Category: talk to me

Taking care

It’s one of those days, snarky, and I can’t get into my work… which is dull and corporate in nature anyway and I woke up with a splitting headache and that dreadful phrase in my head, “what’s the point of it all?” And my co-workers keep telling me that my underwear is showing and I can’t really do anything about it. I think the bottom line, after reading Virtual Pint and a few dozen Ask Nicola‘s is that everyone is reaching out from their various corners of the earth, myself included, for reassurance that whatever path we are taking or abandoning or considering is ok and that there other people reading and writing and drinking and eating and fighting traffic and picking blueberries or apologizing to a lover. It’s compounded need for company in this world they say is getting smaller but actually is so freaking enormous that its impossible to even scratch the surface. And, Kelley, your forum is a great hostel for all of us looking for the point of it all. It is so important, especially in this out of control world, that we all can talk. And share. And listen. That we write. And we read. Work out lyrics and try new things based on recommendation. Kudos, Kelley. What would be a good brew to try on a day like this?

anonymous

I’m sorry you had a snarky day and hope this one is better.

One particularly unhappy year, chock full of snarky days, I was living in Chicago with very few personal connections, no money, no sweetie, and a roommate with a coke habit that didn’t quite hide her vast sadness. I worked in television production and watched the few women I knew in the business become brittle and barbed from the same battles I was fighting. I was beginning to understand that I wasn’t going to be an actor. So I started spending at least two evenings a week in a lovely hot bath drinking a homemade chocolate milkshake. Did it make anything better? Hard to say. At the time, it felt like I was hanging on by my fingernails; now it seems to me that I did a pretty good job of taking care of myself during a hard time.

I was reading the Sunday paper that winter –” white sky, gray trees, snow blowing against the living room window. On the front page of the travel section was a picture of people in a pontoon raft on the Colorado river in the Grand Canyon, the hot sharp light of summer. People in motion. People doing something large. I read the article and felt large myself, and also sad, a sort of miserable, resigned ache. And that just pissed me off, you know? So I cut the article out of the paper and carried it in my bag for a year. Every time I got out my car keys or my wallet, I saw it. It turned so soft from handling that it felt like a cloth handkerchief. I started the Kelley Eskridge Invisible Savings Plan (a way of hiding money without actually putting it out of reach). I ate a lot of potatoes and tuna sandwiches that year, and sixteen months later I was on the river myself. And it was fucking amazing, not only because it was as near as I’ve been to a sense of the sacred, but because I felt in motion myself, driving instead of drifting.

So that’s my strategy for the bad times: find small ways to live large while I’m working on the large ones. I talk to Nicola. I laugh as much as I can. I drink Stella Artois or Oranjeboom. I listen to music that makes me feel bigger in the world. I cook myself the potato-chip tuna casserole my mom made when I was a kid. I read an old favorite book. I watch an oh-my-god-if-I-could-only-meet-that-person movie. I dream. I still want to be in a movie, meet U2, have a bestseller, earn an aikido black belt, write a kickass screenplay for one of the women in Searching for Debra Winger, spend two weeks in Moorea, design and build our own house, be fluent in ASL. And go back to the canyon. I’m working on it.

I’m glad you enjoy the virtual pub. I do too. It’s become important to me in ways I didn’t expect. I’m grateful for the conversations here. I like the mix of idea and experience, personal and general. The talk of hopes and fears jostling with reports on the state of the world from our particular corner of it. Sometimes a warm fire and a beer and the sense of companionable folk at nearby tables is just the ticket. Look, there’s your chair.

The bonds of experience

In this response you wrote:

“I think joy and hope also require consciousness. Hope is almost always a choice to value oneself, in my experience, and joy is almost always a choice to celebrate value in oneself or the world. Maybe it’s that order and kindness and hope and joy are connecting forces, and fear is disconnecting. Maybe it’s that simple. What do you think?”

My thoughts on the topic are probably not especially profound but, in the spirit of sharing a virtual pint, I’ll offer an answer. I’d say that whether chaos, fear, etc. are breaking or bonding forces depends on which direction they’re going: from the inside out, or from the outside in. There’s a scene in Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (I’m guessing from prior posts that you’re familiar with her work) where Shevik says that the only source of brotherhood (or sisterhood, or friendship…) is shared suffering. I read The Dispossessed when I was a teenager, and it’s been decades since then, but that insight — that a brief period of shared suffering can forge a stronger bond than a lifetime of shared good times (not that good times should be avoided) — has stayed with me ever since. In other words, my feeling is that external negative forces, or negative feelings forcibly induced by external conditions, can help create the most enduring connections possible.

