“Manifesto” to John Kessel (October 8, 2007)
My Actual Statement of Purpose
Not that I was guilty of intentionally trying to deceive others when I applied to NC State; it’s myself that I’ve always been determined to deceive. This is more of a manifesto than an essay, per se. But I would rather err toward being too personal these days in order to offset what’s been wrong with my writing for the past ten years. That is, it hasn’t been personal for a long, long time. I’m extremely uncomfortable with this disjunction between story and self. Over the years I’ve justified it in a variety of ways, each of which probably has some truth to it: all creative work has some kind of value in it; I got awarded something for it or it got a good grade, so it must be okay; somebody found value in what I was writing, even if I didn’t. But I can’t go on forever not getting anything out of it. This truth must seem self-evident to most writers. Why would we go through the things we have to go through in order to write, only to write things we don’t care about? But the fact that I’ve possessed this disjunction for so long perhaps underscores how deep the problem is, that I’ve grown so used to it that I’ve refused to even fully recognize it, let alone stand up and fight for myself.
So in the name of standing up and fighting for myself, I would like to start at the beginning of the epic that is my life and take a look at what went wrong between myself and fantasy, which is the same as saying what went wrong between myself and writing. Some major themes will be isolation, shame, and self-doubt. There will be heroic deeds and cowardly betrayals (but no magic swords). And the eucatastrophe will be a collection of ideas to address fixing some of the issues. I’m not sure that qualifies as a happy ending, let alone anything to inspire wonder, but it’s the best I can do at the moment.
I’ll start my story at a clichéd point – my decision to write at age fifteen. At that tender age, I never questioned for a second that I would write anything but fantasy. Nor did I think of it consciously as fantasy. I just wrote what felt natural, and it came out as something that would be put into the fantasy genre. I didn’t have enough access to the genre to be called a fan of it. I ran into a crisis with my decision right away, though it wasn’t a crisis of genre but of gender. Gender is an epic unto itself, but I’ll brush on it here, because as much as I’ve always hated the fact, there’s never been a moment of my life when gender was not an issue. The crisis was that, though there were quite a few female writers represented in my high school literature textbooks, I didn’t like any of them. I only liked the male writers. The result was that I quickly changed my mind, deciding I shouldn’t become a writer after all. My reasoning was that if women were lousy writers, if they only dirtied the art form that I loved so much, then I, a woman, would keep away from it so as not to debase it any further. Though my attitudes toward my own sex matured somewhat as I got older, this was not a conflict that I ever fully resolved to my satisfaction (even today, I’d say 90% of writers I admire are male, but at least I’ve found a few female ones I admire). After about six months I began writing again despite my grudge against my own sex, because I found I couldn’t be happy if I wasn’t doing it. But from the start, I was my own worst enemy.
The crisis in gender bridged into a crisis of genre. When I was 16, I was asked by a talented artist (he’s gone on to do pretty successful work) to write his comic book. I was actually so naïve that it wasn’t until years later that I realized that at least half his object had nothing to do with my talent but was to get me to go out with him. I became his girlfriend and wrote almost full time for about six months. He had a group of all-male friends who read fantasy, drew comic books, and played role-playing games. At that time and place, fantasy was exclusively a boys’ club. And while my boyfriend seemed happy enough with my writing, his friends seemed to find my role awkward, if not downright laughable. I remember that I felt deeply intimidated. I had no idea how to go about structuring such a complex story let alone how to script a comic book, and I was afraid to ask questions because I thought it would reveal a vulnerability and ignorance that would be laughed at and rejected. But because I failed to ask the questions, I didn’t end up with enough knowledge to know how to bring the vision into reality. The project stalled, the relationship ended. I lost months of work, and was heartbroken, not over the guy, but over the comic book.
Related to this incident was a specific piece of self-doubt that plagues me still, which is what I think of as my “lack of inventiveness.” As a little girl, I always envied certain boys the way they played, spontaneously inventing hundreds of details, but I couldn’t seem to play like that. And in fantasy books I read, both as a child as well as later, I was so discouraged by the complex rollicking worlds I admired (The Scar by China Mieville is a fine example) that I gave up before I started. What I imagine tends to focus quietly on a very few locales with the sense of isolation I’ve always known. Further, any talent I have for insight is not anthropological but emotional and relationship-driven. I suppose one answer to this conundrum is that not all fantasy involves the kind of immensely detailed world building that intimidates me. Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirlees seems to be a more “quiet,” self-contained world. Another answer might be that if I simply tried, it’s possible I could do it. For the comic book, I had managed to develop a complex mythology, though I ended up losing all my work. Hell, I probably could do it if I took seventeen years like Tolkien (longer, if you consider however much he developed even before that). Also, I might differentiate here: complex mythologies and complex details are not exactly the same thing. I’d probably have better luck with complex mythologies than complex details.
