Endless Joke, Infinite Jest, Interminable Gag

Well, this is embarrassing. What on earth happened to all those posts between mid-September and now, you ask? Huh? Oh, that's right, I didn't write them. My excuse? None, really, other than the fact I've been very busy (so, nothing new there) and I went and published another book.

Ah... what's that? Yeah, I said a book. You forgive me? Good. Let's go get muffins. Huh? You hate muffins? Yeah, so do I. Whatevs, we'll improvise.

Back to the book. I was so caught up in the esoteric, arcane world of formatting for epublishing and uploading to scarily-named nuclear meatgrinders that I damn well forgot to mention anything on the blog I set up to showcase such announcements in the first place. Can you spell "imbecile"? Yeah, of course you can, it was a rhetorical question.

A couple of things: the book is called Endless Joke. The more astute of you will notice its visual and titular resemblance to a certain famous tome by David Foster Wallace. And for the less astute, ahem, pay attention to the title of this post. Okay, I'm actually surprised no one has taken me to task on the almost inconceivable hubris it must have taken for me to place my snarky book of essays on a continuum that begins with Shakespeare and includes the complex and challenging Infinite Jest. In my defence, I did it in a spirit of bathos, in an attack of self-deprecation on a par with the scene in Trainspotting where Renton can no longer contain within his carefully constructed walls of denial and insouciance the truth of what it is to be Scottish. So, as everyone in the UK would put it, I'm taking the piss. Out of myself more than anyone, it must be said. Now, don't get me wrong: although I harbour a reluctant appreciation for arrogance, I'm personally not all that predisposed to it. I mean, here's the rub: I'm good but I'm nowhere near that fucking good.

Anyway, it took me four years to read Infinite Jest. Yes, I said "years". Just saying. It's possibly one of the most aptly named books ever written. Not that it isn't brilliant. In some ways, it's too brilliant, leaves everyone in its awkward, golden wake.

Endless Joke, however, is far from endless; in fact, it's quite short. Twenty nine quick chapters dug from the seams of Indies Unlimited and this very blog, a paean to and a diatribe against the current book-industry climate in which random vowels seem to get arbitrarily attached to existing words (when this extends to proper names, do I go with iDavid or eDavid?) and all of us have had to learn not only how to be writers, but how to be publishers, editors, designers, typesetters, formatters, advertisers and publicists. With that in mind, it's a hybrid of writer's manual and (pop) cultural commentary, medium-heavy on the snark but also informative, sweet and gleaming with a lifetime's love of the language.

Okay, I've rambled enough for now. I'll talk some more about it later, maybe. For now, give it a go, see what you think, and please don't hesitate to give me feedback. I love feedback. I crave it. I need it. Like zombies need brains. Like ageing mitochondria need serious protection from marauding free radicals. Huh? Never mind, shut up.

Hot And Fresh Out The Kitchen

Editing. Not a concept that fills most writers with joy. For many, it’s the unpleasant yet necessary shadow accompanying the act of writing itself, sort of how a painful rash can follow a good… um, hike through poison ivy. And I see why many of us feel that way, I really do. Or I did. Lately, along with extra wrinkles around my eyes and greyer hair at my temples (okay, not just my temples, but we don’t need to get all TMI, do we?), I’ve begun to appreciate editing for what it is. I’m not talking about the editing I do for others, necessarily, although I could be. No, I’m referring more to my own process in that regard. Something dawned on me: I’m starting to enjoy it. Now, either I am growing more masochistic than I ever believed possible, or my new realisation has actual substance. Again, for TMI-avoidance purposes, let’s go with the latter.

