The Business of Fancydancing

[kalliel]

I. Sometimes I suffer under the fear that if I use an idea, a phrase, or a circumstance, I cannot use it again. And if that's the case then I should save it for better projects, bigger things, more skillful me's. It has nothing to do with the amazing sanctity of words, or don't think it does; I've always done this, with everything, from Mrs. Grossman sticker sheets to packs of chocolate, outfits, recipes. The difference between words and the first two are that these first to actually are finite. Stickers really only stick once and chocolate only tastes ones (heaven forbid you get it a second time!--no, too staged, not funny; not a joke to be saved, not one to be used at all). The difference between words and the second two, well. I actually have no problem reusing either of those. My body isn't picky and neither is my stomach, which makes my wardrobe very small (though very versatile; I own free T-shirts in every color of the rainbow and the same pair of jeans matches them perfectly for weeks without reprieve) and my mouth quite willing to sip tomato basil soup every day, for every meal, likewise for weeks at a time. I love tomato soup (but I'll only eat one recipe).

Really, as much as I love tomato soup and as much as I love being clothed, these activities, for me, lack the self-consciousness that comes with writing. Because if my cooking goes public, I will simply break my traditions and make something else. If I need to dress semi-formal, I can whip up a mean semi-formal. But with writing, if you're working with the same ideas over and over again--really just swirling in them--the same words, and suddenly you need to have something to show for yourself, you can't just change your tune.

Or, you can. You can do whatever the hell you want; type in yellow, suddenly decide to boycott vowels. That sort of thing. But that's what it all come down to: You can do whatever the hell you want. If you write an idea, you're not emigrating it across the Pacific, never to be seen again. (And no, I don't think emigrating is typically regarded with that sort of agency, agency here ascribed to you the writer, the motherland, and not the emigrant. But we talked about this. Whatever the hell.)

You want to come back and steal it back, there's no rule against that. But vigilante writership is easy to espouse and harder to follow 100%. That's where the self-consciousness thing comes in. You don't want to be one of those sad people who can only churn out the one thing--or I don't. The only thing worse than typecasting is self-typecasting! Niches become ruts, expertises crutches. Blah blah blah. It's all very messy, and very stupid, because writing really shouldn't be that thinky. Not down this avenue; there are better roads to waste your time on.

Writers recycle all the time. Students of the gothic mode might consider this a sort of haunting. For Kyoko Mori, it's her mother's suicide. When she's at the mall; while she's at piano lessons. Mori's mother and her characters' mothers all depart the same way. (Kitchen, gas stove; and not even any bell jars to show for their efforts.) For Dorothy Allison it's a few more things, but mostly it's a little albino girl catching fire. Sherman Alexie recycles everything, at every point, seemingly without compunction, some of which is traumatic and haunting and some of which is just reused. But maybe that's the idea; Ford trucks and basketballs can be just as haunting as powow costumes or housefires that kill everyone they touch.

Nothing is too precious to ever be used; and few things have only one lifespan. Yes, even stickers, if you are clever enough. The chocolate is harder. To end with one last literary reference, some Nabokov: At some point in Speak, Memory, he says that love--love!--isn't something to be kept. We're supposed to use it. We're supposed to run it ragged until there's nothing left. If that's a good enough fate for sweatshirts and tomatoes, then words should hop on down, too. There's a trick, of course, because there's always a trick, and there's always one more literary reference than I promised there'd be.

Walter Benjamin in "The Task of the Translator" believes that translations (transliterations, borrowings, swaps, reiterations, reconfigurations) provide the afterlife of a word or set of words. So maybe an idea does die when you set it to paper; it's okay, because you can drag it back and haunt it the same way it is probably haunting you. It changes on the basis of the forms its taken previously. They build on one another. Fail forevermore to exist outside the context of one another. Letting that happen is like making magic**.


** You are the magician in this metaphor. (Or simile. But metaphors subsume similes and the distinction is silly, anyway.)


II. I have stories that are just for me. They don't start out that way; I'm typically not that self-satisfying (that is I never give myself what I want, because I'm too obsessed with the feeling of not having and so find having what I want wanting). Mostly they're stories I meant to write and then didn't, and so ended up reading them to myself as bedtime stories. Or parts of them. It's a repetitive process. Same scene, same scene; and the scene again. Again again again, sometimes without even getting to the good part.

