Take a Trip

A couple weeks ago I took a trip to an area in central Utah where you can do some rockhounding. It's called Topaz Mountain and is about 25 miles west of Delta.

I had been been there years ago when my kids were young. I didn't find anything at the time, not knowing exactly what to be looking for; naively expecting crystals like this to just be laying around:

In case I didn't find anything I planned to get there early enough to photograph the sunrise so the trip wouldn't be a total bust.

I went with my youngest daughter who took the day off from work. She had no recollection of being there as a kid.

I know, nice pics and all, but what does this have to do with writing? I wondered if I could paint the experience with words and get close to the same feeling.

I opened the car door and looked around at my purple-tinged surroundings thirty minutes before sunrise. I walked around the CRV and popped open the back, opened the passenger door to get my camera bag. 

If it was a movie you'd expect to hear a breeze, the clichéd scree of a hawk, various subtle but unidentifiable animal noises, maybe a rabbit running through the brush, little birds taking off. But there was none of that. Complete silence, except for a slight hi-pitched tone of tinitus. Completely alone. 

The first sounds I heard were my boot-crunch on the dried sticks and rocks as I wandered among the dried parchment flowers of the fourwing saltbush, and brittle, twisted, frayed-silver sagebrush roots.  The plastic click and aluminum slide of the tripod legs and various soft button presses as I got my camera ready for sunrise. 

Then it was just waiting. No wind, so the 24-degree temperature didn't feel cold at all. Slowly pacing and wandering around until moments before sunrise I saw a better view for the picture. I ran back to the camera, slipping in the sand, grabbed the tripod and ran back to the better spot just as the sunlight grazed the mountain.

So did I capture the feeling? Whether I succeeded or not doesn't matter. It's the attempt. I had to slow down and quiet my racing mind enough to re-live the experience and try to put it into words.

So here's your challenge. One of these weekends coming up, take a solitary day trip and try to capture it in words as well as pictures.

What's Behind Your Smile?

Ovid's Influence

Vivid Imagery

I had never heard of Ovid until I was reading a book on Shakespeare and the author mentioned him. He summed up his comments with this statement:

There is hardly a single Shakespeare play or poem that does not owe character, language or plot to Ovidian mythology.
Mark Anderson, "Shakespeare" by Another Name

My curiosity was piqued and I've been slowly reading him since. The "Ovidian mythology" refers to the book Metamorphoses and I downloaded several free versions on iBook. I finally paid a few bucks for the complete works that includes the original Latin, English verse translations, and prose translations of not only Metamorphoses, but the rest of his poetry, and a biography.

So why bother reading some dusty old poetry written a couple thousand years ago? Because the imagery is surprisingly vivid. For example, here is how Ovid describes the goddess Envy:

[Envy] rises sluggishly from the ground, and leaves the bodies of the serpents half devoured, and stalks along with sullen pace. And when she sees the Goddess [Pallas] graced with beauty and with splendid arms, she groans, and fetches a deep sigh at her appearance. A paleness rests on her face, and leanness in all her body; she never looks direct on you; her teeth are black with rust; her breast is green with gall; her tongue is dripping with venom. Smiles there are none, except such as the sight of grief has excited. Nor does she enjoy sleep, being kept awake with watchful cares; but sees with sorrow the successes of men, and pines away at seeing them. She both torments and is tormented at the same moment, and is ever her own punishment.”

Isn't that just how envy feels?

Here is an excerpt of the story of Phaethon taking a joyride on his father's Sun chariot (with a time lapse of me sketching a portrait of Ovid):

Book of Changes

Metamorphoses is made up of fifteen books and spans from the creation of the earth to the reign of Augustus. These myths were recorded by others before him, but Ovid was the first person to bring them all together in chronological order. The first eleven Books deal with the Gods and Demi-Gods, and Book 12 tells of the Trojan War. The remaining Books gradually bring us to Ovid's time, with the death of Julius Caesar and the beginning of Augustus's reign.

The theme of metamorphosis seems to start with Jove raping various nymphs and humans, and his wife, Juno, punishing them by changing them into various trees, animals, rocks, whatever. And so it goes, the Gods punishing everyone for their own actions and petty jealousies.

However, there are no lessons to be learned. These aren't morality tales.  Ian Johnston, retired instructor at Vancouver Island University, observes:

The lasting impression is that the metamorphoses provide a wonderful basis for telling stories effectively, nothing more. 

It is there for us to enjoy as an example of a story for its own sake, something we can read and enjoy for the moment, without being led to some system of belief about the world or some cosmic understanding. 

What we remember from the poem is the clarity of particular episodes memorably delivered, rather than any consistent illumination of what one might call a vision of life.

If you read the prose translation of Metamorphoses you'll notice the structure is a bit different. The Books are further broken into Fables, and after each Fable is an Explanation. When I first started reading the prose translation I was confused by the explanations. The fables were entertaining, but the explanations seemed misguided, didactic, and often ludicrous. I was glad that Ian Johnston shed light on them:

The extraordinary tendency of the Middle Ages to moralize Ovid, to force onto the poem very didactic interpretations entirely consistent with the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, becomes easier to understand. Interpreters in that period certainly put something into the poem that is not there, but did not displace or violate some central vision of things.

