Dasein

23rd February 2013

Trust the Germans to come up with as an apt a word as Zeitgeist. German is the leggo language, where you can snap off one word and stick it to another to create a whole new concept. Zeitgeist is one of those words, from Zeit, meaning Time, and Geist, meaning Spirit. Dasein is another good German leggo-word, from Da, meaning There, and Sein, meaning Being. Zeitgeist translates as "the spirit of an age," and Dasein as "The art of being," or being present, being a silent witness, just Being There.
In a way, being in touch with the Zeitgeist requires a certain Dasein. I bring this up, because I have been thinking this week about the role of the artist in society, and I think it has to do with both of these German conundrums. In our age of hyper-individualism, we have to some extent lost sight of the role of art as anything but sheer self-expression. These days, if I stand in front of a piece of visual art or sit down to read a new author, I am only being asked to see the relationship between the psyche of the artist and the piece of art. The larger context, to some degree, has been lost.
Traditionally, however, the artist played the role of the chorus in Greek drama. He/she was a mirror reflecting back the action, the simple Dasein held up to the Zeitgeist of that particular drama. If you think about the writers that have endured, you will find this quality about them. They are witnesses of their particular Zeitgeist, reflecting it back to the general population. Dickens, The Brontes, Orwell, Hesse, Steinbeck, to name but a few, belong here.
But, just as a mirror only reflects what is there, the Zeitgeist resists manipulation. It is what it is and must find its own way to expression, which it does inevitably. In other words, the artist shouldn't set out to be a bearer of the Zeitgeist. The artist can only be the silent witness, and that requires a level of unconsciousness. This is why, though a part of me wants to regale against a book like "Fifty Shades of Grey," or even "Harry Potter," the better part of me knows that it is an expression of the times.
The focus of the writer (let's steer away from the more controversial visual arts) should just be the writing. Whatever else comes through will be a function of the writer himself or herself , and that has to do with his or her quality of Dasein. (Don't you wish we could just plunk for the German here and talk about himself/herself as one thing - the neutral, "One.")
Now, I read early Barbara Kingsolver with relish. "The Bean Trees," and "Animal Dreams," were very good books. But along the way, she veered off into the land of social conscience. On the face of it, it would seem that social conscience would go right along with the concept of Zeitgeist, but in a way it is its opposite. In the arts, that is. Zeitgeist is a mirror, it's not a vehicle for anything other than itself. By the time Kingsolver was writing "Prodigal Summer," she was hanging decorations on the outside of the Zeitgeist mirror. It's a hard thing to do, but the writer has to trust that what they have to say will come out in the writing without them trying to say what they have to say.
Which all comes down to Being There (Dasein.) To being present. It is the voice of the author that is the vehicle, not the issues. It is the silence within which the artist finds himself/herself (Wo man sich findet.) It is the silence that speaks the loudest.

Vox Clamentis

17th February 2013

I am still on hold with regard to my agent's intercession for me at the publishing house.  But this much I know: they're not going to budge on the publishing date. March 1st 2014, it is. What I am pushing for now is to be granted an official "acceptance" date for the manuscript (i.e. the date it left the editor's office) because that secures me two things:
(1) The publication date won't be pushed any further back (within the terms of the contract, they have to publish within eighteen months of this "acceptance" date.)
(2) My second payment cheque
I encouraged my agent to let me in on what he had proposed to the publishing house to make the medicine a little sweeter, but he wasn't coughing. He says it has to do with the promotion of the book and will cost them money, so my editor has to go to her boss for approval. This will take time.
The title of my novel should be switched from "Veil of Time," to "It Takes Time," because it is taking a bloody lot of it. Time being the theme of my book, I ought to have more understanding for the illusory nature of time. And I do, really. 
In the meantime, a writer friend this week was urging me to exert pressure on my agent to get on with hawking my other books. Because it's not just this book that is held up with this new publication date, but my eight-book backlog.  However, by the terms of my contract I am obliged to show my next novel to Simon&Schuster, though any offer they make on it has to be agreeable to me. Also, by the same terms, I cannot publish another book within six months of the first. So it's just a big bung-up all along the line.
I am toying with the idea of taking a writing class by Paul Harding this summer. His book "Tinkers," is one I admire and keep going back to, so I figure I stand to learn something.
No pearls of wisdom this week. I am speaking from the wilderness, a place where time loses all meaning and no sound echoes back.

