#MOC19 - Isolation and the Writer

If you think of yourself as a writer, you probably think that this time of pandemics and quarantine is just the thing you need to start that novel or maybe finish. Writers are moving into a period of unprecedented history. Writers know the value of their time and the space they need to write. The rest of the world - is anxious. Socializing and being connected to people is a part of our jobs, our friend groups, and family. As people begin to rethink their lives around this outbreak of flu, social distancing and selecting to live a quiet, remote life for a few weeks (forced or not), will be a difficult proposition for the people around you. In our culture, we have used isolation as punishment. Leaving people out or creating a cancel culture is considered terrible social terms to live in. People who violate the terms of Twitter are put in Twitter jail or Facebook prison for a period of time. This is all social isolation. We don't value sitting and reading a book for three hours (because no one really has the time anymore). In the book How to Disappear: Notes on invisibility in a time of transparency, Akikko Busch so aptly discusses visibility and invisibility in the world. It is a brilliant discussion of why being invisible is just as important and relevant as being visible digitally and physically.  "It has become routine to assume that the rewards of life are public and that our lives can be measured by how we are seen rather than what we do." This visibility that makes us public isn't just a physical space, but a technological presence of posting our food pictures, sharing social gatherings, and posts about travel. But that is changing and writers are good ambassadors to help people understand the value of reading a book that will change their perspective, share the value of working on something (anything) uninterrupted for a long time. 

Fiction, poetry, and storytelling are fostering an understanding of imaginary inter-relationships in our imagination. We know that we can be deeply moved and changed by watching a good movie or reading a book we really are excited about. Sometimes, those stories are meant to change us, and sometimes they do it slowly, without an immediate impact. Busch talks about the value of imaginative conversations, ways we talk to ourselves as a way to practice speaking at an interview, discussing relationships, or just trying out a new idea. "We can have simulated discussions with real people who are not in the room. We can be deeply affected by fiction we've read. Something that is not real can have a real impact and foster a real emotion reaction." In terms of your imagination and your ability to think and interact - these isolated practice sessions are just as important to your brain and your ability to see the world. 

Writer may feel better about thinking in terms of life as an invisible playground. They may even have a massive set of skills for this kind of interaction. Writers can manipulate and change scenes and find the moment things are relevant, important, and new. They can practice (in their minds) scene that change over and over again until they find the optimal vision that will draw out emotion and change the way people see the world. Do you have that power? I do, and I use it ALL the time. Anyone who says they have their best ideas in the shower are practicing this power in the known isolation of the shower.  

Maybe it is trite to pull out books like Love in the Time of Cholera, or Albert Camus The Plague, but it is also assuring to find writers moving through these ordeals, (real or imagined) and finding out something universal about solitude, isolation, and the human condition. In Pale Horse, Pale Rider, a short novel by Katherine Anne Porter, she experiences the Spanish Flu and the result is a significant shift in the world as she knows it. It is stunning, beautiful, sad, and perhaps one of the most moving statement of shifting from innocence to experience in literature. 

As writers, we may secretly relish this time of sequestering ourselves, more time writing, more time dreaming. It isn't the writers of the world I am worried about, it is all those who have yet to discover how enriching it can be to settle, to focus, and to create. We have to continue the process of introducing friends and family into deep reading, critical thinking, field walks, beach explorations and all the magical ways we find inspiration through solitude. From our worries and our vision of the world - will come great stories, great vision, and a sense that we are all capable of great things even in solitude and with some social distance. 

Busch, Akiko. How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency. Penguin Books, 2019. 

Other Worlds and Escaping

I am reading a title called I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing by A. D. Jameson and he give a short overview of the concept (popular now in fantasy and young adult writing) known as world building. And he used Tolkien's ideas in connecting escapism and plausibility together. He said, 

"Tolkien further argued that in order for this experience to succeed, in order for the faerie to be able to work its magic, the secondary worlds must be credible enough that we fall completely under their spell, to which end authors must give them "the inner consistency of reality."" 

