Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Biting the Nail

I'm at the point now, that whenever I sit down with my pen to write, I always say a prayer first.

I used to just write indiscriminately, no matter what mood I was in, whether I was angry or drunk, happy or hurt, I'd just let it flow and stamp it as 'all the way real' and go on.

But something happened to me one day and I just kinda..grew up.

Or rather I should say, I'm continuing to grow.

Whenever I put things in a spiritual perspective, I find that my path is always more lucid and clear.

So once I acknowledged the Lord I serve, then the task became, channeling a writers work with an engineering mind.

I could see where majoring in English Literature or one of those 'fuzzy' courses as all liberal arts courses are commonly called at my alma mater Stanford University (our football team whupped USC AZ this week!! GO CARDINAL!) , would have helped me a lot in my writing world.

But instead of lamenting what could have been, I always like to enjoy the reality of what God had already planned for me and the path that I have taken.

It is what it is.

People always ask me, 'Well what do engineers do??" and my common answer is 'We engineer things. We make it work."

And one of the most common engineering principles is, if it ain't broke, see if you can make it better.

The basic design of the wheel hasn't been improved upon in centuries.

If it's round, it will roll.

So when I looked at the common formula for writers, and what those who have broken through and published fantastic literary works have done, I ran across this marvelous book called, On Being a Writer, edited by Bill Strickland.

It has interviews and quotes from famous and prolific writers such as Norman Mailer, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Truman Capote, Kurt Vonnegut, Nikki Giovanni, to name a few.

I always like getting real accounts from real people.

And there's a chapter in there with an interview of Ernest Hemingway at his home in Havana by Edward P. Stafford written in 1958 that really illuminated the writer's task to me and my engineering mind.

Here are a few excerpts:

My wife needled him. "Is it true," she asked, "that you take a pitcher of martinis up into the tower every morning when you go up to writer?"

"Jeezus Christ!" Papa was incredulous. "Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You're thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes, and I can tell right in the middle of a page when he had his first one. Besides, " he added, "who in hell would mix more than one martini at a time anyway?"

"What about hours?" I asked. "How long can you actually be productive on a daily basis? How do you know when to stop?"

"That's something you have to learn about yourself. The important thing is to work every day. I work from about seven until noon. Then I go fishing or swimming, whatever I want. the best way is to always stop when you are going good. If you do that you'll never be stuck. And don't think or worry about it until you start to write again the next day. That way your subconscious will be working on it all the time, but if you worry about it, your brain will get tired before you start again. But work every day. No matter what happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail."

********

"How do you ever learn to convey every sensation, sight and feeling to the reader? Just keep working at it for 40 odd years the way you have? Are there any tricks?

"No, the hardest trade in the world is the writing of straight, honest, prose about human beings. But there are ways you can train yourself."

"How?"

"When you walk into a room and you get a certain feeling or emotion, remember back until you see exactly what it was that gave you the emotion, remember back until you see exactly what it was that gave you the emotion. Remember what the noises and smells were and what was said. Then write it down, making it clear so the reader will see it too, and have the same feeling you had. And watch people, observe, try to put yourself in somebody else's head. It two men argue, don't just think who is right and who is wrong. think what both their sides are. As a man, you know who is right and who is wrong; you have to judge. As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand."

*********

"Is it a good thing to talk over your work with other people, other writers? is that a way to learn? It has often seemed to me that most of the great talents of the century were living in Paris in the twenties when you were, and you all knew each other. You must have talked about writing - and it must have helped?"

"Good conversation with good people is always stimulating, especially after work. You can talk about writing generally, about words and when you are learning and trust or respect another writer, he can help you with the blue pencil and in other ways- but never talk about a story you are working on. If you tell it, you never write it. You spoil the freshness, you mouth it up and get rid of it to the telling instead of the writing. Writers should work alone, then talk."