Oh Lord, let me not be one of those who writes too much;
who spreads himself too thinly with his words,
diluting all the things he has to say,
like butter spread too thinly over toast,
or watered milk in some worn-out hotel;
but let me write the things I have to say,
and then be silent, ’til I need to speak.
Oh Lord, let me not be one of those who writes too little;
a decade-man between each tale, or more,
where every word accrues significance
and dread replaces joy upon the page.
Perfectionists like chasing the horizon;
You kept perfection, gave the rest to us,
so let me earn the wisdom to move on.
But over and above those two mad spectres of parsimony and profligacy,
Lord, let me be brave, and let me, while I craft my tales, be wise:
let me say true things in a voice that is true,
and, with the truth in mind, let me write lies.
Not just offline. Haven’t made much progress on any projects for about two months.
Want excuses? I got tons. Good ones, too. Excuses that would make you shake your head and mutter, ‘Gosh, poor Matt.’ Especially if I could tell you my excuses in person. Because I can sure spin a story.
And I can still work on new excuses, too. There’s always something going on to take my mind away from my work. I have enough excuses lined up to put everything off for the rest of the year, really. I could do it. Don’t imagine I haven’t thought of it. It wouldn’t be hard.
And I would do it, too. And you wouldn’t blame me. My excuses would leave you with nothing but sympathy for me. Wouldn’t that be nice? To play the role of the martyred writer, desperate to tell my story but, alas, the universe is working against me. Was a gloriously tragic tale! How romantic! How pathetic! How … common.
That’s what every failed writer/artist/musician/dancer/chef/yogi/spiritualist/humanitarian/idealist does. And their dreams are stillborn.
Sympathy is a pat on the head. Nice. Kinda warm. But giving birth is better on every level.
Your sympathy is not worth nearly as much as my story.
If I give in to the excuses that call me, I’ll get a friendly pat on the head.
If I flip the bird to the excuses, climb the obstacles and write my stories, I’ll give birth to a world of characters and emotions and stories and lives.
And, who knows? I might even get that pat on the head anyway.
I always approach the subject of music … cautiously.
For one, I know next to nothing about it. Though not for lack of trying, really. I learned to play guitar, but without a chord sheet in front of me I’m useless. And don’t you dare ask me to tune the thing. Music doesn’t flow from me. I get it and I appreciate it. But it will never come from me.
Also, there is always an element of judgement that comes in when people talk about their favorite music. Claiming to like, say, Justin Bieber will get you either ridiculed or praised depending on where you happen to say it. So deep in the part of my brain that is still insecure and self-conscious, I fear judgement if my preferred musics are not cool enough for whatever crowd I’m talking to.
But some music is special. Some music has that neat ability to reach inside my creative centre and stroke it gently to life. And I want to share those albums that do that.
1) Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog – Joss Whedon
If you have not seen Joss Whedon’s classic short film, you are missing out. On life. Seriously. It’s a mere fortyish minutes long and it deserves to be watched. You can find the entire show on Youtube. It’s witty, zany and full of fun. It’s a creative masterpiece. Go watch it. Seriously, don’t finish reading this blog until you’ve seen it. It’s better than this blog. And so is its soundtrack.
2) Siren Song of the Counter Culture – Rise Against
A fellow can get used to anything. Even screaming. Rise Against has been a favorite since I first heard them in Pakistan. Their anger-charged music touches something primal and pure. That righteous dissatisfaction with a screwed-up system. I was seriously sad when I found out they are coming to Toronto the day I fly to Pakistan.
3) Introspection – pjt
I went to school with this guy. Isn’t that cool? This whole album is great. All the songs cry out for freedom and authenticity. “I don’t believe it’s right / to let others define your life / I can do anything I’m interested in / And I’m interested in all that I can do.”
4) Aaja Nachle – Salim and Sulaiman Merchant
This Bollywood gem is about a girl returning to her hometown to convince her conservative neighbours to put on a play. It’s a celebration of the creative spirit and every single song carries that flag. “Stand apart from the crowd / Show us your dreams / Show Me Your Jalwa (glory)”
5) The End is Near – Five Iron Frenzy
These guys were huge with the Christian white kids in the 90s. But don’t hold that against them. They are worthy in their own right and rise above the shameless preaching of a lot of their contemporaries. This is one of their last albums and, I think, their zenith.
