Robert E Howard & Me

I recently attended the Howard Days celebration in Cross Plains, Texas.  Although this was the 37^th year for the annual celebration of the life and writings of Robert E Howard, I only learned of it a couple of years ago, and this was my first time attending.  It was a wonderful experience.

The visit to the home of Robert E Howard started things off for me.  I walked through Mrs. Howard’s bedroom, the living room and the kitchen.  But the profound effect of viewing Howard’s bedroom was the seminal moment of the trip.  His bedroom is as small as a monastic cell, with a twin bed and a table with a typewriter on it.  Originally it had been part of the porch, but they walled in a portion of the porch which became his bedroom and workspace.  Howard was known for marathon and late night writing binges.

On the last day of the celebration, they brought out Howard’s actual writing table, which they had tracked down over the years.  It had been significantly modified from its original state, and it is likely Howard had bought it new in the 20s.  So they will have a professional conservator restore it to what it would have been like new.  Since it had not yet gone through the process of restoration, we were allowed to go up and view and touch the table.  It was, perhaps, my most fanboy moment as I ran my hands along the top of that table, the workspace Howard had used a century ago.  It was profoundly moving.

Howard’s life was short and regrettably ended with a self-inflicted gunshot to the right side of his head above his ear.  His mother lay dying and he had been assured that she would never come out of the coma into which she had slipped.  Distraught, and perhaps for many more reasons we cannot fathom, he took his own life.  He did not die immediately, but lingered in a coma for another 8 hours, such was his physical constitution.  He was 30 years old.  His mother died as well. A double funeral was held for them three days later.

The One-Storey and Sacramental World

A few days ago, I posted some thoughts on the problem of writing believably about a one-storey world, a world in which natural and supernatural commingle. That problem is avoiding a deus ex machina, of a too-easy happy ending. There is a related problem. If on the one hand, writing in a world that believes in the bifurcation of the natural and supernatural, is problematic, the mirror problem is just as challenging: the bifurcation of mind (or soul, spirit) and body. If the bifurcation of the natural and supernatural world leads to a sort of moral Manichaeism, the bifurcation of mind and body leads to a sort of Gnosticism.

The answer to both problems, for a Christian writer, is the Incarnation, and the sacramental understanding of human existence in a fallen world.

The Problem of Depicting a One-Storey World

We live lives in which our sensory impressions are privileged far above any sort of spiritual or intuitive impressions. And this is a good thing. Far too often our intuitions and impressions can become delinked from reality and we find ourselves overtaken by delusion and ego. But the dominant worldview we encounter swings back and forth between a monistic materialism (matter is all that there is) and a Romantic idealism (one’s inner world of emotions and intuitions, one’s inner self is the center of the universe). Romanticism is, of course, the natural reaction to Enlightenment materialism. And both views occupy our collective consciousness.

The tension between the two is real, because it is a tension between a natural, material world which we experience and understand through our senses, and a supernatural, immaterial world which we experience and understand through a different faculty (in Orthodox Christian thought, this is the nous). I’ll not go into the philosophy and doctrinal beliefs, nor will I argue for the existence of an actual supernatural reality. And although the term “supernatural” is problematic, it is the only commonly recognizable term that will fit the discussion.

The problem for writers who want to adequately depict these two realities in their writing (whether fiction or non-fiction) is that we bifurcate these realities.

Finding the Way (Again)?

Since the month began, I’ve written eight blogs between my two blogs (this is the ninth post). That is more output than I’ve done in multiple previous years. Both my blogs have lain dormant for several years, with only the occasional post here and there, maybe one or two a year. When I first started blogging, almost twenty years ago exactly, I wrote posts nearly daily, and mostly several days per week. That went on for years. Then life happened. I went through a divorce. I moved to another city in another state. I went through a couple of relationships. There were legal contentions post-divorce. And I tried to write a novel.

But it wasn’t just that life happened. It wasn’t just that I went through relocations, the endings and beginnings of relationship, job changes, and other stresses. Something else happened. I no longer wrote for the thrill of it. I no longer wrote for me. I tried to fit myself into the expectations or criticisms of others. I stopped believing in the story. I stopped believing in the gifts I’d been given. I stopped believing in my abilities to develop in the craft of writing.

I lost the joy. I lost the way.

The Humility of Writing

I might have chosen to call this “The Humiliation of Writing.” It can often feel humiliating. The idea that gripped you while driving in the car, filling you with such energy that the moment you walked through your front door, you immediately dashed to your computer or notepad to begin writing, suddenly turns to farce once you see the words strung together. The experience of having your work critiqued–“feedback is a gift”–only to realize this person merely read the work quickly (perhaps while on the toilet) to “get the feel” of it, and is now savaging the plot they only barely grasped. It can take a great deal of self-hatred to constantly put oneself in these experiences.

Or it can take a great deal of humility.

