We are delighted to welcome Irving H. Podolsky, author of the Irv’s Odyssey books. Irving has stopped by to share his thoughts on the importance of real experience of the world in writing the best possible stories.
Guest Post: CHOP WOOD AND CARRY WATER – A Writer’s Guide to the Real Thing
I’ll admit it. In real life I look a few years older than my avatar. But that is me, last century, at
Mel shook my hand and held it, looking into my eyes. Then he said, “You made you’re A’s. Now what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to write and direct movies,” I answered confidently. Very confidently. Three producers had given me their cards suggesting I call them after graduation. And I told Mel that.
Mel nodded in a way that didn’t convey a thing. I wanted his approval, his blessing, and I waited for it. I got advice instead.
“I think you should pump gas for a few years,” he told me. “Then you can make your movies.”
Those were Mel’s exact words. I never forgot them.
In 1970 gas station attendants pumped fuel into cars, wiped windshields and checked the oil and air. It was the most menial job a white man could get. And there were plenty of guys my age doing that, as well as bagging groceries and mowing lawns. It was the American equivalent of the Zen Buddhist saying:
Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.
For the next five years, those were the kinds of jobs I did, low-paying gigs that needed little education. They weren’t my choice, but those experiences taught me more about the human psyche than any Ph.D. psychology course I could have taken.
One of my best friends IS a psychology Ph.D. and she said she learned nothing until she began her practice in the “Real World.”
DIRECT EXPERIENCE – you can’t beat it. It’s YOURS, filled with details, feelings and vivid memories generating new thoughts – YOUR OWN thoughts.
Yes, you can gain a reflected experience from reading another author’s work. But it’s HIS experience, HER truth, and it’s subjective. That’s why they call it fiction. And yes again, it’s entertaining. But is reading someone else’s art authentic research for a novel of your own?
If you’re reading novels for inspiration and information, how much of that content can you trust? What was filtered before it got to the page? What was altered for dramatic purposes?
And does it make a difference if it was?
It makes a difference if you are writing novels solely based on what you read in other novels – UNLESS you’re writing for genre and strictly formula. Then you can write variations of the tired and true, because that’s what the audience wants.
“SO WHAT’S YOUR POINT?” you ask.
My point is: Maybe you don’t want to write another werewolf romance. Maybe you want to write something as original as you can make it. Maybe you want to go deep into your characters to reveal a common thread among us all. Maybe you want to touch our hearts…our souls.
How do you do that?
Why?
To learn technique? No argument there. But if you want to create literary fiction and you have limited time to read, why not pick up a political science book, or one about black holes and event horizons, or behavioral psychology, or World War I? How about reading prominent newspapers and magazines?
How about REINVENTING THE WHEEL, YOUR way! Meaning, you don’t have to read every how-to manual about writing to learn how to write. Start with the basics and then write and fail and write and get better and then try again. Convince your “beta-readers” to be brutally honest. You will never forget the lessons learned along the way, because they’re YOUR lessons.
You learned to write through process, not by trying to memorize a list a rules.
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Here’s another common recommendation: WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW.
Exactly. What YOU personally know, things you can write about in a way that’s BELIEVABLE.
How do you write believable characters and dialogue? Through direct interaction with living, breathing people! Watching movies and reading novels might get you close to the real thing, but it’s NOT the real thing.
I recently posted an article about techniques for writing dialog. I’ll quote myself here.
Living a real life of texting instead of face to face conversation is not great training for a describer of human expression. To write about people, you must interact with them, watch, listen and think about what you observed; especially shared FEELINGS beyond the physical gestures and vocal inflections. Communicating is deep and provocative when it’s intimate.
This statement brings me to my next point:
Internet technology, with it’s advantage of time-shifting communication, is separating us. We no longer have to talk face to face or over the phone. We can send a message when we want and the recipient picks it up when she wants, if she picks it up at all.
I just finished a sociology book titled: ALONE TOGETHER by psychologist and professor Sherry Turtle at MIT. Professor Turkle points out that people who constantly text do so for control of their time, attention and commitment. And that control is self-centered. And worse, the information shot through cyber space can be misunderstood because there is no immediate feedback to the sender. Consequently, many decisions are carried out based on false assumptions.
As professional writers, (or adult for that matter) we cannot afford to skirt reality. We need more accurate information about everything.
Within the younger generations, it’s thought that even emails take too much time, give too much news, are too personal and might demand a return letter. Extended emails, like longer letters, suggest exposure and carry unwanted responsibility.
Thank God for Facebook! Our “walls” save oodles of time! We can post ten words to our friends, ALL friends, simultaneously, whatever a “friend” is now. Or we can Tweet with no need for feedback. And the short notes we do get, take only seconds to read. Yes, we’ve focused our world, directly on ourselves, in a loop that reinforces anything we want to believe.
This is comforting but unproductive.
Compression of information is a shaky foundation for writing anything. Too much living is
Am I exaggerating? You can answer that yourself.
When on a date, romantically or with pals, do your eyes wander to your smart phone? Does your partner leave the intimacy to go someplace else with a text, a call or a search? Are people in the next booth on-line?
There are so many negative ramifications about this trend I could write three posts about it. But summing up this article, my message is this:
The more complex you live your life, the more you commit to it, the more you gather personal truths first-hand, the richer your stories will be.
Feelings don’t lie. That’s what you’re ultimately writing about, the stuff that connects us all – our shared emotions. You cannot get an exchange of energy out of a book, or a text or a Tweet. You can however, chop wood and carry water.
Invest your time by LISTENING to the ones you love…and the ones you don’t. Then put yourself in a quiet place, think about everything and start writing.
About Irv’s Odyssey: Lost in a Looking Glass Book One (2011)
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About Irving H. Podolsky
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Guest Post: CHOP WOOD AND CARRY WATER – Irving H. Podolsky | Thank you for reading Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dave