Through ages 17-18 I wrote a little collection of fantasy short stories; started several fantasy novels but didn’t have a clue how to structure them and abandoned each in turn; and decided against going to college to focus on writing and help in my family’s music business. Then I had a digression between 18-22 where I decided I should devote myself to a spiritual calling and duty to my fellow humans. I had not changed my mind about writing. In fact, I was devastated at giving it up. But I became convinced that I had higher obligations for a few years and that I was ethically bound to give up writing. Many of the fantasy writers I admired (and still admire) seem to have deep spiritual convictions through which they channel their work. I admire people who devote themselves to a good cause and high ideals and stick with them. Ultimately I ended up ashamed, caught between different worlds, not quite able to be in any of them. My unforgivable sin was that I was capable only of being what I was. That is, I couldn’t make myself stop wanting to write. So, I turned back toward that path, though I no longer had any confidence that I could do it. Like many with deep spiritual convictions, my own emotions were turned up during those years of my life, distilled to an idealistic purity. I wonder if one reason I avoid the big, pure archetypal themes and emotions in fantasy is because they frighten me. During undergrad I retreated into ambiguity and cuteness in my fiction. It was an attempt to conform, but it was also a response to fears I didn’t want to face – like C.S. Lewis’s famous blurb about The Lord of the Rings, “beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron.”
A lot happened during the ten year period after I went back to Indiana: I wrote an opera libretto; I read my father’s beloved copy of The Lord of the Rings for the first time (my only legacy from him); I turned back to writing prose; I earned a degree; I learned through a horrible experience on my undergraduate capstone project how not to tackle a fantasy novel.
But what really dominates that period is what didn’t happen. Basically, I hid for ten years. My own cowardice and timidity were happy to go into collusion with a situation of being overprotected, and the result was that nothing valuable developed in my life for ten years. Nothing grew. I only wrote one story during this period that I like (a fantasy story). Moreover, the goals I needed in my life, the events that would have helped me to move forward, didn’t happen – friends, marriage, children. And it has led to the ridiculous ongoing farce that this MFA and my life here in Raleigh are my first foray into any kind of independence.
Fine, so I sabotaged my life. But why didn’t I at least do something about my writing at that time? I had plenty of opportunities, plenty of time. One answer is that it’s difficult for most people to be very productive when the majority of their life is broken. Another answer is that I did do something. I have multiple notebooks of extremely disorganized fantasy material from those years that I have to deal with one of these days. But I didn’t do nearly enough.
I think the most interesting reason goes back to something much deeper, way back to the very nature of imagination. I was one of those exceptionally introverted and introspective child with vivid, complex daydreams, definitely of a fantastic nature. And that was my favorite pastime. I called it “telling myself a story.” Around age four or five, I ventured to make this strange hobby known to my family and told them what some of the stories were about. But my mother reacted with strange looks, derisive laughter and such, and it became a point over which other family members made fun of me. They were quick to tell me that this was a temporary phase that fell into the category of “imaginary friends.” In essence, I got the message from my parents and from teachers that it was something abnormal to be ashamed of. I wonder how many gifts, and how much natural joy we bash to the ground in the name of conforming, or making kids manageable, or selling the latest designer drug.
In any case, my “forbidden place” was also the source of my greatest joy, and to have been encouraged to use it, to develop it in harmony with my outer life, to direct it in some kind of outward pursuit, would have had much happier results for me in the long run, I think, than fighting against it and exiling it as an enemy. It’s striking to me that in his book Strategies of Fantasy, Attebery says that, “Dream, daydream, hallucination, and visionary states have all provided guidance for writers of fantasy” (7). Also, that “many fantasy writers describe the composition process as the cultivation of such states, in which the mind generates vivid and unexpected scenes which can then be assembled into narratives.” And according to C.S. Lewis, many of his books “began with seeing pictures in my head. At first they were not a story, just pictures” (8). That all sounds awfully familiar to me, and if it’s good enough for C.S. Lewis, it’s good enough for me.
It was my own timidity and lack of integrity that allowed me to be railroaded, and it’s my own responsibility to fix things. The point is just that I quickly learned that the “forbidden place” was something abnormal to be ashamed of and to be hidden from all adults and all peers. I never spoke of it again and I directed it even further inward, looking on it as some kind of festering, malignant disease. My shame increased as I got older and it didn’t “go away,” didn’t pass as a “phase.” Remarkably, even after I decided I wanted to write, I thought creativity came from “someplace else” other than the source of where these thoughts came from. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties that I realized that the enormous “thing” I had been suppressing all my life was 90% of the source of my own imagination.