Here, I’ll just say it: editing is an integral part of the creative process and isn’t really qualitatively different from writing. What we tend to call “writing” is in fact “initial drafting” and what we often think of as “editing” is just a deeper form of “writing”. Every bit as creative, and potentially just as satisfying. At its best, it’s the layers of paint over the pencil sketch. I realise there may be folks reading this who are kind of looking askance at me and thinking “no, duh, did you just receive your first clue via a Wells Fargo stagecoach?”, and to those people I hold up my hands, guilty as charged: what others have perhaps known for a goodly while genuinely occurred to me, like, yesterday. Look, I’m a slow learner, okay, but at least I’m a learner.

So, what do I mean? Well, the best way to get something across is to demonstrate it, to literally show and not tell (don’t hurt me, Linton). So, I’ll write a quick draft of a fabricated passage from a non-existent fantasy novel, here:

The men rode up the hill, the army of trolls behind them. They paused at the top and looked across a burning landscape, the distant city sending smoke high in the grey sky. Everything seemed hopeless. Ear’o'korn faced his men. “This is the moment. All paths have led to this. We must defeat our enemy or perish. Prepare the last stand of Condomia!” Stirred, the men renewed their faith and turned toward their pursuers, ready for battle again and prepared to fight to the last man for the Good and the Righteous.

Okay, I wrote that literally without pausing or second-guessing, which is how most of us either write or are told to write. In other words, bring on the heavy editing artillery long after the first draft, never during it. So, imagine I’m done my draft and am now returning to the passage in question for the first time. And I’m so not kidding, this part is fun. Either that, or I’m an incorrigible word nerd. Hmmm. Yeah, probably the latter. Oh, I should point out there is no one perfect way to edit such a passage; in fact, the possibilities are probably close to infinite, so don’t attack my somewhat exaggerated style or you’ll be missing the point (he says, covering his butt far too glibly).

Here’s one way:

The men rode to the summit of the hill… I prefer this as it negates the need for “at the top” in the next sentence …the troll army following. Again, it feels more efficient and works better rhythmically. Pausing amid a cloud of dust… This engages the senses, adds verisimilitude …they looked out across a ravaged landscape, at the burned forests and the columns of smoke rising from the distant city. A little more description, just enough to conjure a scene, but allowing the reader to fill in some of the detail of what a ravaged landscape looks like. Dismay and horror crossed their faces like shadows. This isn’t great, but it’s still better visually than “everything seemed hopeless”. You could probably lose one of “dismay” or “horror” if you wanted it tighter. Raising his voice, Ear’o'korn spoke. “Faced his men” is too Hollywood, too inorganic, he’s in the middle of a disorganized, demoralized party of weary soldiers, after all, not giving a fresh battle speech at the outset of a conflict. “Men, this is our moment to defeat despair. We have arrived here together, having traveled many paths. Two choices now remain: vanquish… we used “defeat” far too recently, and it has a nice balance alongside the upcoming “perish” …our enemy or perish in the attempt. In the name of all that’s good, for the sake of all we hold dear, prepare the last stand of Condomia! Fight as the brothers we are!” Sometimes we add words, sometimes we eliminate them. This is an example in which the passage requires more length, his speech needing to fit the “high speech” mold of epic fantasy, and rather than tell the readers his men were moved by it, we allow the words themselves to do the job, bolstered by a simple description afterward. As he spoke, the soldiers grew taller in the saddle, slowly turning their horses to face their pursuers. Jaws set, weapons raised, they roared in unison, each man welcoming the final charge, the possibility of his own death. Now, again, this isn’t perfect or even great, but you get the idea that each time we lay down another layer or another shade of paint, we hope to improve the bigger picture. Of course, this leads to another huge question outside the purview of this post: when do you stop? If you daub too many layers, you end up with a muddy, sloppy mess of words and a ruined picture. Anyway, for comparison purposes, I’ll paste the edited version here.

