THOMAS SULLIVAN: STRIVING FOR IMPERFECTION
I think it was the DragonBar that made me remember an early lesson in my writing career. And that happened because the carp ‘n’ tuna syndrome that beset my wrists after too many 18-hour marathons at the keyboard eventually led me to try voice activation software. Dragon NaturallySpeaking with its DragonBar is arguably the leader in that field. I had tried using it in the late 90s to write a book for a celebrity, but the error rate just killed me when it came time to transcribe our interviews. The celeb’s voice was crystal clear, while mine sounded like a cat coughing up hairballs underwater. And guess what? Dragon just wrote “their balls” for “hairballs,” so my enunciation is still perilous at best. I think I learned speaking from Demosthenes, and no one ever told me to take the pebbles out of my mouth. At any rate, the new version of Dragon is more mumble-friendly and so intuitive that you can talk in your sleep and come up with coherent confessions by morning. The mumble-friendly is a gas, but I can do without the intuitive aspect, which is actually a bit of a pain because of the way I think and speak. That’s because the intuition is based on normal patterns of sane people, and I’m not…um – well, let’s just say that if you think unorthodox thoughts or constantly use language in inventive ways, Dragon won’t be able to zero in on you.
So, there is this DragonBar on my screen. I mean doesn’t the name alone set off pinwheels and sparklers in your imagination? DragonBar! – can’t you just picture a lizard lounge with fire-breathing serpents warming their rum toddies by blowing on ‘em? And there’s this little yellow dialog box that plays Simon Says with your every breath and grunt (clear your throat and it’s liable to “spit out” the Gettysburg address). The thing spangles with color cues in response to your voice — a kind of synesthesia — that make you feel that your words are refracting light like bits of broken glass in the bottom of a kaleidoscope. And the mystical crossing between sound and visual representation is unpredictable. You never know what zaniness will pop up next, because what’s inside the box is sometimes outside the box, if you get my meaning. Hmmm. Maybe I’m looking in a mirror.
But it’s also inspiring, intriguing, rich in possibilities, thought-provoking, and a catalyst for newness and change. It unblocks me, unlocks me — lets me develop and distill those truths I need to find and express in order to be me. I can’t do that by following rutted footprints and being the same as everyone else. Every day (and every experience) is fresh and new if you can find the words and wisdom with which to capture it. To put it conversely, DragonBar does not go with the herd. It goes beyond what you would expect from passive people, places and things. It travels to terra incognita (land of my birth!). There be DragonBars! It does so by unleashing little imperfections in what you feed it; and that’s what reminded me of the early lesson in my writing career.
Before I became stupid, I knew a great many things. I had a phenomenal memory for facts and could explain any process. Never mind that most of those explanations were wrong; when I looked at a wall it dissolved into molecules and quantum paradigms. I have written elsewhere in this blog about converting my mind’s warehouse space for facts to storage space for patterns [http://storytellersunplugged.com/thomassullivan/2007/03/16/thomas-sullivan-%e2%80%9cmamas-don%e2%80%99t-let-your-babies-grow-up-to-be-writers%e2%80%a6%e2%80%9d/]. I did this because patterns are more valuable. I can always look up facts, but patterns have to be recognized and understood. At least, I think I did this conversion of my mind’s limited storage space. But since that’s a fact, I may have forgotten it (I forget). Before that, remembering facts was a kind of perfection. And it showed in my writing.
I wrote with an airless clarity that was logical and absolute. I think a certain kind of beginner writer does this to a fault. Usually they are male. Usually they write about “things and events” or “ideas,” as opposed to incorporating “emotions.” I’ve covered all three of those elements in a five-part series here on StorytellersUnplugged, which is central to my writing philosophy. What the hell, here are the links: http://storytellersunplugged.com/thomassullivan/2006/04/16/thomas-sullivan-spiders-and-spuds/
http://storytellersunplugged.com/thomassullivan/2006/06/16/thomas-sullivan-name-the-baby/
http://storytellersunplugged.com/thomassullivan/2006/07/16/thomas-sullivan-marmaduke-er%e2%80%a6-goes-to-college-or-wet-naked-screaming/
http://storytellersunplugged.com/thomassullivan/2006/08/16/thomas-sullivan-time-to-jump-the-shark/
The change in my writing did not come from a sudden epiphany anymore than the change in what I stored in my brain was instantaneous. It was (and still is) a gradual trade-out of inventory. I learn much more about life and people by focusing on patterns than I ever learned from facts. And patterns are seldom pure and exact. They tend to be a kind of consensus of observation, and they cut to the heart of an issue, and they reveal private truth like…uh, nobody’s business. They separate the façades we all wear from the underlying and meaningful realities that govern who we really are.
