Storytellersunplugged

Oh, Lordy, here I dredge the rusty bottom of my brain for something that could pass for wisdom in last month’s column, and everyone who emails wants to know about the beautiful young thing and the owls. How embarrassing. Not because the wisdom was specious, but because – choke – I never hooked up with the fair maiden, and even the owls have abandoned me. Details about the owls later, but no film at eleven. First I need to pick up the threads I spun last time about a writer’s philosophy of language.

You may recall that I described isolating the use of three aspects of life in writing: emotions, things and events as one, and ideas. I chose those aspects for no better reason than I could see where they weighed into fiction and in what proportions. Each one is a distinct bias that tends to shape a story by genre. If you want to go back to the details, here’s a direct link to that column – THOMAS SULLIVAN: SPIDERS AND SPUDS. I also promised to relate those aspects to levels and categories of writing at the end of this series of columns, an association that I find very useful in understanding and aiming my own fiction. At the very least it can enable you to fine tune who you are as a writer and clarify to whom you are writing. So now let me make the case for the first one: the language of emotions.

This is the only language that is completely natural and so universal that it may even be pre-natal. Think about it. We spend nine months in the womb celebrating a Utopia where we don’t have to breathe, eat, drink or change our diapers. We have perfect shock absorbers, sound control, temperature control, and then suddenly – plop! – we’re born. We’re born wet and naked into a room full of strangers. The strangers are dressed. They are also wearing masks. As we turn purple and gasp for breath, one of them jerks us up by the heels and parades our privates to oohs and aahs. Sexual exploitation is soon followed by violence, as we are blindsided by a slap to a very personal place. Welcome to planet Earth. Very negative experience. Some never get over it. They become . . . literary critics. And if the slap upside the derrière is merely humiliating, the next act is downright dangerous, because another of the masked felons ties a knot in our lifeline to the mother ship and CUTS IT OFF! Ladies and gentlemen, it is time to speak. So we give it our first word: “WAAA-A!” Where did that come from? Who told us to make a vocal noise? Was there a loquacious twin in the womb? Who taught the twin? No one. Spontaneous verbal communication. Language. Pure emotion. It’s in our basic wiring.

And it never really changes. Language proceeds emotionally for a while: the feed-me cry, the TLC cry, the there’s-a-pin-in-my-fanny cry. In these more specific outcries there are the hints of a more specific language to come, but it is still our personal statement of being. Our feelings say that we exist as entities, as individuals. It is a life-long need to declare emotions per se. Oh, we will get sophisticated about it, learning to couch feelings behind all kinds of verbal rants and rationalizations that address complex and intricate circumstances, but the purpose is the same: to vent emotions. Waaa-a!

So whatever else more formal languages (English, Italian, Chinese etc.) do, they must answer the fundamental mandate of emotions. In addition to communicating facts and sophisticated thoughts, we need our languages to simply tell each other how we feel. Good writing does that, directly and indirectly. Apart from writing, one gender expresses emotions better than the other. They are called female. Not surprising then, that the most lopsided female literary audience favors writing that deals strongly and overtly with emotions. Males, schooled in the need to never flinch before the tiger, are more reticent in real life. Their emotions must often be inferred and tend to show up expressed as actions. Here’s a gross generality that has a little truth to it: women feel; men think. I hasten to add that the two approaches are not mutually exclusive. We’re talking tendencies here, gender reflex. And if you let me get away with that, here’s another, even worse: women talk; men act. Can you see why women universally shun me? Again, I hasten to point out that this is just a predilection toward one strategy for problem-solving over another. Men incline toward physical resolutions, each a kind of triumph of physical resources over resistance; women incline toward persuasion or psychological manipulation, thus causing change in the obstacle. Hoo boy, which way to the exit? Anyway, if you’ll buy into just a 51% to 49% trend along those gender lines, then grant me a similar nod in the way this gets expressed in fiction, by genre, and in reading tastes. I don’t mean simply with the gender of the characters here, but rather in the way the author exploits the characters, the handling of the conflict, and what she/he tends to emphasize. Do you start to get an idea where I’m going with this?

