Sufferings and Joys

by Andrew | 2 Comments

Today’s the day that the days get longer than the nights, and the sun is shining, and my hyacinths are smelling sweetly, and it’s time to sow seeds, and all over social media people are celebrating the joys of spring.

But – and I don’t want to spoil the party – for some reason lately I can’t get away from the idea of suffering. Maybe it’s taking a meditation course, where we’re paying attention to such things. Or maybe it’s hearing yet another story of someone’s sickness, or reading another story about war. Or maybe I’ve just become a winter person. But just because the sun is shining a little longer today, it doesn’t mean suffering is going away. The cycle is just turning.

Also, I’ve come to feel suffering is probably a more substantial and authentic driver for story than conflict. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: conflict is a primary engine in certain sorts of stories (war stories, crime stories, etc.). And it probably features somewhere in most stories in some fashion or other. But conflict feels overemphasised as the core principle of stories, and especially in cookie-cutter creative writing classes. No wonder there’s so much conflict in the world! And no wonder so much writing feels a bit formulaic. Let’s defer to St Ursula (again):

Conflict is one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in any human life, such as relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, changing. Change is the universal aspect of all these sources of story. Story is something moving, something happening, something or somebody changing’
– Ursula K. Le Guin, Steering the Craft

So how does change take shape in our stories? Experiencing change – or impermanence – is, after all, one of those facts of life that Buddhist teachings say we can’t avoid, and change usually leads to joys as well as suffering, major and minor.

Buddhist teachings also acknowledge suffering as a basic fact of existence, and much suffering is attributed to three ‘root poisons’: hatred, greed, and ignorance. So if we want to avoid suffering for ourselves and others, how might we reduce their presence in our lives?

And to prove I’m not a complete misery-guts, let’s note that these afflictions also have opposite virtues identified as the ‘beneficial roots’ of joy: love, generosity, and understanding. By contrast, how might we nurture these qualities?

Because my default mode is to think about writing and stories, I began to consider the ways in which these descriptions of suffering offer story arcs for our characters, and used these for writing experiments in the masterclass on Character earlier this month.

So for hatred and its related qualities:

  • How might anger feature in the lives of characters?
  • How might they have experienced rejection?
  • And what might they themselves feel aversion towards?
  • What might they be running away from?
  • How might they be driven by fear?
  • How might self-loathing, shame or guilt drive their actions?
  • What pain have they experienced?
  • What wounds do they carry, and how might they have injured others?

And thinking about the opposite quality of love:

  • Where does their open-heartedness begin?
  • And where might it be challenged?
  • What acts of kindness do they perform?
  • And what sort of benevolence has been shown towards them?
  • How might they show compassion in relieving the suffering of others?
  • And how might compassion be shown towards them at times of need?
  • How do they show love to others, and how do others share love with them?

Thinking about the root poison of greed:

  • How might your characters be defined by attachment?
  • What are their desires, and how do they shape their stories?
  • And how are they affected by the desires of other people?
  • What do they crave or grasp for?
  • And what do they cling on to?
  • And thinking about attachment in a more positive way: what might characters in fact gain from holding on to, or committing to?
  • It occurs to me that too often in less successful stories characters’ commitments or desires don’t really feel earned: so: how do characters earn whatever they gain or lose?

And by contrast, exploring the idea of nonattachment:

  • What is the role of generosity in their stories: what are they given, and what do they give to others?
  • What freedom might they enjoy in letting go or giving things away?
  • What sacrifices have they made in the past, and might they have to make in the future?

And to consider the root poison of ignorance:

  • How are your characters’ lives informed by what they don’t know?
  • How do misunderstandings cloud their relationships and experiences of the world?
  • How might your characters be deluded, or held back by illusions?
  • How might indifference or inertia shape their lives?
  • How might their stories be driven by doubt or uncertainty?
  • What foolish decisions do they make?

And on the flip side of understanding:

  • What might characters gain from knowing?
  • How might their stories be informed by their increased awareness of the world around them?
  • What do they come to appreciate?

I recently realised that hope doesn’t really feature in these reckonings of suffering! Which begs the questions:

  • What is the role of hope in the story?
  • And also its opposite: despair? Which can be crippling?

This gives me food for thought – about happy endings, which might be hoped for, but which in stories can so often feel trite: unearned or lazy, or simply not set up adequately. In fact, might the clinging and illusory aspects of hope stand in the way of characters seeing the simple joys in the world around them? And the happy ending is already here, and a character finally sees this.