That said, I admit that confusion and fear emanating from the inside are disruptive. Nor do they require much consciousness; they’re more like manifestations of instinctive self-preservation or panic. Also, I admit that external negative forces aren’t intrinsically creative or connecting — it’s their catalytic effect on latent kindness, courage, and internal conviction that does the magic. So, in short, I agree with your view and feel no need to improve your definition. But agreeing with you straight out would have been too boring.

Besides, bringing up the Le Guin book sparked another question I’d like to ask. Although there are exceptions, most of the stories that continue to resonate in my life have something that separates them from ordinary experience: fantasy, scientific speculation, a wide cultural gap, etc. I’m guessing that those kinds of settings let me step outside myself, let go of my opinions, and be more receptive to other viewpoints — in much the same way that some folks who are allergic to mainstream religion can accept the teachings of a mystic from a remote land, even if the precepts are little different from what’s preached by the pastor down the street. Do you agree, and do you find using unfamiliar settings valuable enough that you’re going to continue writing in the sf/fantasy genre?

Best Wishes

Anonymous

I don’t mind having my definitions improved. Conversations like this are more like cooking than like carpentry (oh, there she goes again with the metaphors….). I’d rather think of these ideas as a multi-course meal than something that must be nailed perfectly together. There are very few 90-degree angles in my approach to life.

It’s been interesting thinking about brother/sisterhood. I’ve really been chewing on it, because it’s not something I generally feel, and on some level that bothers me, I guess. I see it as loyalty based on a specific shared experience (or set of experiences), rather than on the character of the individual people we’re ‘hooding with. If we have seen things, done things (or had them done to us) that we believe other people cannot understand, then we have a bond because we were there. We know. That word know is tricky; it’s not about imagination or empathy or fellow-feeling, it’s about direct parity of experience. It’s an experiential kinship: you are like me because we shared this thing. We know each other in a way that others don’t know us.

And I think that’s true. I think in many ways we can never “know” each other, which is one reason we have art, and psychology, and ecstatic mechanisms like drugs or drumming or dance. Why we have ritual. Why sex means something different when the people involved wish to be emotionally as well as physically connected. I admire humans for all the ways we try to understand things we cannot know.

And yet I find that I much prefer to connect on the individual level, rather than the “we band of brothers” plane. Perhaps that’s because I see people (myself included) using experience to divide ourselves so absolutely from one another. You can’t understand, we say, as if it were the end of the discussion. Experience does differentiate us, absolutely, but does it always have to be divisive? Here’s a low-voltage but common example: when a new mother tells me with that particular combination of satisfaction and pity that I can never know what it’s like to be a parent because I have no children of my own, I want to punch her, I really do — she’s right, and she’s also involved in some sort of social and emotional point-scoring that I find bewildering and somewhat Animal Farm-esque. Why can’t we just acknowledge difference? Why does some difference have to be better than others?

I know it’s not that simple. I do know that. I’ve had someone diminish and devalue my experience because they don’t share it and don’t, in fact, understand it, and I don’t like the feeling. And when I meet someone who I believe “gets it” because they have similar experience, I do feel a resonance. We can connect in that way. And I have seen people almost certainly save their own lives by finding a “kinship” group to whom they did not have to explain, justify, or apologize for their own experience. A group who kept them safe and gave them respite.

I think most people do find brother/sisterhood in bad times rather than good. I worry that in this culture, which is so frightened of difference, the result will be a bunker mentality that only divides us further.

The thing is, I believe passionately that people can bond over shared joy, shared dreams, shared love as well as over the traumatic stuff. Suffering and enduring hardship can catalyze our potential for being bigger, braver, more ourselves than we might have imagined; but I really, really think that love and joy and hope can do it too.

