When Truth Hurts: The Nonfictioneer's Dilemma

Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

~ Franz Kafka

Kafka, you haunt me.

Whenever I read these words, I am divided. One half of my heart swells in awe of your insolent wisdom, at your unabashed defense of the artist's impertinence. You forbid us to whitewash, to pretty-up the ugly corners of life. Do not tread lightly on reality, you insist, but delve deep, and without apology. Show life with all of its thorns, no matter who objects. Where inspiration leads, the writer should follow with frenzied passion.

The other half of me spits at you.

I don't believe my heart was made for fiction. It goes against everything that has made me a writer -- a love for daily life, a quiet belief that every "normal" person, including myself, has a story. The little struggles we encounter each day say much more about our humanity, I think, than some grand, fictional misadventure. The truth is, I long for nonfiction. I long for its contemplative nature, its ability to find meaning in the mundane. Most of all, I long for its potential to highlight reality, and say, "There's no need for fiction. Life is dramatic enough on its own."

But I need fiction, Kafka. I need it terribly.

With nonfiction, there comes a risk. There are many things in our lives that contain all the elements of a good story -- a mother's coldness, an uncle's cancer, a best friend battling alcoholism. If we stop to look around, we realize that the people we interact with everyday have tales begging to be told. But this fascination with the trials of others is dangerous. It requires us to investigate and speculate about people's private lives. The nonfiction writer must intrude -- often without permission -- upon someone's darkest, most intimate secrets.

What is wrong with us, Kafka? Why is it the darkness in people's lives, that which makes them most vulnerable, that inspires us most? We are sadists and parasites. Our work thrives upon the draining of others for our own gain. We delight in their shame, their injury, their deformities, exposing them for general entertainment and "the sake of art." We cannot see someone's wound, and leave it be. In our sick fascination, we pick at the scar, peek beneath its stitches, until it bleeds. Because as a writer, as an artist, we must know what’s inside.

You did well to choose the word "mercilessly," my dear Kafka. To write directly from reality, we have to adopt a kind of indifference. We can't care too much about our subjects; otherwise, we'd always feel guilty, and never write anything for fear of violating their privacy and soiling their reputation.

This is why I write fiction. It was never because my life was uninteresting. My family life has been rocked by death and mental illnesses. My friends have been torn by scandal and abuse. There are always things to write about. But my conscience is my weakness. I don't have the stomach for trespassing onto others' lives, for being an invader. For you see, the greatest danger of being a writer is not the lack of things to write about. It is the risk of someone getting hurt.

Did you ever love anyone, Kafka? Or did not loving give you the freedom to write?

 

Image Courtesy: Emma Moser

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emma Moser is a lifelong New England resident currently balancing her lives as a college senior, local musician, and emerging writer. Her writing pursuits include blogging, poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming at several national venues, including Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, Zoomoozophone Review, Thoreau’s Rooster, Sweatpants & Coffee, and Fuck Fiction.

For more articles, links to publications, and information about the author, please visit her blog at: antiquedwriter.blogspot.com
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Welcome to the world of Social Media ;-)

Marketing a book feels like an endless journey. There is never enough hours in the day to fulfill everything you have wanted to accomplish. Now I know why it’s called “Social Media.” It’s pretty much as social as you can get without changing out of your bath robe. All the hours of reading about authors books, their cats, dogs, favorite foods and so on. I mean it is endless! I barely have time to brush my teeth. My day seems to go by in a fury as if I am in some sort of a race but the only race is one with the clock. Not sure where the times goes? How does anyone even have time to take a bath let alone write a manuscript? How can we have the next best-seller when we are all so busy whittling away the hours enjoying a little “conversation.”

Don’t get me wrong. I love the interaction, the sharing of stories and the knowledge. There is a wealth of information out there in the World Wide Web. Well, at least sometimes there is. One thing I know for sure is I will never be lonely at home by myself again!!! Facebook has solved that fundamental problem.

I used to find pure satisfaction in sitting down, pen to paper, writing for hours at a time. My mind was a buzz and I wrote without a care in the world. I never felt rushed or hassled like I do now. I didn’t have to consider how many messages I was missing or how many notifications I was receiving. I simply wrote for the pleasure of it. There is nothing better than the feeling when you are writing something and the puzzle pieces come together. It is instant gratification even if it didn’t happen in an instant. When the writing is going well, it feels as if I am floating above my body as my imagination and recollection come together. These days I don’t seem to have the luxury to spend hours on end writing. I am far too distracted and frankly too darn busy!

Now to learn how to balance my time better. For a start I have had to learn to use the word “no” more often. That is not always an easy thing to do. It feels so good to help support someone that is doing the same thing you are. It can be so rewarding but at the same time can be all consuming. There needs to be boundaries, I have discovered. That is if I want to have a life outside of all this self-promotion thing. I have friends and family outside of the computer and my books. Sometimes I do forget that but that is my New Year’s resolution. Take more time out for the people that matter the most. Myself included.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and I am constantly struggling to find this balance. For me I have to make a conscious decision to make these changes I need to give myself a calendar and break it all down. How much time do I spend marketing (playing) and how much time writing. It needs to be done and I know it is possible. Are you with me in following a time calendar? Can we stick to it? I do know if we set our minds to it, anything is possible. So why don’t we give it a try and see how it goes.  Break out the licorice and let’s start writing again. :-) 

Brenda Perlin
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PSYCHIC REALITIES: Writers and their Minds

Oh my God! I desperately wanted to finish that story. Look! I just abandoned it. I had been working on it for the past one month. It’d been six weeks since I hadn’t touched it. Would I be able to resume it? How could I do justice to the story, now, after such a long time of discontinuation? I did have some notes made from the times, while I worked on the stuff. I do not think those notes are of any help, anymore, though. 

