James R. Fisher, Jr.,
Ph.D.
©May 17, 2014
REFERENCE:
This is PART ONE of a
planned two part transcript of the recording remarks made by Dr. Fisher to
prospective authors.
PHASE ONE
The business of
writing in the strictest sense is about storytelling. We all have stories to tell.
Whether we are writing about our own lives,
composing a family history, developing a commentary of events observed or studied,
creating a work of fiction, or writing a treatise on mathematics, chemistry,
physics or some other subject, we are telling a story.
There is a certain
amount of discipline to telling a story, but that is not the only thing that is
required. You’ve got to have the time as
well as the passion to write. Sometimes
we’re not aware we have a story to tell.
The other day two
Verizon electronic technicians were in my home setting up their equipment. While the older gentlemen was fixing the
computer in my wife’s study, I got to talking to the younger man. He noticed that our house was literally
covered in books in every room.
“You must like to
read,” he said.
I smiled, “You could
say that,” adding defensively, “My wife likes to read, too.”
“So, does my wife,”
he confessed. “She reads Jodi Picoult. I noticed her books here,” pointing to a
collection in my wife’s study.
“How about you? Do you like to read?”’
“Me? Naw.”
“But I’ll bet you
have stories to tell.”
He smiled, rubbed his
chin, “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”
“For instance?” I
egged him on.
For the next half
hour he told me such stories as this. He was talking to a man in his
kitchen, who was showing him safety catches on his cabinets that were kiddy
proof.
“You have kids?” he
asked. The Verizon man said he had two,
a boy and a girl.
“Well, this is
perfect for you.” Smiling broadly, the
man said, “I’m an inventor. You want to
see more of my inventions?”
“Mister, I think
maybe we might first get to work on your connections.”
“My connections?”
“Yes, your televisions
and computers.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m the Verizon man,
sir.”
“I didn’t call
Verizon. I thought you were here to buy
something.” Turned out the
Verizon man had gone to the wrong house.
Now warmed up, the
young man said, “I’ve got another story.
I went to this house, small place, guess how many
televisions the man had in his house?”
I shrugged my
shoulders. “No idea.”
“He had fourteen, one
in each of three bedrooms, one in each of two and one half bathrooms, one in
the utility room, two in the kitchen, one in the living and dining room,
another in the rumpus room, another on the patio, and one in the garage. Can you believe that?”
“Wow,” I said. Thinking he was through I started to walk
away. “There was this mansion that was
the biggest place I’ve ever been in when it comes to houses. I put cotton covers on my shoes and was
sliding across the marble floors like I was on skates.
“The owner said he
had televisions and computers in the upstairs bedrooms. I couldn’t find any stairs, and started to go
outside. He pointed to what I thought
was a pillar, and said, ‘Take the elevator, bedrooms are on the third
floor.”
The Verizon man
shaking his head, said, “I know. It
sounds unbelievable but my partner can tell you it’s true. I thought I was in a Holiday Inn.”
“Imagine those
stories in a book,” I said.
“But I’m not a
writer.”
“Not yet,” I
answered, “but you have entertaining stories to tell, right?”
“I guess.” With that he was off to do his job.
PHASE TWO
The problem with becoming
a writer is first believing you have something to say, and then starting to
write. This is difficult for we have this misconception of who and what a
writer is. A writer is like a carpenter,
only his tools and construction materials are words.
Once that
connection is made, the next most difficult problem is to get what is going on in your
head to flow to your hand or hands and find its way on to a blank surface.
Terror can block the process from the would-be-writer starting at all. Prolific
writer Stephen King was once asked why he had never written the great American
novel. He answered, “Every time I write
I write as well as I can, and let that effort stand on its own.”
Some writers, such as Harper Lee, who wrote “To
Kill a Mockingbird” (1960), which became an international bestseller, never
wrote again. She feared she couldn’t match
that success.
Writing is never easy. Think how clear
things seem when you’re daydreaming, taking a shower, going for a walk, riding your bike, only to be betrayed once you start putting words to the page after the
fact. Fortunately, culture sometimes allows a breakthrough.
It is no accident
that tribes rich in oral tradition often become writers. The rhythm of the storytellers can be
infectious, finding the mind and the body in sync with that rhythm, first
listening, and then transcribing.
As a
boy, my Irish family and friends entertained each other with stories of a night
after dinner, and I would squirrel myself away in the shadows to listen.
Another factor that
often contributes to writing is trauma that breaks through the wall of silence that mocks the would-be writer. Trauma becomes the instrument of liberation. It was true for me.
The blank page or
screen looks back mockingly, as if to say, “Show me something new,” knowing
there is nothing new under the sun as Solomon has reminded us, only the personalizing of the old.
Perhaps this is why
some famous writers only wrote with a pencil.
This was the case with Hemingway, and the polemicist essayist
Christopher Hitchens. My wonder is abandoning this method is the reason good writing today is so rare.
Malcolm Gladwell,
author of the “Outliers” (2008), claims if you do something 10,000 times you
will be successful. If success hinges on
you becoming a writer, or if you think after 10,000 hours writing, you will be
successful, think again. Writing has little to do with chronological time and everything to do with psychological time.
Writing has become an industry, bestselling novelists write books as if on an assembly line, producing a bestseller every six months or year. When passion goes out of the writing, or the spiritual need to make connection with one's essence, you are no longer a writer; you are a mechanic. We have a lot of bestselling mechanics. We also have hundreds of thousands of books that are published but not read. Writing is first and foremost a communion with self, and then by extension with others, and often defies the laws of the purists.