‘There’s no place like home,’ says Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, whose journey takes her from doubt and ignorance to understanding and appreciation. It turns out her suffering and joy are actually bound up together in the same place – they just needed some unravelling and a bit of growing up, which of course required those adventures with the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion.

I don’t know that it’s necessary to use all of these frameworks: in fact, that might get overly complicated! But these are ideas that might help in developing clear narrative arcs or resolutions for what might at times be subtle storylines. The move from hatred to love, from attachment to freedom, from illusion to understanding: these are journeys that touch on all the big themes and deepen characterisation, and properly explored can bring depth to characterisation and storytelling. You could explore some of these questions in the manner of the notebook practice of Field Work or filling out a Character Questionnaire.

And a final question: how about doing a loving-kindness meditation for your characters: May you be free of suffering. What would that involve?

*

My next masterclasses are on: Setting and Situation on 8 April, Story and Plot on 13 May, and Form and Structure on 10 June.

And I’ve blogged about suffering before in another context: Suffering for Your Art, aka Pull Yourself Together.

Reader’s Report 2023

by Andrew | 1 Comment

As I looked back on the books I read in 2023, I was given pause to think about how I read – in new ways and old.

First, I want to mention strategies I adopted in 2023 that made reading more fun. For example, I cast a drag queen as the central character of an Iris Murdoch novel, and that suddenly made a book about the strained mores of postwar poshos much more interesting.

Of perhaps greater consequence, I used the library probably more than I have since I was a kid. In recent years (decades), I’ve bought far too many books I don’t read and then I feel guilty about them lying in stacks all over the place unread – and that doesn’t include invisible stacks on my Kindle. The library is less risky in that way. I reserve a book at the library, and then wait a week or a month or two, and then it comes and I have three weeks to read it, and that creates a return deadline that focuses my mind. This pattern probably made me read more in 2023 than in many recent years.

Looking back over those books I did complete, though, I wonder if my reading was maybe a bit tame and I missed some of the indie treats and works in translation that I often enjoy most. No writer *really* captured me this year as, eg, Annie Ernaux or Lucia Berlin or Robin Wall Kimmerer have in years before. Could have been me! Perhaps that fixed loan period at the library focused my mind on finishing those sorts of bestsellery or reading groupy books that other readers request and are waiting to read. But even so: there were a lot of books I enjoyed there.

I also did a lot of sampling and skimming this year. If the opening wasn’t clicking, I’d scan the body of the book and skip to the end. Sometimes that’s enough, and library books make wider skimming possible. Skimming: ah! That’s a reading practice to embrace.

Breaking my wrist and having to do exercises three times a day also created extra reading time. (Exercises that allow reading: my kinda.) While the fracture was mending, I found it easier to read hardbacks (the library again) or my Kindle. Paperbacks with tight spines are more work to prop open.

So: I actually read (completed) far more books this year.

Though too: reading isn’t about productivity, is it? So much of my most significant reading is rereading.

I am never sure about the idea of ‘best’ books – best is so subjective, and often boring – so, most recent first, these are the books that probably left most of an impression on me in 2023:

* Paul Murray, The Bee Sting
* Naomi Klein, Doppelganger
* Zadie Smith, The Fraud
* Daniel Mason, North Woods
* Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds
* Tahir Hamut Izgil, Waiting to Be Arrested at Night
* Rachel Pollack, A Walk Through the Forest of Souls: A Tarot Journey to Spiritual Awakening
* Matthew Evans, Soil: The Incredible Story of What Keeps the Earth, and Us, Healthy
* Maia Kobabe, Gender Queer
* Helen Macdonald, H Is For Hawk

I haven’t finished The Bee Sting yet, but on the basis of the first 400 pages, which have consumed me over the last couple of days, its immersive storytelling is a winner.

The standout is probably North Woods. Formally clever, imaginative, poignant. Actually, maybe something did capture my attention this year. I would like to reread it.

Special mention also to Kent Haruf, whose entire canon I completed/reread this year. I think it’s very good to reread your favourites, and he is one of the great prose stylists. Britney Spears’s The Woman in Me surprised me – a lot is missing there, but too I realised, duh, it’s one of those awful child star stories. Other notables were Suzanne Simard’s Finding the Mother Tree, Ada Calhoun’s Also A Poet, M. John Harrison’s Wish I Was Here, Rebecca Smith’s Rural, Justin Torres’s Blackouts, and Catherine Lacey’s The Biography of X (the last two have a similar feel, and I note both were published by Granta in the UK). Yellowface was fun, and one of the more astute descriptions of publishing I’ve come across in fiction.

