Quotes - E.B. White

I've been on a non-fiction kick lately so I pored through The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present, compiled by Phillip Lopate.

Here are a few words pulled from E.B. White's wonderful essay, The Ring of Time:

For the writers among us (or maybe for anyone, really)

It has been ambitious and plucky of me to attempt to describe what is indescribable, and I have failed, as I knew I would. But I have discharged my duty to society; and besides, a writer, like an acrobat, must occasionally try a stunt that is too much for him.

For everyone

The only sense that is common, in the long run, is the sense of change - and we all instinctively avoid it, and object to the passage of time, and would rather have none of it.

I've glossed over a lot of the essay, especially regarding the African-American Civil Rights Movement (which has, apparently, been left out of some of the reproductions found online).  Overall, the essay is masterfully written, and well worth reading in its entirety.

Oh, and "plucky" is a word that needs to grow into regular usage. Who's with me?

Huh? What?!

If you’re observant enough, you can catch me staring at the ceiling, or a blank computer screen, or my fingernails, or the wall. If so, you’ve just caught me while I was lost in my mind. Ask me what I was doing, and I’d have a heck of a time trying to tell you.

Fact is, I was gone: from the room, from my senses, and from the moment.

Much of what brings this on eludes me. I’ve tried to think it through, to see where my absentmindedness came from, but I end up in the same place, and with my face pointed in the same direction: toward the ceiling, toward the blank computer screen, toward my fingernails…

While I can’t recall much from my thoughts of the problem, my bookshelf contains evidence of my search. “Dissociation” and “Stress” are words on some of the spines of my books. From what I gleaned by reading, my inattentiveness is how I cope with stress, a mechanism I used to survive some traumatic event as a kid.

Now, I haven’t seen a professional in a while so I’m not diagnosing myself, but this is something I want to explore a bit.

So, I’ve been affected by trauma. It’s something that I try not to admit because I’m afraid I’d use it to get pity, and I hate it when I do that. But, I’ll make that claim for the sake of this topic. I guess the trauma involves my sister's, Joan's, declining health, or the witnessing of it. It’s a topic that I have touched on before, so I won’t go through much of it now. I don’t feel like talking about it anyway.

Even thinking on it for a minute, I can see how I moved myself inward, trying to ignore the partially garbled words of her decayed speech, and successfully ignoring her when her speech turned into garbled moans. It was easier to stare at the wall and pretend that it emitted a white noise, coating all of my senses, drawing me away from the reality of her condition. At the few moments when I'm aware and I hear her gargle her spit, I cringe. It's a reaction that I can’t help.

Perhaps it’s my awkward way of mourning for what she’s lost. I'd like to think so, at least.

I don’t think that this trauma is the sole cause for my loopy mind. I haven’t ruled out the lack of sleep, poor diet, the Internet, and that awful commute on the 91 freeway as culprits or co-conspirators. Also, there’s only so much I can glean from this introspection before I start navel gazing.

And if you see me do that, be kind and poke me on the shoulder. Thanks!

If Only I Could

The days I hate the most are when I hear my sister, Joan, cry from her room. Depending on how urgently she needs something, or how much pain she is in, her cries range from whimpers to loud groans. It's the only way she can communicate, having lost her speech to encephalitis (so I've been told) back when she was about nine or ten years old.

What bothers me about those days is the feeling of helplessness. It's been a long and frustrating path of deterioration for her: she lost her ability to walk about seven years back, and her ability to swallow food two years back (this event, in particular, I can write volumes on... when I'm ready). I spent most of my adolescence caring for her. Both of my parents worked at the time. When I came home from school, I waited for her bus; led her to the bathroom, back when she could walk; fed her, back when she could eat; and sat with her in front of the TV. Then I stopped, either because I was too busy or I was tired of the responsibility. Between then and now, I've forgotten how to care for her. It wouldn't matter anyway; given her current state, I wouldn't know what to do for her.

