Not to be Missed: Clevenger writes about writing

the man is a machine

i read this, and coming from someone who has never outlined, because he loves the organic story, even i can get behind this. its only outlining in the very loosest. i mean im sure it works, but it seems to me that it would not sacrifice your organic notion of your story.

woah!

i really should join the velvet. but i feel bad because i have read all of clev and baer's catalouges and nothing of SGJ. there seems to be some fantastic writing-based convo's over there, which is great. and i kind of like that. i wish our writers workshop forums were more active. i try everynow and then to get discussions happening, but no one's into it.

thanks for this, Mirka. appreciated. i'm gonna link it from the Writers workshop page.

This is quite common; don't let it deter you. We'll of course encourage you to read some, but there's plenty else to discuss.

yeah, i thought that would be the case. plus there's a bunch of culties over there, which is good. i've been wanted to read "sinners" and "demon theory" but they're never at the book store and i haven't done an amazon shop for a while. will probably be buying a few of his next time i do though.

on the subject of jones, i think LEDFEATHER is just about the best book i ever read. well, maybe next to DERMAPHORIA

I really need to just buy it. All The Beautiful Sinners is one of the most gripping stories I've read. I love Jone's style, but never seem to buy his books.

Maybe you can explain something to me? I'm kind of shocked that Craig can obviously take an enormous amount of time to post something so cool, and there are only FIVE replies? Two from Stephen, no less.

I see that all the time. He posted that gorgeous essay about the dying man T., and it's the most thoughtful musing about honor and death, and that only got three comments. (two are mine!)

Why don't the velvet people acknowledge these gems with a simple, 'Thanks, Craig" at the very least. I just don't get it!

Please don't feel like I'm scolding YOU, personally! That's not my intention. I don't want start any drama, but it bugs me so much.

Matt, the velvet is pretty cool, but really slow, you should definitely check it out. The thing I don't like is that they have really long, enormous threads that are hard to navigate unless you check every day. Like here, we have a monthly 'What are you reading' thread, the velvet "whats the last thing you read' thread is like four years old/long!

It's very different, but lots of cool discussion, cool people, definitely more polite, and they're lucky to have Stephen and Craig, of course, posting away.

I actually prefer long one-off threads. The board I spend the most time on, has a one-thread policy. Basically if a thread already exists on something like the iPhone, all iPhone discussion is to happen in that thread. Any new iPhone threads are quickly killed.

It gets rid of a lot of redundant noise.

But to your other point, yeah, I'm not sure why there's not more follow-up on certain things — and there's a lot of great content there. On the more serious subjects, I try not to reply unless I have something worthwhile to contribute, and I imagine some members feel the same. Sometimes redundant postings on outlets like Facebook and Twitter cut down on forum replies. Also, Write Club is huge this year, and I've noticed recently a lot of the serious writers at The Velvet have taken some of the more specific/advanced writing discussion over there.

Me, I like the way the threads/forums are organized, and I spend a fair amount of energy sweeping up around there to keep them tidy. That's one reason I tend to stick to book/film talk over here at The Cult, because there are so many unique threads whose titles often don't tell me what I'm getting into, trying to tease me into clicking. I'm always thinking about what the forums look like as an archive to a guest who just wants to find some info quickly.

brother g, lady meerk

i thought hard on that point, maybe two years ago. so much so, i isolated my own reasonings why i didnt often post after such valuable gems; if i cant add to the discussion, i say zip. why? because a yay gets annoying. i soon got the impression via other comments in other threads that most members read the same gems and were touched by them. i know i was moved [by the clevenger post], even printed clev's thoughts and read it at the credit union while i waited for the refi lender, and I then folded the page into eights and places it among the pamphlets on the corner table of the waiting area, just so someone could find it, read it, maybe find interest in learning of the velvet and craig....

the cult has a lot more volume, a great many more postings, but still the bookclub forum has always struggled along., the bookclub forum is [arguably, i'm sure, but..] the most literary forum here, and if you take out of consideration the gd forum, the forums would read similar to those at the fold.

i did not craft a response to clev's remarkable post because when he writes something.. well, his writing is remarkable. you cant follow it with a yay, or even a thanks. it just sticks with you. dumbfoundedly. i mean, what do you say after a post like that? "thanks" just doesnt seem enough. his writing has a way of sticking to you and makes you wait until you have something solid to return with. and sometimes--or more times than not--you find nothing to return with, but youre always in the solace that he is there to offer his oun mechanical thinking. how do you just out and yay that with fifty other member yays ?

is^^^my thinking

i try to make threads on the velvet for (insert) but lets go with movies. theres a whole goddamned section for movies, and most everyone posts in the 'what movie did you just see' thread. then again, im anal retentive about some things, and i care much less about others. i feel like the forum should be used to discuss the individual films, even though i only make threads on new releases.