So here I am, answering a question you didn’t ask and not the one you did. Hmm, setting, setting. I think for me setting is a tool rather than a goal: in other words, I’ll probably never write a novel just to create a cool world for people to wander around in. I wrote Solitaire as speculative fiction in part because it was the only way I could imagine getting Jackal into her own head in a way that would be an undiluted experience for her and the reader both. I also wrote it as spec fic because that was all I could imagine myself writing at the time — imagine my surprise to find myself splashing about in the mainstream. The Kansas book and the mountain book are set in the present day US because that’s how I can best support the journey of the characters. Putting these folks in Ko, or Darwath, or even 12th century China, would make it impossible for me to tell their particular stories.

Having said that, part of the fun of the new books is that the settings are unfamiliar, at least to me. I’m learning about different kinds of community and different ways of life. I’m having a whale of a time thinking how I can enter into the experience of someone who shares elements of my culture, but whose external landscape is so different from mine. I don’t think I need specifically to write sf or fantasy in order to go to unfamiliar places; and with those settings, my goal is not to say to readers Look how different this is, but rather See how our places shape us.

A Buddhist flavor

“A Buddhist Flavor”: Hello, Kelley.

I took my refuge vows a year ago and am going to be taking my bodhisattva vow this summer, which is basically a promise to help all other sentient beings achieve enlightenment before I do (wish me luck). Consequently, wrestling with one’s aloneness is, needless to say, definitely more than a little on my mind.

So, here I am, minding my own business, taking a guilty break from some very heavy Buddhist literature and reading along in this novel I picked up from Borders called Solitaire. Not expecting anything but a good yarn, I suddenly come across what sounds like a very accurate accounting of someone being forced to live, consciously, inside their own head for a seeming 8 years and to just simply “deal.” Now, if this isn’t Buddhism, I don’t know what is! I really can’t tell you how strange it was to be reading this in the midst of attempting to digest some other very intense training materials much less engage in exactly what you have Jackal doing. So I am thinking, what is going on here? Are the gods and devas and asuras and Ko’s conspiring to make sure I take those vows, or what??!!

There is a book written along these lines by a senior teacher of my particular lineage, Pema Chodron, entitled, interestingly enough, The Wisdom of No Escape.

Just to rephrase what you alluded to so well, the fact that Jackal could not escape from her “prison” was in my view perhaps her saving. Partly because she had to, and also because she was who she was, she prevailed in facing her “worms” and digesting them and then seeing what came up, which inspires me yet again to face my own crocodiles. In addition, I find it fascinating how you told this plot through the eyes of an imperfect world, which is exactly where “it” happens –” the juiciest material lies under the dirtiest rocks, calling to us in our fear and trembling to come out, come out, wherever you are … and take a look. And just perhaps we can relax in our groundlessness and insecurity after all.

By the way, I found your approach to the description of the love between Jackal and Snow very, very well handled and true. Making a new start after the world shifted for the two of them was realistically portrayed, refreshing and interesting in the ongoing changing kind of moire pattern two very different personalities can create. In this, I liked how it appeared you left the door open on whether or not things worked out between the two of them, like any relationship.

Finally, I also appreciated the description of the place called Solitaire in that I, too, as some other readers expressed, feel as perhaps a solo might feel –” a woman without a country due to some pretty precarious upbringing with no strong roots. Aftershocks, panic attacks, alien people surround me … a place like Solitaire sounds like home where people of my ilk could treat me tenderly and with understanding, and I them.

So, thank you so much for your willingness to go through what you did to give us the VC experience. I would love to hear your comments on how you “got there,” or for that matter, anything else you’d care to comment on, like how you are today — and, sure, how is Snow …er…uh… I mean, Nicola today, as well (teehee).

I certainly do wish you luck. The idea of taking such a vow fascinates and frightens me. I imagine it requires (among much else) a full bucket of responsibility and an empty bucket of expectation. That must sometimes seem a very high hill to climb.

I have one of Pema Chodron’s books, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times. I just pulled it off the bookshelf. It’s been a while, and your email makes me want to read it again. One thing that struck me anew flipping through the book is this passage (in the chapter, “Finding the Ability to Rejoice”):

It is easy to miss our own good fortune; often happiness comes in ways we don’t even notice. It’s like a cartoon I saw of an astonished-looking man saying, “What was that?” The caption below read, “Bob experiences a moment of well-being.” — from The Places That Scare You

Joy is something I work on. I’m learning the joy of everyday things, the joy that I seek consciously when I open myself to an ordinary moment, and the joy that comes unexpectedly. I think they reinforce each other; the more I seek, the more finds me. This is one of the things I wanted very much to put into Solitaire, especially into Jackal’s VC experience. For me, hope is based on this constant possibility of joy even in the most brutal, barren phases of our lives.

