Writers Are “Just People” Too

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Multiple Viewpoints

by Leonard Bishop

Leonard Bishop

Leonard Bishop

I am often asked, ” What are the really famous writers really like?” People seem to be fascinated more by the private lives of these writers, than by the works that made them famous. Some writers I know only from a study of history–other writers I have known personally because writers who publish often attend the same parties, traffic in the same places.

William Faulkner was a lonely man who liked horses. He was short and always baggily dressed. He had a down-slope mustache that made him seem gloomy. I cannot recall a time when he was not drinking. When “under the influence” his speech was incomprehensibly slurred. When sober,  his gooey  southern accent and pitchy voice was hardly understandable. He was shy around women but never indifferent to them. A literary merit I carry is that one day when we met in the lobby of Random House Publishers, he was sober and admired my work. He was dark inside himself, and secretive, and did not always look at you when you spoke. His fingernails seemed uncut, and grimy.

Marcel Proust wrote in a room fully lined in  leather . He composed Swan’s Way while lounging on a comfy divan, munching creamy bonbons while crafting his sentences. It was said that he used a quill pen and ink pot. Surely not a word processor. He was always meticulously coiffed and manicured and when he waddled from the studio, some said he was “a fop, a dandy”. We never met.  He was long before my time.

Ernest Hemingway was a consistently unpleasant man. Behind his blustery macho he may have been a timid soul, but” Papa ” eventually became what he appeared to be. When he was in New York he worked out at George Brown’s gym. He believed himself to be a splendid and tough fighter. I would watch him mix it with Brown for three rounds. Brown was a light-heavy and a champion boxer. He was also a strong puncher. During one workout Hemingway began mauling and fighting dirty. Brown warned him, “Cut it out.” Hemingway kept kidney punching, butting, and elbowing Brown. “Don’t do it again,” Brown warned him. Hemingway shoved and rammed Brown into a corner, battering him, scraping gloves across his eyes, stepping on his feet, hitting him below the belt. Brown slipped the punches, skipped aside, then hit Hemingway with a power-driven hook, knocking him out of the ring. People jumped out of the way to let him sprawl across the chairs. Hemingway bellowed,” Dirty fighting.” He was booed.

James Joyce sang opera before he began writing. Although three-quarters of his readers can only understand about half of his work, he was a fanatic about every word he wrote. When he completed his book Ulysses, he insisted that it be printed in France, by a printer with a staff of absolutely non-English reading type-setters. He demanded this so that not one carefully distorted sentence would be conventionally grammarized; not one deliberately misspelled word, corrected. In his later years, when he was going blind, he  wrote on a large blackboard in huge colored  chalk  letters.

When I was visiting Frank Yerby, in Cannes, he told me the way he often wrote. He was a wealthy man and rather than withdraw research books from the library, he would photograph the pages with a miniature camera. He would develop the film and then do his research at home. He used nine months setting up the novel (outline, scenes, storyline ) and take about three months to actually write it. Before was submitted to the publisher and handled by an official editor, he read it to his mother-in-law. She was an elderly woman and, I believe, Haitian. Her English was not fluent. She would listen to him read it to her. If she shook her head he would examine that portion; if she nodded, he would let it stand. He trusted her instincts, her deep, unlanguaged response. Yerby’s record of bestsellers and bookclub selections establishes his judgment in choice of editors.

The last time I met Mario Puzo  it was at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. He was still gambling heavily and having trouble with one of the Godfather scripts. Before I could sit down to ask how he was, he told me,” I have diabetes and have to stop drinking and smoking cigars. My blood pressure is frightening. I can hardly see and I’m about 100 pounds overweight. I’m in real bad shape.” He waited for my response and I said,  “So nothing’s changed, huh?” He laughed,” Neither have you, Bishop. You’re still all sympathy and all heart.” Later on I ask him what he enjoyed most about all his money and fame. He said, “I hate socks. Now I can go anywhere without wearing socks and no one dares call me a slob.”

I can only write about the writers who are fixed into history and some of the writers I know. On the surface they may appear egocentric and eccentric–but all writers are only like all people. Once we honestly estimate our own peculiarities, our own idiosyncrasies, then historic figures and famous writers will be brought into the reasonable focus of being “just people.”

(first published, Sunday, November 4, 1984 the Manhattan Mercury)

@1984 Leonard Bishop

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Even The Greats Wrote Some Trash

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Multiple Viewpoints

by Leonard Bishop

Leonard Bishop

Leonard Bishop

This is a true story–written to enlighten the general reading public who believe that great writers are born great writers; and to encourage despairing writers who see no hope in their ambitions.