The Year of the Horse

February 10th 2013

This is the Year of the Snake, and I am a Pig (well, I like to say Boar, because that fits in with the Pictish stone carvings in my novel and in with the place where I grew up in Scotland.) I was looking at my astrological forecast for the Year of the Snake, and it said that I should lie low this year and put off any big ventures for a year. So, I called up my agent and my editor immediately and said, "Look, you have to pull all the strings you can so that I can put this publishing thing off until 2014. Next year, the Year of the Horse, is going to be much more compatible with launching my career, because the horse likes to be in the limelight, unlike the snake who has sneaky energy and likes to work behind the scenes. The Year of the Snake has to do with steady progress and attention to detail, so, please, in my best interests, could we wait and not publish until next year?"
My agent said he didn't think they could do that - I mean, there are all those potential readers out there, waiting for September so that they can read this book. At my insistence he broke down and talked to my editor at Simon and Schuster, and with much reluctance, they took a look at their 2014 calendar and said, "Okay. We will put Claire McDougall's book on the March 1st slot. But tell her this is the last time we are going to do this."
Because I spend my time dreaming up fiction, this is the way I cope with devastating news. It's a way of thinking of March 1, 2014 and not crying, because it is an entire bleedin' year from now. Do you want the truth? Then here it is: I e-mailed my editor this week and asked if she could give me a firm publishing date, in September like she said. Her e-mail came right back. It said my firm publishing date is March 1st 2014, the year of the horse. (She didn't mention the horse. I put that in.) I admit I cried. I admit I whisked off an e-mail to my agent which said, "Can they really do this?" Unfortunately they can. My agent said, "I'll talk to them." He did. The publishing date it still March 1st, but he said he talked them into something to my advantage, the details of which he couldn't give me because Hurricane Nemo was banging at his door and he had to run from his office in fear of his life. (He really did! I'm not making that part up. Well, he wasn't in fear of his life, but he was anxious to get home.) Point is, whatever sweetness he hath garnered for me from this debacle, I will not know until he has dug his office out from under piles of snow. Alas, cruel fate!
Tune in next week for an exciting update.
In the meantime, I am still in denial. Just yesterday someone asked me when the book was coming out (as they always do) and I told them September. People are going to think I am making this up. Just to give you a time-line to put all this in perspective. I signed a contract with my agent in July 2009. It wasn't for this book, but that's how long he has been trying to get me in print. I signed a contract with Simon and Schuster for this book in March 5, 2012. So it will be almost exactly two years before the book is published. As I pointed out to my agent, the contract says they are supposed to get the book out within eighteen months, but, as he pointed out, the clock doesn't start until my final manuscript is actually "accepted." This means the point in time when my editor handed my manuscript off to "production," which was October of this year. This is all news to me.
All I am saying is that things had better start moving a bit faster soon. All I am saying is that this business is not for the faint of heart. Writing your book is the easy part. You have to hope there is a bigger plan at play here. That's all you can do.

All Greek

February 2nd 2013

Two popular conventions in writing have to do with the use of adverbs and cliches. Basically, you're not supposed to use either (a quick google search came up with the title, "500 cliches to avoid in writing." I didn't know there were five hundred cliches!) Elmore Leonard famously said, "Never use an adverb to modify the verb 'said,'.....To use an adverb in this way is a mortal sin." You hear these two maxims in writer's groups, at writer's conferences or from anyone who is supposed to know about writing. Stephen King in his admirable book on writing says that the road to hell is paved with adverbs.
I have a writer friend who has to throw up into her hankie every time she hears a cliche, but I am not of that school. I kind of like cliches, because it's no accident they caught on. They are usually wise pithy observations, and why shouldn't we honour them just because they have been used too much? Overused verbage is much more annoying when it has no content, like LOL (which I hate) or 24/7.
"Don't sweat the small stuff," is a cliche, but a mantra for me. I don't care how many times I hear it. Or, "What goes around comes around," is close to a religious tenet, so why spit on it? People use cliches all the time, of course, so why should dialogue in literature not reflect this? I suppose in the actual text, a writer is always having to convince the reader that she/he is in control of the writing, and the use of cliche might undermine this. But, anyway, I think cliches have had a bad rap.
On the subject of dialogue, there is the issue of that road to hell, the adverb. Again, I have my reservations. I suppose it is always better to let the content of the speech dictate to the reader how the spoken word should be taken.
"What do yout think I am, a potted plant?" naturally carries with it exasperation. So it would be superfluous and a waste of reader time to add, "she said exasperatedly."
But sometimes, the dialogue can't reflect the attitude of the speaker. For instance, "'I love you,' he said bitterly." That kind of sentence is more like heaven than hell, because it has that satifying little twist to it.
The point is, all these rules, perhaps especially the ones that get shouted from the mountain tops, are only current opinion. Things will change and the adverb will come back into favour. The cliche will be venerated again. I wonder if cliches are like old literature, and at some point you have permission to like and use them again. I wonder if there is such a thing as the public domain of cliches where they go for R&R, ready to come back into common parlance.
Perhaps Shakespeare used cliches, and we are just out of touch with the Elizabethan cliche du jour. I know he certainly started a few in his time: I refuse to "budge an inch," on this issue, or be "tongue tied," even if it means "knitting my brows," or giving my detractors "short shrift." I may be living in a "fool's paradise," and "the more fool me," but I find a "tower of strength," in such sayings. I hear what the opposition says back, but "It is all Greek to me."

