What Would You Do With an Angel?

 'A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings' written by Gabriel García Márquez tells the story of the reactions of a poor family and community to the finding of a bedraggled angel at the bottom of the garden. What would you do?

The people he met, including a family, clergy man, doctor, mob, pilgrims and a woman who believed in folklore, interacted with him in many ways, ranging from the ridiculous to the understandable and all consistent with the magic-realist genre.

Imagine if you found an angel...

Would you...

tell someone

stare at him with surprise

stare at him so long he become familiar

speak to him

assume he is an angel

hold him captive

club him to death

put him on a raft with food for 3 days

lock him in a chicken coop

make fun of him

find entertainment and throw food to him as if he is in a zoo or circus

make him mayor of the world

make him high ranking military to win wars

cross breed him with humans to make wise rulers of the universe

check to see if he speaks Latin

consider him an impostor because he does not speak Latin or show deference to clergy

conclude that he is not an angel if he is not perfect in actions and appearance

call him the devil because he does not live up to expectations of what an angel should be

describe wings as as little a prerequisite for being an angel as the difference between a bird & plane

check with higher orders in the church for advice

mob the place where the angel resides to see it

fence off the area of the miracle and charge entry

seek a miraculous healing from the angel

burn candles in his honour

make him eat mothballs – folklore angel-food

provide him with a feast offered up in penance

give him sustaining plain and easy to eat food

let the chickens groom his wings for parasites

allow people to take feathers to restore their ailing and failing bodies

throw stones at him to make him move and stand

burn him with a branding iron to rouse him

examine him for a belly button

check if he speaks Aramaic

wonder how many of him could fit on the head of a pin

discover if he was just a human mutation from Norway

lose interest in him when someone new comes along who you can empathise with or understand

move on to the next news-cycle because he is not meeting your imaginary needs

let his extra-ordinariness become so ordinary he is no longer considered a concern

examine his biology logically and see how he could be considered normal rather than humans

take him so much for granted eventually that he became like the house pet being shoed from here to there as a nuisance

cover him in a blanket and let him sleep in the shed like an old dog

get concerned by his demise because the disposal of angels bodies is out of your area of expertise

be relieved, as he finds health and energy again and recovers, relieved that this unexplainable entity is leaving your life, a question mark is gone.

miss the extraordinary when it is gone

Whether it is measuring him against certain criteria, judging him with a prejudiced eye or having expectations of him which are only within a limited area of experience and knowledge, an angel may not fare well in the real world. 

Our lives could benefit greatly from the angel but we, ourselves, might be the barriers to achieving those benefits with our very earthly and earthy views, prejudices and ignorance.

And even worse than that - we might miss out on the miraculousness of the extraordinary in our need to negotiate our surroundings and experiences into ones which are familiar.

 Spotting angels in the world isn't necessarily the hard bit – it's what to do with them next.

As Gabriel Garcia Marquez warns, if we are not careful we can, as the angel's captors did, look 'so long and so closely' at the miraculous that surprise can be over come and the extraordinary fades into the ordinariness and safety of the familiar.

Fraser (2014) from the Guardian considers that:

'magic-realism...employs the magical as a form of imaginative resistance to the harsh and totalising logic of imperial rationality. It seeks the freedom to think outside the box of established wisdom: that is, by rubbing away the line between the real and the fantastic, it frees the imagination from the constraints of how things are. It is revolutionary stuff.'

Viva la revolution !

On Writing: Planning & Possibilities

Possibility & Catching Ideas

I am warned, in The Craft of Novel-Writing, that if I 'linger at the planning stage' that I 'may never start the book at all' (Doubtfire, 1982, p.12). Any planning needs to leave room for the kind of organic development that can't be planned. A book should be 'fluid' and 'a voyage of discovery' that is 'full of surprises' and that it is more likely that the reader will be surprised if I (the author) am 'continually surprised' (Ibid).

This, Stephen King describes as 'an immense feeling of possibility' with which he wrote his very first story as a child (2000, p.28). According to King, 'good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere' and the writers job 'isn't to find them but to recognise them when they show up' (2000, p.38).

Doubtfire (1982) advises keeping note books handy in the planning stages, to catch the ideas as they come (p. 9-12). In 1982 when the book was written, mobile phones weren't as prolific so wouldn't be available, as they are now, at that moment you want to jot something down.

Words, Numbers & Discipline & Freedom

When planning to write a novel its good to keep in mind the average length being anywhere between 60,000 and 100,000 words (Doubtfire, 1982, p.10) and according to Writers & Artists a 'typical paperback' will be 80,000 to 100,000. 