It occurs to me now this is probably the story version of me and tomato soup.

Eventually, ideas converge on one another and become these great, intense, monstrous things with complicated interpersonal relationships and cultural underpinnings and geographic ties and plots that span generations and states and any other kind of boundary. Everything, all the time, at all volumes, until it's probably fifteen different inklings that've all banded together to be something great. Maybe they are great, who knows; their problem is they really don't make that much sense outside of me, the same way dreams are always so dressed to impress, until you try to figure out why the hell you thought saving sharks from whales seemed so par for the course, and can't come up with jack.

To take this kind of story out of yourself you need to field strip it, lay it out all neatly, and start throwing things out until you have something clean again, and not just a heavy thing filled with jammed gears.

III. Some of my stories, whether they are just for me or just for everyone, are not just mine. Because if I sit around wondering if I can borrow from myself surely you have to sit around and wonder if you can borrow from other people.

Not plagiarism. Plagiarism is silly and mostly boring and a hell of a lot of paperwork if you're a professor's assistant and you're trying to sort out someone else's academic integrity. (Does integrity have an adjectival form?)

I just saw Sherman Alexie's film, The Business of Fancydancing, which is American Beauty gorgeous, even though it bears no resemblance to American Beauty almost at all. (They are both American. And are films.) Part of it is about this poet whose friends disown him because he's made poetry of their lives and claimed them as his own. This is, incidentally, a premise Alexie has visited more than once, though this is true of nearly all his premises; that's their power. He's visited its inverse as well--the scholar who records personal stories and claims them as his own, causing much pain and anguish to the very voices he treasures.

It's something he makes me think about a lot in terms of cultural appropriation vs. tendencies toward multiculturalism, but it's interesting from the standpoint of a writer as well. If you borrow hairs from one person you know, and body language or dialogue from someone you actually don't know and have only observed, and a plot from hearsay of gossip of anecdotes told at social gatherings you were not born soon enough to attend, is it yours? Does the way you compose it--birth its afterlife, in the words of Benjamin--make it yours? This train of thought leads to well-traveled discussions of copyright and creative commons, but I don't think that's exactly what I mean. I don't know what I mean.

But I think about The Business of Fancydancing and something tight and hungry happens just below my sternum. It's worth writing about, even if I have nothing to say.

IV. I have a lot of things to say, though most of the time I do not say them. Part of me thinks I should, because if I wrote them out, then I'd have to think about them more, and then I'd be able to remember them for later. But I don't. Fear, discomfort, disquiet, straight up laziness--pick your poison. I cannot help my platitudes (which are actually idioms, for the most part. Idioms or empty language like "for the most part").

The other part of me asks, why bother? Why would that deserve the work of words, the attentions of an audience. That is, who gives a fuck? Do I, even?

Then I think, if I wrote everything I thought maybe people who weren't me would actually know some of what I thought. Again, obvious, but I spent a lot of time wishing people would recognize me for what I thought without making myself public; it's strange how it works, that cause and effect thing. Quite strange.

If I wrote and rewrote and revisited everything I thought, I'd probably have for me what Sherman Alexie probably has for him. Maybe our era has given us this blessing. Facebook: updates on your every mundane moment. Instagram: pictures of the same. Twitter: 140 of your finest neural high jumps. Tumblr: who knows.

Write everything. Write drivel. Write half sentences. Write backwards.

Write whatever the hell you want because you no longer have to carve each letter into stone. There's a reason for that. And volume (mass production!) isn't always devilish. If someone were to actually puzzle through it all, words probably have more in common with chocolate bars than gold standards and the balance of modern economics. The just happen to keep better in heat.


And they're infinite.


* New formula; now fortified with 8g of essential daily irony!


And now it is 1:15AM.

