First, put hand on kettle...
I went to a bizarre metaphysical place this evening. While preparing myself a cup of tea, I felt I was in slow motion. Remember how science classes always tell you that you aren't aware of conscious direction of your individual muscle actions? The example is always that you don't bother telling your hand to extend and your fingers to flex: you just try to pick up the pencil.
Well, tonight I felt them all. I was unable to escape the connective and purposeful actions of each and every movement I made while making the tea. I felt the contact of my feet to the floor, the contact of my shirt on my shoulders, the intent of holding the kettle under the faucet. It was fascinating, but it was also something mechanical. I felt the minute actions that ordinarily make up simple gestures. It was... strange.
And just like it began, it was over. I lost the perception. I was back to normal.
*** *** ***
While I was writing this, news broke that Kurt Vonnegut has died. To honor him, here are his somewhat tongue-in-cheek rules for writing fiction. In spite of the fact they're somewhat wry and simple, they're profoundly important. I've tried to incorporate as many as I can in my writing, and how I *think* about writing.
Eight rules for writing fiction:
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999), 9-10.
Well, tonight I felt them all. I was unable to escape the connective and purposeful actions of each and every movement I made while making the tea. I felt the contact of my feet to the floor, the contact of my shirt on my shoulders, the intent of holding the kettle under the faucet. It was fascinating, but it was also something mechanical. I felt the minute actions that ordinarily make up simple gestures. It was... strange.
And just like it began, it was over. I lost the perception. I was back to normal.
*** *** ***
While I was writing this, news broke that Kurt Vonnegut has died. To honor him, here are his somewhat tongue-in-cheek rules for writing fiction. In spite of the fact they're somewhat wry and simple, they're profoundly important. I've tried to incorporate as many as I can in my writing, and how I *think* about writing.
Eight rules for writing fiction:
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999), 9-10.
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