I get that it can be intimidating to respond, or annoying to have a page of responses  of "Yays" and "Me, too", but I still really don't understand it. I'm sorry, I don't.  I think it's a real privilege to have writers like Clevenger and Stephen Graham Jones posting at all, much less at length, or offering original material, and that maybe people could work up a sentence or two of appreciation.

I realize a lot of people comment on Facebook, I usually do because I'm not a velvet regular. But I guess if I were, I'd post there rather than return to facebook to post my comment. I'm already at the site, reading the piece right? Like I said, that's just me. But yeah, it bugs me.

As for one long thread vs. multiple threads, I prefer shorter, more personal threads. Like birthday threads. The title can be tailored for the individual, and I like that much more than one mammoth thread. Same with "what you're reading now'. It feels more immediate and fun to have "BOO, what are you reading now?" in October for example.

If we only allowed say one Rant thread, what's the purpose of having a Rant forum? Also, if I had a specific question about an Iphone, I wouldn't want to wade through pages of posts to see if my question had be addressed. I'd rather see a thread titled with my exact or similar question.

Flash/Furley, sorry, I don't understand why you say you rarely open threads here unless they are book or music threads? Do you mean beacause you might see something NSFW? Or because you're too busy to  be teased into clicking and realizing you've wasted your time on some foolishness?

I guess there's something to be said for tidy forums, and we do try to keep ours tidy, but I don't really see it as an archive. We archive important information on other pages under categories on  the main nav bar. The forum here is simply for discussion, be it serious or chit chat.

If we only allowed say one Rant thread, what's the purpose of having a Rant forum? Also, if I had a specific question about an Iphone, I wouldn't want to wade through pages of posts to see if my question had be addressed. I'd rather see a thread titled with my exact or similar question.

Well, as for a Rant forum, you have that because there are many discussions about different aspects of a book that you can have. Characters, spoilers, style etc. So though I would agree that you wouldn't cram all Rant discussion into one thread, you certainly don't need to have 15 "What I thought about Rant" threads.

I used iPhone as an example, but the way that board works is there is a general iPhone thread. Where people discuss the platform in general terms. It's not a place you would post questions, but, if for example you wanted to find out good iPhone games you would start a new thread (assuming one didn't already exist). Then, from that point on, all iPhone Games discussion would be there.

I do agree with time-sensitive threads too though, and we use them over there too. Stuff like "Feb Photography" makes sense.

I also acknowledge that a policy like that would be really hard to do here as opposed to there, since that board is private and invite-only. So you kind of have to be aware of the rules before you even get in.

See, I think that's still too strict. Why can't you have a thread for a specific game? Why do all the games have to go in one thread.

And I didn't quote it, but I do agree that we don't need 15 'What I thought of RANT" threads, but I would never quash a single one of those threads. If someone has just discovered Chuck or is just super excited by a book and starts a thread, I'd never be a killjoy and merge it with another thread , or say "Yeah, you and half of America loved it, dude, check out the other 14 threads."

Well over there it is run on merit/discretion. If there is a really interesting game, that requires its own discussion, it gets a thread. What gets lumped into one thread is stuff that is like "Check this out" or "what games are cool". Most iPhone games don't warrant any lengthy discussion though. Movies for instance, get a unique thread, but never would someone post a second thread to discuss a movie.

It's not strict when you make it clear that is how stuff works. It also really helps with the ability for you to follow a lot of discussions and you don't often have to wonder where you were discussing something.

Also, some stuff is just one long ongoing thread. For instance, general politics discussion goes in the "Polics" thread. Which is easily 10,000 posts long. But that doesn't matter because the discussion in there is very "right now". There is no reason to jump back into political discussion from a year ago.