The mind may be
programmed to the laws of grammar, the dictates of semantics, and the
discipline of ordering and telling, but like a painting, writing comes from the
soul. Remember with art the beauty is in the eye of
the beholder. No writer is
going to connect with everyone. For writing to be genuine, it must connect with the writer, not the reader. Readers will find the writing that connects to them.
This means writing cannot be self-conscious
or attempt to justify one’s cultural biases by playing to a
specific audience, but must transcend that limitation.
Readers who are imprisoned in biases will not find the writing
appealing, and the writer should have no problem with that.
Read Dostoyevsky’s
“Notes from the Underground” (1864), which I did as an undergraduate at Iowa, and you
will sense his madness and genius, his unconsciousness, and somehow find it
resonating. Never
will you get enough of the power of his words.
PHASE THREE
"Is any one here writing a book?”
A lady in the back
said she was writing a book about the role God had played in her life,
cautioning, “It is not a religious book.
I am not a religious person.”
She went on to say
she had been a reporter for a newspaper and felt that throughout many chapters
of her life, especially the most trying ones, God seemed always to be there for
her, and she wanted to tell that story.
“Thank you for
sharing,” I answered. "What a
lovely motivation." I have no doubt the book will be written.
Breaking through to
share your thoughts to a group of strangers is not the easiest thing to do. This is especially true for something as
intimate as writing. Prospective writers
seek guidance not confirmation of their views with bromides. There
are no bromides to writing; no two authors have the same roots or destination.
That said we live in a climate of
pervasive sameness with writing the last bastion of expressed difference.
Writing is intimate. It is an extension of ourselves to ourselves. It comes from that reservoir
within that separates and then joins our hearts and minds to a tapestry unique to our lights. As unique as it is, it is a common language to us
all. It is the soul crying out in the
wilderness of despair or longing or love to capture the breeze. It is transitory and ephemeral.
Around 350 BC, Aristotle
defined human beings as “the rational animal,” or more accurately, “the animal
that has language.” Language
distinguishes human beings from other animals.
Language freed man from a world only of physical objects and substituted
a world of symbols.
We think in symbols,
communicate in symbols, the alphabet, words, chemical and mathematical
symbols. For 40,000 years we were the
only animal with language. Now, we have
computers and robots, with a whole new dimension unfolding with language
possibly caught in the vise.
Another person – in
the front row – said she was interested in writing a book about the history of a
family she had come across. I asked her
if she was doing it or was going to do it.
“Well, I guess I have
to get started.”
I told her that the
hardest part is starting; that we are all great procrastinators. Even so, a good story can gnaw at our
conscience until it finally gets told.
PHASE FOUR
The Verizon man,
mentioned earlier, came into my study and told me he had another story. It was about coming to this tiny house with a
wall papered with Louis L’Amour paperback books. He asked him if he had read them all. That was the wrong question.
He asked, “Do you
read L’Amour?”
I said, “No.”
“Do you know who he
is?”
“No,” I answered again. “Well, for the next half hour he told me who
the man was, that he wrote hundreds of novels, and sold over 200 million
worldwide, and that he made you taste the wind when you read him. I thought I was never going to get to my
work.”
The Verizon man had acres
of diamonds at his feet, and never thought to pick up one to write a story. I wondered how many
others could relate to his dilemma.” No
one volunteered.
I softened my remarks
by mentioning my late daughter, Jeannie, who had been a waitress, and was cut
down by a hit-and-run driver while crossing a street. She had hundreds of stories, funny stories to
tell about being a waitress. She was a very funny lady.
More than 200 showed
up at the funeral home, people from all walks of life, to pay their respects. She was that kind of a person. With her high anxiety, and personality, were
she so inclined, she would have been a good writer for writing can be cathartic.
She did have a title for a book, however, “Never
Trust Men Who Drink Hot Tea and Wear Bad Shoes.”
Now, that is a catchy
title. Psychotherapist Bruno
Bettlelheim, who specialized in children, could write, but critics claim his
books sold for their catchy titles, given to him by a friend who read his
manuscripts. His book on the meaning of fairy
tales was titled, “The Uses of Enchantment” (1977), on the vision of Freud, “Freud
& Man’s Soul” (1982), and on child-rearing, “A Good Enough Parent” (1987).
My mother was a great
reader, perhaps in part because she had a hearing problem all her life. She read something like a book a day. When I was a small boy, my da would go to the
library, pick out books by the color of the covers – he wasn’t a reader – and
bring them home for her to read all week, returning on Saturday to get another
arm full of books for the next week.
Thinking she could
write, I sent her a book on how to write. She called me a week later. “This looks like hard work,” then adding,
“I’m not interested.” That was the end
of that.
PHASE FIVE
When I was
five-years-old, I would go to the roof of the tenement house of my Great Aunt
Annie, and look at the Clinton County Courthouse, a towering 130 foot edifice
with a four-sided clock on a copper green dome, which would chime every half
hour. It was like God to me.
When I was researching
IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE (2003), I wrote a poem in memory of that long
ago experience. It started:
“I have never lost my affection for this edifice. It was like a parent that never wavered,
never changed. I am sitting here now,
reflecting on the fact that it is forty four years since I have spent any time
with my old friend. If I were a poet, I
would give it metaphorical significance, like a giant knight, standing ever at
attention to protect my neighborhood from itself and from the dangers outside. If I were a poet…….”
The message is, if
you want to write, look to your experience and write about something you
know, something you wonder about. The
subject is there. All you have to do is start the process. Look at the enter
flap of the flyleaf of the book I handed out if you need encouragement:
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