Fiction Writers Review » lit and art

“Masturbate frequently.”

Celeste Ng — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:00:41 +0000

We hear a lot about how writers find their inspiration. But how about other creative artists? The Guardian surveyed contemporary musicians, dancers, directors, and architects to find out where they got their creative inspiration. Much of their advice is unexpected, yet would be useful to writers as well.

Here’s a sampler:

Guy Garvey, musician: Spending time in your own head is important. When I was a boy, I had to go to church every Sunday; the priest had an incomprehensible Irish accent, so I’d tune out for the whole hour, just spending time in my own thoughts. I still do that now; I’m often scribbling down fragments that later act like trigger-points for lyrics.

Tamara Rojo, ballet dancer: To be truly inspired, you must learn to trust your instinct, and your creative empathy. Don’t over-rehearse a part, or you’ll find you get bored with it. Hard work is important, but that comes before inspiration: in your years of training, in your ballet class, in the Pilates classes. That work is there just to support your instinct and your ability to empathise.

Rupert Goold, director: I always try to reshape my ideas in other forms: dance, soap opera, Olympic competition, children’s games, pornography – anything that will keep turning them for possibilities.

Sunand Prasas, architect: Ask off-piste questions. What if this library were a garden? If this facade could speak, would it be cooing, swearing, silent, erudite?

Polly Morgan, artist: Leave the house. Or better still, go to Battersea Dogs & Cats Home and rescue a staffie. I did so partly to get out more, as I was spending too much time surrounded by the same objects, within the same walls. The sense of guilt I feel when my dogs are indoors forces me out at regular intervals. One of my favourite new ideas came about when I stopped to examine a weed growing in the forest I walk in.

Kate Royal, opera singer: Remember that art is everywhere. It’s amazing what you can find inspiring on the No 464 bus from Peckham.

And then there’s playwright Anthony Neilson’s advice, which I’ll let you decide whether to follow or not:

Masturbate frequently. You’ll probably do that anyway, but you may as well make it a rule.

Read the full list here, and tell us which parts you find helpful in the comments!

Further Reading:

Writing lessons from another unexpected source: the police
Also secretly creative? Supreme court justices.
Tips on stealing like an artist

Bookish Gift Idea #8: Hardcover Picture Frame (DIY)

Celeste Ng — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:00:58 +0000

Image: papernstitch

Today we have a simple but striking DIY gift idea: a picture frame made from a hardcover book. Maybe you’ve got an old book with unreadable pages but an intact cover, or maybe you found a gorgeous old hardcover at a used bookstore that could use a new lease on life (hello, Illustrated Cheeses of the World). Craft blog Papernstitch offers this tutorial on making that hardcover into a picture frame for a one-of-a-kind gift.

The full tutorial is here (via)—you’re on your own for the book, though.

Bookish Gift Idea #7: Retro reading posters

Celeste Ng — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:00:55 +0000

Image: Art.com

We’ve already looked at some posters to encourage kids to read, but what about adults? Take a peek at these amazing vintage-y reading posters. There’s the “Be Kind to Books Club” poster above, as well as several reminding you to read each month, like this one for March:

Image: Art.com

How great would these look over your desk–or in your library, should you be so lucky? Available—along with other historical reading posters—at Art.com. And check back every day in December for another bookish gift idea from FWR!

Whittle a spoon, write more?

Celeste Ng — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:00:08 +0000

If you’re not a geek (and I use that term as a positive term), you may not know who Mark Frauenfelder is. But you need not be a geek to learn from his recent post on LifeHacker. Frauenfelder is editor of DIY-geek-tech MAKE Magazine, and two of his tips on accomplishing more in the day are useful to creative writers, too.

The first is a time-honored writing trick—he talks about going into “Robot Mode” when running down his to-do list:

I don’t think about how many items are on the list or how many I have left to accomplish. I just focus on the current task at hand. [...] Robot Mode helps me from feeling overwhelmed, which can happen if I am looking at a list of things that aren’t in any particular order. If I have to deal with an interruption (as we all do) I take care of it, and get back to my list.

You may not have a to-do list for your current work-in-progress, but focusing on one small segment of your piece helps you from feeling overwhelmed by what’s going to happen at the end of the story (or the book). Anne Lamott gives similar advice when she talks about looking at your story through a one-inch picture frame.

But most intriguing to me is Frauenfelder’s second tip:

There’s one item I add to my list every day that helps me get things done and keeps me happy: “15 minutes of non-digital creativity” [...] I find that taking 15 minutes to do something non-digital, like whittling a spoon, playing with clay, or sketching, is a great way to improve my mood and to make all my work-related stuff seem less urgent. I usually schedule it about halfway through the list, so that I have a treat to work towards in the early afternoon, when I’m starting to burn out.

A short break of non-verbal creativity might be a great way to break the three o’clock doldums that hit me in the middle of writing days: a chance to switch metaphorical gears and get new perspective on whatever scene I’m struggling with. Do you find that non-verbal creativity helps your writing? If so, what’s your favorite way to recharge?

Further Reading:

Author Caroline Preston is a great example of how non-verbal creativity can inspire your writing, as this reviewlet of her novel The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt shows. As part of her writing process,

Preston put together hundreds of pages of hand-cut photos and captions to create the story of her 18-year-old heroine, who receives her father’s Corona typewriter and a blank scrapbook from her mother as a high-school graduation present. To assemble the materials that would make up Frankie’s life, Preston trolled antique stores and eBay for Bakelite bracelets and ticket stubs, a war medal and a flapper purse, a cigarette holder and a pair of driving glasses, bobby pins and fortune-telling cards. She put these items into a scrapbook: ‘over 600 pieces of 1920s vintage ephemera, and that’s a lot of stuff,’ she says.

Bookish Gift Idea #3: Posters to encourage reading (for kids)

Celeste Ng — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 13:00:06 +0000

Image: etsy.com

Here’s a gift for a young reader in your life—or any reader who is young at heart and has a little wall space to fill. Remember those “Give a hoot–read a book” posters at the public library when you were a kid? Here’s a roundup of newer, cooler versions to spruce up a book nook or bedroom. Above, the Edgar Allen Poe “READ” print is available from MonsterGallery.

Or how about this lovely hand-drawn fox with a Faulkner quote, from Gayana?

Image: etsy.com

This cheerful giraffe from Bunch of Bees offers some reading-related wisdom:

Image: etsy.com

And this typographic poster from See Mommy Make is so elegant, you might not have noticed the quote is from Dr. Seuss!

Image: etsy.com

Check back every day in December for another bookish gift idea—including a roundup of prints for adults, too.

[Reviewlet] The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt, by Caroline Preston

Gwen Glazer — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 13:00:23 +0000

We’ve all felt that little rush of connection or electricity or mystery—let’s call it a frisson—from standing in a dusty corner of a used bookstore, flipping through a shoebox of old photos or postcards, and finding something that seems to tell a secret story.

Caroline Preston’s fourth novel, The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt, seeks to recreate that feeling. Preston put together hundreds of pages of hand-cut photos and captions to create the story of her 18-year-old heroine, who receives her father’s Corona typewriter and a blank scrapbook from her mother as a high-school graduation present.

To assemble the materials that would make up Frankie’s life, Preston trolled antique stores and eBay for Bakelite bracelets and ticket stubs, a war medal and a flapper purse, a cigarette holder and a pair of driving glasses, bobby pins and fortune-telling cards. She put these items into a scrapbook: “over 600 pieces of 1920s vintage ephemera, and that’s a lot of stuff,” she says in an interview on her website—and then pasted typewritten text around them to create Frankie’s narrative.

The thrill of that chase is evident in her voice during the interview; it’s the voice of an excited collector, someone who figured out how to translate her passion for ephemera in general and the 1920s in particular into a work of fiction that’s part literary fiction and part graphic novel. The book jacket deems it “a novel in pictures,” but it’s really the typewritten text that forms the story of an 18-year-old girl in 1920, leaving her hometown to see the world.

Through the pages of her scrapbook, readers learn that Frankie Pratt is the smartest girl in her small New Hampshire high school. She initially passes up a scholarship to Vassar because her family can’t afford it, but a failed romance provides an unexpected avenue out of her town and off to college, Greenwich Village, and Paris, not to mention brushes with Charles Lindbergh and Ernest Hemingway.

Frankie is believable and interesting, and it’s fun to spend a few hours in her world, but the unusual format of the book becomes its most interesting character. Imagining the joy it must have brought Preston to assemble this book—the countless hours of searching, the endless eBay surprise packages, the clack of the vintage typewriter, careful cutting and pasting, rubber cement on her hands—might even be a touch more enjoyable than reading the book itself. But for those of us who want to believe that agents and publishers truly are open to novel formats and creative risk-taking, and may be willing to venture into uncharted waters (even with a tried-and-true author), The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt offers a glimmer—a frisson, maybe—of hope.

Extras

Take a look inside the full-color book and flip a few sample pages on Preston’s website. Shop for a copy at your local indie bookstore.

Listen to a 2006 NPR interview of Preston discussing her book Gatsby’s Girl.

State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett

Jackie Reitzes — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 03:00:48 +0000

When discussing plot, consider Leo Tolstoy’s axiom: “All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” In her sixth novel, State of Wonder, Ann Patchett launches a contemporary woman on a personal and professional journey, delivering an ambitious narrative and an entertaining read.

The woman is Marina Singh, a researcher in a Minnesota pharmaceutical lab who embarks on a mission to the Amazon. She is dispatched there to recover the details of her coworker’s recent death, and to evaluate the research of a field team deep in the jungle, a team headed up by her former mentor, Dr. Swenson. The checkered relationship between mentor and mentee, between student and teacher, is at the fulcrum of the novel’s central tension.

Deposited in the South American city of Manaus, Marina sets out to track down Dr. Swenson, whose work on developing a controversial new fertility drug suggests a scientific quest for progress, and the invasion and potential exploitation of the Lakashi, a fictional population indigenous to the Amazon.

As in all odysseys, what particularize Marina’s journey are the hurdles, and how she reacts to them. Speed bumps along the way are also what give a story literary traction, and, as in Bel Canto, Patchett is a master of creating extraordinary circumstances for seemingly ordinary characters. Marina loses her suitcases, her clothes, reading materials, cell phone, and ties to the outside. Once in Manaus, she must endure numerous tests of will in order to find Dr. Swenson’s whereabouts, including scorching heat and a debilitating fever. Divested of her creature comforts, we see her at a vulnerable state and one that is ripe for transformation.

Throughout, Marina is plagued with nightmares—a reaction to the anti-malaria drug Lariam—and these nightly rebellions of the psyche provide a recurring connotative trope:

Even if she went home tomorrow she would have to take it for another four weeks. It was the drug’s way of reminding the patient that the trip isn’t over. The trip would be in the blood stream, in the tissues. All the potential disasters of the place would continue to linger inside.

The persistence of the drug’s nightmarish side effects raises questions about what exactly medicine does, if the supposed “therapy” spawns new, harder-to-cure maladies (in this case, nightmares). Conversely, Marina ingests a shaman’s cup of river liquid to bring down a near-fatal fever, and after a delirious, death-like trance, is pretty much healed. This paradox of modernization versus preservation recurs throughout the novel.

The Lariam also acts as a metaphoric stand-in for how journeys linger in your blood, even after the trip is over, as a psychological breeding ground for illness or health. The idea that a place could live inside you, ripe with disaster or amelioration, internalizes the external arc of the story, layering conflict upon conflict. Good stories, too, are likely to linger, as this one does, even after the act of reading them has ended.

In the tradition of Heart of Darkness, State of Wonder proves the delineation between civilization and jungle is a murky one. Once among the Lakashi, Marina and Dr. Swenson face medical challenges and ethical choices about the boundaries of science and its rippling implications. As Dr. Swanson sums up, their work is a slippery slope between progress and dependency:

What happens to the girl whose brother cuts her after I’ve gone? Does the tribe still have faith in the man who sewed up heads before me? Has he kept up his own skills or was he too busy watching mine? I don’t intend to be here forever…

Through the formidable Dr. Swenson, Patchett challenges the assumption that progress be defined through academic or capitalistic objectives: Is a hot pharmaceutical commodity worth the human price exacted for its potential distribution? Is scientific innovation worth taking down an entire self-sustaining society? In posing questions such as these, State of Wonder cautions against easy answers.

One explanation offered between the jungle and civilization is the existence of art. Before trekking to the jungle, Marina comes to see the Manaus opera house as a kind of sacred space:

There was no real explanation for how such a building was conceived for such a place. Marina thought of it as the line of civilization that held the jungle back. Surely without the opera house the vines would have crept up over the city and swallowed it whole.

One would hope after having lived with the Lakashi, Marina’s definition of civilization and the jungle’s menacing reach of influence would surely be more measured and less imperialistic. However, the idea that art is what creates a society or separates civilization from savagery is notable:

In these past few days of fever, Marina had forgotten herself. The city was breaking her down along with the Lariam, her sense of failure, her nearly mad desire to be home in time to see the lilacs. But then the orchestra struck a note that brought her back to herself. Every pass of the cellists’ bows across the cellos’ strings scraped away a bit of her confusion, and the woodwinds returned her to strength. While she sat in the dark, Marina started to think that this opera house, and indeed this opera, were meant to save her.

Words and sentences, then, like bows and strings, can bring us back to ourselves. The act of reading is an act of salvation; narrative and expression are lifeboats on a meandering river.

Patchett’s magic is in weaving these details so effortlessly that they never register as constructed. Her use of language and voice; the development of a wide range of characters who differ in race, age, and gender; and the elements of mystery and suspense all contribute to a bona fide page turner, an adventure story that still rests comfortably on the shelf of Literary Fiction.

Her gift for capturing emotional nuance registers throughout, as in these two (of many possible!) examples:

At that moment she understood why people say You may want to sit down. There was inside her a very modest physical collapse, not a faint but a sort of folding, as if she were an extension ruler and her ankles and knees and hips wee all being brought together at closer angles.

There was no one clear point of loss. It happened over and over again in a thousand small ways and the only truth there was to learn was that there was no getting used to it.

The character’s modest physical collapse and the thousand small pin-pricks of loss both register with instant clarity—the universality of the feeling is rendered in such a concise, precise way, that you wonder why nobody thought to express it as such before.

Great authors can infuse a physical setting with the emotional undercurrents of their story. State of Wonder, drawing from its “exotic” locale, capitalizes on this notion that the perception of our surroundings is inflected by our emotional state. A figure undergoing transformation, then, sees the strange as familiar, the familiar as strange:

Beyond the spectrum of darkness she saw the bright stars scattered across the table of the night sky and felt as if she had never seen such things as stars before. She did not know enough numbers to count them, and even if she did, the stars could not be separated one from the other, the whole was so much greater than the sum of its parts. She saw the textbook of constellations, the heroes of mythology posing on fields of ink. She could see the milkiness in everything now, the way the sky was spread over with light.

This de-familiarization is crucial to convey the change necessary for all protagonists – the idea that a truly powerful experience upends the very definition of what we think we know. Everything, down to “such things as stars” must be redefined. Old expectations are washed clean, and we’re left with something new and dangerous and beautiful.

The title is never fully explained, but we can infer that this state of wonder is in part a reference to the magical qualities of the jungle and its inhabitants. In addition, the concrete noun “state/statehood” mixed with the dreamy uncertainty of “wonder” offers a useful dichotomy for Marina’s predicament. She is a doctor, a scientist, but, inserted into the jungle, she possesses a child’s capacity for awe and terror:

She had had a good imagination as a child, though it had been systematically chipped apart by years of studying inorganic chemistry and charting lipids. These days Marina put her faith in data, the world she trusted was one that she could measure. But even with a truly magnificent imagination she could not have put herself in the jungle. She felt something slip across her rib cage—an insect? A bead of sweat? She kept still, looking out through the top of the hammock at the bright split of daylight in front of her… she excelled not through bright bursts of imagination but by the hard labor of a field horse pulling a plow.

Reading (or writing) a book is itself a kind of odyssey. Most writers would tell you the bulk of their work is not all bright bursts of inspiration and light, but something closer to excavation. You go down to find something, to suss something out, and you come back changed, different than you were before. It is more plow pulling and less harvest. But what is lovely about this particular paragraph, and, indeed, Patchett’s latest novel, is that, in a different setting, the everyday mechanics of charting lipids and a putting your faith in data take on a larger significance, their own poetic magnitude. A lab in the Amazon is not the same as a lab in Minnesota. The charts and studies come to carry their own sacred connotations, so much so, that even when you yourself have returned to the original state, the journey is still with you. Perhaps by being dropped down into an entirely new environment, some of our chipped-away astonishment can be restored.

As readers, we allow ourselves to be transformed by the spell a good book casts, and, if we’re lucky, that spell puts us in a state of—yes—wonder.

Further Links and Resources

Via NPR, read an excerpt from State of Wonder. Consider ordering your copy from fabulous indie bookstore Powell’s.

On Ann Patchett’s website, read a brief bio of the author, learn about her other books, and listen to an interview. Book clubs: If you’re interested in reading one of Patchett’s novels—or her wonderful memoir, Truth & Beauty, this page provides direct links to discussion guides and tips on starting a reading group.

We recommend this great recent profile of Patchett in the Guardian and this Weekend Edition interview with the author.

In this video from Bloomsbury Publishing, Patchett discusses State of Wonder:

Lit Wall Decor

Celeste Ng — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 13:00:37 +0000

Am I the only one that does spring cleaning in the fall? Maybe it’s the cold, rainy weather that makes me want to brighten up my house and settle down with a good book and a cup of tea.

Should you, too, find yourself simultaneously wishing to spruce up your digs and get some reading done, here are some options for incorporating literature into your wall decor.

image: Spineless

First, Spineless offers posters made out of the full text of classic novels. That’s right–whip out your magnifying glass, and you could read The Wizard of Oz (right) from start to finish. Says the website:

At Spineless Publishing we believe that having a great work form part of the backdrop of your life figuratively shouldn’t stop you having it there literally. [... H]ard as it may be to believe, each one of our designs contains the full text of the book. Where there are shapes in the design, the words wrap to the edges rather than being removed or shaded. The apparent font size is roughly 4 point which is perfectly legible with the naked eye if you have 20/20 vision, or with light magnification if you don’t.

Image: When Boredom Strikes

Or, if Spineless doesn’t have your favorite book, you could try this DIY version like this teen blogger did:

So. Over the July 4th weekend I decided to embark on a new craft-like project. I’d always thought it would be cool to paint a chapter of a book on a wall, but never actually followed through with the vision. Untillllll I decided to ask my mom if she trusted me enough to paint the wall in the stairwell leading to the basement and she said YES. I started drawing lines on July 4th and two weeks later, I had successfully painted the entire chapter of The Tale of the Three Brothers from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on the wall, word for word. I completely guessed as to whether or not it would all fit, and miraculously it fit perfectly, all 20-something pages.

Check out pictures of the finished wall here (via).

Further Reading:
Here are some more ways to get lit onto your walls (you’ll have to find your own cup of tea, though):

A map of San Francisco made up of literary quotes about San Francisco–hella meta, dude
Portraits of authors (literally) in their own words
For a more graphic approach, there are also these minimalist posters of classic stories.
And finally, a custom painting of your bookshelf or a text-poster from Postertext to hang across from your Spineless art.

The essence of a story

Celeste Ng — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 13:00:45 +0000

Image via artist website

Kid-and-design blog OhDeeDoh pointed me to these beautiful, minimalist posters of children’s stories by artist Christian Jackson. Here are a few more:

Image via artist website

What I love most about these—aside from the obviously amazing graphic design—is the way each poster strips the story down to its most basic elements. It’s the visual version of the old writing exercise: can you tell your story in one paragraph? One sentence? One word? Here, each story is condensed into one image.

You can see all of Jackson’s children’s story posters, as well as buy prints (or iphone skins!) featuring the artwork, on his website.

A Portrait of the Artist as His (or Her) Own Words

Celeste Ng — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 13:00:15 +0000

Grace Paley as "Debts" by John Sokol. Image via artist's website.

Artist and author John Sokol creates portraits of artists out of lines from their own works. Here’s another of his stunning “word portraits”—this is William Faulkner as The Sound and The Fury:

William Faulkner as *The Sound and the Fury*, by John Sokol. Image via artist's website.

Visit Sokol’s Facebook page to see more of his portraits, and should you wish to buy one to inspire you at your writing desk, they’re for sale on his website.

(Via Flavorwire.)