Doubtfire (1982) looks at a book of about 70-80000 words and suggests breaking it into 30 chapters of around 2500 words (p.11). The 1-30 method, as advised by Winston Clewes, involves writing 1-30 down a margin of a page and by the 1 put a 'possible opening' and by the 30 an 'idea for an ending' and by the other various numbers 'brief notes on some highspots of the story' (Ibid). It doesn't all need to be planned, but as you write, more notes by the chapter numbers and changes and more notes again will help to sort any 'muddle' out, and help to 'plan a strong back bone for your book and build towards a powerful climax', which can also change as appropriate (p. 12).

Irving Wallace (1969) in The Writing of One Novel considers that 'Every author prepares for a book in the way that best suits his psyche' (p.56). Wallace liked to plan using an outline, which he considered to have the 'virtue of being creatively thought out, worked out, disciplined, in the authors mind and on paper...' (1969, p.60). However he recognises that a novelist 'who plans too carefully in advance' could create such a 'rigid mold that he leaves no room for hisimagination to soar freely or for new ideas to root and grow...' (Ibid).   

Marathons, Toolboxes, Training & Work 

When Guy de Maupassant (1888) showed Flaubert some of his early writing, Flaubert saw 'a certain iintelligence' but wasn't sure if he would go on to develop any talent. Flaubert (Ibid) advised him: 

'Talent...is nothing other than a long patience. Work.'

Francesca Bell in Being a Writer, uses Haruki Murikami's analogy for writing a novel as running a marathon and considers the 'writer has to be fit for purpose and stamina is part of that fitness' (2015, p.268).

How do you train to be a writer? William Boyd in Notes on Becoming a Novelist considers that he found the 'right thing' to do to be a writer was 'writing as hard as [he] could, fulfilling [his] apprenticeship, making mistakes and learning from them' (2015, p. 291).

This apprenticeship carries with it a toolbox. Stephen King (2000) talks about the writer's toolbox of skills in vocabulary, grammar, style and form and says if you want to write to the best of your ability that 'it behoves you to construct your own toolbox and then build up enough muscle so that you can carry it with you', then he says when you are faced with something hard 'instead of getting discouraged, you will perhaps seize the correct tool and get immediately to work' (p. 111). 

Do Two Things

Stephen King's  (2000, p.145) advice is:

'[I]f you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot' 

King reads 70-80 books a year. I looked at my list since starting this blog in September and wondered if I was in the right ball park. By the 19th of February in Reflections on Reading I had read 19 books and since then I have read Timbuktu, The Drowned World, The Guest Cat and The Rosie Project. That's 23 books in 6 months, so in a year, at the same rate, I will have read 46 books. It looks like I have some catching up to do.

When it comes to writing, in the last six months I have attended a writing class, been editing my novel, have written a short story, some poetry, essays for an MA and written over 80 blog posts like this. King (2000) likes to get in 10 pages or 2000 words a day (p.154). However, if that is his only job I would imagine it being easier than when he wrote Carrie in between wash cycles at work. I feel like that's what I am doing and its hard work. I want to be writing all the time but when your eyes are closing and your head is dropping over the keyboard its hard. But there you go - no one ever said it was going to be easy. And all the cliches I drag out to young people I work with about hard work and achievement come to mind and I am chastened.

And I plan to read a lot and write a lot...more.

 
References: 

Boyd, W. (2015) Notes on Becoming a Novelist, Writers' and Artists' Yearbook 2015, Bloomsbury, London
Brill, F. (2015) Being a Writer, Writers' and Artists' Yearbook 2015, Bloomsbury, London
Doubtfire, D. (1978, 1982) The Craft of Novel-Writing, Shocken Books Inc, New York

King, S. (2000) On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Scribner, New York
Maupassant, G, (1888) 'Le Roman', Preface to Pierre et Jean, cited in Allott, M. (1959) Novelists on the Novel, Routelege, London
Wallace, I. (1969) Writing One Novel,  The New English, Library, London

Imagine More Than We Know As It Will Be So

Giving my daughter 10p extra, when she went out to play in the 90s as emergency money for a phone call, I would not have imagined that we would all be carrying pocket size portable phones with us today. Someone did.

Einstein, in an interview in 1929 said, 'Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.'  As Oscar Wilde said in The Picture of Dorian Gray, 'To define is to limit.' Is that what we do when we name and categorize?