There’s an article that might interest you from the Seattle Times, about a group of high school students who recently met the Dalai Lama and asked him what he apparently thought was a very interesting question.

I’m not sure how I feel about what I understand of Buddhism, particularly the emphasis on selflessness, but I understand the value of true compassion, and the burden that our expectations can place on each other when people practice something that they call compassion but that really smacks more of control. I like that the Dalai Lama thinks compassion is important, and that his head spins too. I have, as I believe I’ve said before in the virtual pub, an innate distrust of most authority, including (perhaps especially) spiritual or “moral” authority: but I liked the Dalai Lama in this article. He can be on my party list (which I hope doesn’t offend you: it’s a genuine expression of goodwill, since I take parties and hosting very seriously).

How am I today?

  • I am listening to U2, The Radiators ( New Orleans, not Ireland), and Ursula Rucker.

  • I have finished the proposal for my Kansas book and am working on the outline of my mountain book so that I can submit both to my editor, in the hope that she will be so impressed with my long-term potential that she will throw vast sums of money at me. (Edited to add in 2008: Hah. Find out what happened here.) I’m really pleased with both books right now: the Kansas story has come together nicely, and the mountain book shows signs of doing the same. I had expected to do a very skimpy outline for the mountain book (maybe 500 words to set up the situation and then promise that a bunch of interesting stuff will happen). Instead, I have a real story poking me in the arm for attention, much more coherent at this early stage than I have any right to expect.

  • I wrote what is in my humble opinion a kickass article for @U2 on the African Well Fund, an organization raising money to build wells in Africa.

  • I had a conversation with my ASL teacher about the origins of humor and the difference between comedy and drama, notable because it was an actual conversation and not just me looking blank and trying to keep up.

  • We have a leak in our basement and our washing machine makes scary noises.

  • I discovered the hard way this weekend that red onion is strong and you shouldn’t put too much of it avocado salad.

  • It’s going to rain all week.

  • I love my sweetie (who isn’t Snow, honestly, although that’s a whole other conversation that I’m willing to have if someone will remind me in a couple of weeks –” I will also be happy to talk more about “how I got there” but can’t do it today, so it would be fine to remind me of that as well if you are so inclined. Not that it’s anyone’s job to be my secretary –” it’s just that I am a bit distracted by book-world right now, and so if you really want those answers you might have to ask me again).

If people could always treat each other tenderly and with understanding, well….there’s a goal. I expect it is part of the vow you will take. My very, very best wishes to you.

Consciousness

I recently finished reading your novel, Solitaire, and was astonished at how good it was. But you’ve probably already heard the same many times, so I’ll be more specific.

First, the plot rang true. I’ve spent my adult life working for a single, large corporation. They’ve provided interesting work, have treated me well, and I’m a loyal company man. Probably that’s how affairs will continue until I either die or retire. Yet I know that if, for some bizarre reason, the welfare of the company depended on me being crushed and humiliated, then so it would be. Just as in your story, there would be no malice, there would even be kindness to the degree possible,­ but it would be done.

Second, your characters came to life. Again, that’s pretty general, so more specifically… I was able to dislike and yet feel sorry for Jackal’s mom. I felt, even at first introduction, a simultaneous dislike and grudging admiration of both Gavin and Crichton — the same kind of feeling I‘ve gotten in person when talking to executives, not being able to help admiring them even when I know damn well I’m being manipulated. And, I got teary-eyed at Jackal’s and Snow’s reunion.

Third, the book was joyful. Most great novels are — even if reading academic reviews would make you think they’re gloomy and ponderous. And what I most want to say is that I enjoyed the optimism of your novel and hope that your future work is similar in that respect. Please understand that I’m not trying to give fan guidance on what you ought to write. I’m just offering a thought, a hope, and letting you know what about your work appealed to me. But life can be painful at times and, during those times, coming across a living, breathing, believably optimistic story about what it is to be a human can be a very big deal.