This is a fascinating concept that brings the idea that world building is based on things that are different, but consistent with the basic working of reality. I was more interested in the Star Wars elements of this book, however, there are some fascinating asides that really have been notable. 

In many ways, this is how we view truth in fiction. Yes, it is fiction and completely made up, but the theme, the possibility of the action, and the plausibility all come back to this idea of "consistency of reality." Can we learn something fictional and find it based on truth? Of course, we can. It is the possibility that is so compelling in fiction. It isn't how exotic the realm is, but how compelling we find the characters. We know winter is coming in The Game of Thrones because we've seen the northern wall, hell, we know people who have fought there. And winter is coming. How do I know that? Because I've seen it myself. 

In the end, world-building as an idea is vast and creative. It is attractive to writers. But to me, it feels like the most important part of world-building is that we can still find ourselves, even in the most exotic or different realms. 

Among Those Things

In my previous post about creating Misfit Manifestos in class, it occurred to me that over the course of the semester I give a lot of writing assignments. Not all of them are a lengthy research paper, but they are intentionally designed for the continuous practice of writing. It is important in my class to understand that writing is a practiced skill and they should be writing often. And like someone learning a musical instrument, sometimes who are better off doing scales and sometimes you play the whole concerto. 

Yet, as I was writing about their experience with the Misfit Manifestos, it occurred to me that sometimes, students connect with assignments in a way that opens their ideas, and changes the way they see their own lives. The point being is that through a variety of writing opportunities, it is very hard to tell which assignments are going to connect with the students in the classroom. But what comes with experience: is knowing that something will connect with the students.  

It is clear that these writing assignment was a needed break away from writing about Virginia Woolf and modernism. And it was clear from their writing that they wanted to say something important about who they are. It reminds me of the letter writing assignment I work on with my creative writing students. They write letters to people that they can't send them too because of death, or distance, or something else. Every time I do that creative writing exercise, it is clear that they have something that need to say immediately. It is almost like writers are just waiting for the right idea, the right acceptance and permission to say those things that have been waiting their for the right moment. That is what it felt like with my students, particularly with a student who said, "This will be the easiest assignment so far, I've been screwed up my entire life." And that was the release he needed to explain it all to me. 

Are we looking for permission to write these stories about ourselves? Are these stories just waiting, just under the waves of our everyday life waiting for the right prompt or the right group to share it with? This type of writing is where your story can be a superpower. This is where you sit in class and awe at the struggles, the humanity that comes from writers, and you see something so brave in a writer - the act of writing down something that has always been kept from the world. And there it is on a desk, so common place, like a pen, a notebook. Among those things, you know what a privilege it is. 

CLMOOC 2017 Make Cycle #2

Postcards are interesting in that they can convey things and give us an image, an idea, data, connections, and they are often welcome, unlike ads or bills. 

This weeks postcards was a combination of ideas I had kicking around. One was to write half truth, half fictional newspaper articles that might resonant with people. I find that no matter how big the town, people have their share of quirky people living around them. This is a project to document some of those stories, and capture some interesting jump off points for stories and anecdotes. 

This group has turned my thinking around and while I know the type of content I want to include, I started this with template making and finding the right application to make this work for me. I tried a few different programs and apps, but landed on Publisher. Even though I don't love it, it worked for this layering of textboxes and other elements. 

Postcard #1 was about a screaming lady and while I don't love the content, I was more concerned with the entire look and size. During our Makers Hangout on 7/18/17 we considered the idea that the post card has two sides -- the content side and the address side. While these two sides may be different, they also may be connected - one showing part of the idea and the other the answer, or the reveal, or a clue. 

We also discussed the personal nature of writing and sending a unique correspondence to someone and what that means as a transaction of social or connective significance. When I was creating the back, I wanted to create an orientation to the article and project. But I also wanted to number them and personalize them like numbered prints or series collections so people would be excited about finding and reading a series or collection. (More in the collection here). 