6) Last Night on Earth – Noah and the Whale
It was hard to pick only one album for these guys. I’ve only known about them for a little while but I’m seriously in love with them. Their songs touch on every part of humanity, from it’s highest to its lowest.
7) First Love – Emmy the Great
Silky sweet voice and melancholy songs. What could be better? She just came out with a new album, too, though I haven’t had a chance to hear it yet. She lives up to her name.
8) Exodus – Bob Marley
You’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t love Bob Marley, at least a little. His wild optimism and spirit of Love is infectious.
What songs and albums and artists have inspired you?
It was a dark and stormy, bright sunny day. Or week. Or something like that. Anyway, it was rough. Ruth was leaving earlier than we had planned. I wasn’t sleeping well. Things were piling on. So I slowly walking into a dark place. Ever been there? Not fun.
Then she left. Got darker. Hadn’t written a thing in days. Maybe a week, even.
But it’s getting brighter today.
I took the bus down to Danforth. Walked for hours, carrying my leather case with my notebook and computer. Wonderful day for walking. Too cool to stand still. Once I got into a good rhythm my body warmed itself up. I passed a church that was having a hamburger cookout. They invited me in. It was nice. I declined, mostly because I didn’t want to create an awkward situation because they had nothing a vegetarian could eat. But I hugged the guy and thanked him for his invitation. It made him smile. That made me smile.
I kept going. Crossed the road. Started walking the other way. Came across a vegetarian restaurant I hadn’t seen before called Teatree Cafe. Had a grilled brie sandwich with honey baked apples on oatmeal bread and a potato oatmeal soup. Children played and laughed behind me, talking about their Sunday School class. It was good. My body thanked me for the sandwich. I started feeling strong and I smiled again.
I left and kept walking. Found my way to the Tsaa Tea Shop. I forget what kind of tea I ordered. Something that had to do with eyebrows (seriously). I sat in my place and opened my computer. Found the section I was supposed to be working on. Drank a cup of tea while staring at it.
My throat was wet and my insides were comfortable. But my mind and heart still wanted to throw the computer away and join a circus. I poured myself another cup of tea.
I was feeling more positive. The other customers started to fade and I reached down to my characters to see if they were still alive. They were, it turned out. I poured myself another cup of tea.
I dared to put my fingers to the keyboard. They moved. Slowly at first. Awkwardly. With horrid spelling. But that wasn’t a problem. I’m a worse speller than my mother-in-law. And she doesn’t even speak English. I poured myself another cup of tea.
I was rolling, suddenly. It started to work. It started to make sense. It was fun and real again. I poured myself another cup of tea.
I stopped typing. Looked at the wordcount. Smiled to myself and closed the computer. I finished the tea and stared out into the street.
I left with a grin. I’m all alone, still. But not really. I have love in my life. The love of an orchestra. And a guy was giving out free samples of Stella Artois on the way back. And I know how to make killer tea.
On the bus going home, I read this line from Lotung, the Tang poet, concerning drinking tea:
The first cup moistens my lips and throat,
The second cup breaks my loneliness,
The third cup searches my barren entrail
but to find therein some five thousand
volumes of odd ideographs.
The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration,—
All the wrong of life passes away through my
pores.
At the fifth cup I am purified;
The sixth cup calls me to the realms of
immortals.
The seventh cup—ah, but I
could take no more! I only feel
the breath of cool wind that rises
in my sleeves.
Where is Horaisan?
Let me ride on this sweet breeze
And waft away thither.
My wife and kids are off to Pakistan in a week. I’ll be following them a month later. I’m stoked. I tend to get all glossy-eyed when I talk about Pakistan. Kinda like a high-school girl talking about the head of the football team. What can I say? Pakistan is my lover.
That tends to freak people out a little. Then they ask what I love about it. And I have a really hard time answering them. I mean, the place is pretty rough. It’s hot. Stinky. There’s a few shady characters. Not much chance for the trendy nerd conversations I like having. But I love it anyway.
My wife is running an informal little charity thingy. Helping out widows and orphans. She calls it i117, go check it out. That’s one of the reasons we’re going this summer. Hunting down folks suffering in extreme poverty and coming alongside them to make life better.