Last, I wanted to let you know that I’m a middle aged, straight, more-or-less conservative research scientist (your Crichton would call me a lab coat nerd if she were in a good mood). If you were able to make your story gripping to someone so different than how you describe yourself, then I’m guessing that the appeal of your writing must be nigh well universal.

Best Wishes,
J.

P.S. I saw that you used to be an executive at Wizards Of The Coast. My younger daughter has been a Pokémon fan for several years now. Congratulations on your marketing.

For me, one of the most complex treatments of ambivalence to create in Solitaire was the corporate culture. I have few mixed feelings about bad companies — they just suck, you know? But the good ones are less easily labeled. I spent five years in executive positions at Wizards of the Coast (which was for me an excellent experience in general, although astonishingly hard in particular moments), and in various positions at smaller companies before that (almost uniformly Suck City). The thing that made Wizards an excellent place for me was not that it was seamlessly good, or smart, or efficient. It wasn’t (oh, the stories….). But it was a place where a person of skill could, given a good manager, create an excellent experience for herself. Perhaps this is the best we can hope for, this combination of opportunity and support, but I have to believe it can be better than that, or at least more organized. When I led the project management team at Wizards, I tried to carve out a space in the company in which anyone could have an excellent experience. I expect that not everyone did, but I do believe that project management was considered a “better” part of the company to work in because of the way we built the team.

I get restless and impatient when people talk about corporations being “evil” and “greedy” and “heartless.” Corporations are big stews of people who often make uninformed or unimaginative or fearful decisions, which is just as bad in effect but makes a difference to me on some level. I find stupidity more forgivable, or at least more easily rectified, than evil or greed. What’s interesting is that I’m much more willing to characterize whole corporations as “supportive of employees” or “socially conscious” or “learning organizations” — I don’t have so much trouble with these kinds of generalizations. I think this is because for a whole corporation to be perceived as actively “good” in some way, a lot of people have to make a conscious agreement about how to behave and then live up to it on a daily basis. Chaos requires less consciousness and courage than order (or kindness).

I think joy and hope also require consciousness. Hope is almost always a choice to value oneself, in my experience, and joy is almost always a choice to celebrate value in oneself or the world. Maybe it’s that order and kindness and hope and joy are connecting forces, and fear is disconnecting. Maybe it’s that simple. What do you think?

Anyway, as a writer I’m interested in connection. I will write about fear and sorrow and the fractures within, and between, people because that’s part of the human terrain that I map in all my work. But I believe in joy and hope and growth and love. They are things I’d like to see more of in the world, and I hope I am never so sundered from them that I would want to write a book designed to separate the reader from them as well. I can imagine it. Nicola and I have talked about what might happen to our writing if the other died, and I can see the bitter books that I might wish to unleash on the world. I think I’d probably have a talent for making those people real too, and perhaps there would be some value in it, but I don’t like to read those books, and it would be a challenge to write one that I could be proud of. But I can imagine a state of soul in which it would seem like the thing to do. And if it were a choice between writing something like that and not writing at all…. well, those are the interesting questions, aren’t they?

I’m guessing that Crichton would only call you a lab coat nerd if you did something she didn’t like (grin). And I’m glad you liked the book. Cheers.

More random

Thanks for your description of “angles”, “filters”, and the Interpersonal Gap.

Re your mention of the Interpersonal Gap, I further educated myself here.

It reminds me of the psych-book, Games People Play, re word/body language play.

That is infinity. Apparently, it boils down to skillful and appropriate use of intention and interpretation as priorities in order to profit from conversation, personally, writer/reader, or artist/viewer.

You mentioned “discerning plot from unusual angles” and you mentioned this as best found in film. However, a film cannot be randomly read (another advantage for the traditional book concept). The film can project a sense of randomness, disjointed layers, but only one sequence exists.

A digital movie or website could exhibit randomly though, thus alleviating ‘choice’. Page-flipping could be eliminated also. Current E-books offer this, and they could avoid repetition of sections, which can happen with manual random reading. Reader-choice could be allowed or attenuated.

I meant, ‘gathering’ the plot via random reading, and moving through many tentative plots in the process.

In terms of fiction, all writing loses control to the needs of the reader. Convention is necessary to have an audience, yet the most successful styles, as I theorize here, allow (conventional, sequential) readers the ability to ‘write’ their own book, whereby even ‘profundity’ or ‘apotheosis’ may be perceived. The artistic product is an insight-vehicle for the reader, albeit a guided tour (smile).

