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| Dr. Wolfe, scientist devoid of humility |
I commented about authentic integration of our writing. Writing what we need rather than trying to please either secularist (and so feel like we need to paste in sketchy material), or the story somehow does not include a gospel priority but the writer feels like it ought to, so he pastes in some Christian lingo to check that box. None of this is good for fiction writing, for compelling story telling, nor is it good for the gospel. I believe the gospel is absolutely my highest priority when I write anything, and I hope that that means it is so integral and essential to where I'm going in the fiction, every detail subordinate to the glory of God, that the story would not be complete, would not work, would be empty and shallow, without leaving the reader longing for truth, heart sick for it. Imagine Jesus telling a parable to titillate secularists or to paste in a Christian message as an obligatory afterthought. Christ's parables, his story telling, was a unified whole, every imaginative device, every detail, marshaled to unmask the problem and placard its only solution.
Alan leads off with a poem he has written that reminds me of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Hiawatha from the shores of Gitche Gumee, musical and lyric. Alan read without prelude, no explanation, just launched in. It was magical. After he told us it was autobiographical, inspired by an incident in his life, an uncle who passed away and at his funeral just this week he met another relative; conversation with him led to this prose experiment in an effort to find his way into his fiction work shared recently. Patrick commented on balsam and rock, used repetitively, so it seemed but maybe intentional. All this led into a discussion of Indian culture then and now.
Patrick says his problem is too much material, very fertile times for his imagination lately, it sounds like to me. He has been inspired by author Gene Wolfe. Wolfe wrote a series of stories with key words woven in throughout. Dr. Wolfe and Island of Death, is the name of the story. Felt like it should be a journal but doesn't like the style because it lacks the interactive character of dialogue. What a crack-up! Programmed dialogue between a computer Dante and a pompous scientist, about another scientist who has been stealing or plagiarizing from Dr. Wolfe. Reporters and journalists are found to be the most unreliable witnesses. Willingly deceive. I love the fluidity of your prose, personality coming through clearly through tone of voice, asides, and witty quips. This is one in a series of intriguing short stories, maybe a bit longish for short stories, the largest being 13,000. Alan suggested that his reading group (Who, what, when, where, and wine) read Patrick's short stories and offer their thoughts and reactions.
Doug Mc suggested that we can reconfigure what we do at least some of the time. What if one guy sent out a chapter or short story to all and then we read and came together to critique and comment on the whole story rather than just a ten minute read. Doing Patrick's yarn first this way. Dougie is doing a further episode in his Vietnam yarn, Bruce the hick is reading World Book Encyclopedia then distilling it in his colloquial drawl. Vietnam peasant featured in this episode. What is raspberry and cinnamon that is French in the pastry department? The French and German conversation is a good idea, but I'm not sure if you got everything out of it that was there. The prayer and the Amen came out of order to my thinking. He went on asking for a speedy conclusion to the hostilities, and then the Amen at the end, not first. The background to the history of the conflict does drag a bit in my opinion. I think you need to tighten it up a bit, give us the essential facts only. Maybe you're trying to give us too much all at once here. Could you spread it out, parse it out over more conversations than just this one? Avoid the history bomb, laying out a body of historical context but that is not actually a genuine part of the fiction. Give the reader only what is essential to know at this point in the yarn, the reader wanting more, will read on, then give them more as it is essential to the tale itself. Have the listener receive it, disagree with it, push back in his thinking. Make the history background essential to the fiction you're telling.
I commented about authentic integration of our writing. Writing what we need rather than trying to please either secularist (and so feel like we need to paste in sketchy material), or the story somehow does not include a gospel priority but the writer feels like it ought to, so he pastes in some Christian lingo to check that box. None of this is good for fiction writing, for compelling story telling, nor is it good for the gospel. I believe the gospel is absolutely my highest priority when I write anything, and I hope that that means it is so integral and essential to where I'm going in the fiction, every detail subordinate to the glory of God, that the story would not be complete, would not work, would be empty and shallow, without leaving the reader longing for truth, heart sick for it. Imagine Jesus telling a parable to titillate secularists or to paste in a Christian message as an obligatory afterthought. Christ's parables, his story telling, was a unified whole, every imaginative device, every detail, marshaled to placard the problem and its only solution.
John reads from his Russian yarn. Working on altering the governess so she could be a Huguenot working for a Russian family. Problem of getting Russian down fluently when coming as a French speaker. What is your narrative objective for developing her character? What is her primary role in the story line? All fiction is a contrivance; it is the author's task to convince the reader that the contrivance is authentic, that it works, all skepticism gone.
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I thought this was an important and valuable meeting as far as understanding what writing is, and tonight I think we looked a lot at the forest view of the process, rather than the tree view. I like the idea that you expressed about Gospel fills your writing, you don't have to make a tag, because everything you write is Gospel centered. And history bombing, I have done that. I particularly like your last sentence; that sums up the process very well. We are really only story tellers, we need to find the voice(s) as we tell the story that convince the reader the contrivance, really our artifice, is genuine.
ReplyDeleteHopefully I will be able to coalesce my snippets and join you mighty ones who have actually completed at least one book. These meetings are invaluable to me, I look forward to them.