Ovid's Influence on Writing

Writers will benefit a great deal from reading and studying Ovid. Ian Johnston also points out:

...if one wants to have any sort of historical appreciation for the development of English poetry, understanding the influence of and the reference to Ovid is essential. 

What we are learning, as we read this poem, is not how to understand the world but how to use language and the resources of fiction delightfully.

(In researching Ovid it was inevitable that I'd come across lots of discussion around the various Greek, Roman, Latin, and English poetic forms. I won't go into that here, but see the footnotes if you're interested.*)

Fun Things I Learned from Reading Metamorphoses

• Origin of werewolves (lycanthropy).
• Rover was the name of one of Actaeon's hounds.
• Earth as a sphere was common knowledge in Ovid's time.
• Dreadlocks were referred to (dread-inspiring locks).
• The raven was Pallas's favorite bird. (I wondered why Edgar Allan Poe had the raven sit upon a bust of Pallas.)

How to read Metamorphoses

• Keep in mind Ovid is dark. The stories are often brutal and violent, but the poetic imagery is mesmerizing.
• Read the verse translation, and if you need a little clarification read the same passage from the prose translation. I know, it seems like a translation of a translation but sometimes it helps.
• When you read the prose translation, skip the explanations. They were added by translators in the Middle Ages to impose didactic interpretations reflecting teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.

And finally, here is a poster of Ovid with some motivational thoughts for writers:

*Here are a few links that will give you a great refresher on poetic forms:

• Dactylic Hexameter
• Rhythms of Latin Poetry
• Iambic Pentameter

John Steinbeck on Writing

I've been aware of John Steinbeck as long as I can remember. I've known the titles of his famous novels but never read any until last year. When Elmore Leonard died I read about his writing inspirations and at the top was John Steinbeck. I've always marveled at Leonard's gift of dialog and was excited to learn that it was Steinbeck that inspired him. In 2002 he wrote:

For me that is what John Steinbeck inspired, the simplicity that if you can’t do it well, don’t do it. If you can do something well . . . from that time on, 1954, I concentrated on telling my stories in dialogue so I wouldn’t have to describe the characters.
Library of America blog

After reading Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday, and The Grapes of Wrath, I have to agree, Steinbeck's ability to convey character through dialog is a wonder.

In 1975 The Paris Review published an interview with Steinbeck.

In that interview, a close personal friend of Steinbeck, Nathaniel Benchley, made the following observations:

• He once said that to write well about something you had to either love it or hate it very much. 

•...his fierce dedication to his writing, and his conviction that every word he put down was the best he could find, were signs of a man who dreaded ever having it said that he was slipping, or that he hadn't given it his best.

The remainder of these quotes are from Steinbeck's East of Eden diaries (Journal of a Novel), and personal letters.

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced that there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes but by no means always find the way to do it.

It is not so very hard to judge a story after it is written, but after many years, to start a story still scares me to death. I will go so far as to say that the writer who is not scared is happily unaware of the remote and tantalizing majesty of the medium.

In a letter to his Creative Writing teacher at Stanford, Steinbeck tells just how easy it is being a writer:

But surely you were right about one thing, Edith. It took a long time—a very long time. And it is still going on and it has never got easier. You told me it wouldn't.

It gives me hope that even the best struggle. All that matters is perseverance.

It is the duty of the writer to lift up, to extend, to encourage. If the written word has contributed anything at all to our developing species and our half developed culture, it is this: Great writing has been a staff to lean on, a mother to consult, a wisdom to pick up stumbling folly, a strength in weakness and a courage to support sick cowardice. And how any negative or despairing approach can pretend to be literature I do not know.

I hope I can keep all the reins in my hands and at the same time make it sound as though the book were almost accidental. That is going to be hard to do but it must be done. Also I'll have to lead into the story so gradually that my reader will not know what is happening to him until he is caught. That is the reason for the casual—even almost flippant—sound. It's like a man setting a trap for a fox and pretending with pantomime that he doesn't know there is a fox or a trap in the country.

My work does not coagulate. It is as unmanageable as a raw egg on the kitchen floor. It makes me crazy. I am really going to try now and I'm afraid that the very force of the trying will take all the life out of the work.

Suddenly I feel lonely in a curious kind of way. I guess I am afraid. That always comes near the end of a book—the fear that you have not accomplished what you started to do. That is as natural as breathing.

In a short time that will be done and then it will not be mine anymore. Other people will take it over and own it and it will drift away from me as though I had never been a part of it. I dread that time because one can never pull it back, it's like shouting good-bye to someone going off in a bus and no one can hear because of the roar of the motor.