I obviously don't have an iPhone.

I don't know, why resurrect a 4 year old thread that has broken quotes and most of the posters are people that don't post any more if you want to discuss 'Donnie Darko'?

Also, I think it's more interesting to skim a Politics forum and read various discussions as the time they were topical. Especially if I am looking for something specific. Maybe I just read a book by Al Gore and am looking for threads that either discuss him or his books. I don't want to calculate the time period when that might have been discussed and try to find the correct page on 10,000 post thread.

Back to The Velvet, we've only got a handful of monster threads that are like that, for random discussion, current reading, viewing, and listening. And they're very of-the-moment. Any one of those that's about a more iconic author or film or whatnot worthy of more than a mention will usually get its own thread in the same subforum, or we'll create one if we sense the discussion is going to get detailed. I'm not arguing with you; there's room for improvement, but I think the amount of thread creation there feels about right to me. The one I could definitely see breaking up, though, much like is here, is the current reading thread.

I'm not slamming the velvet or suggesting that you do things differently, I'm stating my own general preference! I though that was clear when I said there are cool people and cool discussions there. Maybe saying it's a "little slower" came off wrong. I didn't mean slow as in dull! I meant a slower pace which is meant to be simply descriptive. I also urged him to check it out.

If I were to suggest anything at all... I don't think that the 'Whoring' thread properly celebrates or congratulates all the wonderful things that your members are accomplishing. Maybe that's how you prefer it, and it works for you (Collectively). I think it would be cool if people had their own individual threads that they could add to every time they got something published or reviewed or mentioned on a blog.

Oh, yeah, I wrote "really slow" not a "little slow" in my original post. That does come off as rude, sorry about that.

I've always felt a faint sting of envy towards the likes of you who can work without a net and let the story happen as you write it. I know plenty of writers who don't outline at all (T.C. Boyle and Steve Erickson come to mind immediately) and yet somehow their stories blossom perfectly. If I tried that, I'd get nothing but weeds. Like I said, having all of the pins in the map- every plot turn accounted for- allows me to not worry and get lost in what's right in front of me. Maybe someday I'll try writing an beginning-to-end story without any kind of plan and see if I can find my way out of the dark. "Someday," as in, "a really long time from now."

Word.

-C

P.S. Mirka, thanks for the props.

i too get lost in the weeds too often to not sit back and rough an outline that turns into a timeline. it's not pins to the wall, but the behavior may progress to precisely that. crammed under paper stacks are two of my larger projects that i've had to scrap. i cant salvage them, i cant pull them apart and put them back together; those projects are too far decayed and that's just something i'm going to have to one day fullheartedly accept. so i have to rough draft and then immediately work a basic plot outline. otherwise the work will give too much away in early stages or not develop a point fully enough at the close. i always looked at writing as art, that you have to tweak it a bit to make it just right, and i've slowly learned that you have to administer surgery fairly rigorously along the way before you can expect to make it to the point where you just need to tweak it to be just right..

I got asked somewhere else on this forum what my response to Craig’s post was, and whether I outline or not, etc, when I’m writing. The truth is, I wasn’t aware of this thread before then, so I haven’t read the huge Craig post yet. I want to give an honest and detailed account of my own writing process without feeling influenced by a much more experienced writer’s words…

To outline or not to outline: that seems to me the kind of question that everyone must answer alone. I don’t outline very much but I do like to have a general idea of where I’m headed with my writing. If I start a novel out of boredom and decide to carry it through to its completion, I’ll probably be thinking of chapter three while I’m writing chapter two, but I definitely won’t be thinking ahead of chapter three. In a way it’s similar to the way I write academic essays: I think of paragraph three as I write paragraph two, but always keeping the introductory paragraph in mind. In the opening paragraph, the writer is promising to deal with such-and-such a topic in a systematic manner; so if by the end of the essay the reader feels that the promise has not been kept, then the essay can be considered a failure. That doesn’t mean that twists are not allowed; but they must be relevant and seem inevitable after the fact.