Guilt sets in too. I made the decision to stop, or so I remember. If I was busy, then I stopped because I preferred my own activities over my sister. If I was sick of caring for her, then I placed my need to stop over her needs. Either way, the guilt is persistent and hard to shake off. And it gets worse as she regresses.

What used to keep me sane when I heard or saw Joan was a sense of entitlement. I traded in most of my teen years, so I saw it fair to break away from my responsibilities to her. I earned my right to be guilt-free, I thought. I learned since that this freedom isn't attained that easily or, more likely, at all. I've been sad since she became ill, and will probably be sad even after she's gone. So I live, knowing that I don't have a choice. To move forward knowing that I have little control is the closest I can ever get to freedom, or sanity.

I hope Joan knows this too. There are only a few things she concerns herself with: she's in pain and she groans to let us know; though her strength has faded a bit, she still likes to smile and laugh (especially when she watches "I Love Lucy"); and she continues to see each day, as long as she's here. At least, I hope so. If she worries about her condition, I don't know if I can deal with it.

[Update]
Now with audio!

Up Late

Anxiety has gotten the better of me again, so I'm awake when I really want and need sleep.

What am I so worked up about? A lot, it so happens. I wish I have the energy to explain it all, and I hope to do so in the future. Part of why I mention this now is so I can remind myself to elaborate.

However, I will say this: every time something different happens, beyond the space of my room, my mind obsesses over it. When I start a new book, I lose sleep. When I meet a new friend, I can't rest. When I try a new sleep schedule (for, you know, like a job), I might as well forget about it because I'll never pass out.

In the end, I am left with a feeling that I can't put down.

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Cheesy Crackers: More Free, More Me

Less Focus, For Now. I'll figure out a structure and style that works for me, eventually. Preferably one that isn't wordy, but isn't forced either.

If any of that makes any sense. Which brings me to this:

Coming Soon[er or later]: A Blog Post In Which I Am Satisfied With Its Coherency

A Milestone

Last night, I bought books off of Half.com and Amazon Marketplace, via Cheapesttextbooks.com.

I worry that they will rip me off and I won't see my money or my books. Still, I can check off "Saving Ridiculous Amounts of Money Through Unknown, Online Sellers" from my list. I am now aware of one more piece of the Internet; one step closer to knowing what my peers, most surely, have already known for years.

I feel it is my duty to catch up. I can't lag too far behind the times - older people need me.

In my mind, embarrassment has a value and is created with each post I make here. And, in my mind, its value can degrade over time.

In this case, I like to hide for a few months until the embarrassment dissipates. Then I'll post something else - that gives me a new reason to hide again.

I can also bury the value through consistent posting. You know, that whole law of diminishing returns deal. People will get so used to my weirdness and idiocy that they'll take it as something normal.

Maybe I'll try the latter this time.

Just Short

Perhaps, like my stature, my ability to communicate is rather short.

I think big when I go through my day. I think about, especially when I was younger, cool situations that I could be in, like I was in a TV show. And there has been more than one instance when I came to some kind of philosophical thought that was worth a good essay or two. But in the end, all I'm willing to put down is a summary of my thoughts, messily packed in a few sentences.

I don't even know if I'm making any sense at this moment, and I've kept myself from acting because of it. Am I afraid? Am I confused? Maybe a little bit of both. I've been so used to having other people tell me what to do that I freeze in place when I want to command myself.

Does any of this make sense? Probably not, but I suppose I shouldn't care.

In publishing this, do I look like a fool? Should I care if I do?

Again, I suppose I shouldn't, but this goes against my feelings.

Late Night Musing

Note the singular.

I'm sitting around - on a computer, in UCR, after 1AM.

This is a quick post since I haven't had the time to reflect... What I can say right now is that I feel a bit of nostalgia, regret, and confusion as I walk through the campus. Now, why do you think that is?

Something fun (and lucrative) to try.

