The Grasshopper #76: Indecision
What if you reach a turning point and don’t know where to go?
I’m still writing about the process of writing here, but if I inject a bit of the unknown, don’t be surprised. While I would like to think we can immerse ourselves in our work and leave the mundane world behind, I harbor no such delusions.
It may have been that there was a more formal time when writers maintained a certain personal distance from their work, just as scientists during the advent of modern science disavowed any distractions or personal preference in their results.
Or so they thought. In pure science, a theory is put forth, tested with research and experimentation, and either proven to have merit or rejected. And the scientist moves on.
If only it were so.
During the beginnings of the rational age, in the 18th and 19th centuries, such purity was all the rage. And some novelists sought to portray themselves as mere observers relating a story without personal investment.
It was all bullshit of course. Fortunately modern literature saw the author as a main character, an auteur, both the teller of the tale and a character swept up in the flow of events, events inevitably sourced from the writer’s experience.
This has progressed to the point where memoir, ever unreliable, and fiction, not expected to be reliable, have melded. Our stories are the stories from within, not stories handed down over years and years and merely channeled by the teller.
Our personal experience and the experiences of our characters can become almost indistinguishable. We have ‘non-fiction fiction’ like Capote’s In Cold Blood, where the writer cannot separate himself from the subject despite aspiring to tell the truth.
And where, like Capote, the writer changes the narrative to make it a better story. Capote, with a crush on Perry, the murderous young man he is investigating, chooses to romanticize him, not very successfully. But, somehow, that makes him even more of an enigma.
What does the writer see in the confused thug, beyond a romantic fantasy of a bad boy?
Capote did not write well at length after that success. There were some charming autobiographical short stories but his ability to sustain anything longer, elusive at best, disintegrated as he descended into alcohol and drugs and the allure of a dissolute nightlife.
Today, in my view, novels come in two flavors, pure escapism in the form of mostly clumsy and imitative fantasy, and confessional, where the writer inhabits one character to tell a story firsthand.
Simplistic? Yes. But hard to escape in a world where telling a kind of truth, a confessional truth, is more popular than ever. I told a truth this week about a personal event and choice and it has proven more popular than anything I have written recently.
Which is why the title this week is Indecision. Do I tell more of my personal journey, a major event in my life or do I continue as before? Or do I take my notes to myself and spin them off to another publication? Do I share or do I keep a professional distance?
Every writer faces this at some point, unless they have consciously chosen to write pure fantasy or procedurals, romance novels, crime dramas, or cutesy tales set in fantasy small towns with lots of cats. Don’t get me wrong, I love cats, but I prefer those who appear in Murakami stories, speaking when needed but disdainful of the mundane problems of humans.
So, I have buried my indecision in this pseudo philosophical rambling, which is about as far as I’ve come so far. But The Grasshopper is wholly mine to do what I want with, an aspect of the newsletter revolution that may not get enough recognition.
When you read this, you get Martin, whomever he may be. After many years here I’m still figuring that out.
“She said in a speech to a library association in 1935, librarians should “read as a drunkard drinks or as a bird sings or a cat sleeps or a dog responds to an invitation to go walking, not from conscience or training, but because they’d rather do it than anything else in the world.”
~ from I’m like a library book by Julia Pott about a great librarian, a species of human I’m afraid is endangered.
Is what I’m writing any good? Anyone who writes will ask themselves this question. And I think you should, but not dwell on it too much. The more you write and edit, especially edit, the better your writing will get, which means your ability to know what is good gets better.
That’s a little convoluted, but the point is that our ability to look objectively at our work should get more useful as we progress.
And blah, blah, blah. I had to stop myself there and do a reality check. Is that really interesting? Does it really interest me as I write it?
Nope and nope.
Normally I would just go back and delete a section where I’m obviously flailing around trying to catch a rhythm or an idea, but it’s not happening. However, because this post is titled Indecision, I’m leaving it in just to show what my thoughts look like when I’m not fully engaged.
They are boring. And you don’t have time to be bored by my self-indulgence this morning. My apologies.
The reality is that it is really hard for me to get away from the drama that is my life right now. I’m simply not the same person I was only a few weeks ago. After 68 years on the planet, this is, for lack of a better word, miraculous, and when it is happening to you it’s really hard to ignore a miracle.
I was literally destroying my life, bit by bit, and somehow managed to stop, just like that. It is so overwhelming that in just four weeks or so I have written 17,000 words trying to catalog and capture a transformation I never thought was possible.
Musicians thrash, surfers surf, I write. We all have our escape modes, those things or actions or places we go to not think for a while, at least on the surface.
When I write, it is real time, not unlike being on stage or catching a break. I’ve spent enough time on stages to know you can’t be somewhere else. I have not surfed, unfortunately, but I’m reasonably certain that when you’re out on the water you’re not thinking about that shit back at work.
The first few paragraphs of this section were me trying to surf while thinking about something else, and it was obviously not working. I have a huge topic to think about and I can’t pretend it is not there right now. And I don’t want to.
So you’re getting this. And my mind is thinking about something else. Sorry. I think this is temporary. But there is some real writing going on that I’m not ready to share yet.
Which makes me crazy but I haven’t figured out what to do with it so far.
When I started The Grasshopper, I made a commitment that I would be consistent, stick to a schedule, and respect my readers who have subscribed. But I never had a clear or unwavering vision of what this is.
And that is by intent. I needed the discipline of a schedule but the freedom to roam a bit each week. And lately I have been roaming more than usual, for some pretty compelling reasons. Even after writing 76 issues, extras, and The Witness Chronicles, the exact nature of this medium is fluid.
We’re seeing a major migration of major writers and thinkers to Substack, including some really big names with huge followings. And it’s been a mixed bag. I was thrilled to see Patti Smith and Margaret Atwood here, subscribed, and have since unsubscribed to both.
Why? I don’t think the format was right for them, but once they had committed and probably signed up a lot of subscribers, they had to write something. Unfortunately, from my perspective, they soon found that writing this kind of thing was not their strength or passion.
I’m probably a minority in criticizing great creative artists like these examples, but their efforts simply fell flat with me. Conversely, my favorite newsletters tend to be quirky more personal stuff from no names like me.
So, thinking about famous writers and artists as competition is a waste of time. My respect for Atwood and Ms. Smith remains as it was, but maybe this didn’t turn out to be the right outlet for them.
So, a small piece of advice: if you are thinking about starting a newsletter, have a notion of what you want to accomplish with it, who you imagine reading it, and whether you can sustain it. It is not always easy.
Did you write today?
Martin Edic
1496 words
I’ve written a lot of stuff here, a kind of random trip through the mind of a writer. If you want to poke around and read it, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid sub. I think that’s a fair deal. Writers, like all artists, need to get paid.