The same is true of chapters in a novel. If you start writing chapter two without having any idea at all what chapter three will be about, then you can have a lot of fun, but in the end the novel may seem to lack structure. And we all know how rich and rewarding a properly-structured novel can be. If chapter three feels like a postscript to chapter two, then you haven’t built up enough suspense in chapter two, or you’ve exposed too much too soon, or committed some other mistake. In that sense, outlining can be very useful. But often I find that it’s enough for me to have a vague idea of what’s ahead, and a VERY clear idea of what’s past. Keeping an eye to the future is important but you can’t forget the threads you opened in the preceding chapters. It’s like the essay: if your introductory paragraph promises the reader that by then end of the essay, topic X will have been thoroughly explored and some interesting new questions will have been raised, then you have to stick to that promise as you write the succeeding paragraphs. Likewise, if your opening chapters have introduced thread X and the relationship between characters Y and Z, you can’t decide not to explore that thread and that relationship in the following chapters, unless you’re Thomas Pynchon (and much as I love him, even he shouldn’t get away with it).

The outlining process can be extremely effective once the first draft is done, of course. You read over what you’ve written and decide that X works and Y doesn’t and Z could work if you tweaked it, and then you draw up a nice, thorough outline and begin to chop up the manuscript. Beat it in to shape, hack away the unnecessary plot threads that lead nowhere, and so on. That should probably happen before you start working on the crafting of perfect sentences, too, because if it doesn’t, you may end up having to delete useless but beautiful turns of phrases when the scene you’re working is deleted in the Stalinist purge of redundant chapters.

I’ll give you an example of a very short story that my housemate and fellow Cultie wrote. The writer in question is Jack, and he wrote the following (beautiful) autobiographical piece about his late grandmother. The reason I’m posting it here, with his permission, is that I think it serves to illustrate my point: you don’t NEED a detailed outline if you can keep in mind what you’ve already written and what you want to write in the immediate future. The way he managed this was to base his structure on the number of cigarettes in a packet. You’ll see what I mean when you read it. The point is that by knowing that he only has twenty paragraphs in which to tell his story (one for each cigarette that he smoked on the day of the funeral), his cognitive faculties are focused enough for him not to need to outline, since the text’s structural limitation (the set number of paragraphs) is also a creative shortcut towards the appearance of structure itself!

Here’s the story. Hopefully you will all enjoy it as much as I did. Now I shall read Craig’s post…

...

A 20 Pack of Marlboro Lights

1. Speaking doesn’t work; I will say nothing. Anything that comes out is, just a primal howl. No no no, what do I do now, what to do now? Should I go back and comfort my mother, or talk to someone or just stay here? My hands are shaking so much. This makes it hard to get the cellophane off the pack, takes three attempts to light up. The nurse is looking at me through the window, but I can’t see you, voyeur. This is my time. I’m staying here till the cigarette burns out. Just going to stand here, looking at the… of course, a graveyard. That must be a nice view for the elderly. I’m going to stand here, finish my cigarette and –

2. – start another, why shouldn’t I? Crush that amber beneath my shoe. You can’t smoke inside. There are rules about that kind of thing, and that is one rule I’m going to abide by right now. Twice in eighteen months. That silhouette through the foggy glass looks like my mum. Okay… let’s roll.

3. “About three hours ago. No, I’m not at home. Huh? Speak up, my signal’s bad. It’s Lincolnshire; it’s full of fucking cabbage fields. People around here probably don’t even use mobile phones. I do not sound like a snob.”

4. “That’s all true. Thank you for your lovely message of hope, that’s exactly what I wanted right now. A nice reaffirmation of your Christian beliefs. Yeah, I’m in a bad mood. Guess why. Nope, nothing. Nothing at all. Yes, that idea scares me. That doesn’t change it.”

5. She was eighty-one, I am twenty-two, I have fifty-nine years left, maybe I should quit smoking, definitely not drink at all, get in shape, eat right, smile more, seize every opportunity, then I won’t-

6. – die, no then I won’t die, I don’t want to die but I have to die. I don’t want to die like that, I don’t want that noise to come out my throat and my chest to go still, and the last thing I see to be unknown hands comforting my children.

7. There is nothing to like about hotels like this. They smell bad, they force me outside in the bloody cold if I want to smoke, and the lights are all flicker fluorescent migraine traps. Should I hug her, just a few metres away from me, arms crossed, her cigarette burning untouched down to the filter? I don’t know how to go about it. I can’t just go up and hug her, that’d be strange. People will see, and I might be embarrassed. That thought makes me feel selfish, and guilty because of just how selfish it is. It must be repressed. There. I am a good person. My cigarette isn’t even halfway down. I don’t want to just go and leave her outside, so I’m taking my time.
“Are you okay?” eyes ringed in red.
“Yeah… I’m okay.”
We both sort of nod, and shudder.
I turn back to her. “Are you okay?”