Edgar Allan Poe on Writing

A Peep Behind the Scenes

Any creative effort can seem magical. As writers we are sometimes awed by the moments of inspiration that lead to our creations. Three and a half years before his death Edgar Allan Poe wrote an article illuminating his writing process titled The Philosophy of Composition for Graham's Magazine in 1846. He pulled back the curtain and showed us

“...the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought—at the true purposes seized only at the last moment—at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view—at the fully-matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable—at the cautious selections and rejections—at the painful erasures and interpolations—in a word, at the wheels and pinions—the tackle for scene-shifting—the step-ladders, and demon-traps—the cock's feathers, the red paint and the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, constitute the properties of the literary histrio.”

He thought it would be interesting to see an author's step-by-step process and he didn't have

“the least difficulty in recalling to mind the progressive steps of any of my compositions,”

and so we have a wonderful explanation of how he composed his most famous poem, The Raven.

Writing The Raven

He spent much effort in deciding the length, effect, tone, and construction before writing a single word.

“Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its denouement before anything be attempted with the pen.”

Only after this preliminary work did he start writing. And he began with the end:

“Here then the poem may be said to have had its beginning—at the end where all works of art should begin—for it was here at this point of my preconsiderations that I first put pen to paper in the composition of the stanza: 

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! prophet still if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us— by that God we both adore,
Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
Quoth the Raven— "Nevermore." 

"I composed this stanza, at this point, first that, by establishing the climax, I might the better vary and graduate, as regards seriousness and importance, the preceding queries of the lover, and secondly, that I might definitely settle the rhythm, the metre, and the length and general arrangement of the stanza, as well as graduate the stanzas which were to precede, so that none of them might surpass this in rhythmical effect.”

The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty

After his death a number of his lectures were published in 1850 as an essay under the title The Poetic Principle. Poe was an early proponent of the idea "art for art's sake." He had particularly strong words against trying to use poetry to be all preachy:

“a heresy too palpably false to be long tolerated, but one which, in the brief period it has already endured, may be said to have accomplished more in the corruption of our Poetical Literature than all its other enemies combined. I allude to the heresy of The Didactic.”

Poe went on at great lengths to define what should and should not be allowed to be called poetry. It bears reading this section of The Poetic Principle a couple times to follow what he's saying. Here's a little chart to sum it up:

Here are some of the points he emphasized in The Poetic Principle:

• -A poem can only be called such if it elevates the soul.  It's hard to sustain that feeling for much longer than 30 minutes.
• -Poetry touches beauty the strongest when it has nothing to do with Truth and Duty.

“I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect or with the Conscience it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with Duty or with Truth.”
“An immortal instinct deep within the spirit of man is thus plainly a sense of the Beautiful. This it is which administers to his delight in the manifold forms, and sounds, and odors and sentiments amid which he exists.”
“And thus when by Poetry, or when by Music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find ourselves melted into tears, we weep then, ... through a certain petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and for ever, those divine and rapturous joys of which through' the poem, or through the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses.”

• In short, a poem

“is a poem and nothing more, this poem written solely for the poem's sake.”

In the final authorized printing of The Raven, the poem is prefaced by these remarks:

"These people... are possessed with a false theory. — They hold that every poem and poet should have some moral notion or other, which it is his “mission” to expound. That theory is all false. To build theories, principles, religions, &c., is the business of the argumentative, not of the poetic faculty. The business of poetry is to minister to the sense of the beautiful in human minds. — That sense is a simple element in our nature — simple, not compound; and therefore the art which ministers to it may safely be said to have an ultimate end in so ministering. This the “Raven” does in an eminent degree. It has no allegory in it, no purpose — or a very slight one — but it is a “thing of beauty,” and will be a “joy forever,” for that and no further reason. ... The worth of the Raven [[sic]] is not in any “moral,” nor is its charm in the construction of its story. Its great and wonderful merits consist in the strange, beautiful and fantastic imagery and colors with which the simple subject is clothed — the grave and supernatural tone with which it rolls on the ear — the extraordinary vividness of the word painting, — and the powerful but altogether indefinable appeal which is made throughout to the organs of ideality and marvellousness."

Richmond Weekly Examiner, September 25, 1849, col. 4-5

And here is a poster of Edgar Allan Poe with a thought-provoking quote on writing.

Free Wallpaper

Save this wallpaper to your desktop for that friendly reminder to write every day.

Writers Need Rewards

It's been said writing is its own reward, but let's face it, sometimes we need just a little bit more to keep going.

There are days it takes all my energy just to get to the end of a chapter or blog post. I wish I could hold out clear to the end to feel that sense of accomplishment, but it helps me to break down my writing goals into smaller milestones and give myself a mini-reward. Somedays it's the end of the chapter, somedays it's the end of a paragraph. I'd be lying to say I've never needed a reward at the end of a sentence!

Whatever your writing milestones are, this will help:

The Leaky Pen Writer's Reward

There's nothing like that little sweet reward, that naughty little sugar rush to push you on! When the jelly beans are gone, refill it with whatever motivates you.

And if you're not a writer maybe it's your significant other or family member who is the writer and needs a little incentive.