I should also mention this year’s ongoing read of Ovid’s Metamorphoses aka Long Ovid. Next we are making a start on the Bible. Our original plans were to read the Old Testament in 2024 and the New in 2025, but we’ve decided simply to finish Genesis in January, then take it from there. I was exposed to the Bible a lot as a child, but I’ve spent less time there as an adult, and I’m curious to see what I remember, and also to think about literary as well as broader influences.

I’m currently listening to My Name Is Barbra – wow, surely the audiobook of the year, all 48 hours of it. Apparently the audio has lots of asides that aren’t in the print/ebook edition. Barbra Streisand is a wonderful narrator.

A special mention also for Bobbie Louise Hawkins, whose story The Child was picked by George Saunders for his Story Club.

Elsewhere, I encountered a LOT of namedropping. Some of it was amusing, some of it was embarrassing, most of it was crammed into three literary memoirs. Writers! As my husband said of one: this reads like a bunch of Instagram captions.

Also elsewhere: some fantastic manuscripts. It’s a real honour to be trusted to read work in progress, and sometimes this raw and unpolished writing enjoys an energy that perhaps only unfinished work can achieve. Hmmm, something for the editor to ponder. I hope these books get finished and find homes with publishers, or get out into the world in some way.

In watching, off the top of my head I enjoyed: The Last of Us, Happy Valley, The Diplomat, Fisk, Wheel of Time, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Reservation Dogs, Slow Horses, and a fantastic series of documentaries on wild dogs. And I’m glad Succession is over. It was too glib for my taste, and reminded me that good writing is about more than lots of shiny surfaces and showing off on social media.

Perhaps the most memorable viewing was Timothy Snyder’s 24-part Yale University lecture series on YouTube on the making of modern Ukraine – which is so much more than that too: a specific take on empire and colonialism and domination and take, relevant in many contexts throughout the world. A camera in a lecture theatre with a brilliant mind communicating brilliantly: sometimes that’s all we need. The words.

Also on YouTube I have recently enjoyed the comedy of Matteo Lane and Bob the Drag Queen. Again, a camera and a sharp mind being quick and very funny: bare brick walls, and words. (Note for sheltered minds: some of these words are also very, um, bawdy.)

Didn’t see a lot of art, but the Mat Collishaw exhibition Petrichor at Kew Gardens is out of this world.

My last post of 2023, on the last day of the year. Look for me on Substack in 2024. And support your local library! I’ve even started recommending books for our library to add to its collection.

And before I go, another mention for my new Zoom masterclasses on writing – to paraphrase one of my musical icons, we start at the very beginning, with Beginnings, on 8 January.

Happy New Year! For some reason, I’m liking the numbers 2 0 2 4. Here’s a pic taken outside Birmingham’s fantastic new library.

 

 

Masterclasses for 2024

by Andrew | Leave a comment

In January I am starting live monthly masterclasses on Zoom. They are designed for writers who want to explore craft and process in writing while learning more about the business and culture of publishing.

Masterclasses will run live on Zoom for 90 minutes. They will include discussion on that month’s topics plus a brief writing exercise and a session of Q&A.

Every masterclass unit will also come with homework, e.g., brief preparatory readings as well as a writing exercise or two. This will be emailed to you a week before we meet on Zoom, and will be optional – you don’t need to have completed these activities to take part in the Zoom class.

Each unit will also come with a workbook that will be made available after the Zoom class. It will include notes on craft, resources, and reading suggestions, and most importantly will give you writing experiments and ideas to try out in your own work. The after-class mailing will also include any further recommendations that might arise from our class discussion.

Classes are live, so recordings will not be available if you can’t make them at their scheduled times.

The topics of the first three masterclasses are: beginnings; voice; character.

Future masterclasses for 2024 will cover: setting and situation; story and plot; point of view and narration; showing and telling; structure and form; genre and readership; endings. A prose style intensive in the summer will look at: parts of speech; sentences and paragraphs; voice and style.

