A Hero's Essential Unity with Us

"Not alone food but every object is to be used with due regard for its proper function and not wasted or needlessly destroyed…. The reasons are more spiritual than economic. To squander is to destroy. To treat things with reverence and gratitude, according to their nature and purpose, is to affirm their value and life, a life in which we are all equally rooted. Wastefulness is a measure of our egocentricity and hence of our alienation from things…from their essential unity with us.... it is an act of indifference to the…worth of the wasted object, however humble." From The Three Pillars of Zen.

This was quoted this morning at my breakfast writers meeting with Kathryn Hinds. Along with discussing the importance the quote has for me on a personal level--It inspired a rather interesting discussion about Heroes and Villains, and which were more fun to write. Which characters were more constrained against the freedom to be themselves?

Part of the reason the quote had impact is that I've long felt a pendulum swing between what looked like asceticism and an indulgence in the joys of life. The quote offered a heady realization that I could respectfully enjoy the world around me. That it offered more freedom than the rigidity I feared might be necessary. But being a writer, that juicy thought fell to the wayside when I thought, Hmm. What does that mean to my characters?

It was interesting to note that in writing villains we might sometimes give them more freedom. In giving villains the chance to do what they wished, we constrain them from their unity to their world and make them suffer the pain of indifference (and yes, I do consider that real pain, even if they don't see it themselves). At the same time, we sometimes give the heroes a more ascetic lives with the false idea that to be good they must be constrained, instead of, as the charm of Philip Kapleau's words, a connection, a bond, an essential unity to all the world. That if the hero is constrained, he might be forced to be indifferent. Which, in some ways, is the villain's job.

Of course, if they're human characters, and living and breathing, are not saints, have not found Nirvana or attained Buddha-hood, then their indifference and unity is probably still remarkably grey on either side of this idea. (And yes, I know in the US it's supposed to be gray, but that still remains to me markedly *wrong* to my eyes). And their lives being grey and swinging from the pendulum struggle of their conflicts makes both quite a lot of fun to write!

Maybe this is all obvious. Maybe I'm looking at it from a different perspective. I'm sure it isn't a new concept. The villain has a real purpose and point in offering conflict to his enemy. The hero's opinion is equally valid, he's only a hero because the story is being told from his point of view. The best stories the villain believes his cause is just and right. It is often reasonable. If the story is good. That is unless he's a serial killer or something bad like that.

But I'm not just a writer, I'm also a mythologist. I happiest writing fantasy, because I get to dive into archetypal issues about our relationship to magic and God(s--and that includes the female ones when I write about them). So there's not just the villain against the hero: There is also a spiritual point of view: are they removed from the divine, do they remove themselves from the divine, or are they continually searching for ways to connect to the divine, to the good, to what is good, and to all the divine touches and loves with respect and care?

There's not just a conflict between the hero and a villain, but the character's conflict about the wasteful measure of his egocentricity and his alienation from other men as well as the divine.

The Write Place

"That’s not to say the story wasn’t good, but that I was not writing from the right place [write place], and so it was a lie to myself and to my writing..."

I wrote this in a letter to a friend and began to laugh. Yes. This is what I am aiming to do. That whole cast of characters, Gerry et al, is only part of what the whole Funny Gnome editing is supposed to do: bring us into the right place. So, another tiresome name change, but one that I am finally happy with!

That Goal Nearly Tripped Me Up!

How totally cool: I felt deflated when I realized I met one of my goals in exercising. I fit into what has got to be the most egregious example of vanity sizing. I got into a size 4 dress. It only took two months of not killing myself while working out (and how cool is that?).

Why is it cool that I felt deflated? Because the goal was met and I wondered, “What am I supposed to do now?” And it then occurred to me that I felt this way each time I reach a writing goal or an editing goal. I have to go: what’s next. And that’s wrong.

To some extent the workout goal is based on the fact that I love walking in the woods. I like working out and breaking a sweat. That part is easy. I also hate shopping and want to fit back into most of the clothes in my closet. Dropping weight was possibly made easier because I had to drop wheat. Those two elements of enjoying a two mile walk in the woods is part of a lifestyle thing. One of those elements where you shift your lifestyle in exercise and diet (diet as in what you take into your body, not some temporary plan of removing things for a short term goal).

Even though I have within my lifestyle exercise and diet, I also imposed short term goals of fitting into a dress. But even though I have another goal of fitting into a particular skirt with a ridiculous waist (which is sized closer to a legitimate 4, but is probably closer to a real 6, thus proving the ridiculous nature of the previously mentioned vanity sizing) I know I’m going to ask myself, “So, what’s next.” And it is a legitimate question, because by then, I’ll be skating the bottom of my BMI, and fielding comments about how much I don’t eat (which won’t be true, as I still love my steak, and if I have to give up wheat, I feel no compunction in eating dark chocolate).

In other words, what I am doing now by setting goals for lost inches or lost weight, may have troubled the lifestyle by making goals have more importance. The joy of walking through the woods, for instance, may have been taken over by the silly joy of fitting into an incorrectly sized dress. But for the joyous part: I realized this is how I also define my writing life.

The lifestyle of writing and work—something I truly enjoy—is defined not by just the pleasure of the work, but by page counts, word counts, how much I edited this day or that day. Because when that goal is over, I find myself with the same blah post I fit into that dress, and going, “What do I do now?”