8. There is a fear I have, a fear I feel every day, that when I am dead, people will come and talk about me for a day or two, and then forget, and I’ll just be scratches on a headstone.

9. There are not many birds here, or they are very quiet.

10. I’m up at this hour, Miss Receptionist, because my Grandmother has died, and I’m stressed and want to keep smoking. That would have stopped her squealed giggling. I definitely should have said that. I wish I’d said that now.

11. I’m not sure if I dreamt of her last night, but a memory came, unsolicited and vivid. Two in fact, disjointed and out of order. In the stolid single bed in my dingy hotel room, I woke up, and for the first few seconds, I was six. I wanted a Batmobile, and she bought me one, and I’m home, in my old house, driving it across the blue carpet, under my cat’s watchful stare. And then I’m four. We are on holiday. I don’t know where – the sun is a slow yellow haze, and the heat is sticky. My mother holds me up in the pool, my feet on her thighs, with my grandma a metre away, and I think yes, yes I can do it, and push and jump the whole way, from one lap to another.
It’s raining today.

12. My cousins loved the breakfast, but I could barely finish. The fried eggs had crispy edges, and the vegetarian sausage tasted like wet newspaper. I tell this to my younger cousin, who looks at me with her big brown eyes filtered through my smoke and hers (she is smoking too).
“How do you know what wet newspaper tastes like?”
“Any newspaper we’d eat,” I say, “would be wet newspaper. By the time it’s softened on our tongue, it’d be damp with saliva. You couldn’t eat dry newspaper. Unless you swallowed it. But you wouldn’t taste it then.”
She nods, though I didn’t answer her question.

13. Did I bring my tie? I hope I brought my tie. The funeral is in an hour. We really should get moving. Rain, you’ve outstayed your welcome, leave now please.

14. Outside the funeral home, he comes up to me. The… undertaker? What is the name of the person who ‘hosts’ the funeral, doing all the readings and such? God, he looks like a vampire. Don’t say anything about him looking like a vampire. That little beard, that villainous arched eyebrow, the long tendril fingers, and, of course, he smokes a pipe.
“Hello there. How are you coping?”
“I’m fine, thanks. Just a little worked up.” He nods, draws a long thick breath of tobacco, lets it twist in front of us.
“Ummm…” the silence feels awkward, I feel I should say something, “…how long have you been doing this? This, this line of work?”
When he looks at me it feels like he knows every little piece of evil from my past, fragments of cruelty, and wants to cultivate them like a mad gardener.
“Eighteen years now.” (A hundred, because I am a vampire.)
“Wow. A long time. Do you find it rewarding?” (You look like a vampire.)
“Very much. It’s a noble calling, giving comfort in times of mourning.”
“Sure.”

15. “I’ll be two seconds. I just need a minute. Yes, I’m smoking again, I keep telling you: I’m stressed. This isn’t raising my voice. I’m calm.” Okay, okay. The car cracks over the gravel. In I go.

16. It is finished, and I did not cry. There is almost no one here who I recognise, but they all recognise me. A greenhouse is beside me, filled to the corners with green, pressed up and huddled. A cactus juts straight up, and only up.

17. The girl who is helping out here is gorgeous. I very much want her, but this is an inappropriate thing to think. I’m a bad person. Her smiles cheer me a little. What I’ll do is just keep getting coffee. I like coffee anyway.