The men rode to the summit of the hill, the troll army following. Pausing amid a cloud of dust, they looked out across a ravaged landscape, at the burned forests and the columns of smoke rising from the distant city. Dismay and horror crossed their faces like shadows. Raising his voice, Ear’o'korn spoke. “Men, this is our moment to defeat despair. We have arrived here together, having traveled many paths. Two choices now remain: vanquish our enemy or perish in the attempt. In the name of all that’s good, for the sake of all we hold dear, prepare the last stand of Condomia! Fight as the brothers we are!” As he spoke, the soldiers grew taller in the saddle, slowly turning their horses to face their pursuers. Jaws set, weapons raised, they roared in unison, each man welcoming the final charge, the possibility of his own death.

Yeah, okay, still needs work. I kind of cheated, too, as this type of writing is almost built on cliché, so I didn’t have to worry too much about that aspect, at least. But hopefully you get my bigger point, that this is writing every bit as creative and enjoyable as that first rough sketch, perhaps more so. That it’s all part of the larger process. It’s work, but it’s also play.

Once again, an analogy from my other favourite art form—music—rides in like Ear’o'korn to rescue us at the death. Far from being drudgery, what we term editing is really a re-working, is in fact not so much an edit as a remix. And as such, it can be truly radical. If you’re still skeptical, go track down R. Kelly’s original “Ignition”, then listen to “Ignition: Remix”. Clue: one is possibly the greatest song of the new Millennium, and the other… uh, isn’t.

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A version of this post appeared on Indies Unlimited on May 11, 2012. David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

I Love You

Here, in reverse order, are ten things I like that are related to writing. Sort of. This is a completely random list and may possibly be an early sign of my eventual and catastrophic disintegration. Actually, I’ve reread it and it makes a very abstract kind of sense, after all. If you’re a surrealist. Or a nutbar. Or a strange gelatinous creature from the Aldebaran system.

10. I like hats. Not to wear. Very rarely, in fact, do I wear hats. I am far too proud of my flowing golden locks to hide them. I run my fingers through those locks while mimicking the sound of gentle lovemaking in haylofts. Anyway, hats. I will write about hats until the cows come home. And if, upon arriving home, those same cows eat all the hats, I will create more hats from whole cloth. Only, not. I’ll create them from nothing but thoughts, like Lewis Carroll embracing Khalil Gibran while on acid. The flowing golden locks part was a lie, incidentally. It’s normal guy hair, short and greying, but I still like it.

9. Roy Batty. The coolest of replicants, steeped in pride and melancholy like a lost boy in a gymnasium full of parakeets. I wish I could have written something even a tenth as poignant and plain badass-cool as the “tears in rain” soliloquy. Actually, this isn’t good. This actually makes me want to give up writing. As it should. You should too. And when I do, I will sigh, with the staggering weight of humanity’s eternal sorrow behind my exhalation, and whisper “time to die.”

8. Poetry. Poetry is very cool, it’s just that most of it isn’t. But the good stuff, the good stuff… Here:

“Maybe, as he stood
two inches from the wall,
in darkness, fogging the old plaster
with his breath, he visualized the future
as a mansion standing on the shore
that he was rowing to
with his tongue’s exhausted oar.”

from Self Improvement by Tony Hoagland

Or:

“On longer evenings,
Light, chill and yellow,
Bathes the serene
Foreheads of houses.
A thrush sings,
Laurel-surrounded
In the deep bare garden,
Its fresh-peeled voice
Astonishing the brickwork.
It will be spring soon,
It will be spring soon –
And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a scene
Of adult reconciling,
And can understand nothing
But the unusual laughter,
And starts to be happy.”