In 1953 my publisher insisted that I live in Europe for a while. “To polish your boorish ways. To get yourself some culture.” I settled in a modest left-bank hotel in Paris and met a Russian Count Maximillian Ilyn. He was a film producer in his sixties. He was an intimate friend of people like Camus, Picasso, Utrillo, Sartre, Chagall, Colette, Malraux. He was always trudging from his room into the hotel lobby, exhausted from the demands of his youthful mistress. We became friends. He called me a “savage” because I doused my food in catsup and did not like yogurt.

He wheeled-and-dealed me into writing a short biography about the artist Maurice Utrillo which he had translated into French. It was issued by an artsy paperback publisher and I can’t find anyone who ever read it. Max took me over as his “barbaric prodigy.” He taught me table manners, the genteel way of kissing a woman’s hand when introduced (“Do not slobber or munch–caress provocatively.”) and how to wear the right clothes to the many parties we attempted.

I returned to New York about a year later so fat with culture that high-class just leaked out of me. I started teaching at New York University and working on another novel.

About six months later Maximillian came to America and telephoned me. We met in the Russian tea room on 57th St. He was carrying a bulky package. We ordered coffee and yogurt and talked a while, then he shoved the bundle to me. “Here, Leonard, this is unpublished stories of Chekhov, Tolstoy  Dostoevsky, Gogol, and such other masters. I am desperate for finances. Submit to your publisher, these writings.”

I was aghast. “Max, are you crazy? You don’t need me. Unpublished work of such great writers carries a built-in fortune. Publishers will let you weekend with their wives and virgin daughters to get their hands on this writing.”

He insisted that I do it his way. “You, Leonard, I trust. You are an innocent–not a greedy soul. For your efforts I will give you a privilege for writing the introduction to such a collection.” I telephoned my publisher, George Joel, of Dial Press, and told him what I had. His voice shuddered and squeaked with excitement. I brought it to his office and he placed it on his desk as if handling the Holy Grail. He was reverent and his eyes teared. “This will be the publishing event of the century.”

Three days later he telephoned me. I could hear his grief. “I can’t publish these stories, Leonard. I’m heartbroken, but I can’t publish these stories.” When he told me why, I was astonished.

I met with Maximilian again, in the Russian tea room. I handed him the bulk of pages. “Max, I’m sorry. My publisher won’t handle this writing.” He nodded and dejectedly spooned his yogurt, and sighed. “I was fearful of such a thing. It is most disenchanting to believe that such great writers could create such unpublishable trash.”

In Max’s desperate need for funds he had hoped that an American publisher would not be as critical as a more erudite and literate European publishers. What these writers–Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Kafka–had written was so amateurish that even the blatantly tasteless and commercial American publishers would not put it into print. The public would not believe such masters could create such drivel.

Great writers do not always write great works. Great writing emerges from ruthless combing away and culling out from a mass of writing that should be disregarded. Yet through all those years of writing, the writers who have changed the concept and character of their society sustained themselves by faith in their talents and in what they believed was truth. It often takes decades of slow working through despair and banality to suddenly produce a great book.

(first published Sunday, October 28, 1984 the Manhattan Mercury)

©1984 Leonard Bishop

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Write A Novel? Get Emotional

Posted on February 10, 2013 by Multiple Viewpoints

by Leonard Bishop

Leonard Bishop

Leonard Bishop

Writers are considered ‘intellectuals’ when, in reality, and they are ‘emotionalists.’ Intellectualism is provocative, but emotions are dramatic. Thought is a result of feeling. If someone flings the torch into your filled gasoline can, you do not first think about the inevitable chemical reaction. You get away, fast, and with feeling.

Writers use their thinking abilities to administrate what their feelings create. They feel the story, then think about. They respond to the emotional theatrics of the seeing, then think about how to arrange it into a readable drama. All writing is both feeling and thinking.

Which came first–the major creator (you) or the plot (some events in your life)? They both came first. They happen simultaneously, and they influence each other. Without a character, an event is merely an historical statistic. Without an event, a character is an inert personality.

Return to the model story-structure of a Red Riding Hood. The moment she goes on her errand, she is a character involved in an event. To bring out the depths in her character, you must put her under pressure. Without the pressure of circumstance, (a threat, a cause for fear,) she cannot reveal what she is feeling and thinking. Let her lose her way in the forest.

Every situation in which you place your character, (yourself,) you first explore the obvious reactions. Then, reveal the more intimate reactions. The obvious allows the reader to identify with the conditions. When the intimate reactions are described, the reader can then relate to the person. This helps the reader to participate and care about what is happening.