I’m also hoping to run pop-up Zoom workshops on topics such as tarot and writing, the Four Elements practice, and specific genres or techniques. I might run a workshop focused on specific pieces of writing and feedback later in the year too. More on all that anon.

You can drop into individual stand-alone classes, or you can take them in sequence across the year as a comprehensive foundation in the basic tools of good writing. Think of it as a craft course for an MFA or MA in writing – you might like to sign up for some of these classes as a supplement to the DIY MA in creative writing.

The emphasis of the masterclasses is very much on craft, though January’s unit on Beginnings will pay attention to matters of process too: getting started or restarted, and maintaining a writing practice. I’m a great advocate of drafting as well as exploratory practices such as Field Work. Later classes will draw more explicitly on my experience in publishing, e.g., when we talk about genre and readership. (Note: I use the word readership rather than market.)

To pace things, I’ll probably focus each Zoom class on maybe half a dozen key tips or takeaways, though the workbooks will offer resources that will let you take things deeper at your own pace.

Beginning as well as experienced writers are welcome. I find a mix in most of the classes I now teach, and I am always a big believer in cultivating Beginner’s Mind to keep writing fresh and authentic.

I’ve been teaching online in some form or other for twenty years – Naropa’s low-residency MFA was one of the pioneers in online learning. My teaching style is informal and enthusiastic, and I welcome questions. I want to be able to help writers wherever they are in their writing, empowering them with what they need to know: questioning myths, overcoming doubts, guiding writers to understanding. I’m particularly interested in cultivating intuitive methods in writing, and my classes often bring in contemplative practices, tarot, or other approaches that take us beyond the page.

Like many teachers I feel that reading is one of the best ways to grow your instincts in writing, and I often do some close reading in my classes, or invite writers to root around their own bookshelves. I frequently use Annie Proulx’s long short story Brokeback Mountain, as it contains a novel’s worth of story while being short enough to be read in one sitting by anyone coming to a workshop, and it covers so much that’s relevant to discussions of craft: character, setting, scene, structure, prose style – basically, everything. There will be plenty of other literary references too: bestsellers, prizewinners, fan favourites, cult classics, works across genres and forms.

Also in 2024: I plan to continue my discussions of craft and publishing on Substack. As a result, I’m not sure how frequently I shall be blogging here. I’m no longer sure about blogging! Interaction has rarely been as lively as Instagram or Twitter/X (though I’m not at all active on Twitter/X any longer, and I fear my Twitter self never really came to life anyway).

Substack has potential; I worry about information overload, with lots of writers writing about writing(!). But too that denotes serious intent, and community, plus a number of people I know are active there. And I was thrilled to pieces that George Saunders chose to discuss The Child by Bobbie Louise Hawkins for his Story Club on Substack this year. The interaction really enlightened me to the possibility for engagement on Substack.

Hope to see some of you there – or on Zoom! More information on the classes can be found here. Meanwhile, I’ll be maintaining this website, not least as a home for all of these writing experiments.

Slow yourself down

by Andrew | Leave a comment

A busy week: interesting manuscripts, Zooms, meet-ups, Space Crones, wild poets, wild dancers, old friends, decompressing last weekend’s workshop on tarot for writers in Hastings, thinking towards the next workshop on revising. Plus library books, libraries, bookshops – and a book barge!

Also very excited to see discussions in the George Saunders Story Club about ‘The Child’, a story I recommended – it’s sooooo wonderful to see so many readers discovering and appreciating the writing of my dearly beloved teacher Bobbie Louise Hawkins.

And now the Equinox has arrived, and I vowed to blog quarterly, so here we are. But what among the many things whirling in my head this week should I blog about?

Easy, really. What I need among all the busy is a good exercise in slowing down and going deep and finding focus.

As a writing experiment: draw a tarot card, and consider what it means for you and your writing. A prompt: This card means … It can really help to get your thoughts down on the page; just ten minutes of writing can bring great clarity.

If you want to get fancy, as I just did, pull three cards from three different decks. (Because you do have more than one deck, right?!) And of course there’s nothing special to read into the fact that two of my cards were the same, right?!

Something I’m contemplating in my interpretation of today’s picks, based on a recent desire to think more about the powers of the numbers rather than specific imagery: adjusting and adapting (Fives) in the world of words (Swords) (times two!). And that centre card: manifesting and getting things in order (Fours) in creative matters (Wands). What does all that amount to? These cards mean …

Also: don’t freak out if you get one of the scary cards. I guess it could mean you’re going to break your wrist or something [insert Scream emoji], but those cards are usually opportunities to think about things we avoid.