Comments

[istne-pieklo.livejournal.com]

I sometimes die of jealousy when I read something and find a phrase or a paragraph that I really wish I'd thought of using, but smn's already done it, so now I can't. XDDD And sometimes I envy myself in that way))) But mostly I just feel that screw everything, I'll keep writing because I don't really have a bloody choice, do I? ;)))
I don't have any coherent thought in my head, but let me love this entry. It's golden and I want your brain because your writing is stunning whether it's fiction or non-fiction or, I dunno, a tweet. XDDD

[kalliel]

<33333 Truth be told, if I see a line I really like I usually just use it as a literary allusion. The problem them is simply a matter of deciding people will 'get' the allusion, or if I need a note at the end that says BTW I BORROWED THIS (AND BUILT ON IT). XP Ideas are a lot harder, because they're not as, idk, travel-sized? as phrases?

I just loooooooove thinking about these things. :D AND YES, YES WE SHALL BOTH WRITE FOREVER. And thank you. <3

[geckoholic]

The mind of a writer. ♥ I think I might be getting where you're coming from here, although I usually face these fears by, uh. Writing it all anyway. XD When it comes to fanfic, at least. I'm much more likely to sit on original fic. This, especially, is true for me, too, with some origific: "Mostly they're stories I meant to write and then didn't, and so ended up reading them to myself as bedtime stories. Or parts of them. It's a repetitive process. Same scene, same scene; and the scene again. Again again again, sometimes without even getting to the good part. (...) Eventually, ideas converge on one another and become these great, intense, monstrous things with complicated interpersonal relationships and cultural underpinnings and geographic ties and plots that span generations and states and any other kind of boundary. " BEEN THERE. DONE THAT. MY PREEEEECIOUS.

[kalliel]

I think I'm getting better about it; I've written a lot of scenarios more than once, and borrowed a lot of phrases, going from fic to fic, or fic to orig!fic, or either of those to/from non-fiction. But then I have this backlog of Ideas I Really Want to Write and yet haven't/can't get right/can't bring myself to start on--I suspect because they've spent so much time tumbling around in my head I no longer have any idea what, exactly, they are! Or maybe they've been damaged in the mail or something. XP

Truth be told, I sit on and think about fan fic the most. I rarely think about original fiction at all, or at least as a commodity as distinct from the fan version. But I think that's because if I have to write original (HAVE to, lol, what am I) either I'm revisiting things I already played with or tested out in fan fic, or I'm writing without having exercised any forethought at all--hit the pavement and go, so to speak.

I do think quite a bit about non-fiction, though!

[raihu.livejournal.com]

Tch! This is, itself, a lovely piece of writing~

All of these points resonate to some degree. I think I'm most interested in III. because I also don't understand what I'm thinking about when I think about that particular concept. It's like debating authenticity; is there one Mona Lisa and a billion copies, or a billion and one Mona Lisas? Though I guess in this case it's more to the tune of: am I a generator of ideas, or a collector of them? I used to feel like I needed an answer to that question before I would actually be 'allowed' to engage with any of those ideas at all. I'm not sure when that feeling went away, or if it ever did.

[kalliel]

<33333 I think you might enjoy The Business of Fancydancing (either the book for the film, though presently I've only seen the film), which inspired this post. I can't pinpoint exactly why I feel that way, though I suspect it's just because every creative person should see this film. /starstruck *___*

Clearly it has given me ALL THE THOUGHTS. :D

[herongale]

This sort of reminds me, obliquely, of one of the most important writing tenants I developed for myself early on, which is this: never save a great idea for a later day. I used to really stymie myself in this regard, because I'd come up with these gorgeous (I thought) turns of phrase, that were just far beyond whatever trivial minor one-shot fanfic I'd be working on. I'd write them down separately, in a journal, and sigh over them, dreaming of the day I'd have a story to fit the ~~gloriousness~~ of the idea/phrase/concept I'd just invented. But of course, that day would never come: the great phrases and ideas would get tossed to the wayside, and in the end I would never come back: because the truth of the matter is that the idea was already tied to that little thing I had already written, and was meant to be there all along.

So basically, I've gotten to be really promiscuous with the great ideas I have. If it works, it gets used right away... if it doesn't, I'll write it down for posterity in a journal but otherwise know it's never getting used ever again. There is no effort so minor that doesn't deserve my best thoughts.