If Red Riding Hood gets lost in the forest, her obvious reaction will be panic. The reader can relate to that. If she decides to calm herself by eating one of her grandmother’s pastrami sandwiches, she is responding individually to her panic. While she is eating, you switch to the hungry wolf. He loves pastrami sandwiches. The aroma leads him to the girl. You have begun to set up another situation of danger for Red Riding Hood.

Major characters carry the novel. They should be complex. The plot-line is the sequence of events. They should be complicated. Complexity belongs to character because the longer you stay with her, the deeper she gets. Complication applies to events. One event leads to another and around and around it goes. Events fix characters into situations that cause them conflict. The conflict is any circumstance or person that thwarts the character from achieving success.

There are three types of conflicts:

  1. The individual against society (an economic depression, an earthquake, social aggression against personal principles)
  2. The individual against the individual (an enemy or enemies)
  3. The individual against him or herself (a destructive trend in character that threatens the individuals goals and objectives)

As in the Red Riding Hood plot line, place your characters into situation after situation. The betrayal by a friend, the rejection by a female, a drunken driving accident, finding a lot of money, developing a physical deformity that estranges them from people. Each situation they overcome deepens them, but also provokes other, more complicated situations. Use your own experiences as the start. Then allow them to lead you and others.

The novel is simply the story of what happens to people and how it happens to them. In the process of unfolding the situations you devise, you cause clashes, conflicts, and changes in character. No one ends the same way they began. This ” Youth\Odyssey” novel is the most credible and readable novel anyone can write. It not only gives your past reality it never had before, but it enriches and offers perception into your present. You also give the readers depths and insights into the variousness of life, through your personal experience. But there is one more requirement.

You will never be a true writer unless you drive yourself lunatic by wondering if you have talent. Many splendid novels are never written because people do not believe they have the talent for writing. Yet consider this: if talent was essential for the writing of novels, then three quarters of what is written today would not be published. Talent is important, but passion and work is more important. You are self-employed, and the boss. You will never know if you have the talent for writing a novel if you peck and poke at writing, now and then. Talent appears over a substantial length of time. You are not talented today and untalented tomorrow. You are either always talented or not ever talented. But you will never know which you are, until you are bold enough to try.

©Leonard Bishop, 2013

(first published November 24, 1985 the Manhattan Mercury)

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Write A Novel? Dramatize Life

Posted on February 3, 2013 by Multiple Viewpoints

  by Leonard Bishop

Leonard Bishop

Leonard Bishop

When writing a novel based on your experiences at a particular age, you must view that time dramatically, and with size. There is no need to develop bizarre plots that happen in exotic locations. Nor do you have to reveal the absolute truth about yourself, as it actually happened. You need only write of it so the reader is convinced that it is true.

If you have an elaborate academic background, don’t let the theories of writing bully you. If you have a scant academic past, don’t crush yourself with accusations of ignorance. Writing a novel does not depend upon scholarship, but on how intensely and theatrically you reveal experience.

The story-model I suggest is Red Riding Hood. Her mother asks her to bring a basket of food to her ailing grandmother. She is warned that it is getting dark and there is a swamp and a forest to cross. There is also a vile wolf lurking about. She confronts all hazards with personal resources she did not realize she possessed. Yet, at the end, just when she is about to be ravished, she is rescued.

You are not writing an autobiographical novel. You have selected a particular interval in your life to write about. Only some of that content will be true. Some of it will be fictional. You will portray some people you have known, properly disguising them. Others you will create. You are writing a novel, not a court room case-history. Here are some writing terms.

Red Riding Hood’s motivation is to get food to her grandmother. The plot-line is what happens on the way. The conflict comes from the dangers she must face. The character changes happen as she overcomes the dangers. She is the major character. The others are secondary characters.

You are the major character in your novel. Objectively estimate the facets of your own character that are complex–which contained some contradictions: Good /evil. Sensitive /crude. Intelligent /foolish. Ambitious /slugardly. Hateful /loving. Serious /frivolous. Simplistic characters are uninteresting. Complex characters are always getting into trouble.

Describe yourself as you are. If that is not suitable for the character you need, make changes. If you are plain, become lovely. Fictionalize off about 30 pounds, or fatten up. If you are sloppy, neaten yourself. Not enough members in your family? Create a few more. You are the creator.