Coming by Philip Larkin

Poetry is not being all emo about how no one understands you, especially that girl with the cute dimples and the endearing way she flicks her hair back. When it comes to poetry, most of us get stuck in that phase and forget to move into the adult world, thinking such ephemera poetry. It’s understandable in a way. We are not always taught it with joy. But poetry is neither Hallmark doggerel nor a sterile academic sideshow. At its best, it’s more akin to music, with its odd internal logic, tone and rhythmic/melodic qualities. Each type of poem has its own rules. A sonnet is not even close to a poem written in free verse, but both are equally valid as forms, the skill of the poet and the (mind’s) ear of the audience the only things that matter. The good stuff isn’t easy to find; you have to dig. I could post maybe a hundred examples right now of why good poetry is worth your time. It’s inspiring. It’s the use of delicacy and subtlety within exacting strictures. It’s beauty. I don’t know why, but for many centuries poets were valued, yet if you say you’re a poet today (I don’t, because I’m not), you will likely be met with awkward silence or possibly even the mocking laughter of a growing crowd that quickly senses blood. In the shame scales, it’s perhaps only a rung above sex offender, or even politician. I’m really not sure why. But I like it. Good poetry, that is. Is there a person alive who wouldn’t react in some way to such a startling phrase as “astonishing the brickwork”?

7. Why don’t North Americans “get” what they insist on calling soccer? It’s inspirational. The very criticisms they level at it are the aspects that make it more than a sport, something elevated into a hybrid of art form and planetary-wide cult. Take the low scoring. It really should be obvious to anyone who has thought about gold or diamonds or raucous laughter on a killing field why that is a positive. When you make the goals so rare, their value is increased. They are precious. I watch soccer, or football as I used to call it back when I was European, and something of its grace and power and drama has to inform my writing. At least, I hope it does. It has to. Even the simulation must translate. I dive to win a penalty. Metaphorically. Even when you dive, you still have to tuck it away. The crowd is outraged. It’s wrong, yet you now have a chance to win. I can’t explain this. It has something to do with the inherent unfairness of the universe. Randomness and a terrible unquenched need.

6. I love you. And I will make you love me back.

5. I am not judgmental. Generally. But if I encounter someone who doesn’t like animals I am creeped out. I have created characters still only at the sketch stage who are extremely unpleasant and capable of great brutality, and I instinctively make them animal-haters. This I might never change.

4. Do you recall an early morning in which the air is cool yet already embracing the promise of the sun? In which the simple act of breathing is a delight albeit one containing the chill woe of its eventual absence? In which the shadows are still soft yet beginning to test their edges like a hoodlum with a switchblade grinning in an alley? I don’t know what I’m trying to say, but this dark, dichotomous urgency is filling me with the strangest panic.

3. It’s all about writing. Which is essentially communication. Which, in its turn, is how we connect with our fellow humans. So, it’s about love. Because we can’t love any one or any thing if we surrender to the awful void of the world’s loneliness. Isolation is narcissism. When we magically talk to another, and we get even a portion of our meaning across, with all its beauty or frustration or uncertainty or hunger, we are performing the work we once attributed to gods. It’s alchemical. It’s akin to magic. Love can’t fully happen without it. I take back what I said earlier: we should never give up writing. It would be like a bird giving up the air.

© mental images, 19982. I don’t know what this post is about. It isn’t funny, or even profound. We sometimes have strange days in which the quirky detritus of the world comes drifting in on rays of alien light via windows we didn’t know existed. Once we know they exist, it’s important not to board them up, yet equally important we don’t force their eldritch light to shine. Let them shine when they shine, and otherwise remain shrouded.

1. A woman stood on a promontory. She clasped a dead kitten to her breasts, and the look of sorrow on her face made the gods weep so much they lost their nerve and abandoned humanity. She looked down at the wrathful surf below, at its inexplicable tantrum against the snaggletoothed rocks and she knew both the ocean’s rage and it’s deceptive placidity. She swayed. A sudden gust would plunge her toward those rocks. She held her breath and waited to see if nature would further aid and abet a terrible crime against love, a crime of neglect. She leaned forward at an almost impossible angle. But no gust, not even a breeze. Nature was violent below, yet gentle as lark song up here on the cliff edge. The sun’s rays were splayed above the horizon, gilt-edging the few clouds amid the deepening blue of the sky. She let her tears fall and recalled a time when she had been a little girl and thought she had seen a stunted demon steal across the school playing fields, hunched and hooded and malignant as any inoperable cancer, as hostile a thing as any she had encountered before or since. She cried for the kitten that had been denied its chance to accept or reject the glory and the disenchantment, the splendour and the defilement. She held its tiny grey body out, marveling at its lightness, and she let it fall to the tumultuous indifference of the eternal clash of water and rock below. The way of yielding and the way of resistance. Thinking about the many ways we must choose to either love or murder, she turned toward home and the man who might soon pay the price—deserved or otherwise—of her eventual decision.