I was checking out The Mark on the Wall when I found a link to submission guidelines for - get this - a Norton Anthology of Hint Fiction.

Here is the first part of the post:

Tentatively scheduled for the fall of 2010, W.W. Norton will publish an anthology of Hint Fiction. What is Hint Fiction? It’s a story of 25 words or less that suggests a larger, more complex story. The thesis of the anthology is to prove that a story 25 words or less can have as much impact as a story 2,500 words or longer. The anthology will include between 100 and 150 stories. We want your best work.

Other things worth noting is that they're paying $25 for each story - with a limit of two submissions. Or you could submit three, if you're like me, and linked the guidelines to your blog or twitter, just like I'm doing right... now.

Delayed News

I didn't want to mention anything until I figured out all my grades, since it would be embarrassing enough to renege if things turned south after this announcement. However, the results are in, so...

I graduated from the University of California - Riverside with a Bachelor's of Arts in Creative Writing.

That was fun to type. I think I'll open up a word document and type it all again a dozen more times.

An Old Dinosaur

I was feeling self conscious this morning, so I looked up my name on the internet and found this old thing. It's pretty bad stuff, but I figure it's worth sharing for a chuckle or two.

However, even though the writing is crude, I can remember the passion that drove me to create. I'm a better at the craft now, but I've lost that energy.

I didn't know any better then, so I had blindly put down words on the page without much regard to rhythm, images, or even comprehension - which is probably why I enjoyed making the contents for that web page. I know more now, but my writing has slowed down in a big way.

At any rate, enjoy the past while I try to figure out the login for the site, because it's going down as soon as I find it. If I ever do...

Stomachs and Crickets

I can't sleep. My stomach feels like it's running circles under my lungs. I take short breaths as I listen to the crickets chirp. If I was tired, the sound would seem distant, filtered by the fog of my drowsiness. But the chirping is loud. I'm not bothered by the noise, however, so much as the fact that I'm alert. I can't relax.

Is it because I have a lot on my mind? Sure. There is a journalism class that I'd rather sleep through, a Shakespeare lecture I haven't read for, and a creative non-fiction class late in the evening. The last one is especially stressful because I have to critique essays I haven't looked at yet. I also have my own essay up for scrutiny, which is horrible.

I had proposed something different. It was supposed to be a fun paper describing the awesomeness of my plain looks. I had good conversations with friends that I wanted to include in the essay, and I had a point that I was excited to convey: you don't have to jazz yourself up to feel important (actual phrase under construction). However, I had a hard time writing about it. I kept getting bored of the prose and I struggled with concrete details. So, I wrote about the difficulty of writing concretely. I ended up submitting a three and a half page whine about how I can't write. At least, that's how I see it, kind of like this blog. Am I not whining right now?

But I digress. What is really bothering me is my fiction writing, which is not happening. It's my sudden obsession with details, or rather the lack of it in my writing that's causing this.

It used to be that if you let me do my thing, I would come back with a story that had mostly abstractions. "He was angry," "it didn't make sense," and "she liked to sing" made good statements but were backed up by sparse or weak concrete details like "he punched the wall," "they raised their eyebrows," or she hummed a lot." And I would have been fine with all that before. But lately it has bothered me. I would look at a phrase like "he punched the wall" and ask, "okay, so what?" or "what about it?" and realize that there are many answers to choose from. The number of options scared me.

It's a classic case of fearing what's new. Trying to write more concretely is forcing me to think in a way I'm not used to. My usual reaction to the unfamiliar is to hide - so I stop writing.

I'm having a hell of a time fighting the urge to run from the fear. It's hard to move forward when the default mindset is to stand still. But my tense stomach (developing ulcer?) and insomnia are pushing me to get out of this slump. I figure if I conquer this fear and get used to it, these physiological problems will go away. It's not the healthiest way to write, but I'll take what I can get.

Okay, I changed my mind.

I’ve been blocked lately.

I’ve found myself cowering from the computer and its word processor. Coming up with words to express on paper feels like a chore. I can’t just throw everything down on the page and call it a day, no. I have to make sure that it’s coherent, not only to me, but to a professor, a classmate, or some friends. To do that is to tap into a part of my mind that’s sick of analyzing sentences and pulling out meaning or significance from them. The need to string ideas together, to create a flow of phrases that culminate into something useful or entertaining to the reader, has, I feel, taxed me so much that I’ve had to stop writing.

I’ve missed turning in a paper, a thesis submission, and many writing sessions on my notebook. I think it’s burnout, but I don’t want to call it that. I want to think that my mind is overwhelmed. My standards for my writing have changed. I demand more of it, but I don’t feel like I’ve improved to my expectations. Even this blog is starting to look like a gigantic mess to me. I am disheartened.

I hope this is just another problem to get through, a hitch to overcome if I am to ever call myself a writer. Framing it this way makes the whole thing seem less despairing, less pointless. It’s still painful though.

Yeah, yeah, yeah... Writing's hard. I really should just deal with it, huh?

I'm blocked because I'm not keeping my pen to the paper long enough.

Well, I guess it's time to go to work...

Into the Darkness I Go

I’ve been blocked lately.

I’ve found myself cowering from the computer and its word processor. Coming up with words to express on paper feels like a chore. I can’t just throw everything down on the page and call it a day, no. I have to make sure that it’s coherent, not only to me, but to a professor, a classmate, or some friends. To do that is to tap into a part of my mind that’s sick of analyzing sentences and pulling out meaning or significance from them. The need to string ideas together, to create a flow of phrases that culminate into something useful or entertaining to the reader, has, I feel, taxed me so much that I’ve had to stop writing.

I’ve missed turning in a paper, a thesis submission, and many writing sessions on my notebook. I think it’s burnout, but I don’t want to call it that. I want to think that my mind is overwhelmed. My standards for my writing have changed. I demand more of it, but I don’t feel like I’ve improved to my expectations. Even this blog is starting to look like a gigantic mess to me. I am disheartened.

I hope this is just another problem to get through, a hitch to overcome if I am to ever call myself a writer. Framing it this way makes the whole thing seem less despairing, less pointless. It’s still painful though.

Updates

Another quarter has ended at UCR. It was rather hectic, in the sense that I made it rather hectic. I tend to assume the metaphorical, and sometimes literal, fetal position every time I have to work on a homework assignment (see: procrastination). Sure, I destroy the opportunity to work comfortably, but I'll still do the job - once I'm sufficiently worried about passing the class.

It's like I want to see how much I can screw myself over before I finally get to work. Some people call it a fear of failure. A really smart professor had called it the fear of success. Either way, I've kept myself so busy from anxiety that I couldn't write here. Yet, I wonder how much I would write, even without the anxiety of school...

At any rate, here is a list of highlights:

• Had a couple of English classes last quarter which practically beat a habit of reading into me. I read every day now. However, I think I'll shorten my leisure reading to twenty-five or fifty pages a day, instead of the one-hundred and fifty pages a night I had to read for class.


• I can safely say that my writing has improved from a summer of reading and practice, along with last quarter's readings and practice, to the point that:
  
  
  • I wrote a story that seems to have the potential to be published.
  
  
  • I wrote a story that seems to be publishable as is.
  
  
• Oh yeah, I moved to Riverside. Life has been more tolerable ever since.

A teacher suggested that I send one of my stories to a specific venue. I'm not sure if I should send it there, as I have read some of their stories and I think that my story would be a downer for them. I have doubts. Then again, I always have doubts.

Picking Things Apart

One day, I hope to get it.

One day, I hope that all the years of taking in books on writing, seminars on writing, discussions on writing; poring through novels, publish short stories, unpublished short stories, short stories from workshops; and transmuting all those experiences into my free writes, outlines, shitty rough first drafts, and second-third-fourth-plus drafts will help me understand and write a good story.

In many ways, I hope that “mastery” in writing will become automatic, in the sense that improvement will come without an awareness of it. For a couple of years, I’ve tried to bend my consciousness to become a good writer. I have read stories/novels/books on writing, not to enjoy them but to dissect them. I peered through every sentence, looked at every word and tried to make sense of their organization to see how they achieved their effects. While it’s important to analyze text, I became obsessed over it. It was like cleaning grout from a tiled floor rather than a game of Where’s Waldo? I spent dozens of minutes per sentence. I didn’t get a lot of reading done. In the end, I kept giving up because of the frustration.

So, I’ve thrown away a little bit of the control freak inside of me. I’m less likely to initiate anxiety attacks. It’ll also keep me from repeatedly thudding my head against the wall, metaphorically speaking. But I’ll still maintain a keen eye into the workings of fiction. I just don’t want to look so close that I miss something.

Anxiety of Influence: A Play in One Act

(Note: I am aware that I haven't followed the conventions of scriptwriting. Leave me be.)

ACT I

[SCENE: A dialog in MS Word that precedes some writing.]

Me 1:
What are you afraid of?

Me 2:
I don’t know. I just don’t think that any of my descriptions and details are any good.

Me 1:
Why not?

Me 2:
I don’t know, I think about all the effective writing I’ve read and I’m afraid.

Me 1:
Why?

Me 2:
I don’t know. I seem to be inspired by the words of other people, but when I try to write them myself, I get scared.

Me 1:
Shouldn’t you write anyway? Most of the people that you admire are dead.

Me 2:
I know. I still need to get used to it.

Me 1:
Why don’t you think about it for a minute. Sensory imagery and all that shit. Get into the zone, don’t worry about other people and how they write.

Me 2:
I know, I’ve heard that before, but I can’t help it.

Me 1:
Do it, you should. And you should really avoid continuing this conversation, all you’re doing is distracting yourself.

Me 2:
I know I am, I’m just afraid, that’s all.

Me 1:
I know, don’t worry about it. Just chill out and, again, work out the details in your head, live the scene and your head and report what you see. That’s all you need to do. You don’t have to worry about flowering it up. Trust that you will get it eventually.

Me 2:
I don’t know if I can.

Me 1:
Come on, at least try.

Me 2:
Okay… let me try.

THE END

Upon reflection, I realize that this blog entry has also been an exercise in distraction. Back to work!

Temporary Silence

I just want to let you, my readers (both real and theoretical), know that I will be with limited internet access until Sunday. So, that means few or no updates until then.

See you next week!

I'll Need a New Character Sheet

Characters have been the focus of my freewrites lately. I manage to write down a character's appearance, favorite childhood toy, sexual orientation, therapy bills, politics, savings accounts, and other things that come to mind, all in ten minutes. It's easy for me because I used to churn out these character statistics for sessions of Dungeons and Dragons.

These character sketches are not written well enough to make biographies, as I connect these traits through word/phrase association. Sometimes the combinations are pretty crazy thanks to my strange world view (e.g. a navy brat who likes to scratch her back with a philips screwdriver). Yet, they work out in the end. So, I've finally found a productive way to freewrite, which excites me.

This means that I can write new stories. I'm not very good with plotting ahead, so I rely on my characters to lead me through it. If the characters are strong enough, with many strange, yet believable quirks, they'll end up in good stories. At least, that's what I hope will happen. No worries.

I try not to stress over it. I've done that before, and it's only led me to nothing. So, I'm going to trust in the "practice makes perfect" cliché and stick to it. That's what I want to do. Maybe, that's all I can do.


Oh yeah, one more thing:

I have considered a change in my blog labels because they might be too generic. For example, there are posts that contain rants about my writing, and others that contain tips on writing - but they're both labeled "writing" because they're about my experience in writing. Do you think this is appropriate, or should I diversify my labels? Suggestions are welcome and appreciated. Thanks!