The structure of the Red Riding Hood-type novel should be done in episodes. Keep them short. If you’re writing in the first person, as though you were telling it to someone, then you use one viewpoint. All situations, problems, conflicts, action and knowledge of other characters are revealed by the first person. Here’s Red Riding Hood telling her story:

“I was 13 years old and my mother told me, ‘Daughter, I want you to deliver this basket of food to your grandma. She’s feeling poorly. Hurry,’cause it’s getting late. You have to cross a swamp and the forest. Also, daughter, be careful of the Wolf.’ I left the house, singing.”

If you are writing in the third person, the detached, the writer is telling the story. You can write through many viewpoints. Here is third person:

“On Red Riding Hood’s 13th birthday, her mother asked her to run an errand. ‘Daughter, I want you to deliver this basket of food to your grandma.’ Red Riding Hood frowned.’I’m sorry grandma is sick.’ She was a tall girl with strikingly blonde hair and crossed blue eyes. She hated her grandmother. She was always picking her teeth and coughing. ‘Daughter, you must be careful.’ Her mother thought the girl was a little slow.”

Story is what the novel is all about. Plot is how the story unfolds and happens. On the way to her grandmother’s house, you fix Red Riding Hood into many situations, episodes. Every difficulty she overcomes leads her into other difficulties. Every new situation is a new challenge.

Transpose the Red Riding Hood story into the one you desire to write. Example: you are an apprentice electrician living with your father who is a drunk. He keeps stealing your money to buy booze. One morning you get into a fight with your foreman and are fired. You pack a bag to go to Phoenix, leaving your father with his bottle. The adventure has begun.

The key that opens the release of writing is the passion of unrestraint. Do not be inhibited by social proprieties. Socrates called writers “plausible liars.” Do not report what you were like, long ago. You were too inside yourself to really notice others. Fictionalize yourself. This frees you from your past. It gives you control over your history. You can also make other people interesting and dramatic. Allow your real experiences to lead you into inventing other experiences and link them together.

Do not become upset about the poor quality of your prose. You do not know enough about writing, now, to judge your own prose. You will write better prose as you keep writing. Your goal is to get a novel written. Now. If you have the endurance to complete the novel, you will have the stamina to do the rewriting, the editing, and polishing of prose. You begin with ignorance and hope, and end with experience and achievement. You learn to write your first novel by the writing of your first novel.

©Leonard Bisho, 2013

(first published November 10, 1985 the Manhattan Mercury)

 

 

 

 

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Write A Novel? Let’s Pretend

Posted on January 27, 2013 by Multiple Viewpoints

By Leonard Bishop

Leonard Bishop

Leonard Bishop

A late general complaint from all people who want to write novels is:” I’d love to write a novel–but I don’t know what to write about–or where to begin.” That is a mediocre excuse for not writing a novel. It is only when you do not view your life as an adventure you have miraculously survived, that you do not have anything to write about.

The greatest contribution to all novel writing is the writer’s dramatic vision. You must see your life as dramatic. Viewing yourself as ” everyone” or” anyone” reduces all the hurt, fear, worry, disappointment, loneliness, abuse, and reaching out for happiness into an experience so common it was not worth enduring. You must believe your own life is a stack of novels already lived and realized, and waiting to be written.

The universal substances in all literature of any nation is based on the dramatized account of the” young man\young woman” in search of self, of place, of soul, of love. From Homer’s Odyssey of Ulysses to the sprawling structure of James Joyce’s Ulysses there are thousands of other ” youth adventure” novels that have been written. Crime and punishment, Moby Dick, David Copperfield, Nana, Anna Karen Nina, Tom Jones, Tess of the D’Urbervilles.” We have all lived an Odyssey that can be written about. You have kept your life secret and hidden and anonymous long enough. It is now time to give your life some creative visibility.

You could use the fairytale of Red and Riding Hood as a model. You can use the story-structure and plot line as you know it–or modify and adapt it to fulfill what you need. You will be the major character. It can be an adventure story, a romance, a study of character relationships. It can be changed to an escape-and-rescue novel, or one of espionage, a fantasy, or a horror novel. It depends upon how interestingly you view an interval of your life and how inventive you are.

If you are 22 years old, or 37, or 58, find an event in your life in which you are most dramatic. An interesting, curious, shattering, sensational, bewildering, bitter, or joyous experience. Why you left your hometown or why you remained. You have never loved anyone or you have been hurt by all the people you have loved. Most of your days is a depression–or you are lusty with expectations. A time of anger, a time of laughter.

You have given your life to God, you are searching for God, you despise God. You’ve tried suicide–you intend to kill yourself tomorrow. You are alone. You drink too much, think too much about sex, have been in car accident and are crippled, hate animals, or fear growing old. If you are some or all of these people you have many dramatic times to write about.

