A handful of books by Barbara Hambly — the first three books of The Darwath Series and the first two Sun Wolf/Starhawk books — are on my shelf of old friends, full of people I’ve traveled with often in my head and still find good company. One reason I go back to any book repeatedly is that if I’ve changed in some way, my experience of the book changes too. I see new things; I feel old things differently; in an utterly familiar landscape, I suddenly find myself in a place I’ve never been.
I love those moments. I love that stories can be elastic, can stretch or reach or go deeper with us. I suppose this is why I shake my head at the academic approach to fiction, the focus on nailing down what a story means. Well, who are you when you read/see/hear it? Meaning is participatory.
And so, several weeks ago, a passage I’ve read at least 20 times in the last 25 years suddenly seemed printed in neon, as if a hand reached up from deep inside me, flicked my brain hard, and said Pay attention, this one’s for you:
“Success in war,” he went on, “is measured by whether or not you do what you aim to — not by whether you yourself live or die. The success of a war is not measured in the same terms as the success of a fight. Succeeding in a war is getting what you want, whether you yourself live or die. Now, it’s sometimes nicer to be alive afterward and enjoy what you’ve fought for — provided what you’ve fought for is enjoyable. But if you want it badly enough — want others to have it — even that isn’t necessary. And it sure as hell doesn’t matter how nobly or how crudely you pursue your goal, or who makes allowances or who condescends to you in the process. If you know what you want, and you want it badly enough to do whatever you have to, then do it. If you don’t — forget it.”
The silence in that single corner of the half-ruined tower was palpable, the shrill grunts and barked commands in the hall beyond them seeming to grow as faint and distant as the keening of the wind across the moors beyond the walls. It was the first time that he had spoken of war to them, and he felt all the eyes of this small group of tiny women on him.
“It’s the halfway that eats you,” he said softly. “The trying to do what you’re not certain that you want to do; the wanting to do what you haven’t the go-to-hell courage — or selfishness — to carry through. If what you think you want can only be got with injustice and getting your hands dirty and trampling over friends and strangers — then understand what it will do to others, what it will do to you, and either fish or cut bait. If what you think you want can only be got with your own death or your own lifelong utter misery — understand that, too.
“I fight for money. If I don’t win, I don’t get paid. That makes everything real clear for me. You — you’re fighting for other things. Maybe for an idea. Maybe for what you think you ought to believe in, because people you consider better than you believe in it, or say they do. Maybe to save someone who fed and clothed and loved you, the father of your children — maybe out of love and maybe out of gratitude. Maybe you’re fighting because somebody else’s will has drawn you into this, and you’d rather die yourself than tell her you have other goals than hers. I don’t know that. But I think you’d better know it — and know it real clearly, before any of you faces an armed enemy.”
— from The Ladies of Mandrigyn by Barbara Hambly.
When the student is ready, the teacher appears. Sometimes sideways — because suddenly for me this passage is not about war, it’s about essential clarity. It’s about the fact that all the guts, risk and insane persistence I can muster is not enough if I am not clear why I’m spending them: why I’m spending myself — my time, my fierce but not boundless energy, my attention, imagination, love, fear, capacity for joy, my hunger for growth. All my life I have seen something I want and literally thrown myself at it. And I am only understanding now (and the smack smack smack you hear is my hand against my head) that the times it works best — St. Paul’s, Clarion, Nicola, Solitaire, Dangerous Space, screenwriting — are the times when I am crystal clear about not just what I want, but why.
I value clarity: specificity in writing, goals that are definite and delineated, an understanding of my options. I work especially hard to be clear about my values; it’s important to me to know why I do things. That been part of my puzzlement these last weeks, trying to understand why this small part of a story is suddenly making me scratch my head (which often comes before the smacking, it turns out). I’ve been telling myself, I get the importance of clarity, so what’s the deal here?
And here’s the deal. I know I’m a writer — real clear about that — but I’m at a crossroads. I have to decide on my next project, and I find it is no longer simply a question of what, but why?
