Fast Food / Slow Food

17 Saturday Mar 2018

Posted by nancystoryflow in Attention, Reading, slowing down, stress

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Attention, Reading, slowing down, stress

I arrived early for a lunch date at a local mall, so I do what I usually do when I have a moment of downtime. I read. I always have a book with me to read in places where I might have to wait. I have read in lines at post offices, waiting for service at a restaurant, while getting an oil change, or having a recall fixed on my car. On this day I read on a bench in a mall.

A woman came up to me and asked me what I was reading. I showed her the title, thinking she’d drift off. I was reading after all. But instead of leaving she settled on the bench beside me and said, “I used to read. I read all the time. I read a lot, but I just can’t anymore. All the political stuff that’s going on. All the trouble in the world. I just can’t read anymore. I’ve tried and tried but the world just keeps getting worse and worse off.”

She sounded angry. She nearly spat her words out, as though to blame someone else for her inability to focus on a book. It was something she used to do, but no longer could.

“You should read,” I said. “It will help the world.”

“I can’t,” she said. “How can you?”

“I have to read,” I told her. “I have to read no matter what’s going on.”

“But, how can you focus?” she asked.

I was tempted to tell her that I wasn’t focusing right now. That I had been, but then I was interrupted by a stranger, a stranger in need it seemed like.

“I sit down, and I open the book, and I read. That’s how I focus.”

“But the world,” she said. “All this terrible stuff going on. I’m so upset.”

“There’s plenty of time to be upset, and for now, if you have a roof over your head and food in your belly, you can make time to read. You need it,” I added, hoping I didn’t sound too insulting, hoping it wasn’t like screaming RELAX at someone who clearly couldn’t relax.

She stood up. “Enjoy your book,” she said stiffly, and left.

I’ve thought about that woman a lot. I felt a little judged, as though by insisting on reading instead of joining her in a stress-fest, I’d abandoned all that is good in the world. In fact, I felt I was embracing good in the world by insisting on reading.

And that’s what you have to do. You have to insist on things. You have to insist on cooking at home and not hitting the drive-thru for fast food in the evenings. You have to insist on weekends and time with your family. You have to insist on brushing your teeth and bathing. And if you want to read, you have to insist on it. You have to make the effort. You have to procure books and turn off the television and give it some time.

What would our world be like if we insisted on good habits instead of falling into the trap of bad ones? I know it’s not easy. The energy of the commercial world, the world that is so in your face all the time, is against you. The woman in the mall was right about that. She felt it. She felt crazed with it all, as most people do. She blamed the current political scene, but how much of this was already in place? How many hours are most people working just to pay their bills? How stressed are people as they drop their kids off here and there and try to make it to the office on time? How stressed are they when they get that memo from the idiot at work who dropped the ball on some project and now they have to work late to cover him, and themselves?

The commercial world, the world of buy/sell, the world of fast lanes and fast foods is totally against you doing anything worthwhile. It’s good for business to have you stressed out to the max. If you’re stressed out to the max, you’re unlikely to do something subversive like make art, or read.

I don’t know what the answers are to the world’s problems. I don’t know how to tell you to pay your bills and keep your head above water. I don’t know how to tell you to stay sane. But I do know this: Taking time and slowing down helps. Read a book. And when you’re done read another one. Reading novels actually reduces stress. It also increases empathy and helps you focus. If you’re feeling fractured and splintered and stressed, read. Please. And I don’t mean Facebook posts and Tweets and news stories. I mean novels and memoirs. Read stories. As Muriel Rukeyser once said, “The world is made up of stories, not atoms.”

Unplug and read a book. I don’t tell you this because I am an author and want you to buy my book. I tell you this because, like the woman in the mall, I see that the world is in a big fat mess, and as a human being, I think one of the strongest most important things I can do is slow down. Not give in to the super stress. Not let it take away from me the things I hold dear, and reading is one of those things. I read fiction and memoir. And I listen to people as much as I can, even if they interrupt my reading.