Yet, both comedians and judges seem to be able to specifically control their delivery and the intended effect.

You ended with, “Filters matter. Often they are integrated at such an unconscious level that it takes a lot of work to dig them out. But it’s work worth doing, in my opinion.”

Yes input/output filters/embellishers are eternal problems and capabilities.

Solitaire seems appropriate for this era.

Thanks for the link –” it’s a useful document.

I’m not sure I would compare Games People Play directly to the Interpersonal Gap model, mostly because so much of Games (as I remember it, and it’s been a while) is concerned with conscious or unconscious bad intentions, and I associate the Interpersonal Gap with good intentions gone wrong. For me, it’s about clarity. Of course, we can have bad intentions and be clear about them, but then it seems to me that we are not playing games, just being clearly nasty. I find it difficult to understand how people experience this as a good thing, but mileage varies.

The ability to clearly articulate intentions, filters (coding) and effects in real-time is perhaps the most powerful communication skill I know of. I am impressed by it even in people I don’t particularly like, because their skill (and mine) makes it much easier to navigate the interpersonal friction. It incorporates awareness of self and other, and the willingness to acknowledge difference, fear and vulnerability in the service of greater connection. I’m fortunate to live with someone who has this skill in spades, and as it happens I like her very much (grin), and find our conversations rich, sometimes astonishing, sometimes terrifying, always connecting.

I believe I understand better now what you mean by random. It’s interesting to imagine moving through tentative plots toward a final understanding of the plot as it exists. A new literary concept: Shroedinger’s Plot. I only do this as a reader if my linear reading experience becomes boring or stressful. When that happens, I’ll jump around in the book to see if I can get a sense of what’s to come without necessarily connecting all the dots. I think that’s as close as I get to what you’ve described. In the best of book-worlds, I like to start at the beginning and have the story swallow me whole –” and I always begin by hoping for the best.

I would paraphrase what you’re saying about writing as “everyone reads her own book.” This is, for me, related to my notions about books and multiple entry points. It’s true that any meaning (profundity, resonance) to be found in a book depends on the experience and values and desires of the reader as much as those of the writer. When these intersect in story in a way that is meaningful to both parties, well, that’s a fine moment. That’s the connection that I seek as an artist.

Riffing

Finished Solitaire two days ago; it’s still ringing in my thoughts. I’d almost given up on it around page 50; you found your stride later, and I’m glad I stuck with it.

Twice (twice!) I found myself tearing up (and I don’t cry *that* easily) –” both times with joy, at the human truths you gracefully set up and then depicted, cleanly, showing-not-telling, without a bit of the maudlin or the melodramatic.

Nicely done! Just wanted to pass on my compliments directly. Keep writing –” I’ll keep looking for your next novels.

Michael

Thanks for sticking with it. I’m glad it became more to your liking, and that you did not find it maudlin or melodramatic. I worry sometimes about my propensity for what I think of as riffing, which is akin to taking a running start at an emotional cliff and then flinging myself off, clinging to a rope of exuberant prose. Riffing is great fun, but not always great writing. The last two paragraphs of the elevator scene are a riff, and so is most of Day 424 in VC, and the entire reunion scene with Snow, and they were all fun to write, even the hard ones.

One way I know I’m on a right track in my own work is that it makes me cry to write it, not because it’s deathless prose but because I’m getting close to some kind of truth that is right for the story, a joy or sadness or exhilaration, or those piercing moments that are these combined.

I, too, am looking for my next novels (grin) and I know they’re in here somewhere. If I could get away with riffing all the time, I’d be on Book 37 by now.

The variety of art

Kelley –” I read for a lot of reasons –” some of which are –” to learn, feel, experience, contemplate, confront, dream, and transcend. Sometimes I seek solace, a new way of approaching life, or the unexpected. The stories that have the most impact on me become a world unto themselves –” these are my favorites and I will read everything I can get my hands on by that author [or musician or director in other mediums]. What they have written lives on forever in my psyche. Solitaire is one of those books.

You taught me something important. I am a solo and I need to do some [more] online editing. And I am fortunate to have my own web.

Jackal and her world have intersected mine and I am grateful.

I enjoy the links and referrals by you and your readers. I am looking forward to reading more. Thank you.