It is clear to me how vague the classification of writers would be if I categorized them based on such feelings as above. A writer, at almost all stages of his or her growth feels this way. Most of those super-successful writers may not experience it the same way, because they have the ability to pursue writing without bothering much about another day-job, but apparently have other issues that affect them the same way.

If writing gives a person immense pleasure or joy, and the person is forced to work in a bakery in order to make a living, the resulting conflict could damage the mental equilibrium of that person. Those person(s) who have no aptitude for working in a bakery, when forced to compromise their psychological ecosystem with the sophistication of an altogether different system of things, creative writing suffers. This is when one feels; “Oh my God! I desperately wanted to finish that story. Look! I have abandoned it.”

The fear for being not able to do justice to one’s work of a lifetime deserves wise handling. If not, it will consume the writer, wholly. The totality of all fears has their common grounding in the unknown. In the case of the above-mentioned writer (let us call him Paul), the unknown part is the quality of his work. Paul does not know and fears this fact: how would it all turn out to be. How could I do justice to the story now, after such a long time of discontinuation?

In order to undo the fear of the unknown, the simplest method can be the Jungian concept of assimilation of psychic realities. Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) was a German psychoanalyst, whose groundbreaking theories on human mind, guided the world into a modern-renaissance. He argues about a specific course of action through which a human being can bring out the contents of his unconscious and experience it in the conscious level in order to alleviate the pressure from the unconscious side.

This same method is useful in undoing the fear for the unknown in Paul’s case. If Paul is uncertain of the results his work could bring him after a considerable gap in the process of writing, he should first, look at the results. There is only one way he can get the result—by completing the work. Paul just needs some gut feeling to cross the initial fear.  

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If one is stuck with the fear of how the work would turn out to be, the possibility of writing a book or a story is obliterated entirely. It is up to you to take that step courageously. Your work deserves to be born, simply because you have such strong feeling for it. Let your fears not obligate the stopping of your creative work.

If you liked this article, you might like my book too. Take a look.

Anu Lal is the author of Wall of Colors and Other Stories. His latest book is Clenched Hands, Bloody Nails. 

You can catch up with him in Facebook too.      

MEASURE OF WRITING: Inborn Talent?

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In this glorious chaos of what to listen to, and what not to, I would like to invite your attention to the fantastic idea called “good writing.”

I am aware that one of the areas, a person coming to WGT might be looking for, is insights from personal experiences of other authors. Due to that very purpose, I would like to share an experience of mine here, in this ‘internet coffee house’ of a blog, as author and editor Scott Bury remarks.

Good writing is an imperative every writer pets with in one’s consciousness. Consequently, there are several myths circling this idea.                

 

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Stephen King once remarked that creative writing could never be taught in schools. He was telling the truth about ‘good writing’ too. Perhaps the biggest impediment in being a creative writer (and a good one in that) is the only boon capable of propagating one in the direction of a successful writing career—Inborn talent. But what about you, a person blessed with the gift of weaving extraordinary tales out of ordinary events in life? Are you born with “Inborn talent”?

What might be the secret of being a good writer, of selling more stories than the number of tickets for the next Hollywood blockbuster; of being the most loved and respected man of letters? The surest way to success in this dimension is perseverance.

As a writer, one might come across many external obstacles; obstacles from our day-job, obstacle in the name of family, etc. These obstacles, sometimes with our knowing and sometimes unknowing, sucks out what could be described as the surest key to becoming a good writer. I would never suggest one must wait for the right moment to pen a story or to edit a previously written manuscript. The right time for a writer is NOW.

Remember, you are here because you love reading about writing and want to learn a few techniques on improvising your writing. You have listened to your call, by coming here. You have that inner radio inside of you that could tune into the cosmic energy that is the Source of all Creation.  

If you arrived here with a desire to learn, I must tell you that you have the necessary ingredients in your DNA to make it big as an author. You are in alignment with that dream that you have nurtured throughout your life, of sitting on a table, signing books at one end of an incredibly long line of people, simply because you are reading this article.

This is not a self-help forum. Still, I would advice a new author to take perseverance as your measure when the path in front of you is not visible, when you meet a dead-end. For example, think about Dr. Viktor E. Frankl’s experiences in the concentration camp of Auschwitz. Had he not been persevering, his future and the future of psychoanalysis itself would have been something else. In such a situation, perseverance means you trust your abilities to risk every other madness around you. It results from trusting oneself. Dr. Viktor E. Frankl shares his experiences in the book titled Mans’ Search for Meaning.  

 

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The craft of good writing also stems from trusting oneself. However, I would also suggest you should not limit your trust upon the blind faith that ‘whatever you do would be good’; or daydreams about long lines of people waiting for your autograph. Although, it sounds almost naïve, I must say that one must act in order to bring success into the world of reality. This, I consider, is a valid thought for any aspiring writer. Most aspiring writers never make it to the successful line of authors. The reason for that is simple: most aspiring writers only aspire. Their aspirations are not strong enough to manifest themselves into material reality.

The next best thing to do in order to bring in your ‘good writing’ is to trust your own intuitions and write steadily. By carrying the purpose, and following the discipline required to finish specific writing projects, you are sure to succeed. In writing-life, failure has only one meaning—stopping a work. This means, essentially that if you don’t stop, you never fail.  

About The Author:

Anu Lal is the author of Wall of Colours and Other Stories, Book-1 in the Hope, Vengeance, and History Trilogy. He resides in India. His second book You Should Know How I Feel has been a bestseller in Amazon India.

Blog: http://anu-lal.blogspot.in/

Author Page: Here

Twitter: @Anulalindia