Data Postcards

It sounded like the group had been working in data and using data cards to establish a connection. I have to say, thanks to Kevin, I was able to watch the data video Big Bang Data which really helped me understand the concepts and the connections. I really love this concept and idea. And I think it will be a fascinating connection to do with writers. How often to you think about your characters, novel, plot -- or how often did you write a poem. Part of collecting this kind of data for writers is not only for the collections of data, but to see productivity. Writers have a terrible self view and they always feel like their work is kept behind closed doors. This proves their worth, their working, and that they are constantly seeing the world through the lens of a writer. Fascinating and an evolving thought pattern in creating connections to writers. 

CLMOOC 2017 Make Cycle #1

Being a writer, the more visual, artistic elements of creation often come to me in different ways. When we start thinking about coloring pages and books, I started thinking how would I think of a coloring page for a novel or a story. 

Honestly, I wanted to make a coloring sheet for a character -- what they look like, motivation, and outcome. People could fill in their responses and have a visual sheet for a character. But once I started creating this - I started having an existential conversation with a would-be character. I am not sure how this turned into a kind of conversation but I made some interesting comments here about how I feel about creativity - writing, the process, and the muse. Not sure if this fits into the coloring page idea completely but it showed me some insight.

What I started to think about was how this sheet could hold a variety - perhaps limitless conversations. What happens when we place out subconscious on the page (in the shape of an outline) and ask it questions, give it reason, and converse? Perhaps it would shift a visual brain? Perhaps it would inspire someone to see interconnections? I want to color one of these and accent some of the elements that are important to me. I want to use this type of creation to show and bind a visuality to words, and the ownership of words to the visual.  Thanks for your time in looking this over to everyone in 2017 CLMOOC -- it is such an important place to consider the world.

Add On: Sometimes, after making something like this, I sit and think about it or have a conversation with someone and I find more to think about. While this image was meant to be a coloring page for a character -- based on the idea from Janet Burroway concerning conflict and desire, and then spiraling out to something else -- it would be interesting to take an essay or a chapter from a book and see how it would map out in a visual diagram. What would be the focus, what would be the elements that we need to know the most? And then how would we color this in? What significant details mean the most to make the scene work? And how does it work emotionally? I could see people using scales and meters to measure emotional investment. I could see readers taking pull quotes out and adding them to make impacts around their maps. 

One of the best books on literature and creativity that I've read and admire is Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer by Peter Turchi.

It is from that influence that it is easy to see how the imagination can be very specific and wonderfully complex, needing a place for maps and signs, way-points and directionals.

In a class of thirty students, taking one scene from a book and mapping them out will create thirty unique maps. Then we could compare them, and see what elements are common in them all (characters, setting, action), but more importantly, what beats, what moment, what words specifically changed the reader? That will be unique and different. We are constantly coloring our imaginations, we are constantly rediscovering a childhood memory (recoloring perhaps), and I am constantly trying to contribute to why books, writing, stories, and literature is important. (Maybe that's just me) The black and white outlines are the form, the frame, and the logic we need to speak to one another. The colors are the imagination, the turn of a phrase, and vision. Visually, I don't think I've thought about the craft of writing this way. I've spoken a lot about form and content -- but now perhaps there is a new dimension there. The beauty is that it brings into the discussion whether writers color in the lines or embrace the infinite possibilities that blur the human experience. 




