Tag: bradbury

mccomas, July 8, 2002 at 12:50:00 AM CEST

Quantity and Quality

An essay inspired by Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury.

For I believe that eventually quantity will make for quality. (p. 144)

Funny, as I begin to do my 4th writing (of 5) I run across the line about quantity and quality and throw that in at the tail end of my last writing from Bradbury about letting stories, or my writing, tell me where it wants to go and what it wants to become. Clearly, I do believe that with quantity something good comes out of it...not necessarily quality of writing (or does it?) but certainly fluency in writing, fluency in thinking, and the quality of the thoughts seem to be deeper and richer than the first thoughts that often come to us when we contemplate, however briefly, this thing or that thing.

A few years ago I was enamored with the notion of "first thoughts" (I think I should attribute Natalie Goldberg with this but am not going to dig up the specific reference). I believed then, and think I still do, that it is important to spew forth our first thoughts, stoke around in the pile and see what is of interest to us, and then take that which is interesting and further develop it. Bradbury does that every day, writing at least 1000 words every morning in a "word association" fashion where he simply takes the words that comes to mind and writes and writes. For example, if I were Bradbury right now, I would probably write about M & Ms.

My sweet fix for the day consists of M & Ms except I didn't buy the single pack, no, didn't even buy the king size, I bought the bigger pack...red, white, and blue...the 4th of July special. As I've been sitting here working, I've been eating until 2/3 of the package is gone and I'm sick to my stomach and haven't even had dinner and can't even think of it now. I'm so unable to discipline myself it makes me quite sad as I so want to be a disciplined person. I would like to be one of those people for whom food means nothing--or if it means anything it's a major inconvenience. But I'm not, food means a lot to me and there are certain foods which mark certain occassions for me. Christmas requires the green and red Hershey's kisses, in honor of my mother who for years stuff stockings with Hershey kisses and brought them with her to WV when she came to visit at Christmas, perhaps in case we couldn't get them here. Maybe they were a marked food for her. Then, there's eggs in a cup reminding me of cold winter mornings that had enough time to leisurely eat breakfast. We boil eggs, peel them, put them in a coffee cup, add lots of butter, and smush them up. Even when I didn't like eggs any other way I could always eat eggs in a cup. Now, on to tin roof sundaes--a Van Faussien tradition. I always think of my mother when I think of these delectable deserts--vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce (not fudge sauce), and peanuts. I preferred to mix mine up like a milkshake although for some reason that drove my father crazy. When I lived by myself one of my greatest joys was mixing my ice cream and chocolate sauce up like a milkshake in a bowl.

I detect a theme here...I like foods that are eaten in dishes one normally wouldn't expect them to be eaten in. Eggs in a cup....milkshake in a bowl....does this unveil the food dependent rebel in me? What does this mean about me, about my personality, about my dependencies? I have no idea, but I suspect with a little more thought I might just happen upon something.

Other comfort foods might reveal other patterns of behavior. Grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches. Broiled open face tomato and cheese sandwiches. Macaroni and cheese (the way Marcia makes it). Hamburgers, french frieds, and milkshakes on Friday nights. Food was important to my whole family, and perhaps an organizing theme for our family unit. I've noticed this before and have commented on it (don't recall if I've written about it). Every time my parents were coming to visit, or I was going there to visit, food was a major topic of conversation before the visit, during the visit, and after the visit. Before each visit, my dad (mostly) and my mom (because dad drug her into it) would spend hours planning menus, verifying them with me, shopping for them, talking about each day's menu, making adjustments, and finally during the visit, the whole time was spent with food. Dad would always cook a big breakfast (and I do mean big) and then we'd clean up. By the time the kitchen was cleaned up, it was time to prepare for lunch (no peanut butter and jelly there, Dad never liked it). After lunch, we'd have to clean up the kitchen again and then it was time for the dinner prep to begin. Dinner time, and then more cleanup. We'd spend 8 hours a day preparing for or cleaning up after meals, and approximately 1 hour actually at the table. An absolutely amazing imbalance of time spent...not to mention the stress, arguments, and passive behaviors that surrounded all of this activity. It's a wonder anyone had any appetite for most of these meals.

But this means something. Was my father's preoccupation with food a result of not having enough as a child. He was near the end of the line of 9 children during the depression (he was born in 1926). His father was self-employed much of that time and I cannot imagine he brought in much income. Was putting enough food on the table my father's vision of being a good provider? What else did he consider to be consistent with a good provider? Over expressions of love? Rare, but understood if one wanted to. Discipline? Frequent, misunderstood as hate rather than love and perhaps misguided on his part at times. I remember one time my mother said to me, "Honey, we did the best we could with what we had and what we knew." That meant to me that no matter how I understood some of their behaviors that their intent was to be good parents whether or not I perceived them to be or not.