Three years ago, I threw myself into revising the screenplay that is based on my novel. If it’s true that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become expert, then I’ve easily got 4,000 already, and I got it in six- or eight- or ten-week-long marathons of 12 to 14 hours a day, with all the fatigue, fear, frustration, hope, hopelessness, exultation, and sheer bloody suck-it-up-and-start-again that important struggles bring with them. It wasn’t a war, at all, but it was just like one: it required that I test Nicola’s patience, sacrifice things I wanted, make myself utterly vulnerable, fail in public, and learn some things that please me and others I really would rather not have known. And it required me to endure. I got so fucking tired; but I am crystal clear on why I did it, and regardless of whether it ever gets on screen, it’s one of the best choices I’ve ever made.
And now we have a script that genuinely rocks, and although I will continue to work on it — there are always more changes, more improvements, more sandpapering to do — it’s also time for me to move on. I have to find the next thing to fall in love with, to begin spending myself on. And what I’m understanding now (hah, and you thought I’d left my point in the dust) is that I have to find a different why.
I have at least two novels and three screenplays coming to life in me right now. It’s no longer a question of which of these stories am I burning to tell — these days, if they don’t burn, they don’t stay with me long. Life is too short not to be on fire for my work. But I must choose. So if a novel, why? If a screenplay, why?
Part of the reason that why is so important is that I am finally understanding I can no longer cling to the strategies that have worked so well for me. In the words of the passage above, a war isn’t the same as a fight. I can’t just throw myself at something and hope it’ll all work out. If the project is fiction, well, I’ve got way beyond my 10,000 hours there: I’m an expert, and I don’t have to run into a wall at 100 mph over and over and over to make it happen. If the project is screenplay, then I’m no longer the beginner who needs to do twice as much work as someone else in order to simply keep up: and, as necessary as that constant 100 mph crash was to my beginning, it won’t help my learning in this intermediate stage.
I’m comfortable with the crash. I did it with the screenplay, I did it with “Dangerous Space,” and it worked. And therein lies the trap: because I’ve been trying to decide what to write next as if I would automatically write it the same way, but you know, that won’t work anymore. It’s a beginner’s approach. If I keep using it, it will simply ensure that I don’t learn how to be an expert — how to be conscious, efficient, aware, intentional — no matter how many hours I practice or how fast I run at the wall.
I have been stuck halfway between what and why.
This isn’t a war, but it’s just like one. Swinging around a sword with my eyes closed will get me exactly nowhere. I’m going to have to be just as clear about what I want next, and just as bloody-minded about getting it. But I have to find a new path. It’s no longer enough to just do, do, do, because although I’m good at that, I also see that it will not get me where I want to go.
When I was younger, I found my essential self through doing. Now I have to find it through the why.
I never start to think you might leave your point in the dust. I love it when you write these kinds of posts.
Sometimes i read your posts and think, wow. I was just thinking some very similar things. And then I think, was I thinking that, or was it her writing that made me think that?
Sometimes I read what you have written, and it is so eerily similar to some of my own train of thought that, I think, is she talking to me? And then I think, no. It’s kind of like being at a concert and feeling like the singer is looking right at me, singing to me. It only happens when someone is really good.
This is the part that really speaks to me right now, âItâs the halfway that eats you,â he said softly. âThe trying to do what youâre not certain that you want to do; the wanting to do what you havenât the go-to-hell courage â or selfishness â to carry through.” And this, “If you know what you want, and you want it badly enough to do whatever you have to, then do it. If you donât â forget it.â
“When I was younger, I found my essential self through doing. Now I have to find it through the why.”
I like typing out your words to look at them through my fingertips. I like sitting near this upstairs window where rain slaps the paved streets. It rained in crazy parades of ragged black clouds out at the fire lookout today. (Maybe it was the party in your home coming through across the continent, still in progress, still lively…) I like not knowing why your thought about the essential self intrigues me. There is room to be intrigued, here, before dinner. I like that.
The half-way has haunted me ever since I can remember. It’s been a couple of years since I became strongly aware of its grip on me, so now I’m more careful when I have a choice to make. It’s the daily drag. I suspect the lure of it will keep tugging at me until my very last day, but it helps to read your thoughts on the process of how and why one goes about fighting battles vs. committing to win the Stuff That Really Matters—at a high cost, if it must be so.
