sistermagpie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sistermagpie) wrote2004-10-26 02:22 pm
sistermagpie) wrote2004-10-26 02:22 pm
Entry tags:
Banging head on the looking glass
When I was little I used to sit in front of mirrors and try to figure out a way to get inside. I was especially fascinated by the reflection of my bedroom on the window at night; for some reason that looked even more 3-dimensional and climb-into-able than the mirror at times.
Also, the pull chain on the light in my mother's closet had this little geometric plastic thingie hanging from it that seemed like it was very cozy inside (like I Dream of Jeannie's bottle) and would be good to travel around the world in to go on adventures, maybe travel through time and other dimensions. It was very pink. I also used to draw secret doors in the stone wall underneath the hill in my backyard.
The point of this being,
I mean *that* kind of writing, where you can actually write yourself into the mirror? Because that's what reading a good book feels like to me. I think that's why I like big fat detailed universes like the kind in Victorian novels, because you open this brick on the subway and literally drop into another world for a while. I just feel like since I've been very small I've struggled to actually create something like that and how do people do it?
It's not just being able to use words well. I'm much more confident about words when I'm using them to argue or explain or just converse. But using them to...create is damned hard. It's like doing more with less, in a way. In grad school I took one English lit class and while I obviously love analyzing literature it made me run happily back to the Arts department because I felt like as much as I liked talking about the text it was just a whole different world than writing a text. I don't usually feel like the two things have to be set up against each other at all, but I remember feeling kind of annoyed at what seemed like a desire to own or claim the text through analysis. Specifically, I remember thinking that the woman teaching me Virginia Woolf (it was a class in Modernist Lit) so obviously thought Virginia Woolf would think she was really cool, if she'd known her. And maybe she would, but maybe she wouldn't--maybe she would have liked some person who has totally different tastes than you do. And even if she did, who cares? The artist is nothing compared to the art. It made me appreciate the people in my regular classes more, even if I didn't care a bit for what they were writing, you know?
I guess it's sort of an Easter egg phenomenon? A flawed story can yield up incredible analysis. The analysis can be "better" than the story, in fact. Yet the analysis is still dependent on the original text. It can't exist without it. The worst story, otoh, can exist perfectly well without analysis. Plus, while different theories can co-exist side-by-side, they are each separate unto themselves, whereas a story can just encompass all these different ideas at once. You crack it open and there's so much STUFF there--it's bigger on the outside than it is on the inside. It's an Easter egg. Or a prism. More metaphors! More! Okay, it's like Mother Gigogne and her Polichinelles--ha!
It's just so hard to get things out of your head and onto the paper. Not even just creating real people who say real things that subtly move along a story while they sound like they're just shooting the breeze, but making you feel like you're there wherever there is. It's not just describing...well, it is because you have to help someone see/hear/taste/touch/smell it, but it's got to be there all the time, even if you're not aware of it...that means not just describing something but...infusing it with the feeling you want it to give the reader. So that as a reader I don't even care what's happening, I just want to be in that place. Sometimes if I think to notice what somebody is doing in a story, I'll realize I don't even know half the things they're telling me I'm looking at, or if I know them I might never think to picture them somewhere, you know? Like when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
willow_wode describes a barnyard I'm all, "I wouldn't even know those things are in a barnyard, but when she mentions them I can actually smell 'em!" Or this recent description from SohW:
I've been "seeing" those headstones ever since I read Chapter Four.
::Sigh:: I don't do that very naturally, which is weird because I "see" things in my head really clearly. In fact, I tend to stare at things in love to take a picture to keep in my head if I like it--there's a passage in Proust that describes that really well so made me incredibly happy to read, but I don't have it handy. He's staring at a small thicket of trees...
You have to do that with *everything* in fact--even characters are part of it. The characters have to seem to make sense, like little worlds in themselves, though really they're part of the larger world you're creating anyway, a world you pulled out of your head. I guess that's the amazing thing about art in general, that you're trying to take something of how you experience life and give it to somebody else, just translating it into music or dance or artwork or photography or whatever. Maybe that's part of the appeal of fanfic, that you're still sharing the inside of your head with people, but it gives you a structure to wrap yourself around. Or, um, something.