18. A lady in her sixties, whose daughter works with my cousin, has come out to join me.
“Bit chilly out here, isn’t it?” Will I sound like that? How soon will I sound like that?
“Yeah. Least the rain stopped though. I’m sorry but… how did you know her?”
Our breathing in and out of smoke is perfectly in rhythm.
“Well,” she says, “I cared for her a couple of years ago. Her legs were very bad. And I’d come, and see how she was doing, back when her husband was alive, and check on the both of them, and bandage their legs for them.”
I almost say “thank you”, but feel it would come across as insulting.
It hits me that I’m now standing about 30 metres from where my grandmother died. The rest home, though a different part of the building, is holding the wake. Turn my eyes another way in search of distraction, only to see, of course, the graveyard. The graveyard with its rows of silent stones and flowers wrapped in plastic.
We pace around, not really knowing what to say. Focus on the yellow pebble, kick it around a bit – maybe she’ll go inside. My cousin comes out, beautiful in her black dress. I want to tell her so.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says, although her mascara has run.
The old woman pats her forearm, and says “Aww, it’s tough isn’t it dear. Poor girl.”
My cousin smiles, and sits on a wooden bench next to some paved stones that dot a path to the greenhouse. The lady turns her attention back to me.
“So… did you know her well?”
“She was my grandmother.”
A hot rush of blood fills my cheeks, and anger rises, so I stare at the ground, drop the cigarette, and move my foot, then hesitate. Instead, I let it burn out, its bright and pacifying glow slowly fading out.

19. My whole family is outside now. That is, the smokers. That is to say my mother, my two cousins, my aunt and myself. We’ve formed a circle, converging around empty space. My eyes stay on the ground, but the glances and little smiles of comfort are moving between everyone. Looking up, I receive one from my mother. It’s strange, but there’s a brief, vibrant flash of memory of us all standing together for a photograph. That must be five or six years ago. We’re all grown up, and in our suits and dresses, looking pretty. If she could see us, she’d look and she’d say how pretty we all look today. And we do, today we do. No one in the circle says anything. Our mouths stay shut, but we are all thinking, that no matter what we think or feel right now, in a while we’ll know, know for sure, that there’s no such thing as an ending.

20. Not even in death, not for a moment.

Craig, thanks for stopping by. It’s always a pleasure!

Jack! Your story almost made me go out and buy a pack of cigarettes.! Take that as a compliment, please. The details are so exactly correct and evocative it made me wonder how I’m going to get through anything difficult without a cigarette much less suffer through something beautiful without one. Something like your story. I’m going to quote some lines that really stood out for me, though I found the entire piece really amazing. I think the length is perfect for the structure you chose; each cigarette is a vignette that conveys the distracted way that a grief-stricken person’s mind agitates and flits from this to that, and then back to the source of grief.

-There are not many birds here, or they are very quiet.

 I’m not sure if I dreamt of her last night, but a memory came, unsolicited and vivid…(.and the line  “It is raining” off by itself, it’s own line, a sad conclusion that that is real, the reality of the day is smoking in the rain.. the Batmobile and the memories are that, memories,...)

“Any newspaper we’d eat,” I say, “would be wet newspaper. By the time it’s softened on our tongue, it’d be damp with saliva. You couldn’t eat dry newspaper. Unless you swallowed it. But you wouldn’t taste it then.”
She nods, though I didn’t answer her question.

Will I sound like that? How soon will I sound like that?

 Instead, I let it burn out, its bright and pacifying glow slowly fading out.

...but we are all thinking, that no matter what we think or feel right now, in a while we’ll know, know for sure, that there’s no such thing as an ending.

Thanks for letting Phil post that, Jack. (I'm also very sorry for your loss.)

Phil, your process is pretty wild. I always make lists of points I want to make, so I guess I outline. Not intensely, just enough to organize my thoughts and to figure out where to start. Not that I've had to write an essay in a while. But to intuitively know what you want to say, and how to proceed paragraph by paragraph or chapter by chapter, depending on what you're writing is  pretty impressive.  Did you write Klondike that way?

I also agree that an author owes their reader some respect, though you didn't put it that way exactly. I like some resolution...I don't mind being bewildered or lost as long as the author isn't just messing with my head (and time)  to indulge in their own poetic fancy or superiority or what have you.

Thank you Mirka. I put myself much more on the line writing that, much more than usual, so I appreciate the encouragement.

Oh, I made a comment about the following line that I put in italics by mistake! YOUR line is "I’m not sure if I dreamt of her last night, but a memory came, unsolicited and vivid". My comment is now in parenthesis.

It's really beautiful and you should be proud of the piece. I hope you share it with some of your family. I like the end and how your family (Well, the ones that smoke) comfort each other without really looking at each other. Really beautiful. And it's awkward saying that knowing that it's an autobiographical piece. Thanks, Jack.