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A version of this post appeared on Indies Unlimited on April 13, 2012. David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

Breaking the Rules

As much as we sometimes pretend we don’t, we love rules. Even the most maverick of writers is receptive to those clever, memorable guidelines, if only to know what to kick against. And the reality is that rules for writing—as for life, let’s face it—are not only abundant but are bewilderingly contradictory.

See, the thing about rules for writing is that, kind of like a yin-yang symbol, they always contain cute little seeds of their exact opposites. Witness the exhortations—from such authoritative guides as Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style and George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language—to err on the side of simplicity, to avoid in particular the pretensions of Latin- and Greek-based language in favour of good old Anglo-Saxon English (put simply and memorably: “avoid fancy words”). Plain common sense advice about plain common sense English, right? Well, yes and no. Outside the secret and no-doubt sordid fantasies of botanists everywhere, Orwell’s example of a snapdragon is still in no danger of being superseded by antirrhinum almost seventy years after he expressed his reservations. Similarly, ameliorate and clandestine have their place, even if we are more often inclined to use help and secret.

The thing is, contained within this particular dictum is a received wisdom that is equally worth challenging: that pretension is somehow wrong or unseemly.

Personally, I’d trust a style guide that said something along these lines: “if your intuition (sorry, “gut” if you love the Anglo-Saxonisms) tells you that what you’re currently writing requires some pretension, then don’t shy away from it”. The music of the Ramones was every bit a product of artifice as anything produced by Van der Graaf Generator. And there may well be moments during your writing (for pacing, for rhythmic or melodic reasons) that require the risk of spouting the dreaded purple prose. In which case, I say go for it. Life is risk. Hell, writing is risk. Let the rules take a back seat once in a while. After all, playing soccer in just the penalty area is called “training”; you use the whole field when you play the actual game. Or, more in keeping with my tortured metaphor, that guitar you coveted and saved for and so proudly brought home in its sleek black case happens to have six strings and twenty frets, so why only noodle around on the top E string and the lower three frets every time? You didn’t buy it just to stroke its feminine curves, did you? (Don’t answer that.) And I haven’t even started on effects pedals…

I’m not saying go all Yngwie Malmsteen here—a sweaty blur, shredding ’til your fingers bleed, hands like demented octopi—but the odd flourish might not go amiss. Of course, you’re not Jimi or Jimmy and your attempts will probably fall flat, but what if by reaching, by risking overreaching, you unveil something in your style you weren’t aware of, a capacity for lyricism or poetry, a music previously unsung? I’d say that’s worth the risk, wouldn’t you? Especially since, by baring our souls so publicly, we’re already making complete fools out of ourselves anyway.

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A version of this article first appeared on IndiesUnlimited on February 10, 2012. David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

Tilting At Windmills

Of course, this isn't all going to be about me and my introspective self, it's going to be about writing, too... and publishing... and books... and writers and readers, and the overlaps therein. Oh, and sex. Okay, maybe not sex, unless you consider language sexy, in which case, you have my blessing.

Earlier I was talking about the two trips I took across the continent of North America, coast to coast, so to speak. This second time, I saw plenty of changes, not least (in a physical sense) the incredible number of wind farms that had sprouted most everywhere the land lay flat and the air moved fast. Thinking about all this, I came across the following:

Similar thoughts had crossed my own mind, but that last panel is genius. Anyway, you gotta love the Web and I couldn't have asked for better timing. And, bonus, it's always worth a plug for the incomparable xkcd.

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David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.