How Not to Write a Novel

04 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by nancystoryflow in Attention, Process, Publication, Working

≈ 1 Comment

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Attention, characters, completing a work, Process, quitting

The title says it all. I could just leave this space blank. The way to not write a novel is to not write. Or the way to not write a novel is to start and then stop writing. The way to not write a novel is to not dedicate yourself to it, to not develop the habit of writing, to expect it to be perfect first time around, beginning to end. If you get that far.

For me the way to not write a novel also includes talking about it. I don’t talk about my specific projects except to other writers, and even then I am selective. I tried once talking about a work-in-progess. I wanted to seem as though I was confident, and knew what I was doing with this novel, so I spoke about it publicly. I gave a brief summary that didn’t reveal very much. I mentioned the setting. I said the characters’ names. They didn’t like it. That’s all I can say. The story left me. It did not want to be paraded about. It wanted a private, intimate relationship with me. It wanted a partnership. It was not ready for relationship with anyone else. That’s what publication is for.

I know all this makes me sound like a nutcase. That’s okay. I am a bit of a nutcase. I believe in things we don’t know. I believe in working intuitively. It’s not always comfortable, and it doesn’t give me confidence, but that’s the point. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just doing it. It’s very hard to understand that for many writers, it’s a blind grope into a story. It’s stepping off a cliff. Sometimes we are caught by our characters, and sometimes we are allowed to crash to the bottom of story the canyon. But that’s the process. Always there’s a point of stepping out into the unknown, be it the stage of plotting a novel, if plotting’s your thing, or the stage of writing it for someone like me, who flies by the seat of her pants. Novels are unknown until they are written. And even then, throughout the process, they reveal themselves slowly, sometimes reluctantly. You have to keep showing up. You have to be committed.

It’s easy to not write a novel.

On Getting Lost

04 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by nancystoryflow in Attention, Fiction, Process, Writing Advice

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Attention, characters, Process

Not everyone has a natural area to visit in their daily lives. I count myself blessed to be able to step into nature regularly. My studio is located on land that has been in the same family since the 1700s. They work hard to hold on to this land, but who lived here before this family arrived? I’ve never found arrowheads here, although I have found several along the Eno River, close to my home. Those arrowheads were surely made by the Occaneechi Tribe who occupied the area before the British colonized it. I am sure there were native people living and hunting the land my studio occupies too.

On that land there are many trails through the woods. The trails loop and connect to other trails, and backtrack on themselves and spiral within each other, or so it seems to me. When I first started walking these trails I tried to orient myself to the pond and know where I was, but I ended up places without really knowing how I got there. Whenever I am in the woods, I make sure to pay attention to landmarks as I walk. When I got lost, I would finally stumble across something familiar. The big rocks. A familiar fallen tree. Another tree with its bark stripped off. The stream flowing into the pond. A deer stand. I found my way by getting lost. And so it is with fiction.

A story is not a series of disconnected events. A story is a series of events that play off each other. If this happens to this character then what happens because of that? Every scene has a reason for being there, and ends with either conflict or a consequence. That’s a tough row to hoe if you ask me. I know, because I’ve done it.

But doing it, or having done it, doesn’t mean I know what I’m doing when I start out. Often, in the beginning, I have only a glimmer of a character, or an opening line, or a snippet of dialogue. Something that intrigues me that I’m willing to follow, like a path into the forest. I get lost often. Sometimes I thrash my way out and leave a trail of massacred scenes in my wake. Sometimes there’s a guiding hand. Always, I am looking for those landmarks, noticing points in the story that seem similar to other points in the story. For instance, I really don’t want to forget that a character does not eat meat, and then have her date a butcher. If I forget that she’s a vegetarian, then I have forgotten something major. A driving force for her, and a potential conflict or compromise between the two of them.

What I am saying here is pay attention. Get to know your characters the same as you get to know strange paths through the woods. Entering lightly is probably not a good idea, but neither is hanging back and not entering at all. Enter respectfully. Know you can get lost, and probably will. The great thing about writing is you won’t die of hypothermia (unless you can’t pay your heating bill) and you won’t starve (unless – well, you get the picture).

A walk in the woods, in my opinion is always worth it. I don’t always come out of it with an arrowhead, or a story, but I do come out closer to myself, and closer the bone of something deep and primal. And so it is with fiction.