E and I watched Brüno last night. While I sat in the movie theatre, I kept thinking: The people who made this—Sacha Baron Cohen plus creative team—are geniuses. Once we got home, I began to wonder if the methods they used to expose the ills of our society weren’t just as twisted and cruel. This morning, I thought back on the excerpt you posted here about war and stopping at nothing if one wants to win more than a mere battle… So my conclusion is that Brüno is a fine example of someone going all the way—putting one’s physical safety and career on the line—to create art that makes us so uncomfortable it shakes us awake. I hope one day I can do the equivalent, on my own terms—comedy is not my vein.
I trust you’ll let us in on the Why of your next project when you get to its gut.
Jennifer and karina, yes, the halfway has sharp teeth sometimes. I hate being in the halfway place. But I know that sometimes it’s a necessary part of my process — and that’s a particularly hard time for me, because I always have some self-doubt about whether I’m trusting my process or just kidding myself. Whether I am getting clear, or just churning around in the mud. And sometimes I don’t know until I know, you know?
I used to think that the halfway was always an indicator of what was “true” for me: that if I was only doing something halfway, it was a clue that I was doing the “wrong” thing for me. I don’t think that anymore. There are lots of reasons I can end up halfway to something, only one of which is that my instincts telling me to take another bus.
Jean, it’s nice to see you 🙂 Am happy to hear you talk about words or rain or essential selves anytime. I hope your firewatching is going well.
For me the halfway point is often where the going gets hardest, and I decide I’ve made a poor choice quit. Later I have always wondered if I just quit because the doing got too tough. I am determined not to let that happen again. Then other times it seems that the beginning — getting past that first inertia point and making an informed committed decision that is the hardest. Like now.
I heard someone say yesterday that CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies make their decisions with 30% of the info (or something to that effect). I don’t know where he got that figure, but it made me think about my process.
Sometimes it’s hard for me to decide what is my gut and what is my fear talking. So I am trying to pay more attention to that right now.
Jean I’ve been thinking that it would be awesome to do a photo essay on firetower people – firewatchers. One of these days…
Kelley said of the Hambly quote:
“When the student is ready, the teacher appears. Sometimes sideways â because suddenly for me this passage is not about war, itâs about essential clarity.”
To me this is a basic fact of reading. I find something in almost everything I read that translates to particular meaning for me. I most generally can’t find it again as I’m usually going pretty fast but once I’ve read something that moves me like that it stays in me even if I don’t think about it in words any longer. I feel the collective meanings of what I read and learn in other ways too.
I am most often moved to some height of awareness by music even music with words. Most generally the words don’t really fit my life but they are words wrapped in a sound that strikes deep where I live and change. In that way they become mine, the music though I didn’t write it or play it becomes part of my wiring.
It’s so with words too, words grouped together forming phrases that speak truth and therefore can be assimilated and run like music as sensory memory. And I as Jean like to be intrigued.
The question in my mind right now is what will come up for you as you are making the film of Solitaire what is next for that lovely place, that lovely idea? How will it change as you revisit the story?
I lost my way in a story I was trying to write that I called “2530 Willow Glen Road” because I kept losing my place in the sequence of events. I really *wanted* to write a story but I found I’m better at writing my thoughts. I’m better at interpreting music than I am at writing stories so I had to literally shove the desire to be a writer out the door of my being so I wouldn’t be so disappointed in myself. Just not everyone *is* a writer. It’s just like not everyone who learns how to play an instrument *is* a musician.
I understood that I am not wired to be a writer, that is somebody else’s job, my job is and always has been music. Another job I took on myself a few years ago is to promote books and music. I don’t get paid for this I do it because I never talk about/sell anything I don’t believe in. You’d be surprised how many books and albums/CDs I sell from right here in front of my computer.
So I can’t make words into a story like I can make notes into a strain/phrase of music that I write. Or in my case at this stage of my life how I used to do that. I did write what I think of as a decent piece about that because I was inspired by an observation about musicians.
I hope I didn’t junk up your talk with my meandering around in a simile too much Kelley.
Sly