Fix yourself into the “time-of-yourself” you want to write about, and remained there for a while. Remember a little of what happened before that time, remember some of what happened after. Now begin writing about it. Put it in simple, direct compositional form. You will be given one continual, unvarying guarantee: whatever you write about will be awful.

Amateurish, and shockingly dumb. If anyone ever sees it, you will leave town ashamed. That is the first “creative experience” you must overcome. In your fantasy and hope, the writing was symphonic, spellbinding–in the actual writing it becomes a dribbling ditty. What did you expect? Instant perfection? You become a writer of novels because you believe you have a literary experience to offer. You remain a writer because you can persist, and continue. All it is costing you is time you would waste anyway.

Keep at it. You are about to embark on an errand that will be exciting and jammed with adventure. Change Red Riding Hood’s errand into another. Example: you are the mother of a child whose Frisbee is blown by the wind. The child chases it. A long black car stops. The driver grabs her. It is her father who does not have visitation rights. He will take her to Wyoming to live. You go after the child.

As a writer you are involved in the enterprise of pretend. You can be the little girl who was kidnapped. You can be the mother. Or the father. You can divide your perception and imagination to become all three. Do not limit your personality and character by viewing it from one surface.

See yourself as a many-fascinated diamond. Various, changeable, complex, unpredictable, interesting. Inside the diamond is a precious and marvelous light. Let this light glow through your many facets.

Not everyone who tries to write a novel will become a writer. But you can try, and through trying, realized if it is a day-dream or reality. Novelists are not born. They are creations of their own effort. Don’t lock your creative life away because you will not risk appearing dumb for a little while. Open the closet and let yourself out. You may be exceptional, and marvelous. The novel you have always wanted to write is ripe for being written–today.

©Leonard Bishop, 2013

(first published November 10, 1985 the Manhattan Mercury)

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We Grow Through Time

Posted on January 21, 2013 by Multiple Viewpoints

by Leonard Bishop

Leonard Bishop

Leonard Bishop

I enjoy remembering, but I do not believe in photograph albums. They are bulky, and troublesome to maintain. There are always stacks of pictures in the drawer, waiting to be placed on the pages.

Years ago I decided “No more albums,” and began searching the thrift stores for used frames. Whenever I settle and build myself a studio, I hang the photographs on the walls. I am surrounded by my history, by the people I love, by memories. Wherever I look, there I am, where I used to be.

There I am in 1944, a few weeks before D-Day. I’m wearing a broad brimmed fedora, my jacket was wide, padded shoulders, and I’m sneering. If it had not been for that photograph me and three other kids would’ve robbed and mugged the greatest symphony conductor of the time Arturo Toscanini.

We had it carefully cased and planned. He conducted a weekly radio program from Rockefeller Center in New York City. He had a large rented home in Riverdale outside of the city proper. He was driven to the 49th Street entrance in a luxurious Chevrolet. He was a punctual man. Short with flaring white hair. Skinny, rat-eyed, natty. We were told he carried a wad of bills in his pocket to pay for the nightclubbing he did after performances. We were dressed neatly in borrowed zoot-suits to blend with the crowds of respectable people and soldiers.

Then a street photographer working the area snapped our pictures and poked the receipt into our pockets. If we mailed him a dollar– it could be in postage stamps– he would send us the photographs. We wanted to kill him.  If we had mugged the “Great Toscanini” the cops would have learned of our presence on the street and could’ve gotten our pictures. We walked away. A few months later I sent for my picture.

There I am in 1939 lifting weights in an institution for ‘the social correction of delinquents.’ It was about 6 miles from Eastport, in Maine. Big chest, bulging shoulders, trim waist, stallion legs.

Eleven years later, in 1950, I was in New York City, just starting to become a writer, and I was forced into hiding. There was a catch-a-communist frenzy on. A senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, was on a rampage for personal publicity. He used the Communists as his lever.

In 1937 I joined the Young Communist League. It was the only place where you could get free donuts and coffee, and be taught how to lift weights. Ironically, the Young Communist League was one of the few organizations that was not considered subversive. I had signed their membership, Hymie Cockamamie.

There I am in 1959 holding my youngest son, Matthew, about a year old. Behind us is a bulky television set with a screen the size of a book page. It was a day when my first wife thought I was a stupid envious man.

Around 1958, we had gone to a party and met a tall, soft-faced blonde guy named Charles Van Doren. His family were noted scholars and literary critics and I immediately disliked him. He believed my novels were too raw. I said he was a superficial punk living off his family’s reputation.