It’s hard trying to write while running on only 10%. Most of the time it results in no writing at all. But I’ve found it’s even harder learning how to access the 90% when it’s something you’ve been ashamed of all your life and have worked hard to suppress. This difficulty is one that I’ve already been working on for a few years now. I think it’s the primal source of the disjunction I talked about in the first paragraph. It’s a disjunction within myself that causes the majority of my creative life to remain without expression. But I think it can be healed through thoughtful reflection and through the writing process itself. I think of it as building a bridge. In recent years I have reclaimed perhaps another 20% from the “forbidden place,” putting me now at about 70/30. A good goal for the work that I do here would be, I think, to get to at least 50/50; that is, to write work that reaches toward a fuller expression of fantasy. I would go for 100%, except that I don’t think that’s realistic. I don’t have the maturity, either emotionally or technically, to get there yet.
Having brought my story up to the present, now comes the part where I try to learn from it. I see that a common thread that runs through it is shame over a variety of failures: failing to be male, failing to know enough about fantasy, failing to be bold, failing to be inventive, failing my own conscience, failing to establish a successful life, failing to be a normal child, failing to have enough integrity. And a lot of these failures turned into vicious circles. For example, the older I got, the more ashamed I was that I didn’t write the way I wanted to, and so the less I tried. The most basic answer I have for myself in regards to my many issues of shame and fear is: Tough. Get over it. The problem with a vicious circle is that there isn’t any way to stop it except to simply act, to break out of it no matter how difficult or painful. And truthfully, I think these fears get blown out of proportion the longer they’re maintained. The first story I workshopped this semester incorporated some fantastic elements, and in most respects it was a pretty silly story. But everyone was very nice about it, and some liked it. They didn’t bite my head off and drink my blood, or anything like that.
Isolation is another common element throughout my life (and above I didn’t even mention other events like a long childhood illness that tended to isolate me, and the death of my father when I was ten). But though my lifelong isolation may be a problem, I think it’s also a solution. Once, in an undergrad class, my instructor Jim Powell mentioned strengths and weaknesses as two edges of the same blade. I’ve felt for a long time that if isolation has contributed to my weakness, then it also plays a strong part in my writing. In a sense, it must; I can’t become a completely different person.
Beyond that, here are a few more ideas that occur to me, not intended as a rigorous plan, but as some jumping off points:
Often to examine a demon or a ghost under a bright light is to cause it to vanish. In other words, simply to recognize some of the problems may be enough to exorcise them without any other fixes. In fact, while writing this, a greater number of fantastic elements wiggled into my fiction on their own accord, apparently as a result of just having acknowledged the issues.
Surround myself with people who encourage me and help me to be productive and independent. Even if I’m coming from a ten-year period of mostly wandering in the desert, I’m surrounded by friendly people in the program here, so it would seem I’ve taken a step in the right direction.
As I’ve already said, be brave enough to test whether or not I can be a little inventive, and patiently work toward drawing from the “forbidden place.” There’s one simple word that sums up what I’m going for: integrity.
Resign myself to the fact that I may not be able to write work that I like, no matter how hard I try. Because of gender and many other factors, what I’m capable of writing may be different from the writers and work I admire, from what I wish I could write. However, I think the gap can at least be narrowed.
It might help force me to write fantasy if I also acknowledge that I have no choice but to write it. As I read the more, well, normal fiction of my compatriots, it strikes me that I seem to lack almost all of the ordinary experiences of life. I still hope to gain some of those experiences, but at the moment, the bizarre is all I know.
Fix my life. If the likes of Tolkien, Lewis and Gene Wolfe had faith, hope, and love in their lives, and the greatest of these is love, and I have none of them, where exactly does that leave me? I’m not sure what the answer is, but it’s not pretty, let alone any beauty that cuts and burns. Fixing my life is a tall order, and it will be a slow process. At the beginning of Gene Wolfe’s The Citadel of the Autarch, Severian brings the dead soldier/Jonas back to life, and reflects on how difficult the experience must be. The soldier comes back in slow stages, at last managing some death rattles and groaning. I’d say that’s about where I’m at in the process. But that’s not to say that I can’t do good writing in the meantime.
I’ve always possessed an enormous number of stories (from the “forbidden place”) with no structure or vessel to put them in. The challenge is to be true to those stories and ruthlessly practical at the same time. That is, to find a form that makes them useful and valuable to a group of readers. What I have failed to do all my life is gather enough knowledge of genre, craft, etc., to form a vessel. I sense being close to a major breakthrough, but it’s still just out of grasp. It’s necessary then to do what I can to grow tall enough to reach it. As Tolkien recently reminded me in “On Fairy Stories,” one can consciously think about one’s principles and goals in writing and formulate an approach. I need to deliberately analyze what I like and don’t like in a variety of books within the fantasy genre and without, decide what to borrow for my own writing and what to banish. A lot of the contradictions have to be resolved through the constant accidents of the writing process itself.
This concludes my manifesto and my list of commitments. Now to see if I can keep them.