For A' That

27th January, 2013

If you live in the Rocky Mountains, as I do, and you wake up to sunlight fingering branches heavy with new snow, you should be true to the ethos of the place you live, reach for your skis and be out on the slippery slopes, not at a desk composing a blog about literature. I have in my time been an avid skier, but this year I didn't even buy a ski pass. I am slowly coming round to Dave Barry's opinion about this winter sport that "Skiing combines outdoor fun with knocking down trees with your face."
The year before last, I tried knocking down a tree with my head and ended up in the ER. Last year, I merely broke my shoulder, but it all amounts to me thinking that maybe my days of flying down the slopes are coming to an end. And this, despite the fact that I just took out a fifteen year mortgage on a new pair of ski boots. They hurt, those boots, like a vise, cutting off feeling to my toes and pressing in on sensitive parts of my feet I never knew I had. "Melted bowling balls," Dave Barry calls ski boots, and he's not far wrong, no matter how much faux fur they pack around the top. But I might just be too clumsy for skiing these days.
Back to things literary: Friday 25th of January was Burns Night. I don't expect anyone not of Scottish heritage to have any idea who Robert Burns was, although his song "Auld Lang Syne," is sung with abandon on New Year's Eve throughout the world without anyone having the foggiest notion what it's about.
He is our most celebrated Scottish bard, born in 1759, well known for his literary acuity, his astounding fertility and his love of a good dram (shall we say.) He influenced Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley, and Dickens brings him up frequently in his works. For some reason, he is wildly popular in Russia. But no wonder, because Robert Burns was very good poet and wrote some touching verses to the many ladies he loved, some of which you can hear put to music on my website (clairemcdougall.com)
But Robert Burns also had his political agenda and was an unabashed nationalist. Though the son of a mere farmer, with very little formal education, he turned his nose up at the Edinburgh elites. He was known to shoot his mouth off, and was constantly being hushed by people who thought his opinions were not in the best interest of his career.
I would quote a poem here called "A Man's a Man For A' That," but it's as unfathomable as "Auld Lang Syne" to the untrained ear. In paraphrase, it says: the authentic person, though poor and disregarded by the mighty, is twice the person of stature than those folks of fashion and wealth who take the stage and laud their position over others.
Och, hell, I'll quote a verse of the poem, because it is so good (and change words and put explanations in paranthesis.)

 "Ye see yon birkie (fellow) called a lord,
Who struts and stares and all that?
Though hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a cuif (fool) for all that.
For all that, and all that,
His ribband star, and all that.
The man of independent mind,
He looks and laughs at all that."

The Edinburgh elite thought Burns quaint, for all that, and made of him a kind of mascot. They liked his farmer's work clothes, unpowdered hair and common speech, just as long as they could stand him in a corner of their parlours and not think too much about what he stood for. The powers that be like originality, just as long as it doesn't try to rub noses with them. They like it where it can be sanctioned and packaged.
So my hommage to Robert Burns today is to disregard the ribband star of the fashionable, the monied custodian few, especially in the arts. You don't have to like to drink as much as Burns did, and you don't have to go about increasing the population at the rate he did, but you do have to look and laugh at all that. Right, Rabbie?

I think I can....