Chela

And thank you. I do this myself with books and music, and can’t imagine how I could be myself without them moving through me like tides. I’m honored that you would include Solitaire on your list of things that work in you this way.

It’s interesting to think about the difference for me between books, music, and visual media in this context.

I give my heart to a TV show every so often, one led by a really good writer/director whose vision shapes all aspects of the experience (Buffy, Firefly, The West Wing, My So-Called Life, and does anyone remember Wizards and Warriors from the early 80’s? I loved that show.)

Movies are different. I tend to think of them as a more singular experience rather than part of a spectrum of work. I have a few favorite actors whose work I will seek out, but I don’t make the same commitment to directors and screenwriters. I’m partial to some (Peter Weir, John Sayles) but I don’t form the same passionate attachments that I do to authors and musicians. Hmm, she said, thinking, thinking. I wonder if this is perhaps because I recognize movies as collaborative, and what I am talking about rightnow is being drawn to the work of the individual? Auteur television falls somewhere in the middle ground. And of course no artist is free of the influence of others: in some ways, we’re all collaborating with the world in general and our own lives in particular. We are all editing online, all the time.

I love movies and television and theatre: I love the total sensory experience, and the complexity of so many elements coming together. Successful collaboration is a particular thrill to participate in, and to witness, and I’ve had some amazing emotional experiences in these situations. But I find my most powerful connection and recognition with books and music, where I am more free to consider the experience from multiple perspectives. It fascinates me that movies are a collaborative effort to present a unified vision, and fiction is an individual effort to present an experience that can be entered into in multiple ways. At least, that’s how it works for me. And music: well, for me, it’s the express train to places sometimes too deep for words alone.

Pain

I found this via Alas, A Blog:

The Girl Who Feels No Pain, an article about a real-life “Alien Jane“, the three-year-old Gabby Gingras.

Ide Cyan

Oh my. Life will always have to be so conscious, so hyper-vigilant for these people. They’ll have to develop systems to watch Gabby, to check the environment, anticipate the hazards that are invisible to her because she can’t process the warning language of pain. They will have to read the mind of the whole world.

Nicola and I talked a lot about this over beer last night. I believe that humans are potentially limitless in spirit, in toughness, and in the capacity for joy in the face of adversity, but I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. I felt particularly sorry that there are no resources for these folks, that they have to do all the work of discovery as well as implementation. I hope they have loving and imaginative people around them to help: it’s the sort of thing that takes imagination, not treacly pity or platitudes. One thing that astonished both of us about this report is the sentence, “There is no cure, nor will she outgrow it.” If I told someone my child had a condition for which there was no cure, and they said, stupidly, “Well, maybe she’ll outgrow it,” I think I would put their head through a wall.

The world is often stranger than fiction, and harder too.

What next?

I really liked solitaire and I want to read another one of your novels. I don’t know if you have another one in the works or not but if you do please release it soon, and if not get to work :). I would like to read a second novel to solitaire. I think it would work because I want to know how she turned out. Did she get over anti-social behavior? Did she make a lot of money? How did KO turn out? Does she still live in the NNA? What happened to snow? I think it would be good and you could put new problems maybe KO double crossed her, there is a problem with the online thing and she gets stuck in VC longer than supposed to, or any thing else you can think of as a new problem or a new plot. I know you could make a great new book and it would be a shame not to write more about Snow or Jackal.

I have a question though. Who killed the security guard and where did the other go?

And I hope you make a second book to solitaire or write another novel because your first novel was really good.

anonymous

I am sorry to disappoint you, but no sequel. I’m glad the characters came alive for you, even if does mean they are still rattling around in your brain, demanding to be continued. They do that in my head sometimes too. Of course I have my notions of what happens to everyone, but I expect you have ideas about that too, as will other people who read the book and liked it. We will all have to be content with our notions for now.

I’d be interested to know how you define anti-social behavior. I think Jackal’s probably the most well-adjusted person in the bar most nights (unless Snow is there). I’ll bet all those tourists feel just a little safer when she’s around, which may or may not be what they were hoping for.

One security guard was in the pay of Steel Breeze, and set up the initial situation with the elevators being stuck. I’ll bet he was really confused when Jackal did his job for him. He killed the other guard, and Jackal herself was fortunate not to end up at the bottom of the access stairs with a broken neck.

