A ‘Start Again’ with a Dedication

The mechnics of writing are fairly simple. You sit down and write. One word follow the other until you have a sentence, then, by pressing on with more strings of words, you have two. In time, these strings become paragraphs, and eventually, by some twist of consciousness you have something written. Easy, right?

Well, yes and no. The internet is deluged with the easy mechanics of writing. I am astounded by the proliferation of material. You can read just about anything about anything. And yet, I have seen wide-eyed fear in those asked to write a poem, i have heard great talkers balk at the notion of books. So then, what delays and retards the progress of some (and multiplies that of others)? What is it that infects some with the dreaded block.

I am, at this time (and this may change before long, contrary as I am), under the impression that the writer can too easily turn in on himself. Writing with only his own ends in mind. As in, talking to oneself. Experiencing one thing, then retelling it to himself. Without the slightest need to verify the emotional parabola. Without any cause to edit the dull, unhealthy bit. Those that bore, tire and molder.

The whole process of story telling, writing, and such, is about the communication of an idea from one person to the next. Its not about working lovely phrases for their own sake. Lovely phrases are great to help the burden of memory, but they are dust without story. And what is story?

By way of illustration, I’ll explain. The other day, I was in a funk about a minor vissicitude so I made a couple of calls to vent spleen. Those who listened comforted me. But the best calls were made to those whom recalled similar injustices and recounted their experiences. Story is just a human way of sharing experience.

After all, have you ever considered that the language of the brain, all those hormones and electrical flashes, are translated into pictures so the mind can make sense of them. Equally, these stories are converted in hormones and flashes so the brain can simulate them. The brain has only the vaguest notion it is not where it is being told it is.

There is a superb quotation from Denis Johnson’s famous story “Car-Crash While Hitchhiking.”

That was the great pity of life: he could not tell me what he was dreaming. And I could not tell him what was real.

In this otherwise mildly prosaic retelling of a hitchhiking trip, this total nugget of wisdom donkey punches the reader. Here, a bloodied father snores in the wreck, there, an impotent hippy looking on as a nuclear family is lain to waste. The great dichtomoy: to dream and to live. Which then leads natrually on to truth and lies. And from here we have the foundations of culture.

So, all these brains, floating about in their soup. All with their little chemicals. How does one speak to them all?

The point is not to! But to find one or two that you feel tender towards. Towards that ugly cinereal mass. And give that lone fatty swimmer something to flash his synapses at, give him something to squirt hormones for. That is story. That is what it is about.

Entirely focus on doing the task for someone else. And the fingers spider words into strings (webs but that word is sullied by the internet [cords maybe?]).

Have you ever wondered why every decent book begins with a decent dedication? This is book is for, etc. etc.? It is because the decent brains know perfectly well that floating in isolation is not the how of writing. (It was in this way that the editors of Cemetary Dance were able to identify Joe Hill, as the disingenuous son of Stephen King. For he was the subject of King’s dedication to the Shining.)

Thus we drag ourselves out of our soupy indolence and moronic goings on. And we focus on that single other person and write. For it would make them happy to see you being the person they believe you to be. To inhabit achievement and success. It would make them laugh and clap their hands and shout out, “I told you so!”

For everyone loves a know-it-all.

But all of this blog is so much avoidance. The truth is, can we do what Jeffery Archer does, and get up and write from 6am to 8am, 10am to 12pm, 2pm to 4pm, 6pm to 8pm. Every day. Then edit each manuscript 14 – 20 times and produce novel after novel before the year is out?

Or, like F Paul Wilson, hammer out 100 short stories this year alone to publishers?

It is 8:55am now. I am in my pajamas. I have not seen another human for days, let alone a pomerarian or a yoga mum. Everything is stacked against the act. But for that one person. For that dedication, its time to begin again.