Words Unlimited

George Bellows - 'trying everything'

"Try everything that can be done.

Be deliberate. Be spontaneous.

Be thoughtful and painstaking.

Be abandoned and impulsive

Learn your own possibilities."

George Bellows, 1920

 

George Bellows’s words are writ large on the wall at the end of the current exhibition of his work at The Royal Academy, London.  They appear to be addressed to younger artists, but I reckon the advice remains relevant throughout any creative career.

We don’t know what kind artist Bellows (1882-1925) might have become because his life was cut short. He died aged 42 at a point where his work seemed to be in transition from documentary realism to something more surreal and dreamlike.

His earlier work documents the grittier side of Manhattan as it was transformed into a modern city. Bellows directs his energy and his eye to look slant at the city. A dramatic series records the digging of the foundations for Penn Station – a black hole in the middle of Manhattan two blocks square. These dark scenes are often lit only by the glow of workman’s brazier. Brave stuff to be painting in 1907/9.

He painted the poor of New York - people not normally depicted in works of art - such as his 'Forty-Two Kids' which shows street kids jumping into the East River to cool off.

He certainly lived up to his own advice with his range of subject matter - boxing matches, seascapes in Maine, family portraits, responses to the First World War. He also explored printing as well as painting.  

At art college he was a contemporary of Edward Hopper. By the time he died in 1925 he’d left enough evidence to show that he was still ‘learning his own possibilities.’  It’s tantalising to think of the artist he might have become.

Bellows’s words apply equally to writing. Having just spent the last month working ‘deliberately’, ‘painstakingly’ and ‘thoughtfully’ as I prepared my novel manuscript for submission, the quote reminded me that it was time for a period of play and spontaneity!

'You can't rush inspiration'

"Don’t go searching for a subject, let your subject find you. You can’t rush inspiration. … Once your subject finds you, it’s like falling in love. It will be your constant companion. Shadowing you, peeping in your windows, calling you at all hours to leave messages like, 'Only you understand me.'"

This is from a recent New York times piece by Colson Whitehead, How to Write, in which he offers his 6 Rules for writing. The above is rule No 2. The piece is witty and wise - well worth reading in full.

As with all such 'rules' some will chime with what you're doing, some, inevitably, are key to that particular writer. Whitehead's No 2 spoke to me about the project I'm working on at the moment - the subject really won't leave me alone!

I'm also reminded that each writer drafts their own rules and that all rules are made to be broken, sometimes. 

It's also worth a look for the sharp illustrations by Joon Mo Kang that catch those moments in the writing day that I think many would recognise.   

Paradox, Politics and Place

"Language is not a pure instrument. It is used by many forces before a poet picks up a pen. It is used to sell programs, objects, ideas — to propagandize, to create artificial desire ..."

This is American poet Jorie Graham, from a thoughtful interview in The Spectator on the occasion of the publication of her new collection, Place. She talks about paradoxes and contradictions in her poems and the ways to be 'political' in culture. It's worth reading the whole piece.

Place, is to be the PBS Choice for autumn, guaranteeing Graham a place on the 2012 T S Eliot Prize shortlist.

The Ultimate Guide

"Writing is a muscle. Smaller than a hamstring and slightly bigger than a bicep, and it needs to be exercised to get stronger. Think of your words as reps, your paragraphs as sets, your pages as daily workouts."

An inspiring quote for those who like a physical workout ... but what if you don't like going to the gym? There's more where this came from - it's part of Colin Nissan's The Ultimate Guide To Writing Better Than You Normally Do. See all his guiding words at McSweeney's.

Thanks to Amanda Dalton for sending me the link.

If you were to write your own personal "Ultimate Guide" what would you include?

The Secret Of Writing

Anne Tyler on the secret of writing:

" ... pretend to yourself that no one will see it, ever."

The novel she feels proudest of is Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant. More on her writing life in a long interview from last Saturday's Guardian Review

Fact in Fiction

Fact into fiction is a current preoccupation of mine, it's at the heart of my current work-in-progress. How far can I stray?  I want a nugget of fact - or do I mean 'truth' - in each scene. So I was delighted to come across this quote:

'I’m increasingly interested in the gulf between what is “fictional” and what is “non-fiction.” I have long doubted the word “fiction,” but I’m even more doubtful about what “non-fiction” supposedly represents. Clifford Geertz said that the real is imagined, just as the imagined is real. Who is to say where the lines can be drawn? What is it that we choose to invent? And how does language negotiate that territory?'

It's novelist Colum McCann, from an interview in the New Yorker in which he talks about the process of writing his short story, 'Transatlantic.'

McCann's novel Let The Great Wold Spin is a masterful blend of fact and fiction. I'm currently working my way through McCann's backlist he is so creative with history. 

Read the full interview here.

'Transatlantic' is featured in the 16 April 2012 edition of the New Yorker which you can get from the LRB Bookshop.  

Quote No. 17

"That’s how my novels get written. Small scenes that build and merge, and then you recognize the larger context."

This is Michael Ondaatje from a long and fascinating interview in Bomb 58. Worth reading the whole thing.

Small scenes certainly built and merged in The Cat's Table which, for me, was a stand-out book from my reading last year.

Interesting how this chimes with what Hockney said about creating a large painting.

Quote of The Week No. 16

 “Except by prejudice there is no sentiment in the arts banned from expression and no story that cannot be told. The enchantment is in the feeling and in the telling, and that is all.”

So says the narrator, Mia, in Siri Hustvedt's The Summer Without Men, one of the many books I enjoyed in my long summer break of holidays and celebrations. The quote is a good reminder, as I settle back to writing my novel, that voice and viewpoint is all!

Siri Hustvedt [Mrs Paul Auster, not that that should matter] is a writer I've been circling around, feeling I should read her but never quite manging to. In some ways The Summer Without Men, is a light read but it's also witty, intelligent and thoughtful about love, women across the generations, aging, dying and writing. I'm looking forward to working my way through her backlist.

It seems that The Summer Without Men has been shortlisted for the French literary prize, The Prix Femina. The winner to be announced in the first week of November. 

Quote of The Week No 15

 “At best, the life of the writer, properly understood, is a quest for clarity and understanding in which every fresh start feels like an outrageous gamble against impossible odds.”

From an article in The Observer by Robert McCrum on literary survival.

Quote of The Week No 14

"Doggedness is an essential quality for any novelist"

Says Michael Cunningham, as he reveals how doggedness, kept him going until he found the way to make his award-winning novel, The Hours, work. Read more in this fascinating article, 'Virginia Woolf, my mother and me.'