Ron's Words: On Art and Writing by Kevin Hodgson

Trying to find a poem in there #CLMOOC colored layers pic.twitter.com/KbCewxhZ4f

— KevinHodgson (@dogtrax) July 12, 2017

Experimental Novels Part I

Introduction

Ask anyone and they will tell you that I am fascinated with process in writing and in order to understand the way we write, we have to understand that we can find specific reasons or connections to the choices we make. From names of characters to motivation to plot, process is important. The more I can identify some reason and function for my choices, the more I understand where I am going and why. That being said, one of my favorite topics to read, research, and share is my love of experimental novels. And in order to really understand why it matters at all, we have to define what they are and why they differ from other novels. And then, by looking at some novels that I consider experimental, it will also help find characteristics that are relevant in watching the evolution of experimental novels and ideas over the years. This series is part book review (of experimental novels), part idea building, and part process discussion. So, it won't always feel like the typical blog post. Sometimes, it will feel like a hyper-focused discussion about one book. Other times, it will talk more broadly. And sometimes, it will be connections and random thoughts. If you would like to share your ideas, feelings, or refer books - I would be happy. The comment sections will be open for that purpose. 

I will post a working list of experimental novels HERE, as a shared document. Feel free to add your favorites. 

Experimental isn't cutting edge. In fact, experimental novels of the past paved the way for how we consider the novel now. Even a common high school literary experience like Moby Dick by Hermann Melville might be considered experimental at the time. The experimental novel isn't new. In fact, all innovations in novel writing were and are considered experimental. Some are more pronounced, but they all have fed into the discussion that will be evolving here on this website, through the sources, and through other connections. In looking at some titles, it will be necessary to put the novel into historical context. What was happening in the world around the book? What was the author thinking? Why this experimental concept at this moment? And what did it mean? 

Perhaps any artist that attempts to find the edges of their craft will eventually consider some kind of experimentation or variation on what is considered the normal balance of art expectations. Often, experimentation with poetry, paints, and other modes of art feel like they absorb and use experimentation as a constant in their understanding of the craft. While the novel, stands in a slow pattern of change. Forever on the edge of extinction, the novel moves through slower changes. And I don't think the heralding of the long form's untimely death has ever done anything but strengthen its resolve to continue forward. In the last twenty years, I've posed the idea that the novel isn't dying or even in elder care - but changing into things that don't make sense to critics and literary crepe hangers. It is believing the television will never change, only to find everyone talking about a show on Netflix, that thing you didn't subscribe too because it seemed like a scam. Perhaps then, the novel will change with the technology, change with the vision a future forged in strife and chaos rather than bucolic suburban dreams that disappeared shortly after the second invasion of the Iraq. The novel might be on the move. It might be expanding. But until we use some of our tools and innovate their use on experimental texts, we will never really understand the edges of the novel world. That is my goal to discuss, view, and understand where the novel has been in terms of experimentation and evolution so that we can innovate and embrace the new vision of novel writing, style, and process involved in continuing his vast and stunning legacy in letters. 

Between The Lines: Slaughterhouse Five Opening

Truth and fiction is a strange world. Writers are constantly invested in the vision of living many lives - some on paper while others are in real life. The complexity of writing fiction and understanding truth runs parallel to the idea that we can talk about truth and find its mirrored in fiction. In terms of writing, true stories and real accounts has a value to the general readership. We see labels splashed across book covers and movie posters that profess that they are based on a true story. And yet, the layers of fact to fiction can be complex and run deep into the story. 

Does it matter? Does fiction have to hold truth? Does a true story shift into fiction as soon as it is captured and told from different voices?  

It is important to write about these lines and ideas as they relate to both sides of the issue. It isn't black and white, truth and fiction, but a combination of millions of possibilities and connections that make truth stranger than fiction. This series continues to discuss this concept. Sometimes, these entries will be brief notes and connections, while other articles will a bit more elaborate. 

In Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, we are faced with the kind of strange world that I want to continue to explore - perhaps for the rest of my life. I want to be the truth expert in fiction... whatever that means. 

"All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his. Another guy really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunman after the war. And so on. I've changed all the names." 

In looking at the way this opening reads, it is clear that fact and fiction are coming together. Most of the sentences in this section have disclaimers to the truth. "All this happened" is very declarative until it is disqualified with "more or less." This builds the uncomfortable relationship that is being established. 