It is not neatly divided, however. Languages of the type I’m describing – arbitrarily dividing, really – do not exist in a vacuum. When I cover this in a speech, I can usually play off an audience for examples and direction that make the interplay abundantly clear. There are ardent devotees of language types just as there are ardent devotees of fictional categories. Think of your own stages in life and what you were consumed with at a given point and how language cued into that. Think Junior High. Think college. Think personal life. Think career. And if you are old enough, think where you ended up when all those stages finished pounding you into a conglomerate pulp. You are still being pounded. If art is a mirror of life, then maybe your fiction mirrors where you’re at. Duh. The stage is now set for the second language: the language of things and events. But that’s the next column.

And the final column in this series will try to put it all into balance in a way that lends some direction to self-analysis of the writer (and the reader, really). He said.

Okay, back to the owls. If you didn’t catch the last column, I am referring to an owls nest and a chance meeting with a comely young thing training in a nearby nature preserve (see: 04-16-06 link below). The owls went one at a time – like the von Trapp Family Singers fading out of the spotlight at a Nazi rally. First the sexually ambiguous parent disappeared. Actually, that makes sense. Abandonment was probably a subtle cue aimed at telling the owlet chilluns to get out of the nest and find a job. But then the nest disappeared. Don’t ask me how or why. The two “watermelon-size” chicks were still there, jammed more or less into the crotch of a tree, scowling down at me like juvenile judges at a felon’s trial. Hey, I’m not a house burglar, and if I was, I wouldn’t steal a house any more than a cat burglar steals a cat. Watermelon One was gone the next day. And Number Two hit the airways the day after that, I guess.

So I’ve been left to my lonesome, clop-clopping up the trails where women occasionally flash me America’s most famous digital gesture but little else. I am a pariah, destined to die unloved in the wilderness. But, hey, I’m a writer, I will make something of this. Writers suffer, right? Must suffer. So far I’m doing great. If you don’t feel life in its excruciating extremes, you can’t write about it. This is where you find the people for your books. This is where you internalize the psychology that will bring your characters to life. Take today. Out there blading when my radar pulls in a leggy blip in pink shorts on the horizon. I turn on the after-burners and in a couple of hills I’m closing in on a delightful mirage, moving like a racing blader. The pink shorts contrast a gorgeous tan, one of those I-hang-out-at-the-beach-with-buff-bronze-guys tans. I’m more the Casper the Friendly Ghost type. But hey, albinos can be buff too. Another hill, and it’s confirmed: female, exemplary specimen. Add competitive. Because now she sees me and begins to pour it on. She is no doubt one of the femmes training for the Tri who I run into every day on the trails or in the pool. I’m out here for the “Try” myself, so we’re sorta compatible already. The first curve (not counting hers) reveals the 5-wheel skates of a serious athlete. I am wearing Fischer-Price Tonka PlaySkool 4-wheel jobbies with little yellow duckies on the side. Now, the number one rule for these spontaneous races is that you must never show effort. She is showing no effort. Long, easy strokes, one hand working the turns, glide, glide, glide. I am going clip-clop, clip-clop, stagger, stumble, stutter step, pant, pant. I give up trying to breathe through my nose. If I swallow one more species of insect, I will have ingested all the entomological varieties available in the park. Mere mortals on bikes veer out of our way, as do family gaggles and terrified infants. Mile after mile (that’s two miles) we yo-yo uphill, downhill. Finally she slumps into a long glide, exhausted. I’m thrilled to see it’s hurting her, ‘cause it’s killing me. When she goes left at a juncture in the trail, I go right, happy to be able to slow down and too whipped to pursue conversation. Gorgeous tan goes one way, the Friendly Ghost the other. Back at the car I discover the carton of HeartSmart that fell out of a grocery bag yesterday. Keep Refrigerated, it says on the label. I’m out a couple of bucks. Stuff makes good suntan oil, though, and “tomorrow is another day.”

Here are some direct links to an interview and all my columns:
DBJ Sully Interview
12-16-06 column: WHAT’S IN A NAME?
01-16-06 column: THOMAS SULLIVAN WHO?
02-16-06 column: “OH, YEAH?” STUFF
03-17-06 column: KISS
04-16-06 column: SPIDERS AND SPUDS

Thanks for reading. Your thoughts are welcome and your attention valued.

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan