Good writing

Patriotism's failings belie the unity felt during war, echoed in raw tones within this LIFE magazine article published on September 20th, 1943.

"Here lie three Americans. What shall we say of them? Shall we say that this is a fine thing, that they should give their lives for their country? Why print this picture anyway of three American boys, dead on an alien shore? The reason is that words are never enough. The eye sees. The mind knows. The heart feels. But the words do not exist to make us see, or know, or feel what it is like, what actually happens. 

And so here it is. This is the reality that lies behind the names that come to rest at last on monuments in the leafy squares of busy American towns. The camera doesn’t show America and yet here on the beach is America, three parts of a hundred and thirty million parts, three fragments of that life we call American life: three units of freedom. So that it is not just these boys who have fallen here, it is freedom that has fallen. It is our task to cause it to rise again."

The above quote is narrated here, creating the expected somber aura though with an inescapable hopefulness.

The Art of Storytelling

Every story has its basic elements from protagonist to context to the outcome and resolution, whether good or bad. That's the start.

But not every story comes off the page, not every story can make your mind photographic or feel the lilt of its words so you get carried away by the flow of paragraphs and pages. A practiced author can make that happen but mass appeal doesn't prove art.

Beyond the page turners are those stories you never want to end because you're breathing through the sentences, rereading to sniff out the planning and placement, feeling your way steadily through the individual words to capture the minutiae necessary to make the recipe just right. The philosophy is in the details.

I'm reading such a book right now. I'm not yet halfway through East of Eden by John Steinbeck and I want to go back and read it from the start to make sure I didn't miss phrases like "the water of people", describing a crowd at the brink of riotous, righteous fervor or the making of pancakes as "little hassocks, small volcanoes formed and erupted on them until they were ready to be turned" or a man so close to remembering a far-off memory as "a little more there was to it, he dug it up and set it before his eyes in the air ahead of the horse's head". All read within a span of three pages.

The story is only an element, perhaps just a context for the author to weave in little tidbits imagined, crafted, found and stored in a separate place waiting to be carefully placed so the reader might catch a hint to pay attention exactly at that moment. 

I've often skimmed passages of page-turners to get to the end. It's an art to tell a captivating story that keeps you hungry but patient enough to savor the juicy details.   

Legacy blogging

When we can be honest about who we are and what we want, there is no need to demand, be rude or aggressive, or manipulate others that are involved in helping us get what we want. Instead, we know that we are transmitting a signal on the right frequency to bring all that we desire into our experience. 

-Madisyn Taylor

I realized after reading yesterday's post that the idea of legacy blogging can mean many things. From my perspective, it means not only charting my growth, but meeting other like-minded individuals.

Legacies aren't built single-handedly. They are an outcome of growth with a curated community. I have worked hard to consciously curate both my personal and professional networks as I've discovered new ideas and grown to understand more deeply what I care about. Now I want to share that understanding and find others who reflect on a similar level.

I have made the mistake in the past of thinking that my interests, whether in health, food, politics or some other field, are echoed in occasional posts that fit into these buckets. The posts I wrote or linked to were important enough to my thinking at the time to share with others. For example, I would be interested in the construct of language, read books and articles about it, have in depth conversations with friends and colleagues and share my findings in a couple of posts I thought best reflect the subject.

I shared the outcome but not the process.

Without a context behind why I was writing about the construct of language or where my interest came from or how I discovered material on the subject, these posts would seem to come out of nowhere. Even now, when I look back on these posts, I remember my personal journey through the subject which has repeated itself many times since. But my posts weren't additive. They didn't build to anything but a memory of my interest.

I hope to change my approach even as I write this post. I could have let my thoughts about legacy blogging simmer over the next few weeks, found others who had written on the subject and curated my findings here. Instead, I'd like to share what I bring to the art of learning.

We all have a unique process of getting from point A to point B. Many people have been at each of these metaphoric points before. They've struggled through the same things we struggle through now. It's not about being at point A or getting to point B, it's about how you evolve from one to the other that weaves an interesting story. Your story. 

If we don't provide a glimpse into how we change, we're just planting flags for markers in our development. Our story deserves more than that.

Starting Anew

"But my vision of success is my own to nurture. It’s not for anyone else to decide. I intend to grow in the ways that matter most to me, not the ways that society tells me I’m supposed to care about."

- Steve Pavlina

I've often started writing in my blog and stopped. I write in a private journal and occasionally in 750words, both of which are very cathartic as well as milestone-capturing experiences for me. The feeling of writing for an audience, even a small one, is quite a different experience.

The problem is that you feel like you are writing for them. It's different from being up on stage giving a lecture, where the metric of success is very likely how well your message is received. In the blogosphere, it's more like writing for an empty auditorium in the hopes of filling it. There's nothing truly to grasp.

Another problem is trying to effective. As they say in journalism, don't "bury the lead". You worry about this. Titling your post with a "How to" or "5 reasons why" is another strategy that increases page hits, and you spend more time thinking about this than you ever care to. You think about your "voice", the consistency of your writing, whether you can keep up a routine.

You think about all this before you even start your post, which of course hinders starting your post.

Blogging serves a different purpose for everyone, but it should be fun. It takes valuable, personal time, at least an hour per post writing, editing and reviewing. There's nothing wrong with having goals for your writing, but it helps if they're sustainable.

My goal is to build a legacy through my blog. I see the evolution of my personality in some of the articles I've written over the years, but overall it's a series of interrupted writing held back by the belief that I need to perform for an audience that may not be there.

In some ways, this is a fresh start in a new year. I didn't make a new year's resolution to do this and I hesitate even now simply because it may be viewed as such. But that doesn't have to be a bad thing and I see 2012 as a year of pacing ourselves. Taking a second to think if we're on the right track as revolutions, both personal and worldly, continue to trail us.

I hope my writing reflects that decision to take stock before moving forward. I have many projects underway and I'm trying to better judge success from a personal vantage point, not one that is handed down to me. This can only come from a deeper understanding of past experiences, observing others and being part of a community and culture I care about.

Joan Didion - The White Album

Joan Didion makes me want to write.

I'm on a vacation/staycation, sweating in a humid apartment with two fans running, one in front, one behind me. I finished The White Album a week ago, reading The Year of Magical Thinking now and looking forward to her 56-page essay-book, Fixed Ideas: America Since 9.11. I only heard of her a month ago in June after finishing Patti Smith's Just Kids. I wanted more writing like that; non-fiction, in-depth explorations of life through an autobiographical lens.

For a sci-fi/fantasy reader, it's been a wayward and rewarding pleasure. If psychobabble holds any truth, I went from "escaping the real-world" to jumping in it full-fledged.

"Most of us live less theatrically, but remain survivors of a peculiar and inward time. If I could believe that going to a barricade would affect man's fate in the slightest I would go to that barricade, and quite often I wish that I could, but it would be less than honest to say that I expect to happen upon such a happy ending."

There's a distant apathy to her style. I picture her flippantly flicking her hand as words go from brain synapses firing onto the page. She's good, she knows it, and it bothers her. She achingly tries to elucidate this feeling in her writing. "A sense of anxiety or dread permeates much of her work", as an anonymous Wikipedia contributor references from an article about her.

"I gravitated to the random. I swung with the non-sequential."

She's more funny than serious though. More lost than analytical. She comes from wealth, is wealthy, and has a clear understanding that her station in life - as a renowned journalist and author - allows her (comped) access to varied aspects of life that others don't see. Her candor gives you front-row seats.

"Bike movies are made for all these children of vague "hill" stock who grow up absurd in the West and Southwest, children whose whole lives are an obscure grudge against a world they think they never made. These children are, increasingly, everywhere, and their style is that of an entire generation."

She's talking about the generation of the 70's, but I see the hipsters of today or sometimes the disconnected teen entrepreneurs or the laid-off brokers turned freelancers. Held accountable to rules that no longer pertain to them. Absurd, begrudging, distant.

I keep reading Didion because she keeps hinting at recurring themes. Having written since the early 60's till today, she could very well point out the "human search for meaning in a changing world". But it's something Obama might say in a campaign speech. We might see it on a billboard promoting Scientology, abortion rights, or Chase Bank. It may be assigned as a homework assignment in an English class focused on the classics; Of Mice and Men, Dickens, or Brave New World. The cliche doesn't bear repeating, so she writes to convey the feeling.

Group Think

"To which I say: key-shmey. There is no rule, process, peer group, leader, or best seller that can absolve us of the responsibility of thinking our way through life on our own two feet. What irks me most about this infinite parade of gigundo solutions isn’t their glibness or even the borderline theology (of some) and borderline Babbitry (of others) involved in promising audiences easy, happy, profitable ideas. Nope. What irks me is that when you rigidly apply grand theories to everybody, sooner or later everybody feels like nobody, whether you’re in Communist Belgrade or the local DMV. There is a reason we call such systems soul-crushing: They ignore or annihilate individual difference and inner life."

From the brilliantly-written Group Think by Kathryn Schulz. It's worth a full read, if only for the comedic lilt of the piece.