And there he was, a television star, answering questions that could earn him $64,000 on the television quiz-show. I said,” I don’t believe he knows that much. You heard me talking to him. I had to give the creep the definition of eclecticism. He’s a know-nothing.” She claimed I was just an uneducated lout who didn’t know the sex of the Statue of Liberty.

On November 16, of that year, Charles Van Doren walked into the House Caucus Room and testified that he had been fed the answers to the quiz. I pitied the poor child, but I did envy the money he made.

There I am, in 1939, standing in front of the high school with two satin streamers across my chest.” Second Best Dancer” and ” Second Best Looking.” The only reason I came in second in those two categories was because the guy who came in first had gotten to the voting committee before me. With strong-armed intimidation. You could win any high school poll. I was wearing my older brother’s suit.

I have seen the studios of other writers. They have paintings and books, fan letters and book jackets, accolading reviews and some photographs of their families framed on their walls. Few ever used their walls as a gallery portraying their past.

I enjoy looking at and remembering all those yesterdays. I feel continuous, moved along with time. I did not become what I am right now, right now. I have been grown like a gardenia or weed, through time. I am connected to a social and personal history. In those times when I was photographed, I am fixed and unchanging. I will always be the same even while I am becoming more, and older.

©Leonard Bishop,2013

(first published October 27, 1985 the Manhattan Mercury)

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Aggression, Cynicism and Great Writing

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Multiple Viewpoints

by Leonard Bishop

Leonard Bishop

Leonard Bishop

What I intend to say, and how I say it, are not always the same. I received a letter from a Mr. D. of Manhattan. He stated that my attitudes to “being a writer” were aggressive and cynical. I will agree to being aggressive, but not cynical. The tone of what I say often conceals the feeling with which I say it. Still, I finally answered Mr. D’s letter. He also made some statements about “being a writer.” What follows now are excerpts from my reply to Mr. D.

Mr. D writes: “I believe that great writing evolves naturally without forcing it.” My answer denied his belief.

“I don’t believe any writer deliberately writes great writing at all. He or she merely writes. Greatness is dumped, whacked, or blanketed upon them by a constituency of critics who happen to be around at the time the writer is published. You will find that nine-tenths of what is considered great writing is almost unreadable, in this time. Which defeats the mantle of “greatness” since if it is truly great it must transcend the centuries because of the vibrant universality of its content. Re-read the books you once considered great and you will experience a dreadful disappointment.

“If you are in fact, Mr. D., a writer, then you know it is a daily job. There is no glitter, no tinsel, no romance. It is what you do. The writer is engaged in craft not art. How do I get a character across the street? If I use introspection here, will it slow the action–and if it does, is the content of the introspection worth the interruption? Can I end this chapter with a “hanging moment” and begin the next chapter with a summary of what happened in the last chapter when I left it–and thus save unnecessary exposition and documentation? Is the setting more vivid than the action it is meant to authenticate?  And on and on.

“This is what writers do. They conceived through the abstract and use their senses of drama to bring it into the tangible experience. If they are concerned with “greatness” while they write, they are fools. If they are concerned with art while they write, they are equally foolhardy. They are, in the reality of experience, writing for their lives. And when they are done, it is no longer theirs. The strata of the society lays judgment on their work.

“In your letter, Mr. D., you seem to be dealing with “therapy” rather than creativity. A writer doesn’t find themselves in the writing. They are a self when they begin. I have lived through the ugliness, the pain, the despair that students reach when they try to write; when they keep writing; and I grieve for them. In whatever I write (a column, a review, my own work) or whenever I teach, I always indicate that writers write for two reasons only. For fame, and for wealth. I am perhaps lying through omission.

“They also write because they must fit themselves into their time. They are castoffs, malcontents, exiled–because they are talented. Because they are dramatic. Because they see in the common, the rare. The talent, that odd and alien vein that carries sweet and bubbly blood to their hearts, estranges them from the time in which they want to belong–and yet, not really belong, because it is oppressive; it is grinding; it is wrong. There are roses and they learn the petals are sour. There is a magic kiss and then the astonishment that all the teeth are loose.

“They write because they cannot fit into the world and they want to change it; or write to change their own lives so they need not fit into the world, and yet live. Yes, they want fame and wealth and awards, but they also want to touch what always seems unreal, and shape it into a reality they can live with.

“You write about “theme”… and I have come to despise the word because I have seen it mislead and corrupt so many talented writers. The theme is born into writers long before they bring a pen to paper. If they have to think of themes they are consciously limiting the expanse of their work. If what they write doesn’t have a multitude of themes then they have written a duty. You find the theme after you finish the work… People who are everyday writers do not think of themes, they think of craft, of sentences, of backgrounds, of drama… Whatever you write must be published, or it is not written. It is merely notated. That is a crass and hard fact, but it is not cynical. If it is not published it is not read. Writers are not some bone-heads, egg-heads or effete intellectuals who inhabit some esoteric dimension not open to the community of commons. They write to be published.

