Other people’s shoes

I had grand ambitions for this blog

I am a grand ambitions kind of person
(secretly, inside my head)

But ambivalence got the better of me and reluctance made me delete what I wrote

I think I thought
(these words are a sort of chorus in my life)
that because I am a writer, and a person whose head is s o f u l l of thoughts,
that words simply would spill out of me
Gush out in arresting articles and striking observations

But maybe my personality is more like that
of those prolific writers who write 800-page master works
but trip over their own words in a simple interview or letter

I do have much to say
But I don’t say it easily

Two other things comes more naturally to me, than writing my thoughts in a blog post:
The first is to listen
(I already know my stories, but I don’t know yours)
The second is to put myself into someone else’s shoes, writing from their point of view and in their voice,
That feels so much easier than staying in my shoes, writing from my point of view and in my voice.

(A little like an actor who readily takes on a character
Breathing life into it, without being shy or timid
But who is, in reality, rather private)

I am too aware of my complexity

Or perhaps I’m just easily perplexed by something that to other people,
really appears quite simple

Deep Dives & Realism

A little while ago, I put down “The Guest Cat” by Takashi Hiraide, which I was reading, and asked myself: What does Hiraide do particularly well?

“The Guest Cat”, if you don’t know it, is a lovely, quiet book, originally written in Japanese, the cover of which was so bedazzled with reviewer’s flattery that I actually did my best not to read it. It’s like those youtube videoes that have in their title “you won’t be able to stop laughing”.

But I’d been wanting to read it for a long time, and once I was able to push away all the insisting voices shouting at me how wonderful it was, I did find that I liked it. But then, this isn’t a review. This is just me talking about something I think Hiraide does well in it.

The characters in “The Guest Cat” are few, and provided with hardly any backstory at all. They just are. A married couple. How they met was perhaps mentioned with five words. No description of their appearance. And the story is told from a vantage point sometime in the future, which makes the way memory works influence the way the story is told. Rather than giving an overload of detail, as one might when describing a character presently (or in the historical present) in a specific room, this story is told from memory. Several times, phrases such as “as I remember it” come up, and most of the story takes place in little episodes, where the things that haven’t stuck to the narrator’s memory,  have been omitted.

All the same, the book is rich with specific detail and at times, it dives deep into this or that topic. This struck me as especially significant to the overall impact of the story.

These little “deep dives” include passages on, to name three examples: the story of the building where most of the story takes place, the intricacies of the current housing market in Japan (where the story takes place), and in a particular, unusual form of painting. Now why is this important?

I think, with a subdued, minimalist writing style, it is easy to go too far, thus ending up with a story that is not so much “gentle strokes” as it is too brittle to fly .Mind you, the minimalism is brilliant, thanks in part to the specific details. In a way, I think it is a kind of minimalism that things are specific – because if they really happened, as is what you’re asking the reader to believe, why go through the trouble of generalizing? For the actual narrator, it would be just as easy to say that the cat ate dried mackerels, or whatever it was, than, vaguely, “food”.

Anyway, moving on to the deep dives. They provide, I think, necessary ballast and realism, providing counter-measures when the reader is at risk of becoming lost or distracted, either because the topic/situation/setting/place the narrator is discussing or finding himself in, is too unfamiliar and vague. After all, even a stylistically elegant, aloof reference can risk giving the impression that the writer doesn’t know what he or she is talking about.

Maybe the main reason why this occurs to me, is because I’ve done just that. Constantly delving into the exciting and unknown with my stories, I often found myself out of my depth when it came to my ability to pull it off convincingly. I could not convincingly write about the specifics (since they were unknown to me) nor about the generics (since it became obvious that I was just trying to avoid something I didn’t know anything about; this was especially evident in dialogue).

The crucial point is this: You have to be pretty amazing at this writing thing, to write a story well, which contains major plot elements which you know nothing about, have no personal experience with and/or have not researched. You may get away with it at times, but especially in story told in a minimalist writing style, you’ll occasionally have to do deep dives.