Are our young adult books like The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner and Divergence seeking to push past those limitations and boundaries, to think outside the box, while commenting on our habits of putting people into boxes, creating boundaries and limits? Are they warning us of our possible futures if we continue?

Sunset and Moonlight on Brighton Beach

Oscar Wilde wrote in The Critic as Artist that 'a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.' Will we listen to the dreamers who see the dawn before us or will we just have to wake up and see it with our own eyes when it will be too late to do anything about it, in the cold light of day?

Or can we be dreamers too?

Einstein, A.(1929) What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck, The Saturday Evening Post, October 26 1929 ,Saturday Evening Post Society, Indianapolis, Indiana. 
Wilde, O.(1881, 1997) The Critic as Artist, Green Integer 
Wilde, O.(1890, 1998) The Picture of Dorian Gray, Random House

The Baba Effect

The imagination is the fertile ground on which sprouts the flowers and beanstalks of our great ideas.It can be hazardous and joyful in our dreams. It can be inhibiting and liberating in our day time routines. It can be enthralling and enriching in our creative lives.

Where do the ideas come from? What prompts such ideas as the following?

1 A dream:

Two seals appear in a dream, followed by two wolves guarding them.

2. A poem:

There are kippers in the sky today
And treacle in the sea
And lemons growing on the moon
And magpies for our tea
And when you find a starfish
In your porridge, in your jam
You must return it to the sky
And say "That's what I am".

 3. A googled word 'Baba':

The last, I know the answer to and the answer  may even explain all three.

 I sat at my laptop testing the Internet by randomly googling a word. I typed   'Baba'. My colleague and I wondered why. I immediately made the only association I could which was with Babar the elephant, which I had watched as a child. Consequently I added the letter 'r'. The internet,  I found was working and we continued to chat until my colleague became distracted and said 'Baba' pointing to an old wooden Turkish delight box (now housing loom bands) which had been sitting to the side of my desk for the previous few weeks. I hadn't noticed and probably wouldn't have, had it not been for my colleague, the words written after the larger words' Turkish Delight' , the less distinct words -  'Hazer Baba'.

Our ideas are not in our heads. They are just visitors being transported and given a tour of our brains while originating in the native land of real life and sometimes returning to reality to make a little more sense of it if we spot the clues. The subconscious is like the subplot to the main story of our lives...eventually we will know where it is going, but not until we are there and can make sense of it. As 'possible's slow fuse is lit by the imagination' (Emily Dickenson), so too will we unravel the mystery of the dreams, poems and words...eventually, when we make the links

When conscious we are 'aware of a significant percentage' of our own thoughts and during subconscious thinking we can 'only sense some mysterious, hidden mental activity', while the 'preconscious state is the go between' (Gordon & Poze, 1982, pg.1). So when we try to solve a problem or access our creativity we allow the area we are developing to fall back out of focus into our subconscious. In my book The Generation G.A.P. , I realize my character Jez talks about this process. He talks of focussing and unfocussing, using metaphor and poetry to blur and refocus and how not seeing the wood for the trees can work. Gordon and Poze talk of the 'complete failure' of the creative process without relaxing any 'intense focus on the problem' (1982, pg. 1). Any writer will be able to identify with this process but why do we have to learn the hard way? Why don't we learn this at school?

We don't even learn how our memories work unless we study psychology. Why, when learning and problem solving skills are developmentally the most progressive of tools in the toolbox of life, are we left to discover them for ourselves?

How long would it have taken me to discover the word 'Baba' on my own? Maybe I would never have discovered it. How much more don't we know about ourselves because people took the time to teach us how to tie our shoelaces and how to learn our times tables but not how we think and learn and remember and solve problems (back to the Kolb Cycle)?

 Why don't we teach learning at school?

 
GORDON, W. J. J. and POZE, T. (1981), Conscious/Subconscious Interaction in a Creative Act. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 15: 1–10. doi: 10.1002/j.2162-6057.1981.tb00269.x

Imagination Making Possible

"The Possible's slow fuse is lit By the Imagination." 

(Emily Dickinson, 1924)

It was one of those sessions when the birthday boy didn't show so we celebrated everyone's Unbirthday instead. We had the monster Unbirthday cake (because some liked sponge and others chocolate cake), we had Unbirthday party games like musical statues and blind mans bluff and we had Unbirthday party bags.

We have 364 Unbirthdays, according to Lewis Carroll (1871) and only one birthday but we only get to celebrate the one...but not today. Today we had a Very Happy Unbirthday!



Dickinson, E. (1924) The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Boston, Little Brown
Carroll, L. (1871) Through the Looking Glass, Macmillan