He moves on to the next idea, "The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true." Alluding to the idea that "pretty much" covers enough. As we move to the next sentence, we should acknowledge the emphasis on the words. "One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his." This is a moment where you feel like the writer wants to look you in the eyes, look, this happened. Notice there are no names here. The next sentence continues this serious tone, "Another guy really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by a hired gunman after the war." In these phrases, the narrator wants us to realize that there is truth, even fact in these words, but they can't be verified. They can't be questioned. You will have to take his word for it that they happened.

In the last two sentences, we have "And so on" as if we would just carry on with more of his stories. And then he forfeits it all by saying, "I've changed all the names." The obscuring of the names isn't at all a surprise, the narrator has teased out the balance between truth and fiction here, but to it does remind us - I will tell the truth by obscuring facts and leaving you merely with truth. Of course, this is merely an interpretation, but it does a back and fourth of reality that is being played one aginst the other. 

This work is considered semi-autobiographical which alone strikes at the heart of the matter. Half true, half something else. Part of what we are seeing here might be an answer for the mass destruction, the death, and the insanity of war. It can't be shown to the reader without cloaking it in imagination, shifting the reality away from the reader, intentionally block the brunt of the evil so that the readers can begin somewhere. This novel was written twenty-five years out from his personal experience. Perhaps it is this distortion that helps define the balance between right and wrong.  - #


Ron Samul is a writer and educator. For more information or to contact him, go to www.RonSamul.org 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Reflections On Mentoring / "Only connect..."

This week, I've been thinking about the role of the mentor. I understand my official role as a mentor. But I feel like it has taken me some time to develop what I can do for students who connect. I am not the line editor, although I can pick out places where I think the writing needs work. I am the mentor who connects. Perhaps it is partly from the obsession I have with E. M. Forster's epigraph at the beginning of Howard's End that says simple "Only connect...." and he adds three pesky ellipses that just don't connect. Ugh! That idea is like a hand grenade in my brain. It is such a simple puzzle: elegant, beautiful, and sad. This relates to my mentoring philosophy. I want to find ways to enhance the likelihood of the writer writing. That is my job. 

#DigiWriMos / The Invisibles / Thought on the Metaphor Project

The world is becoming more visual. Almost all of our social media and interaction online have some pictorial element. From icons to robust ads (with color and motion), we are constantly connecting image to word. That being said, I write is to create something that someone can imagine, conjure, and experience in a way that isn't attached to my image, but with the user (the reader and creator). And the stories that are important to tell are those containing "invisibles" or things that cannot be seen or even reconciled without individual interpretation.

The idea of "invisibles" comes from the idea that no one thing represents what we are trying to describe. No one can tell you what love looks like. They can try, and you can accept or reject it. But love is complex and usually needs a series of figurative ideas and elements to make it work. Most people have a complex and changing vision of "invisbles" like love - so in one story it will appear significantly different than the next. 

In October, I discussed the thought of creating a study on the metaphor of rhizomatic learning to define why we use the metaphor to explain elements of this type of connective learning. It is a tricky endeavor. The use of a metaphor is a figurative affair that must pay off on both sides of the metaphor. So much resides on the reader's experience, the metaphorical correlation, and the way it is applied. How the hell can you possibly study those elements? Perhaps you can't but you can collect metaphors and see how they are being used. It reminds me of electron colliders - you never see the collision, but the explosion after the fact. "Invisibles" are the quintessential reason for writing. It is why poets and writers can spend a year writing a novel that creates something bigger, something epic, something brilliant that has never before been experienced. It makes sense that religion and myth derive from oral and written manifestations. Gods draw off the tongue and miracles emerge from the page when we use figurative language to define the possibility (see what I did there?).