“What you say about writers entering a dark room when they begin, and they adjust to the darkness and become less fearful because there is nothing in the room that can harm them, is right. But you leave out a significant detail. Writers bring someone into the dark room with them–themselves. They bring in their restraint, their shame, their anger, their doubts, their parents, their friends, and all the terrors they tried to hide all their lives. And unless they write about this, they may find light in the room, in time, but none in themselves.

“That’s what you’re for, Mr. D., and what I’m for. To help them see some light in themselves. If an ex-drifter like me can do it, then it can be done. If someone like yourself can teach and offer helpful comments and instruction, then that is what you are there for–to bring them some light. Light chases the gloomy guilts and arcane fears and long intervals of self-torment. And if you are not loved for it–does it really matter? We are paid for what we write and teach and if we demand love as part of the compensation, we are performing in a clattering conceit.”

That was some of what I wrote to Mr. D.

©Copyright Leonard Bishop,2013

(first published October 13, 1985 the Manhattan Mercury)

 

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A Resolution Meant to be Fulfilled

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Multiple Viewpoints

by Leonard Bishop

Leonard Bishop

Leonard Bishop

I intend to fulfill a New Year’s resolution that is based on a long-standing cliché. But, like many clichés that were once refreshing wisdoms, they should be reprised and the wisdom revived. Beware of self-fulfilling prophecies. If I can sustain this resolution, the remainder of my life will make sense, and be successful. I never realized I was a self-causing depressionist until I saw how other people caused themselves depressions.

One morning last week, when I woke, my first sound was a despairing groan–my first statement was,” This is going to be one long and lousy day.” And I was right. Every hour was a deploring exhibit of what anxiety, irritation and self disgust can do to one person. Whatever I did became a procedure of failure. All my pleasant intentions–to be loving, kind, considerate–became a meanness that forced people to avoid me.

I had no justifiable complaint, no excuse for blaming other people for my state of feeling. I had brought it upon myself. From the moment I awakened. “This is going to be one long and lousy day.” Diligently, I worked to prove I was right. If the day had turned out well, I would’ve been miserable. I would’ve wondered what had gone wrong.

So much of our time is guided by the unhappy clichés we utter, revealing our deepest, secret attitudes. If something good happens, we are afraid that an admission that it is good will jinx it. So we comment,” It can’t last,” or” It’s too good to be true.” If we gain an unexpected opportunity, we say,” I’ll never be able to do it,” or” I’ll probably mess it up, the way I always do.” We awaken with a sense of gloom–and direct ourselves toward a daily doom. Most of us are afraid of the day that opens for us. We hope for a marvelous future, but we dread tomorrow. We place an intense spotlight on how inadequate we believe we are, and keep the knowledge of our constant competence in the shadows. Hourly, we exaggerate self-doubt and diminish self-appreciation. Because we experience some confusion or dilemma, we immediate believe we are helpless and our lives are futile. We are comfortable with self-condemnation, and to try trusting in ourselves causes us grief and palpitation.

We are so edgy with worry for what others think about us that we begin to dislike people even before we meet them. Our interest in being liked by everyone is so anxious, we never pause to consider if they are the kind of people whose favor we would enjoy. We compromise, subsumed, and concede personal values in fear of being exiled from social stratas that are sleazy and without values.

Well, I’ve had enough. I’m going to stop believing that the people I respect are more intelligent, talented and deeper than I am–and respect them because of what they are–not because of what I believe I am not. And I won’t care if my nose is large, if there is a blemish on my skin, a bulge over my belt, or if I’m not tailored as meticulously as an English butler. Since I do not earn my income posing for magazine covers, why be anxious about not being a handsomest of men?

When I awaken tomorrow I will say,” Thank God for the marvelous day ahead of me,” and live the day in pleasant expectation rather than anticipating horrible problems. I will do this every day until the sensible attitude replaces the dumb habit of preparing myself for daily doom.

It is no lie, no hype, no self-induced trance into a brutal delusion that is easily shattered. I am a sincere person. I do have accomplishments. There are people who like me and there are people whom I like. If I need help, I’ll ask someone to help me and not be ashamed that people think I’m weak, or worthless. If someone asks me for help, I’ll help him and not be suspicious that I am being used, exploited, or mocked. I am a good person.

