waitress who touched you because she "liked" you? Oh, that's cool. The Hooters waitress who touched you for tips? OMG WHAT A HORRID THING. Even if her "like" merely means that subconsciously, she's realized that subtle flirting makes people like her back, and she has instinctively realized that being liked is a wonderful thing?

Is it a conscious effort? Hell, no, but that doesn't mean it's not manipulation.

What this means is that you have a whole class of reading that's gets pre-mocking right from the start, whether it's one of those books on how to land a husband or how to pick up a chick or how to market to a customer. "I wouldn't read that crap," some people say, because changing your personality to get better reactions from people is creepy, even if your personality has left you miserable and lonely. And those people usually say they wouldn't read that crap because they've mastered the rules of society without even thinking, and quietly consider it their birthright.

You either know or you don't. And to those who have the power, anyone who doesn't know is fucked.

But there are still the stranded, those dateless lonely people who drive folks away without ever knowing why. This book is not for you, most likely - it's written for the guys who are thirty and still sweat when they're in a room with a girl, because they don't know how to act. (They don't really know how to act with guys, either, but girls always have that extra societal pressure placed on men where you're supposed to be smooth with them.)

So you know what "Rules of the Game" does for these guys?

It breaks "socialization" down scientifically. The first couple of chapters don't even deal with women at all - it's about dealing with people. It's bare-bones exercises like "Make eye contact with five people today," or "Start three conversations with strangers." It's about breaking down how you dress, how you stand (no slouching!), your voice and how you use it (one exercise tells you to speak into a recorder and listen to yourself, giving specifics on what to look for).

Hell, there are several chapters devoted on how to tell a story. Not writing short stories, but just telling an amusing anecdote. Which is, as I realized, a vital skill in my socializing arsenal, but I'd never thought of how vital it was before now.

And it tells you how to listen, and constantly - constantly - tells you how to pay attention to what people are doing. Yes, the end goal is to get a date - referred to here as "a planned second encounter with a woman you've just met," and the fact that this is viewed as a task that requires thirty days of intensive exercises to get should tell you exactly what sort of guy this book is aimed at.

But in between the various ways you can refashion yourself to seem more appealing to women, there's a surprising amount of discussion about how your goal is to form connections that will be worthwhile even if you don't sleep with the person you're talking to.

For those who are starting from zero? It's all really good stuff.

Furthermore, the scientific approach in the book really takes the sting out of the inevitable rejections. Because when you get dismissed, as any human knows, it's hard not to take it as a rejection of you. But Rules goes out of its way to make excuses for other people - hey, they're busy, they might be wary for other reasons, if someone blows you off it means that your technique was incorrect. You're not allowed to go, "God, what a bitch," but rather are heavily pressured into going, "Well, she completely ignored me - what did I do wrong to deserve that?"

What you're do here is fulfilling quotas. You have to talk to three strangers and get a clothing store recommendation from them. That's all. Do that, and you've won for the day. And if someone won't give it to you, well, that's not the point. Just get your three. That's all you're concerned about: perfecting your technique until you get that bloodless, external goal.

It's an approach that nullifies the emotional damage of getting rejected... And yes, I know women have whole different sets of fear about strangers approaching you, which is entirely valid, but life also isn't a zero-sum game. Being turned down for a date is still something that hurts people, particularly when it comes over decades of rejection - and the exercises take that sting away by making sure you realize that hey, this is all about technique. It's not that they hate your soul, they hated what they saw.

You can work on what they saw.

In that light, the neg-bang becomes entirely different. The neg-bang (which isn't really referred to it as such in this book) is an excuse to get timid guys to do something that's often anathema to them: contradict a woman.

Because denial is a part of flirting, like it or not. If someone's just kissing your ass, agreeing with everything you say and never expressing anything of his own, then that's not flirting, that's an awful suckup. To interact with someone, you have to have the strength to stand up for your beliefs and say, "Whoo, you like country music? Lordy, that's not for me. Couldn't rope me into a George Strait concert if you tried."

To guys that timid, though, who've been taught that "being nice" is all it's about, having them take a conversation that's going well and then - to them - derail it by purposely disagreeing with someone they like is a Herculean act. They require that scientific principle that all but forces them to express their own opinions, because it's not something they'd ever do on their own. As such, there are of course exercises where you are called upon to say, "No, that's wrong." And getting them to do that is a good goddamned thing that will make them better conversationalists.

So what we have here is a book on "seduction" where 80% of it is actually not that at all. Scrape the surface, and what you'll find is a set of advice designed to get people - whether they're women or not - to like you. It's giving you all the little techniques for personal magnetism, something to amplify your personality without necessarily changing it wholesale. There are a couple of people I can think off of the top of my head who could genuinely use this book.

However.

...however.

I can also see where this approach would, over time, go desperately wrong. Because in taking the scientific approach to stave off the pangs of rejection, I can easily see where someone would take these rules and fetishize them.

I do not doubt at all that there are guys who have taken this to the limit of Total Crazy - utter nebbishes, once supplicants who spent thousands buying drinks and never getting a date out of it, who now are flush with power and want to see how far they can take this. I can easily see men running out to play the game of seducing as a replacement for self-esteem, seeing what exactly they can do with this set of rules, forgetting that the rules were guidelines to get them to a better place and not a goal in and of itself. And that is bordering on mysogyny (although given how you're treating the entire world as a scientific experiment for your pleasure, one wonders if it's not sloping towards misanthropy).

So what we have here is a paradox of a book: it's got a lot of solid advice that can take the hopeless to a point where they can, with luck and dedication, become a reasonably popular, friendly person. (And it does it in a way that's going to make them likely to pick it up, because "Rules of the Game: How To Stop Creeping People The Fuck Out" is never going to find an audience. People know they can't get dates; they often don't know they're putting out subtle, off-putting signals.)

But the method of getting those skills is something that can then be ridden beyond the pale to the point where you have a bunch of pathetic guys spouting hoary anecdotes, looking for empty love because they've never had it and now they want it all.

Those who read the book would be well advised to read the anecdotes at the end, wherein Neil Strauss discusses the crazy sex he's had in various countries. Those who've never had that kind of sex may well go, "Holy cow, a threesome! This guy is awesome!" Pay closer attention, my friend; look at how empty his life is, how full of wan longing and pathetic depression his words are, and you'll realize that you're gonna need to hop off of this game before you reach the end.