Some reasons why, that I can think of:

A, to create interest. A story which only contains elements I’m thoroughly familiar with, won’t interest me. There has to be something interesting. A place, a concept, an idea, a context. Preferably more. And to introduce something unfamiliar to the reader, you simply have to take a bit more than half a sentence.

B, to create realism. Rather than risk being lost of confused by the unfamiliar element, you are made to understand, and so you follow along further into the world of the story, more than before since you have now taken steps away from your own familiar world, and dived into the world of the story, which has other elements as well as those you’re familiar with.

C, to build trust. When the reader discovers that the writer has done his job thoroughly in specific, carefully chosen deep dives, he or she will, I suspect, be willing to suspend disbelief in a different way from that point onwers. The writer may then approach other topics and barely explain them at all, even if they too are confusing, because the reader now won’t think “oh, he’s trying to cover up that he doesn’t know too much about this” (like I would if reading a shortstory about a lawyer, written by a teenager), but rather might think “the narrator for some reason doesn’t find this worth explaining too much”, allowing that to inform his or her view of the narrator’s chracter, or something like that.

That’s all for now. Musings and thoughts about something I thought Takashi Hiraide, writer of “The Guest Cat”, does well.

If you haven’t read the book yet, then please do. And if you are passionate about the book industry, please pay actual money for it. If you, like me, wish the book industry was doing better – then put your money where your mouth is.

All the best,

Randi

Movie of the Day

About ten years ago, I invented a creative writing exercise called “Movie of the Day”.

Well, I say “invented”. Really, I don’t remember quite how it started, and I dare say there are many variations of this exercise round and about. What I remember is why it started: with the fear of running out of ideas, or forgetting how to make up stories. Or, more precisely, fear of ever becoming intimidated at the prospect of starting a new story.

My creative writing exercise is not intended to produce great things. I think that’s important to stress, because the pressure we put on ourselves to create amazing things can become so much we don’t even start. This exercise, then, is simply intended to keep the imagination at work, making you actively engaging in creating a story.

I’m a picky movie-watcher known to walk out from family movie nights – for the simple reason that some idea had popped into my mind, that interested me much more than the movie. Numerous times I’d be scanning the shelves of DVD’s in my parents’ house (how sad to think the era of DVD’s might be fast approaching an end), finding nothing at all that I wanted to watch. And that, I think, is where this exercise really started – as I asked myself: What are the ingredients of a movie I would want to watch?

In periods, I’d do this once a day, minimum. I’d open my notebook, and write down any and all elements I’d like to see in a movie.

An example of a page like this would be:

Old china cutlery. Loft. Dusty caught in sunlight. Raspy voice. Maybe someone who’s lost their voice (why would that matter? why is her voice important.) No squeaky clean, unrealistic apartments – mess, life, the oddness of the ordinary. The real world-ish, but not quite. Something’s off. What could that be? Also: Drums. A really good, riveting beat, like enormous drums.

And then I’d work from there.

Another way I do it is I pick five interesting images with no obvious correlation, and force myself to somehow create a story using those elements.

Or I’d draw.

I’ve always drawn freehand. Before I ever fell in love with words, I loved storytelling through imagery. My gateway into loving stories was actually cartoons drawn by old masters, such as Hal Foster and André Franquin. I’ve always drawn people, wondering who they are and what their stories are, approaching it a bit like people-watching, really.

I might be writing into an empty void right now, but I hope that with time, more and more writers and story-lovers will happen upon my little corner of the internet. But anyway, I drew this drawing in order for others to participate in exactly what I have just described: to make up a new story.

Within this piece of art, there are numerous elements for you to explain, explore, and piece together. There is the three girls. Who are they? Where are they from and what is their background? Have they known each other for a long time? What has happened to them? Where are they? Are they far from home, or close? What’s going on outside the frames of this picture? What are they talking about? Do they agree or disagree with one another?

And please, please let me know in the comments what you come up with – I’d love to know.

On a final note: Personally, I don’t know what this drawing really portrays. I don’t know if it’s a beginning, middle or end, and there is no “right answer” here. But I definitely have a skeleton of a story that has started to take shape.