Which is more important, to have goals, or to have a lifestyle of writing. I suspect both can be important, but the question is which is more important. Are those goals short term temporary versions of, “I’m on a diet so I can wear a bikini on the beach this summer,” type goals. Or are they reminders that we’re still on the path goals?

The only way we can tell is if we meet our goals and feel deflated: then it’s a temporary one, and I recommend you eat a pint of ice cream or have a scotch or a glass or three of wine. But if you think: Cool. And then forget about it because another story has come to mind. Then they’re stepping stones to what you are doing anyway, because the joy of walking through the woods, the joy of writing this character’s escapade or that scene and this next book that won’t shut up.

So May your goals be stepping stones that don’t trip you up while you’re working.

I forgot the story...

Instead of leaping into work, I leapt to the computer to surf Facebook and the News. I discovered a clip on Fox news and found myself listening to Gary Vaynerchuk talking about his book Crush It! The book is about how to “Cash into Your Passion.” What is my passion? Writing, editing, and practically anything to do with Book. So I say. But after I finished my edits on The Bone Reader, and started working on writing the next novel, the desire to leap out of bed sort of faded. What went wrong?

I could relate a lot of babble about internal mythology of walls that block me, except a walk in the woods helped me realize how much that’s a delusion. Anyone, even writers…possibly especially writers, know a lot about fiction; if it is good fiction, we want to believe it. Be it Fantasy, Romance, or Science Fiction.

As I was reading what I could get off the “Look Inside” for Crush It! I read how he apparently lives his life with three principles: Love your Family, Work Super Hard, Live your Passion. Was I living my passion? Well, again, I say that I am. But his litmus test on that is by seeing if we’re 100% happy, and I’m not.

I am reminded, then, about something that occurred to me on my walk. It wasn’t just the delusions that stopped me, or echoed an internal mythological struggle. I found myself wanting to write this new novel with non story focused reasons. I wanted to bring in characters because they’re cool. I wanted to impress a friend. I wanted to make the story dramatic. And hadn’t I been here before, which was why I dropped my whole Contemporary Suspense series? I had gotten into a rut where I kept forgetting the story.

Yes, I want to write cool characters, interesting dilemmas, and heart pounding conflicts. I want to impress not just one friend, but as many readers as I can reach. In other words, they’re not bad things, but… the story is my passion. That other stuff is and always has been secondary. It doesn’t even have to be written by me. It’s why I love to edit other people’s stuff. It’s why I can be ruthless towards the writer. In some ways I care about him or her, but I adore their story more.

I was about to apologize, but I think I won’t. Because it is true; I care less about the writer than the story. And I have forgotten that. So, saying that, I’m off to write. Hero wants to chat with me, and so I must go and listen to what he (and not what I imagine other people think that he…) has to say.

The Adventures of Funny Gnomes: the revised purpose

I’m not sure what exactly happened to make me drop the writing project I’ve spent almost three years on. The Mia James stories began around April 2003; a draft was finished in 2007. Unfortunately it earned laughs from my expert-beta reader. It wasn’t supposed to do so. I tried again, with the draft that used the humor and shifted the character. I worked on it till Friday 23 October 2009.

I won’t claim that the novel, Other Sort of Monsters, was horrible. I think that there was a lot of good in the writing, as well as an interesting story. I probably also learned a lot about writing in the effort. But I wasn’t writing it because the story was good. I was trying to make it good.

A number of factors brought me to this place. One was a story my mother told. A couple of others might be my having to give up wheat, as well as the goal to do 100 crunches a day. One of the more important may be a friend’s comment that she thought a publisher might like my novels Fate of the Red Queen or The Bone Reader. Additional aids may have been Kapleau’s The Three Pillars of Zen. Maybe the Muse just bopped me with her magic wand, or Fate said it was time.

With apologies to my twin, the story my mother told me was about when I started to crawl. I showed early on that I was my father’s child. Ever practical, I’d put a toy in my mouth, take two in my hands and crawl on my elbows. My twin, possibly even more practical, would just sit and wait till I came by and take one of my toys.

And part of my shift came from this bad poem that I wrote on the day I gave up Mia James:

My practicality, taken from my hands,

A toy or a choice, unfreely given,

Fine. Have this thing.

Did I surrender a piece of myself

When giving away this object?

And in Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art, he asks, “If I were feeling really anxious, what would I do?” He goes on to write about how Arnold Schwarzenegger would, on a freaky day, head to the gym, even if he were there all by himself with no one to be impressed by his effort. Working out was where he would center.

Little things came together, and my writing was re-born.

I shelved Mia James and all her novels. I put away the work of more than three years, to pick up the work I’d put down for about that long, that I’ been working on for longer. I read the latest draft of The Bone Reader, and found myself working all day. Even better, there were times I would look up from the manuscript and realized that nothing had bothered me all day. All the concerns I had, such as being single, or feeling 42, my twin taking my toys, or how I was going to pay my bills, went away. They had been gone. Even better: I wanted to work. I didn’t care about those things I had used as distractions, things I’d wanted to use to help me pretend I was happy or healthy. While working on The Bone Reader, I hadn’t given anything away.

So, the blog is no longer The Constant Comma. I don’t care about my pretentious ideas of my abilities in understanding language use. It was never the point. And I had forgotten. This time, the toy hadn’t been taken out of my hands, I’d tossed it so I could be proud and, worse, I also got snarky because of that.

So this blog is now the Adventures of the Funny Gnome, and within days, the Mab Morris site will be all changed. And I’m really writing again, and not just pretending.