But also, besides being promiscuous about it, I'm also intensely wasteful. I throw out thousands of words of pretty, lovely prose for every 1,000 I think are worth keeping... I keep track of how much I throw out, because each story gets its own associated junk file, and whenever I decide that I'd taken myself off track from what the story is about, I find the point at which I fell of the rail, and cut everything from that point on... and paste it into the junk file instead. No mercy, even for my "best" stuff. Everything is disposable.

As for the concept of writers and poets who take someone else's lived experience and appropriate it for their own: I'm not sure I'd even call this appropriation, personally, since the stories you hear from friends and family become a part of your life as soon as you hear them... and once you cast something into your own words, it's not stolen work, because the manner of presentation matters, and writing is about so much more than the characters and events they relate. The risk of being disowned is there regardless; I do think that writers and poets need to think about how much they care about the people around them, and whether they'll regret being disowned like that... some people are actually okay with it, since they put their art above their relationships.

But hell, writers also risk being disowned/disavowed for stuff that has no resemblance to real life or real people at all: sometimes as writers we find ourselves drawn to seditious, brazenly sexual, or intensely immoral themes or characters of our own inventions, and the choice remains the same even though there's nothing even remotely like appropriation involved. A part of following one's muse is being willing to go all the fucking way: to recklessly pursue art even at the potential expense of real life relationships. I think that's a hard choice, however: I don't fault people who throttle their own talent in order to hold on to their precious real life connections: it's so personal, and different for each writer, where the line will be drawn. However, what is incontrovertibly true is that writers who excessively throttle their writing out of consideration to social mores and family concerns will probably never be able to produce anything great or worthwhile. Except for maybe by complete accident.

[kalliel]

I think for me right now, what I tend to "save" is fic premises--not even writing itself, but the premise. Not because they're too glorious, necessarily, but because I think, omg, that would require thought, and then feel like I'm too busy and frazzled with other things to dedicate that nice swath of time to really thinking about it, and sorting through things. What I'd like to do is to not need a large swath of uninterrupted thought time, and be able to just write wherever, in whatever snappy increment I have. I've tried, and I have, successfully, but I always see "writing in the spare interims" as a frantic, last-ditch thing rather than my preferred style, or my norm.

Not that sitting around contemplatively for four or so hours at a time is something to repudiate on principle; it's just not particularly compatible for my lifestyle--tragedy of tragedies. XD

As for the appropriation thing, it's actually something the film discussed--the poet character explains to his book signing audience in one scene, that he and his cousin were so close, what happened to one happened to both of them, and both of their memories were intertwined and their experiences did indeed belong to both of them. The cousin, on the other hand, thought that this explanation was in itself poetic bullshit. The issue extended as well, because the poet had left the reservation to go to college and live in the city, yet so much of his poetry was about the reservation--a place he'd left, excised from his present, vowed never to return to. Poet believes, of course, that that past will always be a part of him, and an important part. Cousins believe he shouldn't be speaking of things he no longer knows, and so forth. The even-handedness of the film, and its many perspectives, don't necessarily beg an answer so much as they beg discussion, to see how far in all of these directions the argument extends. Especially within the context of Alexie's other works and his autobiography, it's craaaaaazy interesting to even conceive of mapping it all out.

[marieincolour.livejournal.com]

"Sometimes I suffer under the fear that if I use an idea, a phrase, or a circumstance, I cannot use it again. And if that's the case then I should save it for better projects, bigger things, more skillful me's."

Don't mark me as insane here, but you might be onto something. I find that I can go back (sometimes as soon as the next day, actually) and read something I've written, and read like it's the first time I've seen the words. The spot the idea occupied in my head is just empty. It especially goes for anything deep or emotional that takes something out of me to write, which is a shame, because it makes me constantly worry that I could have done better and used the idea for something truly remarkable as opposed to something generic and sub-par.

It puts me off, too. Not for long, though, because I'm easily bored.

(I read the whole post and it was clever and funny and interesting and all kinds of good things, but I've just gone off a 9 hour shift, so my brain is mush and has nothing intelligent to reply. Sorry.)

[kalliel]

(Haha, no problem! That is about the state I wrote it in so I understand the dilemmas inherent therein, XD.)