Anyway, writing with perfect knowledge of facts can get in the way of showing the patterns of life. To know everything is to be unreal. You can even intimidate readers, or make them uncomfortable, by bombarding them with too much in-depth certainty. Most of all, you are very likely to be rejected by mature readers as phony if all your prose is cocksure factual and exact. On the other hand, the messy contradictions that show the humanity of characters (and even of the third person POV of the author) are more consistent with inexactness. It wasn’t until I learned to use qualifier words and relative modifiers that I felt my characters coming to life. Beware of characters you think you know inside and out. You may have dressed them in caricature. Let them go where you cannot. Let them lead you from page to page. Are you never going to change, be wrong or contradictory? If the answer is no, then why create fully formed manikins whose thoughts and utterances are exact? Sure your characters can have their unchanging bedrock, but all the more reason to show the reader their vagueness and uncertainty in the little things they think and do on the surface. Let your characters grow and surprise you.
And here’s the key: apply some of that same inexactness to the narrator, even if it’s third person omniscient. Because even that unobtrusive narrator is a kind of implied character POV, capable of stepping away from every other character and observing, describing, philosophizing, analyzing and so on. You have the reader by the hand, and they must trust you. So think of yourself as needing to come across as the real and imperfect person you are and not God. Of course, if you are God, that’s different. But then, shouldn’t you be writing a Bible? You are trying to be omniscient, not omnipotent. So give the blend of your fallible humanness and omniscience a name or an anagram that will stick with you. Think 3CPO — if I may borrow from “Stars War.” Third Character-Person Omniscient.
What I’m suggesting is that giving reality some elbow room is a stage of development in good fiction writing. Pin it down too tightly and it may lose color, reverting to black and white. The more human you are as a writer, while still observing and analyzing but never judging, the more your readers will fit under your umbrella. Sometimes it is better to be merely omnipresent rather than omniscient as a third-person narrator. And if you are writing first-person narratives you can really be imperfect. First-person POVs enjoy the suspense of not knowing. Sort of gives a whole new meaning to imperfect tense.
I do recall sitting in a writer’s group one night where I had a sort of epiphany about this. And I have a déjà vu feeling that this anecdote is also in the SU archives of my columns (if you find it, please let me know). Three of the people present that night stand out like an equilateral tri — no, too perfect, make it an isosceles triangle… aargh! worse… okay, you know, one of those Leaning Tower of Pisa triangles.
So, there they were, three people coming from different angles from acutely bent to obtuse. The first angle was a former ballet dancer who emoted with everything. Her movements were dramatic and choreographed, even when she helped herself to the honey roasted cashews. She would rise up on one bent leg, the other extended toward the coffee table, and with a graceful bob dip one hand swan-like into the silver dish, then curtsy back down to the divan. Her writing was infused with emotional color but no form, rather like a finger pressed to mute lips seen in a dream for which there is no explanation. The second angle was all sly mind games — ideas — which he perpetrated on the hostess mostly, and on those among us he felt were easily shocked (definitely not moi). His writing was about transvestites, and in reality he was outing himself, enjoying the delicious dawning horror in the faces of the inhibited ones in the group. But the third angle is the one I am writing about today — facts (things & events). He was a wonderfully researched, technically informed, fact-crammed writer who should have been in charge of all shop manuals from Taiwan. He also had a squeeze bottle of Neosynephrin (spelling — where is my pharmacist?) that he kept squirting up his nostrils. One of the hosts had a hearing aid whose ultrasonic mosquito note came clearly into range each time he turned it up. So it remains a very vivid memory for me, filled with eccentric mannerisms like the madcap Marx Brothers in “A Night at the Opera.” Of course, I was the straight arrow member of the group.
If there was a single moment when the fallacy of a perfect omniscient narrator sank in for me as a writer, that was it. But I’d like to make a distinction here between the kind of stylistic imperfection I’ve described and perfection as motivation. I worship perfection. It has always been my Grail. Without it as an ideal to pursue full speed my life would be dull and empty. The difference is in learning that communication has no rules. DragonBar reminds me of that.
“What?” you say. “No rules! Absurd. Of course it has rules!” Well… not really. Just the one. Communication must communicate. That’s the definition. Yes, I’m using a ton of rules (or trying to) to write this essay. But that’s my choice. Sometimes you have to strip away all the rules in order to appreciate how much freedom you have within the rules. You won’t find your voice on DragonBar, but you might find the breath of freedom and imagination you need to go looking for it.
Finally, last month I gave some misinformation in my newsletter which, for many people, is linked to this column. I mentioned that the gift of a nomination at The1000BestSpecialPeople.com expires after a year, and so I thanked a number of individuals for tributes and for boosts as the year drew to a close. Now Australian Grant Soosalu informs me that the site has gone free and thus the nomination will stay up there. Thank you one and all, in particular for the tributes and boosts posted since last month.
Your thoughts are welcome, your attention valued. If you’d like to see more of my writing, please check out a free sample chapter from THE WATER WOLF on my website. My free monthly newsletter is separate from this column and the mailing list is growing by leaps and bounds. I’ll be happy to send it to you if you email me at: mn333mn@earthlink.net Past newsletters are being archived at the website below, and the photos are now included!
Thomas “Sully” Sullivan
http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com/
