.:. Another Likely Story

Quote as found on Diane Duane's blog:

“Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox would say, ‘Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words.’ A glib saying. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the centre of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”

-- C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

"... the Osbourne Brothers' bluegrass classic, 'Rocky Top' [says] in two lines what poets and writers 'Anna Karenina' themselves to death to convey, about a girl who's 'wild as a mink, but sweet as soda pop/I still dream about that.'" -- Singer-Songwriter Neko Case.

And that is the kindest, cleverest way I have ever been reminded to cut down on the purple prose a tad.

A really nice post, with links to other posts, about how learning and growing has got nothing to do with the state of "flow."  It's when things are hard that we're learning.

... the feeling of flow is different than the feeling of getting better. If all you seek is flow, then you’re not going to get better. There is no avoiding the deliberate strain of real improvement.

Writing gets harder as I get better.  But that's okay, because it means I'm getting better.  I'm writing a techno-thriller right now, and it's like pulling teeth to write, but I am determined, because see above.  Also, it's all kinds of fun, because nobody said it couldn't be hard and fantastically enjoyable at the same time.

I highly recommend the blog in question (Study Hacks), by the way, as I find it to be insightful wrt the learning and practicing process.

I came across this article, Transcendent fantasy, or politics as usual?, on Black Gate, which discusses whether it's "possible for fantasy to move beyond the political."

1. There are lot of people whose Thing is consciously, deliberately, thoughtfully writing sociology, politics, economics into their stories.  For my part, although I have my opinions on issues, I feel no delight or urgency in consciously expounding on those issues in my fiction. And some days I want nothing more than a vacuum for my story to exist within.  However, on this topic I defer to Italo Calvino, who a) is more eloquent than I am, b) surely wrote stories fantastic enough to know. In his Invisible Cities, Marco Polo describes "a great number of lands" to Kublai Khan, until:

“Tell me another city”, Kublai insisted. [...]

“Sire, now I have told you about all the cities I know.”

“There is still one of which you never speak.”

Marco Polo bowed his head.

“Venice,” the Khan said.

Marco smiled. “What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?”

The emperor did not turn a hair. “And yet I have never heard you mention that name.”

And Polo said: “Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice.”

“When I ask you about other cities, I want to hear about them. And about Venice, when I ask you about Venice.”

“To distinguish the other cities, I must speak of a first city that remains implicit. For me it is Venice.”

2. I don't mean, actually, that in writing a story I must be saying anything about this particular universe that you and I share. But I cannot help saying something about the world that I created.  Even if something is merely for a laugh, the fact that I think it is worth a laugh, or the fact that some reader thinks it is worth a laugh, means that there is something entertaining in that setup, in that situation, in that world.  Therefore, the author has said something about that world, not to mention themselves, after all.  And the bigger the world, the more is said.  The only way to say nothing, to preserve that vacuum, is to remain silent.  To not create at all.

(3. ... isn't the author dead anyway?  So who cares what I intended ... )

1. In 1979, Jorge Luis Borges edited a 33-volume anthology of fantastic literature, in Spanish, titled The Library of Babel (like his own marvelous story of that same name).  The Rumpus has found the titles -- though not all are available online, and many are only available in Spanish -- and amassed a number of reading links for one's pleasure here.

2. Borges being one of my favorite authors, if not the most favorite -- I once found out that there was a Borges museum, and was distraught that I couldn't go.  The Significant Other consoled me by pointing out that the Perfect Borges Museum would simply stand you in the lobby, ask you to imagine the most perfect museum to Borges, and then send you out the door saying that was the entire exhibit.