Being and Formulating

Over the past few months, I had been posting chapters of my novel, Monkey Logic, to this blog. The process was rather educational for me and hopefully entertaining for you; however, I have decided to (at least temporarily) suppress those posts.

I have left my posts about Monkey Logic and my thoughts as to why I originally wanted to post it. They may seem a little out of context without the actual Monkey Logic posts, but they speak to some ideas about blogging and self-publishing that still may be worthwhile.

So, why the change of plans? Part of my reason for posting the novel was that it had become this big unwieldy story, and I felt that it was unpublishable. But it wasn’t without its strengths, so I felt it was worth playing around with on this blog.

Posting the chapters was surprisingly rewarding. I saw the structure and the pace of the work in a new light. I had tried in the past to streamline the narrative but was never happy with what I came up with. However, working on the draft on this blog changed all that and I found a way to shorten the work, so now I am in the process of yet another revision. Whether or not I’ll post anymore of Monkey Logic here is a decision I’ll make further down the road.

I came across an interesting quote about writing in The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh from his chapter on Right Speaking:

“Writing is a deep practice. Even before we begin writing, during whatever we are doing–gardening or sweeping the floor–our book or essay is being written deep in our consciousness. To write a book, we must write with our whole life, not just during the moments we are sitting at our desk.”

Discovering a new writer is such a joyful and annoying prospect. Joyful, of course, because I love to read. Annoying because I discover them faster than I can read them.

I had heard of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges before but couldn’t tell you anything about it, not even the name of its author. But I just read a short essay by and an interview with Nathan Englander in New Letters (74:3 2008). In addition to Urges, Englander also wrote The Ministry of Special Cases and the interview focuses on this latter work.

Of course, the short essay, “The Quick and the Dead” (about his visit to Argentina to visit cemeteries) and the interview made me want to read his books, so onto the pile they go.

Although the interview focuses on The Ministry of Special Cases, he does make some interesting observations about novel writing in general. Since part of my hope for this blog is to chronicle interesting and helpful quotes about writing, I’ll pass along a couple from Englander:

On plot:

“From reading the book it would seem that one outcome is much more likely fated, but I like to think that, as in a haiku, if a novel is functioning, there’s a momentum to the ending.”

On getting the details right:

“Because fiction has to be this unbroken dream. If a reader says to himself that street doesn’t go that way, or you wouldn’t hear the airport from there, he isn’t in the dream. To me that’s a failure, because it’s a question of effort.”

And since it’s November:

“Some people write a book just because they can, and those people are scary to me.” (The connection of this quote to nanowrimo is mine not Englander’s but it seems apropos.)