I get bothered when I think about how much my country suffers. I have friends who are malnourished. Literally. I have family who had to cut their caloric intake when American bio-fuel companies started buying up all the rice and grain that used to be used for food. For four years I lived among a people who simply did not have enough.
But now I live in Canada. And we have too much. Way too much. So I don’t really want to be productive. Because we’re producing so much that most of what we work 40hrs a week for ends up in a dump before it goes stale. Because we buy new printers instead of refilling toner. Because the average household drill runs for 16 minutes during its entire life. Because everyone on the street owns a lawnmower that they use once a week in the summer. Because we eat so much we’re dying because of it. We’re just producing too many things. We aren’t even consuming them anymore. And it can’t go on, friends. It won’t.
So I’d rather write books. I’d rather sing songs. I’d rather dance. I’d rather do plays and cook fancy meals and drink tea with strangers and tell funny stories. Because those things don’t take up space and don’t take away from my friends in Pooristan.
My old protestant work ethic is yelling at me right now. He’s telling me that hard work and productivity is a virtue. I figure he’s wrong, though. Our craze for being productive has made us the economic lords of the earth, yes. But you can’t have lords without serfs. And I think it sucks to have either.
This is a new one. I’ve been wanting to write it for a while but was never really able to make it work until just now. And I think it works now. It’s a bit of an exercise in trying to understand myself and my thoughts about life, Jesus and everything good. I was raised in a very conservative religious environment and have been moving toward something different over the past few years. The Sodomite is a bit of a parody of some very popular modern Christian parables linking the idea of substitutional atonement with a judge condemning a guilty crook and then serving his sentence. Anyway, enjoy it and pass it alone!
Some of the strange things I’ve learned about writing and all the sucky struggles that come with it.
Busyness does not even enter into it. When I first started writing I was working as an elementary school teacher. I taught two grades at once, every weekday. I received my textbooks a few months into the term so I was always very busy with lesson plans, homework marking, test writing, math re-learning and all that silliness. And within a year I had the first draft of a novel finished. The next year I was gloriously unemployed with nothing but leisure time. Despite my desperate yearnings, I wrote nearly nothing. The amount I write, I found, has nothing to do with how busy I am. Like Jello, there is always time for writing if I want it.
Multitasking sucks. Driving while listening to music. Cleaning while listening to audio books. Eating while reading. All these multi-tasking habits that I was raised on have been nothing but a burden to my craft. When I turn them off I have more success. So I’ll often drive to work in silence. I try to eat with nothing in front of me. When I read, I do nothing but read. When I work, I do nothing but work. And the mind is sharper for it. And the work is better for it.
The search for the ideal environment hamstrung my writing. Not because it was hard to achieve. But because when I finally got it (and I did), it sucked. A huge desk. An optional typewriter. Epic music in the background. It all served to distract. Now I try to write in places that are uncomfortable. I use the tiny ledge of a counter in the kitchen. If it’s too hot, I let it be hot. If I want a snack, I refuse to get it. Writing under perfect conditions is distracting because life is never perfect. And stories are elevated reality, not idealized reality.
Glorious things only look glorious from the outside. Remember Dragonball Z? Remember how in nearly every episode there was a scene of Goku flexing like a crazy person while golden flames danced around him and glorious power filled his body? It was always kinda inspiring. I used to figure the same sort of thing would happen in a perfect writing session. So I was always disappointed when it turned difficult. But look at Goku again! From the outside all we, the viewers, get to see is the fire and light and power. But look at Goku’s face. There is pain and effort and heartbreak there. The end result was wonderful, of course. But the summoning of the power was harsh and bloody and raw. That’s the way it is with writing. Pain and blood in the inside. Glory and beauty on the outside.
Writer’s block is a lie. Or at least a misnomer. It’s just what happens when the mind and heart turn lazy. And there are two good cures for laziness. Sleep and work. The situation dictates which one is needed.
Everyone’s process is different. Stephen King hates outlines. Brandon Sanderson loves them. They’re both right. There is not a lot of writing advice that is true across the board for everyone. Finding my own process instead of relying on the processes of others was one of the best things I ever did for my writing.
Resistance is everywhere. Crouching the the corners. Sneaking up from behind. It never leaves you alone. Best be on the lookout for him.
