That 'What's Next?' Syndrome

"So what are you doing next?”  It’s kind of a weird question most writers face, that “What’s next on your list?” question.

Even though I just finished the long process of writing another novel (and, believe me, it’s a long process), the pressure’s on, so I’d better start figuring it out.   And, of course, if my new novel flops, then I’ll be the one asking myself what I have next on my list?  Sort-of an act of vindication, I suppose.   

I like writing fiction, once I get going.  It’s just that “get going” part that always gets in the way, so to speak.   Most writers, by nature, procrastinate with their writing because it’s such a draining experience.  You pour everything into the process of bringing your characters and place to life.

“Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay,” Southern writer Flannery O’Connor once said. 

                                                                                   

                                                                                                                   Flannery O’Connor in 1947 

 “I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality," she said.  "It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.”

A Writer's Moment: Engaging in the 'Big Conversation'

A Writer's Moment: Engaging in the 'Big Conversation': “I want to write a book that makes people debate, and makes people think, interact with each other and exchange ideas... I write because I...

Engaging in the 'Big Conversation'

“I want to write a book that makes people debate, and makes people think, interact with each other and exchange ideas... I write because I'm engaged in this big conversation. – Miguel Syjuco

Born in The Philippines on this date in 1976, Syjuco started his writing career in the early 2000s and has won multiple writing awards, including the Man Asian Literary Prize for his novel Ilustrado.  He also is a contributing opinion writer for the International New York Times, and both his fiction and non-fiction focus on politics, history, inequality, cultural identity, literature, and formal experimentation.  

Currently a Visiting Professor in New York University’s Abu Dhabi writing program, he holds advanced writing degrees from both Columbia University and Australia’s Adelaide University, where he earned a Ph.D. in English Literature.

“I treat my writing like a day job, like my main job, even if for many years I was doing other jobs to pay the bills. I worked as a copy editor. I was a medical guinea pig. I was an eBay power seller of ladies' handbags. I was an assistant to a bookie at the horse races. I bartended. I did anything I could to make ends meet.”

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A Writer's Moment: The 'Music' of Poetry

A Writer's Moment: The 'Music' of Poetry: “Poems have a different music from ordinary language, and every poem has a different kind of music of necessity.   That's, in a way, t...

The 'Music' of Poetry

“Poems have a different music from ordinary language, and every poem has a different kind of music of necessity.  That's, in a way, the hardest thing about writing poetry; waiting for that music, and sometimes you never know if it's going to come.” – C.K. Williams

American poet, critic and translator, Charles Kenneth “C.K.,” Williams, born in November 1936, won nearly every major poetry award including the 1987 National Book Critics Circle Award for Flesh and Blood, the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Repair, the 2003 National Book Award for The Singing, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement.    For Saturday’s Poem, here is Williams’ narrative poem,

SILENCE

The heron methodically pacing like an old-time librarian down the stream through the patch of woods at the end of the field, those great wings tucked in as neatly as clean sheets, is so intent on keeping her silence, extracting one leg, bending it like a paper clip, placing it back, then bending the other, the first again, that her concentration radiates out into the listening world, and everything obediently hushes, the ragged grasses that rise from the water, the light-sliced vault of sparkling aspens.

Then abruptly a flurry, a flapping, her lifting from the gravitied earth, her swoop out over the field, her banking and settling on a lightning-stricken oak, such a gangly, unwieldy contraption up there in the barkless branches, like a still Adam's-appled adolescent; then the cry, cranky, coarse, and wouldn't the waiting world laugh aloud if it could with glee?

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A Writer's Moment: Leaving A Lasting Legacy

A Writer's Moment: Leaving A Lasting Legacy: “Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson Stevenson, born on Nov. ...

Leaving A Lasting Legacy

“Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

Stevenson, born on Nov. 13, 1850, was one of the world’s most versatile and “translated” authors.   This Scottish-born writer left us everything from Treasure Island to Kidnapped to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and a host of great characters like the pirate Long John Silver, and Jekyll and Hyde (also a lasting descriptive phrase).

Stevenson’s creativity included essays, short stories and poetry for both adults and children (A Child’s Garden of Verses – with lasting poems like My Shadow:  “I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.”), and music.   An accomplished pianist, he wrote or arranged more than 120 original pieces for various combinations of flageolet, flute, clarinet, violin, guitar, mandolin, and piano, including ten songs written to his own poetry.     Stevenson’s many travels led to his connection with American Fanny Osbourne – their love story becoming one for the ages.  For a great read, check out my good friend Mark Wiederanders’ novel Stevenson’s Treasure – a truly wonderful tale.

Stevenson always seemed to be able to connect with readers from all walks of life and when asked why, he simply said, “The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish

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