Re: Re : Here's what you do ...
Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Mon, 20 Apr 1998 08:54:23 -0400
Darren wrote:
> Hello - I'm new to the list. My name is Darren, and I'm a novelist who
> lives and works on my home reservation in South Dakota.
>
> Dave Foley, one of the Kids in the Hall, recently gave this advice to
> aspiring sketch comedians: "Learn as much as you can about comedy. But,
> then have arrogance and contempt for all the things that you have learned.
> And then in time when you've developed your own style, you can come back
> around to loving things."
>
> I think this is great advice for just about any aspiring artist.
Welcome, Darren!
I've always found connections with Picasso, and how he went through his
life as if he were a sponge, pulling things in and squeezing them out,
without regard for what was "right" or "wrong." One of his little drawings
is a portrait of a woman's bare back and legs, and is done in about three
or four lines of ink. In anyone else, it would seem just like squiggles of
ink, but he manages to put his personal "voice" in it. He also said (and
I'm sure I'm mangling the quote, because it's from memory), on the issue of
influence, "Bad artists borrow. Good artists steal."
Jazz musicians like Charlie Parker couldn't have gone off improvisationally
if they didn't know the tradition of older jazz; but only after learning
the basics could he go off and do something like "Koko."
In terms of writing, I'd say it is urgent to READ, as omnivorously as
possible, and to expose yourself to various styles and methods, and even to
try exercises to learn how a writer did what you see on paper. (Even in
our modern times, writers like John Grisham -- whether you like him or not
-- show us how one can make a plot move quickly or ploddingly or
annoyingly.) Chandler and Hemingway teach us enormously about dialogue.
Paul Auster and Madison Smartt Bell are good models to learn about
structure. Mary Gaitskill and Lorrie Moore and Raymond Carver show how
significant the tiny details are. Frank McCourt demonstrates how to write
about pitiful conditions without succumbing to cheap or easy
sentimentality. Rick Bass writes completely without sentiment, about
animals and people, but with a huge heart. (He did a piece in the
Mississippi Review a couple of years ago about turtles, which absolutely
murdered me.) The list goes on and on, but my day does not, so I need to
clamp it off here.
But you've got something by the tail. You live, you take note; you read;
you read more; you write badly and well, and learn the difference when you
go mining your notebooks for material. And you hope you never stop
learning as you go through all this.
--tim