The Tourist (4)
18/04/10
I’m now at chapter 73, and the worry rises. To quote Alfred E. Neuman, “What, me worry?”. Worry about what? Well, about how to finish my second novel, The Tourist. Talks with my informal advisors produce useful ideas about how to make the existing manuscript more accessible, clearer, and maybe better. But they don’t answer the central questions (see Tourist (3)) that need convincing answers. If I can’t come up with answers, there was no real point in starting the new book, and there is no point in finishing it. I can’t yet answer the questions. I hope I can at least start to as I write the last chapters of the first draft.
But for now I can at least talk about other questions, ones that don’t really matter. Questions abut the author (for example “Does he have another book in him, or just the one that was based on a life-time of stored up impressions?”) are of some interest to me, but are fundamentally trivial. Putting it another way, in contemporary culture (Do I mean all or culture, or just pop culture?) the concept of Self-Expression as the sovereign force behind creativity has saturated understanding. The idea that a creative work can have any inspiration, or motivation, or justification that is independent of some internal process or need or compulsion of the author (or, from another angle, some need or compulsion of society or of the particular little determinative slice of it from whence the author sprung) is almost completely out of favour.
Judging by my own observations, this is true to such an extant that the very notion that any other factor could influence the decisions or the actions of anyone who would sing, or dance, or write, or paint, or anything, is absurd, if not incomprehensible. Why would John, a retired businessman, write a book? Why, to express himself of course! Or because he had to, to carry out the manifest destiny to do so, implanted by his difficult youth, or inevitably engendered by his later life in the bowels of commerce, or some such whatever. And of course the book can be reverse-emgineered to reveal itself as nothing more or less then the conclusion inevitably resulting from (in fact already present in) the premises of his life - his life in the giant syllogism that is existence, at least as post-moderns deconstruct it. I’m sure even I, no trained creative vivisectionist, could come up with a few hundred pages on what Except My Love For You doesn’t mean.
Except that I wrote it because everything about doing it felt right. And, yes, I had to do it, not because of some existential angst that it might put a poltice on, but because there were some things I felt needed to be said. I am perfectly comfortable in saying that I felt visited by a Muse, one who said “Get off your ass and write this”. Whether or not I succeeded in getting across the ideas, or whether the ideas were worth the effort, are judgements for others to make - and are beside the point for the purposes of this blog. Of course I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. And of course my life history, my previous experiences with composition, and everything that has ever been connected with me are all determinants of why, and how I tried to write my first novel. But they say nothing about the purpose for which I wrote it, or what use it is, if any, to the people who read it.
It is fun ( for me anyway) to talk about how the book relates to me and my personal story, but it is not important. It is the book that is or is not important. I hope it is worth reading, and I am absolutely certain that I know why and for what purpose I wrote it.
Which brings me back to the beginning of this blog. When I began writing The Tourist I was motivated by several things, some higher and some lower. Among the lower but still respectable motives was finding out whether I could do it again. As well, it had been innocent fun to write, and conceited fun to be treated like an author, especially after the first effort had been accepted for publication. Among the higher motives was to determine whether I had the discipline to work like a professional author rather than a tourist in the trade. But the only important reason to make the attempt was that I thought I still had many things to say, things that needed a new plot and character context to put across.
In the event the writing of a second draft manuscript (as explained in Tourist (1), (2), and (3)) went swimmingly, for awhile. But I had to stop, for many reasons already explained, but also because of fundamental questions not then immediately answerable, questions about where the book was heading, and about the purposes for which it was being written. Now, at long last, I have returned to the point where all the questions posed in this and earlier blogs must be dealt with. Or the Muse will refuse to choose.
Don’t forget THE LAUNCH PAD COFFEE HOUSE, this Wednesday, APRIL 21 at Churchill Park United Church, 525 Beresford Avenue. Open Mike all night. Doors open at 7:30PM.
But for now I can at least talk about other questions, ones that don’t really matter. Questions abut the author (for example “Does he have another book in him, or just the one that was based on a life-time of stored up impressions?”) are of some interest to me, but are fundamentally trivial. Putting it another way, in contemporary culture (Do I mean all or culture, or just pop culture?) the concept of Self-Expression as the sovereign force behind creativity has saturated understanding. The idea that a creative work can have any inspiration, or motivation, or justification that is independent of some internal process or need or compulsion of the author (or, from another angle, some need or compulsion of society or of the particular little determinative slice of it from whence the author sprung) is almost completely out of favour.
Judging by my own observations, this is true to such an extant that the very notion that any other factor could influence the decisions or the actions of anyone who would sing, or dance, or write, or paint, or anything, is absurd, if not incomprehensible. Why would John, a retired businessman, write a book? Why, to express himself of course! Or because he had to, to carry out the manifest destiny to do so, implanted by his difficult youth, or inevitably engendered by his later life in the bowels of commerce, or some such whatever. And of course the book can be reverse-emgineered to reveal itself as nothing more or less then the conclusion inevitably resulting from (in fact already present in) the premises of his life - his life in the giant syllogism that is existence, at least as post-moderns deconstruct it. I’m sure even I, no trained creative vivisectionist, could come up with a few hundred pages on what Except My Love For You doesn’t mean.
Except that I wrote it because everything about doing it felt right. And, yes, I had to do it, not because of some existential angst that it might put a poltice on, but because there were some things I felt needed to be said. I am perfectly comfortable in saying that I felt visited by a Muse, one who said “Get off your ass and write this”. Whether or not I succeeded in getting across the ideas, or whether the ideas were worth the effort, are judgements for others to make - and are beside the point for the purposes of this blog. Of course I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. And of course my life history, my previous experiences with composition, and everything that has ever been connected with me are all determinants of why, and how I tried to write my first novel. But they say nothing about the purpose for which I wrote it, or what use it is, if any, to the people who read it.
It is fun ( for me anyway) to talk about how the book relates to me and my personal story, but it is not important. It is the book that is or is not important. I hope it is worth reading, and I am absolutely certain that I know why and for what purpose I wrote it.
Which brings me back to the beginning of this blog. When I began writing The Tourist I was motivated by several things, some higher and some lower. Among the lower but still respectable motives was finding out whether I could do it again. As well, it had been innocent fun to write, and conceited fun to be treated like an author, especially after the first effort had been accepted for publication. Among the higher motives was to determine whether I had the discipline to work like a professional author rather than a tourist in the trade. But the only important reason to make the attempt was that I thought I still had many things to say, things that needed a new plot and character context to put across.
In the event the writing of a second draft manuscript (as explained in Tourist (1), (2), and (3)) went swimmingly, for awhile. But I had to stop, for many reasons already explained, but also because of fundamental questions not then immediately answerable, questions about where the book was heading, and about the purposes for which it was being written. Now, at long last, I have returned to the point where all the questions posed in this and earlier blogs must be dealt with. Or the Muse will refuse to choose.
Don’t forget THE LAUNCH PAD COFFEE HOUSE, this Wednesday, APRIL 21 at Churchill Park United Church, 525 Beresford Avenue. Open Mike all night. Doors open at 7:30PM.
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