The Grasshopper #67: Art of Life

It’s bookended by death, and that’s alright

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

I had a nice graphic of quotes by famous painters on creativity but Substack won’t let me load it and I’m away from my laptop to try and figure it out. Maybe next week.

Artists as philosophers, no big surprise. Creativity is about curiosity and specifically, curiosity about the nature of life and death. One thing we know a lot about and one we never will.

All of those quotes above are about being present in the moment, aware of the vibratory nature of that moment, and interpreting it in whatever form of expression you pursue.

I have spent quite a bit of time in a hospital this past week, not as a patient, as a family member. They are strange places, sterile by design and that sterility leaves you starving for a dose of life, looking out the room’s window at a glimpse of green foliage in a thunderstorm. Your mind’s eye begins to hunger for that chaos outside the glass.

As a writer, I always circle back to that glimpse of greenery. There is a scene at the end of The Lord of the Rings when Frodo, exhausted to near death by the weight of the Ring and the darkness of Mordor, can no longer imagine a green world. It is a master touch by Tolkien that shows impending death, hopelessness, and the coming of a great tragedy.

Of course that tragedy is avoided but Frodo is left a changed creature, unable to completely enjoy life, another kind of tragedy.

Despite my hospital sojourns I’m not feeling a darkness because the people working there are so positive and helpful. They break the sterile veneer. Working in healthcare requires a personality capable of compassion in the hardest times.

So does art.

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Now that I’m doing The Grasshopper once a week instead of twice (The Witness Chronicles also is once weekly), I find myself dipping into the weekly doc and adding things in smaller bites. This place is where I step away from politics and the alarmist game of writing about climate and just share my thoughts.

As a long time writer, the idea that I can have an audience of my own is a new one. It’s one of the reasons I advocate for writers to take the plunge and publish online. I know it can be frustrating at first when you don’t have momentum or readers but it requires patience. It’s definitely one of those ‘if you build it, they might come’ things.

But what if you are not attracting readers? I think the answer is fairly simple, bordering on glib. The things you write are just not that interesting or original. That’s a hard thing to admit to yourself but it is integral to being an artist to face these kinds of realizations.

The good news is there is an audience for almost any set of interests, no matter how specific they are. If you go to the Substack home page and scan the various newsletter articles you’ll see an astounding array of subject matter from thousands of writers. Yes, some have few subscribers, but a surprising number have fairly substantial reader bases, even for the most obscure topics.

I’m still amazed that my numbers grow every month. I’m at around 1000 subscribers here after 16 months. I never expected that with all the competition out here. I have paid subscribers but the income is more like coffee money than income. That’s ok, this is a personal project and I am very happy with it so far.

I’m currently adding about 50 subs a month, a growth rate I am fine with for now. When writing this, I debated about giving out numbers, but given that I am trying to encourage my fellow writers to dive in I thought it might be motivating.

So what if your ideas are not resonating with readers? My first thought is they are not your ideas and you are likely, subconsciously or not, writing what you think will sell rather than what you are passionate about. Everyone has things they are passionate about and there are people out there who share that passion.

In my case, I have a real fascination with human nature as evidenced by the craziness of politics. I also feel the necessity to witness the effects of climate change. Fortunately for me, these two topics are intimately related, giving me access to a larger audience over on Medium.

It may take some experimentation to find your sweet spot. It did for me. For my first few years writing for Medium, growth was slow and I wrote about a lot of random topics. This lack of focus meant readers had no reason to follow me, the key to online success. When I zeroed in, my readership rapidly increased to where it is today with about 6000 followers.

It grows steadily, lending truth to the ‘slow and steady wins the race’ rule.

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“If you want to keep a secret, you must keep it from yourself.”

~ George Orwell

What is my secret? What do I harbor that I don’t share, even with myself?

I love the power of words. Orwell’s quote, only a brief sentence, triggered me to think about what drives me at a primal level as a writer and whether I am being true to myself. The answer is not simple.

Not at all.

I prefer to write in the morning, sometimes before my essential coffee. I think it is because I’m not entirely in this conscious world and I can make connections between ideas that are not always logical.

I love logic but sometimes you have to let it go, or at least let a different logic take you to a conclusion or insight. A good storyteller knows this. The story is the logic and it often takes detours that the writer doesn’t understand but whose logic reveals itself eventually. 

This is the kind of storytelling I love and the kind I want to write. The story becomes a labyrinth and once you’re in you have to follow it. No going back. This is why the notion of a plot being anything more than a starting sentence seems like a different kind of sentence, one involving bars and a hard cot.

Unfortunately I have no time this morning to explore this. Real life, in the form of a hospital visit, is pressing, but I’ll try to get back to this thread a little later. Hang in there with me.

I’m back and going to try and pick up this thread again. I like the idea of a story as a labyrinth where the reader cannot always see around the next corner. Not a maze because that implies running into dead ends, which is definitely something a story should never do.

Continuity and pacing in any kind of writing are the skills we need to be very diligent about. If a story stalls or stops making sense, even for a moment, you’ll lose the reader. In my articles on Medium, they provide enough stats to make a calculation which pieces are read through to the end and which might have a dead end in them.

How do you police yourself especially when you’re doing a longer and more complex piece? This is the challenge of editing yourself, a necessity in online writing. I always separate the editing from the writing mode, usually by putting it down after a draft and looking at it later. Even a few hours can help you see the work in a different light.

This is why in Stephen King’s On Writing*, he suggests finding early readers who will mark things up and give you honest feedback. I’ve done this with both novels and it was invaluable. But finding those readers can be a challenge, not least because you don’t want to put them in the position of having to tell a friend our writing stinks!

The only way around this is to either hire an editor, or write good (me write good).

Circling back to the notion of a secret is that your story must have one or your reader won’t keep going. It's the ‘I want to know what happens next or how it ends’ mindset. You need to trigger that and that can be a challenge, especially for newer writers.

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*If you have not read On Writing, stop what you are doing and get a copy. Not only is it one of the best books on the subject, it is a terrific memoir that does not gloss over the dark places King has gone through (believe me, they are very dark). The guy can write. Duh.

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I’m on a train, headed to Hudson, NY in the Hudson River valley. The train is packed and the view out the window is verdant arboreal forest just west of the Adirondacks. We’ve had a lot of rain this summer, 3x normal, and everything is abnormally green and lush for this time of year.

At a time when much of the country is baking in extreme heat, we are having a lovely hot summer day with temps predicted to hit ninety. I’m headed to my friend’s country place where I plan to cook, sit on the porch and enjoy the distant view of the Catskills across the expanse of the river. Paradise.

Last night I made pesto with a friend who is originally from southern California but now lives in Rochester to be near her grandchildren. She is in a quandary because she would like to be living in SoCal but sees it as being less viable given climate change, the heat, and the fires.

This is a situation a lot of humans on earth are facing right now. The need to leave their homes for a safer place. I’m writing a long piece on these choices and their implications for all of us. It’s new territory, making these choices.

Finally, I am happy to report that my mom, whom I thought we were losing last week, will be released from the hospital and goes to a nursing home for physical therapy. She needs to get stronger, physically. Great thanks to all the medical personnel who helped with this amazing turnaround.

Did you write today?

Martin

1699 words

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