If we look for the origins of why we write and why we admire writing - it comes from how it changes our perspective of a person, a time, or an object. Amazing stories change us because we see and learn something new about what is possible in the world. But that doesn't come from facts - it comes from the figurative nature of listening and hearing words. Figurative language has a power (simile) to compare, to encompass (symbolism), to bring to life (personification), and to experience a visionary world. Writers know that there is a little bit of magic in these things called "invisibles" -- not because they can cast spells or turn a prince into a frog, but they can give you an experience that is refined. Our lives are not stories filled with "invisibles" - and that is what we long for when we read. By way of the word, we experience them deeply.*



*I typically add an image with my posts to make them a bit more dynamic, but this one deserves words alone.  

Capacity

Teaching a graphic novel course is always fun. The best part is the exploration: from different genres of comics, to artistic styles, and great stories. In defining what a graphic novel can do, to that of a comic story, I use the example of Capacity by Theo Ellsworth. This book brings about a visual and story based epic that captures some stunning philosophical ideas, creations, and connections. There are times in this graphic novel that I completely get lost in time and space.

Why is Capacity as an art form so estranged from the typical comic experience and so in tune to what we think and see in the real world?

Let's start with the minutia of the artistry. I don't mean that it is all about small things, but Ellsworth is creating a word that is complicated and hyper detailed. The complexity of character and image creates a complicated and sometimes complex matrix of ideas that aren't based in our reality, but in something more abstract and subconscious. The reader isn't defining the next panel or how the story is going to end, but how odd that figure is, or how long it takes to draw so many tiny scales. But when you pull back and see that inner workings, it makes a stunning and prolific universe. Not only is the narrative story (in this case I mean words) epic, it is interactive. Often the narrative accesses your vision and choice in a friendly banter. This is what draws the reader to the inside. It is there that we begin to ask ourselves, what is going on. The stories are filled with epic failures, uncertainty, and sometimes hubris. It switches from brilliant moments of understanding of the consciousness self and then shifts back to how he lived in his car. While it is about the commitment to art and the stories that he discovers in his mind, it is also about the reality between the outside world and the inside.

Capacity is a stunning imaginative wandering and it doesn't work without the symbiotic relationship between the images and the words that balance one another in the vision and scope of the ideas. In some ways, the artwork affords further into the mindscape that he creates than even the narrative suggests. It is a complicated and visual wandering.

When I passed this book out in class to share and let the students see the creativity and ideas in the book, most of them took some time. One girl stayed after class, not realizing that everyone was gone and she got lost in the poems, the stories, and the details. I didn't bother her for awhile because I had been lost in that same way. This is a powerful and very creative comic. 

The Metaphor Collection - The Intangible Collection

My intention was to do something predictable. Write a stuffy academic boring paper on why the construct of the metaphor and rhizomatic learning are often connected. I would explain the history of metaphors, I would try (and fail) to understand A Thousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia and the metaphors in that text. I would connect the rhizo metaphor with Dave Cormier's vision (probably a fail too). Then I would take the amazing and complex examples of metaphors used by the rhizo community and come to some significant and poignant understanding that we can't see everything but figurative language is the key to unlock ideas that are otherwise intangible.

Maybe I will still do that.

And then #digiwrimo entered into my world. I don't want to figure this all out right now. I want to collect metaphors (original and cited) and what people think of them. I want people to add their vision to the collection. Isn't metaphorical interaction subjective, like reading, like interpretation? In Rhizo15, it felt like we were using the metaphor to dig and cast new ideas that didn't have names yet. And the more we pushed our metaphorical experience forward, the more we drew closer to naming and giving shape to what we couldn't find.

My passion in writing is always capturing or even moving around something that we can't quite collect into a term or a definition. And when we try they vanish or change.

Questions:
Can I collect metaphors?
Why am I doing it?
What if all the things you collect becomes an index to things unknown?
Should I look at the rhizome collaborative?

What output would this project create? Collaborative document, book, or paper? Database? Or is there something more to be done. Maybe a digital notation of each metaphor would make sense?

I am not sure. I know I've written and discussed some really important connections in rhizo learning and digital writing conversations, and somehow - why the metaphor becomes such an important tool in that process needs to be investigated. I would love some feedback, ideas, connections, and collaboration if anyone is interested.