I am a good person, in fact. I know how to love, to laugh, to work, to give. I’m so strong within myself that if someone hurts me, abuses me, or damns me, I will survive. I will survive and not feel sad that that person has overlooked my value in his life. I am an experienced person. I have lived through illness, family death, poverty, disappointments–and have gained wisdom. I can give all of myself to anyone and still have more of me, for others. The only one I have to be afraid of is the ruthless enemy within me, trying to pull me down. He’s an enemy, so old within me I cannot know where he came from, or why I let him in. And I no longer care. I am more certain and greater than he is. Back to hell with you, enemy. “This is going to be one long and loving year!”

Yes. Come on, New Year. I stand naked before you, with my arms fully opened. Dress me, fill me, cover me with your glorious blessings.

Leonard Bishop

(first published December 29, 1985 the Manhattan Mercury)

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Deep Down, Even the Dull are Delightful

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Multiple Viewpoints

by Leonard Bishop

Leonard Bishop

Leonard Bishop

Is your life dull, because you are a dullard? Are your days one drab dragging into another drab? Do you avoid standing against the gray wall in fear you will not be noticed? When invited to a party are you used only to fill space? Hold on–don’t despair–there’s still hope for you!

You don’t have to be an actual writer to gain the attention a published writer gets. All you need to do is say you are writing, and you are given regard. The kind of social stature you want to attain depends upon what “type” of writing you pretend to do. If you are asked, “What kind of work do you do?” And you reply, “I’m a writer.” The next question is, “Oh, what do you write?” Your social stature hinges on how you answer that question. If you remark, “I write letters to the editor,” you have just given yourself a social coronary. If you continue with, “Someone has to inform the public of the injustices that…” You have given someone a shovel to bury you with.

Running second to the lowly “letter to the editor” are greeting cards, industrial manuals, bank brochures hustling people to open accounts, or “meaningful essays.” Not only are essays ignored, but few are published and those that are, are rarely understood. Essays are lambs for slaughter.

“I write poetry” might cause a twitch of interest. If you identify the category of poetry you claim to write, make it exotic. “I write Gothic ballads,” or “Renaissance lays are my forte. Though on occasion I compose a Petrarchan conceit, or a Miltonic sonnet. I improvise on the use of trochaid, pyrrhic, or  Alexandrian hexameter.” If anyone knows what you’re talking about, avoid such crazy people.

Revealing that you write short stories is more acceptable. But never carry any of your mythical work with you. There is always a vile person who might ask, “You have one with you? I’d like to read it.” Writing short stories gives you an aura the serious, yet still innocent “artist to be” stature.

It is in the “I am writing a novel” where you gain size and artistic charisma.

The first question you will be asked is, “What’s the novel about?” Edge back as though in the presence of the diseased and reply, “Do you tell anybody about what you do on your income tax return?” Or become tense, “I never discuss my novels. I might talk them away.”

These are the attitudes and identifying behaviorism’s to use when trying to be branded as a writer. If you write “non-fiction novels” carry a tape recorder. While chatting with someone, suddenly hold it up and say, “My, you have an interesting speech pattern. Do repeat that, please,” then loudly snap on the machine and squint intensely. You will either fluster the person into silence or bloat him into believing he is interesting–so you will be thought interesting. Do not be surprised if he asks, “Will you mention my name?” or “When it comes out, can I get a copy?”

The public is either a paradoxical or contradictory people. If you are a genuine struggling writer, they give you little respect. All manner of ridiculous and unfounded stigma accompanies the identity of “struggling writer.” You are an idler, a drinker, a lecher, an irresponsible dim-dip, an opium smoker, an incurable psychotic, a repugnant necrophile preparing to experiment with incest.

But at a party, you create uncertainty in other people. They are all brought up on myth and superstition. Life is illogical, disorderly, unpredictable. They cannot be absolutely certain you will always be a failure. “What if he makes a big one day?” they think.

People at a party or a gathering are obligated to be proper and conventional–but they find a touch of madness delightful, interesting. It’s all an act anyway, isn’t it? Nobody knows what anybody is really like–deep, deep down. Why let them believe you’re dull just because you might be dull? Make it up, put it on, have the laughs you never had before; do a little dance. Nobody really cares and everybody wants to enjoy and be enjoyed–and who knows, you might really be interesting–deep down.

Copyright Leonard Bishop

(first published Sunday, September 15, 1985 the Manhattan Mercury)

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Writer’s Hint: Characterization

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Multiple Viewpoints

From Leonard Bishop, Author of Dare To Be a Great Writer

Let characters live in a constant state of “Scream!”  (2/12/98)

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