Names, Stories, and Healing

There is a concept in brain science called neuroplasticity, in which the brain adapts and changes in relation to various changes, whether those are brain injury, trauma, and disease, but also through undertaking new endeavors, such as retirees returning to college later in life. A couple of videos came to my attention recently on how stories affect our brains. In Empathy, Neurochemistry and the Dramatic Arc, researcher Paul Zak discusses who a particular form of story, the Hero’s Journey, impacts the brain through the production of cortisol and oxytocin, and how the production (or non-production) of those chemicals then motivates the hearers of the story to particular actions. (A brief article by Zak can be read here.) Another researcher, Dr. Uri Hasson, in a brief Ted Talk, This is Your Brain on Communication, discusses how, in experiments using fMRI technology, the brain waves of both the speaker and the listener actually synchronize during the telling of the story, and similar areas of the brain are active for both speaker and listener. Even more amazingly, when the listener then retells the story to another person, the same brain phenomena occur. And other research (note: article is behind a paywall) demonstrates a further interesting finding: the less trauma is integrated into a coherent narrative, the longer the damaging effects continue. Trauma, in a sense, requires the development of a coherent narrative around the trauma for healing to take place.

In other words, story telling produces a shared experience between the hearer and listener, an experience which can then be shared with others, producing a similar experience. Storytelling also can motivate to action. And story telling can actually heal us.

Rediscovering Vocation

I wanted to be a writer–more specifically, a published author–since I was in first grade. Most of my grade school experience was writing stories and trying to start novels. I read voraciously, was involved in sports, but spent a lot of time writing. Most of it was in imitation of the writers I enjoyed reading, especially the pulp writers, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E Howard. The writing was fun. It was delightful to imagine one day having a book on the shelves in the library or at the bookstore with my name on it.

But something happened along the way. I worked up the courage to share one of my writings with an adult in my life. That person made a criticism that went beyond typos and word choice into the moral realm. Whatever misunderstanding there may have been, the implicit communication I got was “your writing is morally bad.” I didn’t stop writing, but the writing went underground. I shared my writing with almost no one, and when I did I made as sure as I could that the person wouldn’t label my writing as something like a sin.

Taking Risks

During the past three months, as I’ve turned attention to some personal work on myself, as a growing sense of self-understanding has unfolded, it has become clear I have not been a risk-taker.  I’ll not unburden my heart is this public space, but suffice to say there have been enough disappointments and painful events that one finds it rather simpler to mitigate risk.  And by mitigate risk, of course I mean avoid it wherever possible.

The illusion, of course, is that avoiding risk is even possible.  It is not.  But we are so used to the habitual, the routine, that we do not take into account the sort of risks we face in simply rising from bed and going about our day.  Risks of falling and injuring oneself, even resulting in a permanent disability.  Risks of dying in a car accident.  Risks of being a victim of a violent crime.  Risks of being struck by lightning.  We are only aware of these dangers when they draw near to our circle of daily activity.  We drive past the car accident on the highway. We stumble but catch ourselves on the stairwell, and limp slightly at the ankle that turned just so.  We see on the news that gun-toting man holding up the convenience store we had just left ten minutes before.  Without getting in to the politics or medical back and forth, at the core of our public response to the coronavirus during the past year and a half is the question as to whether and how much risk we are willing to face.

This notion of risk is, for me, at the heart of writing.

A Brief Update

On my general blog, I posted a note providing an update on what has been happening during this recent blogging pause.

The gist: I’ve been working on personal matters and have been devoting time and attention to those things. I have, however, recently felt more strongly the pull to return to writing. Prior to the pause, I was posting on a once-weekly schedule, and hope to continue the same. However, it may sometimes be less regular. Nonetheless, the discipline of weekly posting is a good one, and I hope to work to maintain that schedule.

More regular posts to come. Stay tuned.

Study the Comics

If you’re a writer–non-fiction, fiction, poetry, it doesn’t matter, but fiction is best served here–I’m quite serious when I say, you need to study how comedians do comedy, the conventions and structures of their bits and sets. Seinfeld is great because his structure is usually pretty obvious. Brian Regan is another good one. Jim Gaffigan is good because his can be multi-layered (his falsetto interjections are another voice that adds a layer to each bit).

All fiction, including so-called literary fiction, is part of a genre, and, like comedy, all genres have their conventions and structures. A good joke has a set up, some form of complication or conflict, a crisis moment, and the punchline. Sometimes you can tell nothing but the punchline in such a way as to elicit the entire structure and genre of the joke. Or you can start the setup and stop, and everyone can fill in the rest of the joke, and it gets a laugh. This is how convention–even the conventions of literary fiction–and structure can do some of the work for you.

The link I’m posting here is a five minute clip, from 2012 I believe, of Jerry Seinfeld talking to a reporter at the NYT about how he created his pop tart joke. We can bypass the old “if you have to explain a joke it isn’t funny” and see how he sketches out the structure of the joke. And notice how he has to pay attention to timing. This is important in writing, as well.

Now, admittedly, this clip is edited so as to only give the barest of insights into how he wrote this particular joke. But it’s enough to get the main idea.

So tune in to YouTube, go on Netflix, sign in to HBO, and look for masters of standup. Then study their work. There’s a lot to learn there. And it will be fun doing it.