And they were, although I wasn't always aware of it at the time. Together they appeared united to me, showing a consistency that was important to devleping certain patterns of behavior in me and my siblings. If they disagreed about how to respond to certain incidents, I was never aware of it and that was important in order for me to focus on my behaviors not their inconsistencies. Had they been inconsistent I think I might not have recognized that their response to my behaviors was a direct result of my behavior, not of inadequate judgement on their part.

So, those are my first thoughts...random, unorganized, just flowing as Bradbury says they should. Now, I might just decide to go back and pick one of these ideas up and do something with it. Or, I might just decide to let them all lay there...which will be alright because tomorrow I should try writing another 1000 words based upon a word association.

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mccomas, July 7, 2002 at 4:38:05 AM CEST

Becoming Stories

An essay inspired by Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury.

For only after, can one nail down, examine, explain. To try to know before hand is to freeze and kill. (p. 116)

All through the essays in this book, Bradbury talks about sitting down to write something and how it became this or that or this other thing. I understand what he means about trying to know beforehand...yet, that's how most of us were taught to write. We did a little research, created an outline, and stuck to it (and in some cases, lost points if we didn't stick to the outline). Now, I'm all about planning and prep work (notice how I have asked my students this semester to develop a project prospectus) but I do understand, better now that I've been writing for awhile, how work evolves and does become something different than what I thought at first. When I get into trouble, and it's quite often that I do when writing, is when I try to stick to the outline or refuse to let a piece of work become what it wants to be.

I first heard of this concept from Dolores who shared what Don Gallera(sp?) had said in a workshop one time. He said he often asked his students, while they were writing, "What does this piece want to become?" I know that pieces do have their own personalities. I, myself, have turned essays into poems because that's what they were. What I struggle with is the writing that has to be done on a schedule and perhaps just not giving myself enough writing time to let a piece evolve, to discover what the piece wants to be, and even to let it become that if I happen to discover the true nature of a piece of writing.

I'm thinking back to my book chapter (the book is due out this coming fall--finally!). The early drafts of that work are so amazingly bad. I found it difficult to push myself forward on the work and felt fraudulent, as if I should have explained to James, "I'm sorry, but I can't write...you might think I have something to tell, and I do, but I can't write." But, because I had made a commitment, I did push forward, hoever slowly and laboriously, trying to make the piece be something, instead of letting it become. It took a long while until I was able to let it become and right now, as I am writing this, I realize that it was after James had given me his first feedback that I felt like I could begin to let the piece evolve. He gave me some positive feedback, something like "this is a decent draft" and then some things to think about. Hearing him classify my work up to that point as a decent draft made me feel as though I had made progress but it also freed me to play with the work a little because if my playing didn't go anywhere, I could always go back to that "decent draft." This freedom made me feel safe, safe enough to take a risk and that's how that piece changed over time.

So, what does this tell me? It tells me that I hang on to tight to my words (I wrote somewhere else in the last couple of days about how seriously I take myself) and I need to let go; it tells me that I need to take risks in order to get the big payola; it tells me that I need to get out of the way of my words and my mind in order to give them their own life; it tells me that stories develop in minds where thoughts are allowed to roam freely without fear of or exposure to those internal censors we use.

And what does this piece of writing want to become? I don't really know right now. So far it's becoming a discovery piece for me...a place to figure out and articulate (perhaps what I already knew, at least subconsciously) the places where I have the most room to grow as a writer. It's a piece that might want to become an essay, or a prose poem, or a found poem. I don't know yet, but what I do know is that if I stand in its way it will become nothing. What Bradbury has taught me, however, is that it's only after I am done writing that I might know what this piece wants to become...and that I might not know it for a very long time.

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mccomas, July 4, 2002 at 7:23:28 PM CEST

The Big Dipper

An essay inspired by Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury.

Bradbury talks about dipping water out of the well. He says:

And, of course, the more water you dip out the more flows in. (p. 81)

I remember the first time I read this book. It was probably in 1997 or 1998. I was on a Greyhound bus bound for Detroit to visit my brother and his small (then) family. It was the one semester that Marshall had a legitimate fall break and sometime in the middle of October we had a Friday and a Monday off. I had decided to take advantage of the extra time and go for a visit. I read the book, and made some notes, all the way to Detroit. This served two purposes for me. One, I could easily stay buried in my book, thus avoiding eye contact with those new passengers searching for a seat (I wanted the whole row to myself so I could spread out, stretch my legs, pile my books and papers up in the empty seat beside me). The second purpose was that I simply had enough unstructured time during this trip that I was able to read some and write some. Time is the most scarce commodity for me and I realized I needed to take full advantage of it.

Of the things I read about in Bradbury, two ideas really stood out to me. The whole notion of keeping lists (he reports keeping lists of nouns, my variation on that was to keep a list of titles of the pieces I would probably write one day). By keeping those lists, I was able to dip some water out of the well of memories I had stored, some in untouchable places. And, I discovered that Bradbury was right! As I dipped out the titles, more memories, and consequently more titles, flowed in. Since that time I have gone back and written about some of the items on the list; others remain on the list as titles only. It is perhaps one of the most productive kinds of writing I have done, yet I failed to keep up with it.