If you are interested, you can learn more about my next novels from this previous post.

Mind the gap

You responded, “I was intrigued by the idea of Solitaire as an experience unmoored from plot, and did a little random reading in it myself. I’m not sure what I would make of it as a new reader…”

Not necessarily a plot unmoored. The reader still gathers the plot from unusual angles.

John Cage published a written work that consisted of three very different works, interlaced, with each work color-coded. Unexpectedly, the reader becomes more attentive, rather than confused. Though sequentiality is still maintained in that example, it somewhat illustrates the random approach.

My disenchantment with science comes from having studied it extensively and finding the politics of its interpretation to be a huge, probably unconscious, part of everyone’s lives, a virtual reality.

I am pleased to read your thoughts about your writing process, “laziness”, etc., the process of arriving at the completion of something, Michael Ventura’s essay on writing, the room, too.

Anonymous

Yes, I understand your point about discerning plot from unusual angles, although I find this more enjoyable in film than in prose. I enjoyed Memento, for example, even though it wasn’t seamless — I had fun with the layers, and admired the screenwriting. Someone put together a fantastic website (you need to allow popups). I’d love to have something like this for a book, with visuals and artifacts from the story, that could offer glimpses of the story. Most of the websites I’ve seen dedicated to books (as opposed to writers) are static, in all ways unengaging. Connection, interaction, that’s the strength and beauty of the web (as well as all art, in my opinion). I’m guilty of this too, as regards Solitaire; that part of this site is pretty boring. (Edited in 2008 to add: I hope not so much anymore!)

I agree about the politics of interpretation as regards science (and just about everything else). There’s a model that I used in the classes I taught on effective communication and meetings, called the Interpersonal Gap. I don’t know whom to credit for it, but it’s widely used.

I send a message (face to face, email, etc.). I intend to communicate something specific. First, the message has to pass through my personal filters — how my day is going, how I feel about the other person, my assumptions about them and the situation, my socialization, whether or not I’m in a hurry. All these factors color my communication in ways I may not be conscious of. The person I’m talking to can’t see my personal filters, and so cannot be expected to be aware of specifically how they affect my communication.

My intended message, already affected (perhaps distorted) by my personal filters, is now out in the space between me and the other person. This is the realm of observable behavior — body language, vocal or physical language stresses (depending on whether I’m speaking or signing), where I’m looking, etc. This is what the other person sees and/or hears.

This altered message has to pass through the other person’s personal filters, which aren’t visible to me. Did they eat a bad piece of corned beef for lunch? Do they like or dislike me? Is some of my observable behavior attractive or objectionable for cultural reasons? Are they in a hurry? Are they tired? All of these factors color the way they receive my message. By the time my message arrives in their brain, it may be something quite different from what I intend, because of factors that neither of us can control absolutely. And that’s the message they respond to, and the whole cycle starts over.

The goal of this model is to help me understand that what I think I’m sending isn’t necessarily what the other person is receiving. We need to make filters observable if at all possible, to help close the gap. I need to be as aware as I can of my own filters, and I need to ask questions to identify other people’s filters or intentions. For example, I might tell the other person that I’m distracted because I’m in a tricky place in my book, and my brain is giving the problem a lot of attention. Or I might say, “Did you mean to snap at me, because that’s what it sounded like.” It’s not rocket science, it’s just technique. It falls under the category of not expecting other people to read my mind. Often I hear people complain that someone didn’t get the message — “It was obvious I was in a hurry, but she wouldn’t let me go!” Well, maybe it’s not obvious — who knows how everyone’s filters are distorting the message? Making it obvious improves the odds that the real message gets through.

I find this model accurate in my experience, and it’s been very useful to me not only on a personal level, but with regard to the interpretation of information. The people who deliver information have their filters. Cultures and disciplines have filters too. My culture is biased toward the notion that data is superior to, and more valid than, personal experience. But ask anyone who’s been medically misdiagnosed because her symptoms didn’t “fit” what she thinks about that.

Filters matter. Often they are integrated at such an unconscious level that it takes a lot of work to dig them out. But it’s work worth doing, in my opinion.

Note from Kelley in 2008: If this interests you, you’ll find more about the Interpersonal Gap and other communication models/tools in Session 2 of the Humans At Work curriculum (follow the link and check the sidebar).