That is quite interesting! I can kind of understand that. I think for me that happens a lot if I try to discuss an idea with someone, or tell someone about what I am writing. After the telling, no matter how vague or incomplete, part of my mind is just like, well self, you've already told this story! What is the point of telling it again by writing it down?? Why the other part of myself accepts this reasoning, I don't know. XP

[marieincolour.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It's like the whole thing can only be one place at a time, so if it's not in my head, it's out "there" somewhere.

IDEK, my brain is weird. 8D

[glorious-spoon.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I suffer under the fear that if I use an idea, a phrase, or a circumstance, I cannot use it again.

This, this, every piece of this. And I find that I do reuse words, phrases, plots, ideas shamelessly, in my writing; in SPN, I quite happily wrote for more or less an entire year on the same theme. It did get ragged around the edges after a while, but that's fanfic, that's what fanfic is for.

Original fic, though, that terrifies me. If I write something original, it should be important, shouldn't it, and I shouldn't use up a good idea on something that isn't going to be absolutely brilliant, and of course the irony of it all is that this is a very good way to end up never writing anything at all.

Very thoughtful, bb. Also: HI!

[kalliel]

I think I'm getting better about revisitations for a lot of things, though for large overarching ideas I still kind of cower. Though I know I've used the phrase "invertebral shrapnel" at least three separate times--in my defense, however, once was in a letter, once was in fan fic, and once was in non-fiction, so at least they were three different mediums/audiences extremely unlikely to ever intersect?

I think if I model my life after Sherman Alexie All Will Be Well. XP He seems to have coined, among many other things, the phrase "ambiguously ethnic"--and then proceeded to own it.

And yeah, I definitely get this part!: I shouldn't use up a good idea on something that isn't going to be absolutely brilliant, and of course the irony of it all is that this is a very good way to end up never writing anything at all. IF ONLY I COULD MAKE MY IMAGINATION UNDERSTAND THAT.


And yes, hiiiiiiii! I feel like we haven't spoken in ages! How are youuu?????

[glorious-spoon.livejournal.com]

I am very goooooood. :P I just got off a plane after wandering around a Marine base for three days (little brother's graduation, holy shit was that weird), so I'm loopy as fuck, but I've been really good. And you, my dear?

[kalliel]

Oh! Congratulations to him! Guess that means it was a good fit, yeah? What's next for him?

And I'm gooooood. I'm geting on a plane to Russia in about a week and a half, for a semester abroad! \O/ gonna die

[glorious-spoon.livejournal.com]

DON'T DIE. That sounds amazingly fun--I always kind of wished I had prevailed upon my parents' generosity to take a semester abroad while I was in undergrad, but I was too chickenshit at the time. You must write allll about it. :D

Yeah, I was actually surprised--Marine boot camp is pretty hellish, but he has ~blossomed~ under the pressure, I suppose.

He gets 10 days leave and then goes to combat training for 5 weeks, then to tech school, probably in San Diego. Which I'm kinda jealous about, actually.

Also, the Brigadier General in charge of the Parris Island training facility is a woman, which I thought was pretty cool.

[kalliel]

Bahaha I cannot, at present, afford a plane ticket back to the United States, but I'm working on that. XP

Ohhh San Diego! :D Pendleton? He'll be with my cousin~ And that is pretty cool. Anyway, I'm glad to hear about your brother; that's great. I've (obviously) never met him but LET HIM KNOW THAT I AM PROUD OF AND EXCITED FOR HIM. ...SILENTLY IS OKAY AND PROBABLY LESS CREEPY.

[glorious-spoon.livejournal.com]

Oh, live on the edge :P How much does one of those run, anyway?

It is an amazingly small world....I will tell him ALL ABOUT YOUR CREEPY APPRECIATION, OKAY, because you and it are adorable.

[kalliel]

Somewhere between $600 and $3300 (wtf is with that range, I know); my ticket there was ~$650, which seems ludicrously cheap when I think about how much it costs to fly from SoCal to NorCal, so I guess we'll see what it's like going the other direction~ XP

AHAHAHA I AM OKAY WITH THAT. <3

[glorious-spoon.livejournal.com]

lol, holy fuck, how do they determine that? It was like $420 for me to get from NY to Georgia, which is pretty massively overpriced for a fairly short trip, but it stayed pretty steady across the board.

XD OH GOOD.