20th January 2013

I have been writing this blog weekly for almost exactly a year now, sometimes with more readers, sometimes with fewer. I started it just after I signed a contract with Simon and Schuster to publish my book (within eighteen months, so they are pushing the envelpoe a little here.) The idea was to track the book's progress through the system, marking significant points. A year later, and the book has got through the editor's office and is now into production. I haven't heard from anyone in that department. My editor, Abby, says that office looks like air traffic control and she doesn't want to pressure them but I should be hearing from them within the month. I think she said that about a month ago.
What I have learned in this year-long process is to take deadlines with that metaphoric pinch of salt. To departments in a large publishing house, one book must seem much the same as another. They have a list before them, and they go down it book by book. So mine is in the line-up somewhere, chugging along like the little engine that could.  I have sort of lost track of what's up next - I think we're through line-editing and onto prooof reading, but there may be another level of editing I've forgotten about. Once we get through that and into things like cover-art, it will get more interesting. But forgive me if I snore off in the meantime. 
People ask me in endless rotation, "So how's the book coming along?" and I know they must wonder at my blank look. "But it's so exciting," they say. And, yes, it is exciting, but, like buying tickets to see your favourite star, you lose sight of the goal a bit when you've been standing in line for a year. I've stood in line for tickets where the queue ran out of the building and back around the block. I probably haven't stood in line anywhere for more than two hours, but the time always seems interminable. Anyway, opint is, you lose a little enthusiasm along the way.
I have no doubt that as we approach my publishing date (the exact one I have not been told yet), I'll be waking up in the night with butterflies doing flips in my stomach, just as when you finally get close enough to that box office it's time to take out your wallet and pay for the much-anticipated tickets. But day to day, the answer to "What's happening with your book?" seems to be "Not much."
People look back at me quizically. "You don't even know your publication date?" "Why aren't you more excited?" "Are you making this whole thing up?"
Maybe I am. Maybe publication is all in my head, something I simply dreamed up. Except for the odd note from my editor, I might thing it was.
The answer to when my book is coming out is "Last I heard, September," which seems like a bleedin' life time away. Eventually things will start to heat up, but not before I have made quite a few more blog entries. I'm sorry it's boring. It's out of my control. It could drive a writer to distraction, and maybe that's why we move on to different projects in the meantime. It's an act of sanity. In my case, I might have a sequel ready to go before the first one sees light of day. I might. I am enjoying this free floating space of zero pressure to write it in.
The really good news is that the little engine that could eventually does. At some point we will pull out of the station again and be on the go. In the meantime, I'll keep you posted.

A Quality of Light

13th January 2013

I am going to try and write this entry on my new IPad, but judging how long it has taken me to write this much, I may not succeed.  John Steinbeck in the journals he wrote while he was penning his novels would often wax lyrical about a new pen in his possession, and I can appreciate how important a writer's tools are. I suppose it's that you don't want to have to be thinking about the particular roll of a ball-point pen or an awkward keypad when you're composing: "Cannery Row in Monetrey is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a....damn it...a quality of light...this pen is also a stink."
The Ipad is to give me something to write assignments on, like this blog, when I am away, but why Apple couldn't have just included directional arrows on the keyboard is anyone's guess. If I try to move the cursor with my finger, as prescribed, it goes anywhere but where I want it, and I don't have particularly big fingertips. Anyway, I can see I will have to break down and buy a proper keyboard, which only goes to show what an old fogey I am when it comes to computers. 
Bill Bryson describes how one day at his new computer he watched in horror as his cursor ate his words pacman-like as he tried to type in more. This happened to me more than once, until I realised I had inadvertently hit the "Insert" button.  (Half of this last sentence just disappeared of its own accord, so I am going to have to abandon ship and go to my regular computer...but now I can't find the "Save" button...damn, this contraption is a stink, and not a particularly good quality of light...)
Back at my desktop, I couldn't retrieve what I wrote on the Ipad, so had to write it all over again. Yes, I know it's just me. I have a similar problem with keys.
At any rate, what this blog was supposed to be about was not fearing rejection. Here I am a hypocrite, because rejection to me is like a new computer - what else is there to do but fear it? Barbara Kingsolver says that when you get a rejection letter, you should think of it as an envelope adressed to "The editor who can appreciate my work" - it's just that it didn't reach its destination. Yeah, right. Through the blurr of tears, it just looks like a form letter with a few scratched remarks about your book not being right for their "list." I always want to shout, "What bloody list? Your shopping list?"
But there are more constructive ways to approach the rejection letter, and history proves this. Last year, I went to hear Kathryn Stockett, author of "the Help," whose book (a best seller and Oscar-nominated film)was rejected sixty times. I have friends who keep their rejection letters (line their bathroom walls with them) and I did for a while, too, but that bulging brown 8" by 11"envelope just sat on my dresser emanting bad energy, and I decided to toss it one day. I have never looked back.
Robert Pirsig, who wrote a cult book of my youth, "Zen Buddhism and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," had 121 rejections before it was picked up by a small publishing house and went on to be a best-seller. I loved that book when I was at university and brought all kinds of disdain from my professors for quoting it in philosophy papers.
Moving on, Audrey Niffenegger got 25 rejection letters for "The Time Traveller's Wife," again finally going to a small publishing house. Harry Potter was turned down by twelve publishing houses, for goodness' sake! I, like every once-rejected novelist, revel in the groans and gnashing of teeth that must have come out of those literary agent's offices when that book took wings and shot off into the literary stratosphere.
Louisa May Alcott's father ws told by the editor in chief of The Atlantic magazine, "Tell Louisa to stick to her teaching: she can never succeed as a writer."  She told her father to tell Mister Big Shot, "I will succeed as a writer, and I shall write for the Atlantic." And she did. And she wrote "Little Women." End of story.
The point is, rejection letters knock you for six, but you have to have some of that Alcott grit. You can lie in the mud for a while, but you have to get up again and know one day you'll write for the Atlantic.