...shakes head, goes off muttering.
Also, the pull chain on the light in my mother's closet had this little geometric plastic thingie hanging from it that seemed like it was very cozy inside (like I Dream of Jeannie's bottle) and would be good to travel around the world in to go on adventures, maybe travel through time and other dimensions. It was very pink. I also used to draw secret doors in the stone wall underneath the hill in my backyard.
The point of this being,
I mean *that* kind of writing, where you can actually write yourself into the mirror? Because that's what reading a good book feels like to me. I think that's why I like big fat detailed universes like the kind in Victorian novels, because you open this brick on the subway and literally drop into another world for a while. I just feel like since I've been very small I've struggled to actually create something like that and how do people do it?
It's not just being able to use words well. I'm much more confident about words when I'm using them to argue or explain or just converse. But using them to...create is damned hard. It's like doing more with less, in a way. In grad school I took one English lit class and while I obviously love analyzing literature it made me run happily back to the Arts department because I felt like as much as I liked talking about the text it was just a whole different world than writing a text. I don't usually feel like the two things have to be set up against each other at all, but I remember feeling kind of annoyed at what seemed like a desire to own or claim the text through analysis. Specifically, I remember thinking that the woman teaching me Virginia Woolf (it was a class in Modernist Lit) so obviously thought Virginia Woolf would think she was really cool, if she'd known her. And maybe she would, but maybe she wouldn't--maybe she would have liked some person who has totally different tastes than you do. And even if she did, who cares? The artist is nothing compared to the art. It made me appreciate the people in my regular classes more, even if I didn't care a bit for what they were writing, you know?
I guess it's sort of an Easter egg phenomenon? A flawed story can yield up incredible analysis. The analysis can be "better" than the story, in fact. Yet the analysis is still dependent on the original text. It can't exist without it. The worst story, otoh, can exist perfectly well without analysis. Plus, while different theories can co-exist side-by-side, they are each separate unto themselves, whereas a story can just encompass all these different ideas at once. You crack it open and there's so much STUFF there--it's bigger on the outside than it is on the inside. It's an Easter egg. Or a prism. More metaphors! More! Okay, it's like Mother Gigogne and her Polichinelles--ha!
It's just so hard to get things out of your head and onto the paper. Not even just creating real people who say real things that subtly move along a story while they sound like they're just shooting the breeze, but making you feel like you're there wherever there is. It's not just describing...well, it is because you have to help someone see/hear/taste/touch/smell it, but it's got to be there all the time, even if you're not aware of it...that means not just describing something but...infusing it with the feeling you want it to give the reader. So that as a reader I don't even care what's happening, I just want to be in that place. Sometimes if I think to notice what somebody is doing in a story, I'll realize I don't even know half the things they're telling me I'm looking at, or if I know them I might never think to picture them somewhere, you know? Like when
willow_wode describes a barnyard I'm all, "I wouldn't even know those things are in a barnyard, but when she mentions them I can actually smell 'em!" Or this recent description from SohW: "The lawn sloped gently down toward a thicket of trees, dotted with row after row of monuments that wavered and ran in his sight, liquid grey. Past them, Harry thought he could see, barely visible, a circle of low, plain headstones huddled amongst the trees, separated from the rest of the graves by a narrow stream."
I've been "seeing" those headstones ever since I read Chapter Four.
::Sigh:: I don't do that very naturally, which is weird because I "see" things in my head really clearly. In fact, I tend to stare at things in love to take a picture to keep in my head if I like it--there's a passage in Proust that describes that really well so made me incredibly happy to read, but I don't have it handy. He's staring at a small thicket of trees...
You have to do that with *everything* in fact--even characters are part of it. The characters have to seem to make sense, like little worlds in themselves, though really they're part of the larger world you're creating anyway, a world you pulled out of your head. I guess that's the amazing thing about art in general, that you're trying to take something of how you experience life and give it to somebody else, just translating it into music or dance or artwork or photography or whatever. Maybe that's part of the appeal of fanfic, that you're still sharing the inside of your head with people, but it gives you a structure to wrap yourself around. Or, um, something.
...shakes head, goes off muttering.