It was winter, so the windows were closed. Not that it helped much. A stray stream of air slipped through the cracks in the glass that the riveted-on piece of plexi-glass was not able to stop. But the bus was crowded, so it wasn’t so cold. That was good. It was surprising how cold Pakistani nights could get. Never below freezing, of course. But chilly enough to wish that vehicles and houses had heaters.
The bus was like any other. Every square inch was decorated with gaudy colors and hangings. Lights flashed all over the inside and out whenever the driver touched the brakes, which, mercifully, was not often. The plastic seats were all ripped up and barely fixed with mismatched scraps of coloured plastic. The floors were sticky with spilled drinks and candy wrappers. Yep, just another normal bus.
I was lucky to still have my seat. Most of the other men were forced to stand while the women claimed seats. That was nice, I thought. In a country that was not exactly known for gender equality at least women were guaranteed a seat on a bus.
That bus was special for me. While I sat on it I looked around and built a clumsy narrative in my mind. I paid special note of the windows, the seats, the ancient Hindi music screeching from faulty speakers. When I arrived home I sat at the computer and wrote it all out. It was even clumsier on paper. But in my eyes I saw something. A tiny whisper rose from the scratchy writing: ‘Are you a writer?’
The paragraph grew and I added characters. They took on roles and emotions and generated a plot. The next thing I knew I had the first draft to a 100k-word novel. I held it in my hands after printing it off for the first time. ‘Am I a writer?’
Nothing ever came of the novel. And I’m okay with that. Because it was the first step. It was practice. I’ve left it behind and I press forward. But it’s funny to think back to that bus. That clunky bus scene never even made it into the final product. But that’s okay. Because it served a role. It got me to write a novel.
That novel was only ever read by a handful of people. And that’s okay, too. It served a role. It was practice. It told me to write. And I’m still writing because of it. It’s amazing to think about the things that made you move forward, isn’t it?
I love Pakistani buses. They represent something very precious for me. They represent the pursuit of creation. Do you have anything like that?
Was a blast! I’m still reeling from the exhausting glory-fest that it was. Here are some things that have stayed with me so far:
Setting is powerful – Gwynn Scheltema led a great workshop on crafting setting to push your reader in the direction he ought to be. It was probably the most informative session of the day.
Connections are powerful – I had never really taken my writing ‘outside’ before. To meet others who were at similar progress levels to me was a very comforting experience. I made some great new friends and I hope I’ll see them again as we chase our stories.
Spirituality must be practical – There was an amazing author who helped me one-on-one with some of my writing (which is now listed as one of the most encouraging moments I’ve ever had) told me an amazing story of two Taoist monks which brought forth that life-giving truth about how anything spiritual must be practical.
The first draft is the hunk of marble – Just get it down. Then begin to chip away to reveal the masterpiece.
Stories are sacred things – Because they are acts of creation. Because they hold meaning. Because they give life. Because they hold so much more meaning than sermons or lectures or lessons. And that makes the writing of stories a sacred thing.
Writing is hard work – I knew that already. I also knew that anything good is hard. But I think I know it even more now. That’s a great thing to remember because it means I won’t be seeking the ‘ideal’ writing mode or mindset or environment. It’s like a job. Show up every day. Play hurt. No calling in sick.
While the specifics of publishing look confusing the core is very simple – Write well.
Your writing space ought to be ugly and uncomfortable – You’re not on vacation, after all. You’re writing, for crying out loud.
I am a writer. – My one-on-one session was one of the positive experiences my writing life has ever had. It went just about as good as it could have. But that’s not why I’m a writer. Even if it had been a horrible experience, I’d still be a writer. Even if my Blue Pencil mentor had written pages of harsh criticism and marked up my whole piece with piles of corrections, I’d still be a writer. Because writers are just people who write, not people who get paid for writing. And I write. I create stories. And stories are little universes. So I look at the label with respect and a touch of awe. And then I step forward and own it. And that feels pretty damn good.
Thanks, OWC. It was a great time. See you next year.
I was hoping to throw something else up before putting up another short, but Easter weekend being as busy as it was there was not much else to do.
Layali is a short story from about a year ago. It’s about a young Afghani girl struggling to find her identity in suburban Canada.
People are a lot more complicated than we usually give them credit for. We prefer things to be black and white. We like our films to have definite good guys and definite bad guys. We don’t like ambiguity. We don’t like things we can’t label. And that hurts people. Hurts lots of people.
Matt W Cook 