I mean, here is one beautiful way to think about one of those scary things from Sherman Alexie on Substack (don’t think he used tarot to write this poem, but).

If you don’t have a deck, try Serennu or randomtarotcard.com (which seems to do only Majors).

If you want a good tarot reference: Joan Bunning’s website lists some of the conventional associations based on the Smith Rider Waite deck; I use her book Learning the Tarot often. Another ebook I carry with me all the time is Tarot For Change – Jessica Doré always comes up with fresh and insightful interpretations, especially in ways that upturn conventional good/bad associations of cards. Because good/bad are often just different ways of looking at the same, and we need to be reminded of that if we are to avoid blame and hurtfulness.

Also, a reminder: that next workshop is running with Words Away at the Phoenix Garden in London’s West End on 14 October 2023: The Four Elements of Revising: Become Your Own Best Editor. My Four Elements practice began with tarot, which might come up in discussion there too. We shall be focusing on craft and practice and ways to empower you to finish your book, and – if desired! – send it out into the world. Yes – let’s become our own best editors.

Also, in case you’re wondering: the decks left to right above are the Marseille by Alexandre Jodorowsky and Philippe Camoin, the Smith Rider Waite, and the Visconti. And the other two photos are taken by my husband.

Autumn 2023 Workshops

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Some information on a couple of workshops I’m leading in September and October:

17 September 2023
Magicians and Fools: Tarot for Writers
Hastings Book Festival

14 October 2023
The Four Elements of Revising:
Become Your Own Best Editor
With Words Away at the Phoenix Garden, London WC2

I’ve not taught a revising workshop in some time, and I’m excited to be doing so again, bringing plenty of new insights and ideas. The world has changed in many ways – and so have we! I’m hoping to fire people up about their writing: owning their visions, expressing them clearly through the craft, finding ways to bring them to readers. It’s what I’ve been doing successfully one on one during covid and beyond, and I’m looking forward to bringing this into a classroom with Words Away again. And what a classroom! The Phoenix Garden is the best.

Yes – there are lots of workshops and courses out there! But the Four Elements practice is a sincerely different approach to writing and getting published. You can read more about it in this interview, and you can also read some endorsements of my style.

Also: I promise not to tell you to proofread your submission letters. In fact, I will have things to say about this, as well as other practical matters in the lottery that is publishing. But mostly we’ll focus on the writing – your writing, your stories. Writers of fiction or nonfiction are welcome, as are writers in poetry, screenplay or other forms. It will be of use to writers with complete manuscripts, as well as writers who’ve reached a stage where work-in-progress needs a boost – though given my emphasis on drafting it ought to be helpful to writers at any stage of the development of a piece of writing.

And the tarot workshop is with the lovely people at the Hastings Book Festival, where I ran a workshop last year. They have some great events for writers and readers – check them out if you are in the area. Such gorgeous sun on the sea last year: such light along the coast there. This is a new workshop, but it draws on years of practice, and I’m glad to have the chance to talk about one of my favourite subjects as it relates to writing.

Also:

* Among the current rescrambling on social media, I’m finding much of the most engaging content on Substack: thoughtful, intelligent, well written. I have a slight concern about word overload, but we can be selective. Its potential for interaction is promising. Not much action from me other than Restacks at the mo – but I might reboot my blogging and/or online teaching there. More to come. Find me here: Andrew Wille Substack. Do connect if you are there too.

* I’m also on Threads now. It’s not on browsers right now, I guess, so maybe you can find me via Instagram if you are on your phone app? TwitterX seems pretty inert, and I’m not sure I’ll be keeping that much longer.

* I also have spots for mentoring. Mentors have priority for developmental edits and manuscript reviews. If you’re interested, contact me with details of projects and your intentions in writing and publishing – if it seems a good fit, I can send more information.

I’m taking a break from manuscripts and editing for the rest of August, so I might not be at my desk to answer emails right away. The plaster cast is off! And I’m just about caught up. So now is the time for a bit of rest and physio. I need a break. Just not another fracture!

Summer reading recommendation: Yellowface by Rebecca F. Huang. I’m hoping to reread/read Kent Haruf this month. Support your local libraries and independent bookshops!

The tree above is the black walnut at Marble Hill. Just because! It’s been growing there for 300 years.