One of the most frustrating things to run into, I find, is to get a review from someone who cannot distinguish the writer of a story or a poem from the narrator of the aforementioned. I realise that it can be tricky, but one of the first things I was taught at Uni when I started getting into literature was never to confuse the two, and, more importantly- never to assume that the writer is the speaker. It can be interesting, of course, to consider the possibility that, say, Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder wrote his poetry based entirely on personal experience, but it would be a grave mistake and would certainly not do his work much justice even if it does seem to fit. (Often overlooked fact: many of his sonnets were actually translations of Petrarch's works!)

I personally get annoyed when these things happen, and sadly enough, they happen all too often. In fact, I don't think I've written a single poem that hasn't been mistaken for my own personal story at some point or other. While it is certainly true that every writer eventually uses some personal experience to write something, that does not mean that everything they write is necessarily about them. Often it is much more abstract, a touch of reality to breathe life into a story otherwise entirely made up. Let's face it, when we want to write believably, we draw on real life experience to add colour to our verbal paintings.

So why is it that, even though deep down we all know this, whenever we find something that is written very evocatively, we end up assuming that it must have been reality for the writer? Sure, sometimes that's true. Writing can be a very powerful tool, and can make for pretty effective therapy... but we're not all in therapy! (Right? >.>)

I guess it sometimes bothers me that often enough people manage to completely miss the point... by miles and miles. A lot of literature references other works, often the Bible or classics from Homer and Ovid to somewhat more recent works like Dante's Divina Commedia. I learned very quickly that in order to understand the subject matter of my studies properly, I needed the immense amount of background knowledge which I was fortunate enough to have acquired before ever even going to Uni in the first place. (Many of my fellow students were not that lucky.)

I find myself following that trend somehow. Sometimes I just write whatever pops into my head at any given time (on a train, while strolling in the forest), and sometimes I write about some issue or other I read about; social commentaries wrapped up in a mythological fabric. Crucially, though, you need to know your classics to understand poems that draw heavily on said classics.


The Laurel Tree is an intense poem however you interpret it, but you won't really get the imagery unless you know the myth of Daphne and Apollo, and you'll probably miss what the real issue is unless you also know the story of Lucretia. True, not everyone will be equally well-read, but I like to think that people are not too lazy to wiki a name if they see it referenced in a poem. It takes, what, a whole 10 seconds? Heck, I find that when a writer drops a name, they're dropping clues, and my inner detective must investigate. (Something about a dog and the night time...)

So, even though I know that I may not be the easiest writer out here, and may be a little hard to interpret, I still get annoyed when I get unhelpful reviews like "it's good to channel your pain into a tree metaphor". I'm sure it's well meant, but... no. Just no. :)
 

...it strikes hard.

I cannot be the only person to go through periods of complete creative dysfunction only to wake up one morning with a thousand-and-one ideas. It is sometimes frustrating to not be able to sit down and write anything at all when I have time and reasonable clarity of mind, while at other times I have long days at work to look forward to(?) and no gaps at all to sit down and put to paper the little snippets of ideas that drift through my mind.

One of the solutions I have found for this is just to always carry a little notebook around in which I scribble whatever pops into my head. The one I have now is small, blue, and since it first saw use a few months ago, has become half-filled already. It contains one short story, the first chapter of Maison Diable (unpublished!), various poems, random one-liners, snippets of to-be-used dialogue and even little bits of research for ideas that want to remain adrift a little longer. Strange how these things work out.

I find it difficult to focus my attention on any one thing for very long, and so I have decided that it is simply easier to do everything at once... more or less, anyway. As a result I am currently working on 4(!) full-length novels, a screenplay, and a short story cycle. It is strangely refreshing to switch from one project to another at will and so far it's turned out to be a small miracle as far as my creativity is concerned. I've written more in the past 6 months than I have the 5 years before. It is easy to draw parallels with my previous relationship and the end of it, but that wouldn't be entirely fair.

Not that I ever post much of what I write... A lot of my stuff is unfinished, too rough around the edges, or simply too incoherent outside of its context to make sense to anyone who doesn't know the whole story (which would be basically anyone not me). The Construction Site makes for a pretty nice dump of stuff just like this, but even there I don't want to post anything that wouldn't at least make a vaguely interesting read on its own. Such dilemmas!

Two of the novels I am working on are part of a much larger project, if that is even the right word of it. For those among us who know their Tolkien (I sure do!) the words the tale grew in the telling must seem awfully familiar. While I am by no means Tolkien 2.0, I am beginning to understand the sentiments that spawned that phrase. Creating your own world is far harder than it seems, although its roots can be as little as a faraway castle over yonder mountain past the roaring rivers of eternity. What ensnares the writer, however, is how it got there. Before you know it, you've spawned a full-fledged Myth of Creation, the origins of evil, several dynasties of kings, various nations that each have their own traditions, and of course a hero with an epic quest to go on. If that wasn't enough, the people met along the way each have their own story to tell, and before you know it, you're writing those too. At some point, the writer has to take the approach of the Neverending Story and say that that is another tale for another time. Never ending story indeed.

One of the things I hope to be posting in some form or other soon is Great Arcana, a short story cycle based on the 22 cards of the tarot popularly referred to by that name. I got the idea while reading Neil Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors and it has stuck with me ever since, although I have no intention of linking it specifically to vampires, and my stories are thus far a deal longer than Gaiman's handful of brilliant paragraphs. (And, as a side note, I hope I won't get stuck on 15 or less like he did.) I started working on it purely as a writing exercise (take a theme, write a story), but it's evolved into something more serious from there and has even weaved its way into the Legends of the Seven Realms (also unpublished).

And for some inexplicable reason, most of this creative process occurs when I'm travelling- either during the 40 or so minutes of daily commute, or on trains and airplanes to more distant places. The 3 Poèmes de la Gare Montparnasse are definitely the most expressive case in point.