The Blogosphere

So I've been looking around at other blogs today...and I've found a few that are just insanely interesting to me.

For instance...I have a thing about punctuation. Yes, I tend to overuse it. But I at least use it in places that it is somewhat appropriate. The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks tickles my funny bone. An entire blog, devoted to signs where people use punctuation that they really do not need to use. It is cracking me up, reading some of these signs. Makes you wonder how some people survive in life.

Another one that I've found is Notes from Inside My Head. I'm not sure what it is about this blog...I'm not a Mom, so I don't really relate to that, but I find her writing style to be infectious. So I'll go with that. She is fun to read. I think I may have to be sure my SIL sees her blog, because she is about to be a new Mom. I'm sure if you are a parent, this one is even funnier than if you aren't.

While visiting there, I discovered Rants and Raves, complete with more Mom stories, but also thoughts on the writing process and blogging in general. She's got a great sense of humor that shines through in all of her posts.

I'll fill you in on more sometime soon...when I'm bored and go blog hunting...

Writing Yourself

In Literature, we are strongly discouraged from assuming that the main character or narrator of a piece is the author himself. In fiction, a writer has to create a personality, a persona, which fits the story that they want to tell. Often though, if you look at the life of the author, you will see a number of similarities between the writer and the character. Those similarities certainly don't mean that the character IS the author or vice-versa, but it can often cause me to question where the line is. At what point does the character separate himself from the writer (or is it the writer who separates himself from the character)? I certainly know from my own writing that it would not be as powerful as it is or communicate the message that I am attempting to convey if the characters did not have a little bit of me in them. On the other hand, if the characters were me entirely, my writing would be very boring! I am not all that exciting a person. So how much of a writer is present in their characters, and in their works? This is an idea that intrigues me. When reading Don Juan or another poem by Lord Byron, with a Byronic Hero, is it safe to assume that the Byronic Hero is Byron himself? Not exactly. Though he was described to be "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know," this isn't exactly what a Byronic Hero is. When looking at poetry such as "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath, can we assume that the speaker is Plath herself? Not exactly. While there are certainly a lot of similarities we can draw between Plath and the speaker, they are not expressly one and the same, for certain. In music, the same questions appear. Is the lyricist the one speaking, or is it a persona that they have adopted who is speaking? This, it seems, depends largely on the lyricist.

Former INXS frontman Michael Hutchence was one who liked to write lyrics that could be interpreted in a number of ways, to mean a number of things, depending on who was reading them. They may have started out as a very personal experience or thought, but he worked to turn them into something universal. While he certainly achieved that, how much of himself did he leave in the songs? On the band's album Elegantly Wasted, Andrew Farriss said that Michael was in a very different "head space" than what he typically would be, and his lyrics were far more about what he was dealing with in his personal life than usual. Songs such as "I'm Just a Man" and "Searching" certainly point to this, especially when considered in relation to his life circumstances at the time.

U2's Bono began to adopt a persona through which to sing at some point possibly as early as the 1988 album Rattle and Hum, but certainly by the 1991 album Achtung Baby. The lyrics on that album began to touch too closely to his real life, and he found them too personal to be able to perform them as himself. At that point, he became The Fly for the ZooTV tour, and was able to sing those lyrics as someone other than himself. Each persona he has adopted over the years has shown itself not only in his dress, but also in the voice he uses to sing the lyrics. By being someone other than himself, Bono is able to sing about himself.

Taking a look at a newer band and singer, Justin Furstenfeld of Blue October writes intensely personal lyrics and attempts to take himself back to the moment he wrote them when he performs live. When the band first began to write songs, Justin took his personal journal and diary entries and turned those into songs. His lyrics speak of addictions, mental breakdowns, anger, and so much more.

Even knowing how intensely personal these lyrics are by these singers, can we assume that they are entirely THAT PERSON? I think that it is doing them a disservice to make that assumption, because while they may have come from a very personal place, an intense part of their lives...there is so much more to them. We can't know everything there is to know about Michael Hutchence or Bono or Justin Furstenfeld by listening to their lyrics. We can however relate to the emotions which their lyrics express. Just as in poetry, we can find things within the song which touches us on some level and take from it what we will.

Filtering Critiques

In my Creative Writing class last week, I presented a short story that I've recently written titled "Dear Diary." Much like the last time I presented a piece, I got a lot of feedback. Tons of feedback. Maybe too much feedback. I'm really honored that the class is spending so much time talking about the pieces I present...it makes me think that they really like them and feel like they have a lot of promise. But at the same time, it is hard to really determine what parts of those suggestions I should actually try to incorporate into the story, and which ones I need to disregard.

I know that some of what was said would work really well in the story, in theory at least, but I have to question each thing before I try to do it. Will it actually push the story to where it is almost reaching but not quite? How will it affect the characterization of my heroine? Does that stick completely to the theme that I've set forth? There are so many factors in play, and the story really does balance on a fine line. I think that if I find a way to include some of these suggestions, that line will be even finer...which would be a good thing in the story. Primarily, I want there to be more questioning at the end of what my heroine decided to do. Some people questioned, and they brought up the reasons why they questioned. But others were very certain, based on the clues I had given them, which decision she had made. I want to make it harder for them to be certain...I want them to question. I really need to dive deeper into her head, and make it more realistic for her to have chosen either path.

The idea for this short story actually stemmed from music. I was doing some freewriting while listening to music for inspiration, and the song "Hurt" by Johnny Cash came on. Yes, I know that it was written by Trent Reznor and originally recorded by Nine Inch Nails. But when Johnny Cash sang "Hurt," it truly became a Johnny Cash song. He gives so much life to the song, and really makes you feel the pain of the lyrics. I began to wonder what would have to happen to a person, what would they have had to live through, in order to reach that level of desperation. "I hurt myself today to see if I still feel. I focus on the pain, the only thing that's real." What could be so bad that you don't even know if you're alive anymore? So the ideas started formulating in my mind as I continued to listen to the song. It ends with "If I could start again a million miles away, I would keep myself. I would find a way." This person has completely lost who they were, they are completely engulfed in the pain of whatever has happened to them and is just existing. They don't feel anything anymore, other than pain. And "Dear Diary" was born.

It still needs a lot of work, if it is going to really achieve what I set out to achieve with it. Like I said before, I have to go deeper into her mind, deeper into her pain, deeper into her anguish. It has to be believable. Right now, it is almost there, but there is something missing. I have to figure out what, if anything, out of the feedback I've been given will fill that void. The rest, I need to forget about, because it is so close to that point already.