Category: Art & Craft (Page 10 of 17)

I don’t have one, a compelling personal story. Nope, nary a really good tale, let alone a whole life story, just one pleasant ordinary life. I always thought CPS was the one told when you, you know, did something MAJOR. I was raised on the lives of the saints as CPS…those who suffered and died for their faith, believing that eternal life with God was the better deal. Or the biographies of those who were first–first to see a river, or first to climb the highest mountain, or first meet a new ethnic group [but we didn’t call them ethnic groups back then]. And being first meant the unknown, the fact that you had no idea what hazards lay ahead but you went anyway. And, the one thing these CPSs had in common? They were about dead people, lives well led, fully spent, done.

There’s a saying in the Euripides story of the Trojan Women when Troy has been sacked, the husbands killed and the children are sacrificed to the gods or turned into slaves. Somewhere along the way, Hucuba, wife of Priam, Queen of Troy says, “Count no one happy, however fortunate, before he dies.” That made sense.

Which brings me to the Orson Welles quote, “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” The political climate of now being what it is, you don’t need a whole story anymore, and so the converse must be true [I studied Logic in college, the logic syllogism—if A is true and B is true, then C must be true or not] then, If you want a compelling personal story, that depends, of course, on where you start your story,” meaning it may not be the whole story, just one compelling personal vignette. Because that’s what many of these CPSs are today, a brief evocative description, account, or episode, not a story, a whole story.

So, to me, a verification of a compelling personal story is the whole story, not just a couple of years, but the WHOLE of it.

I’m writing a narrative non-fiction. This is the story of a man of fortunate background, aristocratic, well-educated, in a stable home, loving parents, older brothers, raised in a castle, having a brilliant mind, excellent in school, transferring into a career, successful. Very little in this is compelling, it all seems so easy, excellent name recognition opening doors, a life of interest, but not so that you’d write a book about it fifty years later. In this case, the CPS comes from his death. A meaningless, stupid, senseless death that did not have to be. And because it is so meaningless, stupid and senseless, changing the world, mourned by millions for what would now NOT happen, his life now is compelling, because everything he did, all that was in him, all that he worked to accomplish was over, perhaps never to return again. How sad for the rest of us.

Every one should tell at least one compelling personal story, it doesn’t have to be their own, it doesn’t even have to be real, but it does have to be a whole story, compelling and necessary. I hope I can do this one justice.

There are more words than I care to admit to that I first learned, that  started with a capital letter. Epiphany is one. It’s one of those words that roll nicely off the tongue, with a hard fssst sound in the middle. Very satisfying to say. But it was not just a word, or only a feast day, it was a major event.

While Jesus was born to the Jews, he was made manifest, revealed, to the Gentiles when the Magi found him, twelve days after Christmas. I’m a Gentile, and i always thought it was sad it was called Little Christmas. A strong word like Epiphany should be enough. Revealed. Manifest. Very powerful words.  It was a non-Latin word, not English, not one of the romance languages. Like the Kyrie Eleison, the only Greek in the mass, so it stands out when you sing. I like that.

There are not many of our feast days where we use the Greek, most are with Latin reference. But back to epiphany, in small letters. The word means a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being, a moment of sudden revelation or insight. I like that we don’t overuse the word in English. There was a time though, people would say “I had an epiphany.” No mention of what was now known, more that something was. Like a lot of words, epiphany has felt its fair share of abuse.

There are some words I’d like to use more. Epiphany is one. Catholic in the small ‘c’ sense of universal. But I wonder if today, readers, especially kids, would even know they are common nouns not just names. Sort of reminds me of the term ‘elevator’. In business school we learned that Otis designed the first vertical stairway. He named it an elevator. It has become a common noun, not a proper noun. Companies have spent a truck load of money protecting what could be common nouns, Coke, Kleenex, Xerox, just to name a few. They identify, they immediately bring up an image. Go into a restaurant and order a Coke, if they only serve Pepsi, the waitstaff will ask if a Pepsi is okay. Why, because it’s not just soda, it is a Coke!

With so many words being coined, made up, ginormous, selfie, ugh, functionality, which may be among the worst of them, it’s almost sad we’ve lost some great words. And it is fun to have an epiphany, to reveal, with sudden insight, what I think about common and proper nouns.

I need a critique group. I need the imposed discipline. I need the conversation. I need the support. But mostly, I need the brutal truth about my writing. I don’t want, “oh that’s really good.” Or, “I like this.” What I want is––”no, you used that same word five times on the same page,” or, “collapse this part it’s definitely too much information.”

I’m lucky, I get it all from my critique group. But today, it was less about the writing and more about where I was going with the writing. What was I trying to get to. I’m writing a non-fiction. I’ve been toying with ‘is it a biography or is it just about a historical time period?’  I’ve worried that the subject matter is not easily translated into kids-speak. And, what is less history and more my life, I am concerned that the stuff that I think is important maybe isn’t.

So, I’ve been reading a lot of NF and trying to work out what makes a good NF tick. I don’t want a straight time line, you know, born, schooled, lived, died type of story. I’m not working for the kind of book a kid picks up and reads because of a book report. And, I don’t want it to be so full of fundamental facts that a kid will start to read and his/her eyes will glaze over. Oh, my! No! I want a book a kid will pick up and say, “Hey, this is cool!”

The problem is always, where do you start? At the beginning, and if so, which beginning, whose beginning. I’ve tried starting at the very beginning, but if you don’t know the historical figure, then WHOMP, who cares where he’s been born and lived, even if castles are involved. If you start in the middle, where he stepped onto the national and international stage, well, again, who cares. He’s just some dude who was important in the last century. So last century! It you start where he’s made a huge impact on the world––well then, why isn’t he remembered already?

So I was going for the mystery and trying to articulate what that meant to me, the whole raison d’être  of writing this book. And there is was. And one of my critique partners said it out loud.

 Yes. Yes, indeed. It is certainly, most absolutely about the WHY.