{"id":8020,"date":"2011-02-11T06:52:56","date_gmt":"2011-02-11T11:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=8020"},"modified":"2011-02-11T06:52:56","modified_gmt":"2011-02-11T11:52:56","slug":"making-the-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/making-the-trip\/","title":{"rendered":"Making the Trip"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/object><\/p>\n

[Trailer for <\/em>Adaptation<\/a> (2002), starring Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, and Chris Cooper
\nand featuring a whole lot of other favorite, familiar faces]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river’s <\/em>commonplace book<\/em><\/a> (the archives):<\/p>\n

Human beings can’t live without the illusion of meaning, the apprehension of confluence, the endless debate concerning the fault in the stars or in ourselves. The writer is just the messenger, the moving target. Inside culture, the writer is the talking self. Through history, the writing that lasts is the whisper of conscience. The guild of writers is essentially a medieval guild existing in a continual Dark Age, shaman, monks, witches, nuns, working in isolation, playing with fire.<\/p>\n

When the first illuminated manuscripts were created, few people could read. Now that people are bombarded with image and information and the World Wide Web is an open vein, few people can read. Reading with sustained attention, reading for understanding, reading to cut through random meaninglessness — such reading becomes a subversive act. The writer’s first affinity is not to a loyalty, a tradition, a morality, a religion, but to life itself, and to its representation in language. Ego enters in, but writing is far too hard and solitary to be sustained by ego. The writer is compelled to write. The writer writes for love. The writer lives in spiritual debt to language, the gold key in the palm of meaning. Awake, asleep, in every moment of being, the writer stands at the gate.<\/p>\n

The gate may open.<\/p>\n

The gate may not.<\/p>\n

Regardless, the writer can see straight through it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Jayne Anne Phillips)<\/p>\n

Writing is one of the most easy, pain-free, and happy ways to pass the time in all the arts. For example, right now I am sitting in my rose garden and typing on my new computer. Each rose represents a story, so I’m never at a loss for what to write. I just look deep into the heart of the rose and read its story and write it down through typing, which I enjoy anyway. I could be typing kjfiu joew. mv jiw<\/em> and would enjoy it as much as typing words that actually make sense. I simply relish the movement of my fingers on the keys. Sometimes, it is true, agony visits the head of a writer. At these moments, I stop writing and relax with a coffee at my favorite restaurant, knowing that words can be changed, rethought, fiddled with, and, of course, ultimately denied. Painters don’t have that luxury. If they go to a coffee shop, their paint dries into a hard mass.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Steve Martin, “Writing Is Easy!” [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

His writing did not go “gonzo” until 1970, when he found himself up against a deadline for a story on the Kentucky Derby…<\/p>\n

“I’d blown my mind, couldn’t work,” Hunter S. Thompson recalled later in a Playboy<\/em> interview.<\/p>\n

“So finally I just started jerking pages out of my notebook and numbering them and sending them to the printer.<\/p>\n

“I was sure it was the last article I was ever going to do for anybody.”<\/p>\n

The article… was heralded as a breakthrough in journalism, and it brought the author a lasting epiphany.<\/p>\n

“If I can write like this and get away with it, why should I keep trying to write like the New York Times<\/em>? It was like falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool full of mermaids.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(“New Journalism’s Dark Prince,” by Elaine Woo,\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em>, Feb 22, 2005)<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

E.L. Doctorow once said that “writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”<\/p>\n

You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Anne Lamott,\u00a0Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life<\/em>)<\/p>\n

It’s been a crowded week here: words — and thoughts about them, and stories built with them — filling my head, and everything but<\/em> words and writing and stories jammed into waking life (outside the early-morning and all too brief writing periods). It hasn’t been dull, I’ll say that — in fact it’s been downright entertaining. It’s resembled the stereotypical circus act in which a miniature car with opaque windows (some sort of shrunken Mini Cooper) drives into the center ring. It rolls to a stop. The door opens, and out unfolds a fat clown… followed by a skinny one… followed by a little guy… and his pony… a guy on stilts… a twisted contortionist, somehow walking on her hands… and… and…<\/p>\n

That car.<\/em> Yeah. That’s been my week.<\/p>\n

Yours?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Trailer for Adaptation (2002), starring Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, and Chris Cooper and featuring a whole lot of other favorite, familiar faces] From whiskey river’s commonplace book (the archives): Human beings can’t live without the illusion of meaning, the apprehension of confluence, the endless debate concerning the fault in the stars or in ourselves. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[183,247,1393,53,5,36,372,515],"tags":[1757,2206,2207,2208,2209,2210,2211,2212],"class_list":{"0":"post-8020","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","9":"category-movies-media","10":"category-06_writing","11":"category-reading","12":"category-style-and-craft","13":"category-grail","14":"tag-steve-martin","15":"tag-adaptation","16":"tag-nicolas-cage","17":"tag-meryl-streep","18":"tag-jayne-anne-phillips","19":"tag-hunter-s-thompson","20":"tag-e-l-doctorow","21":"tag-anne-lamott","22":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-25m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8020"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8021,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8020\/revisions\/8021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}