This opportunity then, to read Bradbury again (perhaps my unconscious reason for suggesting the book), shames me into acknowledging my lack of discipline in dipping out of the well. It also provides the perfect opportunity to begin dipping overflowing scoops of memories out of the well in order for other memories to flood in. While Bradbury's memories are mostly of a personal kind used as mulch (and yes, sometimes fodder) for his stories, it is just as conceiveable that teaching memories would be as appropriate for such a list as personal memories. Perhaps it is my task on this blog to begin such a list...both of personal memories and of teaching memories...of the critical incident kind? It is exactly these kind of memories that I prefer to write about, to think about. The ways in which my personal memories and my professional memories intersect openly reveal who I am as a person and as a teacher.

"I teach who I am," Parker Palmer writes (in The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life) and this is what I mean by the intersection. The point at which my personal and professional lives intersect is the very point at which I am the most real, the most truthful, the most alive. I personally like reading the stories of others that describe these points of intersection; the stories that let me see into the mind of another, to stand beside that other and see what they see, to imitate the thoughts and questions asked by the other as ways to uncover, shovel load by shovel load, the ins and outs of me.

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mccomas, July 4, 2002 at 1:57:15 PM CEST

Seeing

An essay inspired by Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury (p. 79-80)

Then I took a long look...

As I read this particular passage it struck me that when I am writing, I never look outward. I never look to see what is there, I always look inward and looking inward only reveals feelings to me. Bradbury is talking about both seeing and feeling when writing and describing (or showing as in "Show me, don't tell me.") what he sees and what he feels.

I'm reminded of a long drive home from a softball game in Milton one suffocating weekend in late July two years ago (or so). It was late in the afternoon and the shadows were falling earlier each day. While half dozing I was infused with the total green-ness of my surroundings--everywhere I looked it was green. I looked to my right and saw green grass and followed that green grass with my eyes until I saw green trees and I followed those green trees with my eyes as they stretched to the sky and bent over slightly at the top to cover the road and kiss the leaves of trees on the other side also bending over slightly to cover the road. I followed those kissed leaves down to my left until they blended into the green grass on the left side of the car. Together, all this green created a carpet of softness to tread upon and a canopy overhead to shade and protect us. It occurred to me then that I never, ever look up.

I am always looking at what is right in front of my face or I look down or I look inside. By only looking at what is right in front of my face, I miss the wholeness of things--the bigger meanings (such as trees into canopies)--and I lose my perspective of where I fit into my surroundings. By only looking down I can never see where I'm going only how I'm getting there. And, by only looking inside, I dwell far too much on feelings and thoughts--the abstractness of my life--instead of things concrete and tangible, things with density and mass.

Two years ago in late July I was determined to start looking up and outward. I did, for a while, but I've forgotten how to do that. Bradbury is talking about consciously doing that every single day while writing whatever comes to mind. He revisits places in his mind and writes about what he sees in those places; he revisits people in his mind and writes about what those people look like; he writes about the concrete and by doing that he is able to explain the abstract. I'm vowing again, today--right here in this blog, to start looking up and outward.

To my left is a pile of laundry, unsorted, providing an interesting collection of colors and shapes. If I squint my eyes just a little, the pile blurs and looks just like an impressionistic painting with no specific form and shape but endless possibilities. The wall in front of me contains six tiny nail holes where things used to hang (and here Bradbury would probably try to recall what used to hang there and then describe them). There is also a heart shape with swatches of red and blue fabric tied around the metal frame with a bright red ribbon at the top which serves as a way to hang the heart on the small brass cuphook screwed into the wall. Above the cloth heart is a cross-stitched sampler, a gift to me from a friend. The sampler is on a cream colored fabric with blue threads forming the shapes of four houses, red thread for the alphabet surrounding the houses on all four sides and red thread creating the outermost border in the shape of a checkerboard. The sampler is doublematted (red and blue) in a walnut frame with each side of the frame extending below or beyond the side it is framing, forming and "x" in each corner of the frame. The entire piece is covered with glass. To the left of the sampler and the cross heart is another piece of work, a light blue square of card stock with two holes punched in the uppermost right hand corners to support a dark blue ribbon used to hang the piece on a nail much to large for this wall or this piece. The card has red handprints, one right hand and one left hand, and white paint surrounding the handprints like cumulous clouds on the first day of summer. At the bottom and slightly to the left of center is printed: K a t i e. Standing, I turn this piece over, looking for a date and realize I have not dated this work and am not certain when it was made. Kindergarten (1985)? First grade (1986)? I make a note to ask Katie as she remembers everything.

Ah, Bradbury has forced me to look and to see and to describe the results of this visual feast I have fed on this morning. It occurs to me that my interest in narrative and stories will benefit from this kind of exercise. If I want to write stories based on the narratives of people's lives and experiences, then I must be able to describe, not tell, so that my readers can stand where I am standing and see what I am seeing.

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