This week was tough to write this up. Illness has its way of coming in at the worst times, but alas, we have to make it through. The moments where the pain feels excruciating, draining all the energy out of you, is anything but fun. Nonetheless, if there is a will, there is a way. And writing has its way of sneaking in here.
There were roadblocks in figuring out the right words to say. Trying to force things out that weren’t coming naturally, but isn’t that why we write or express ourselves? Mary Karr voices this well in the last sentence of the 6 chapters I read:
“In short: How are you trying to appear? The author of a lasting memoir manages to power past the initial defenses, digging past the false self to where the truer one waits to tell the complicated story.” – pg. 102
Life is anything but easy. It has its ups and downs with events like acing a test or getting laid off from a job. The inflection points are what bring it to life. I don’t know about you, but if I read the same thing every day, I would snooze right out of there the second time around. What becomes redundant gets boring.
We all live in the same world, but we all see it in a new way, shape, or form. What one person may notice walking the streets, thinking about their hopes and dreams, is entirely different from another who is focused on simply buying the groceries! Karr uses the term carnality to express this, where it is our innate desires coming out to the world:
“Carnality aka what we focus on is unique per person. The attributes we notice can bring it to life. It is not going to be exactly how it played out, but the attributes that are true to us.” — pg. 78
Describing these experiences is what provides us with a new sense of appreciation for this beautiful gift we call life. To hear the splashes of the water or the willowing winds from someone else’s point of view moves us into a new realm of experiences. A realm of abundance with no boxes in sight:
“An excellent carnal writer fashions not a robot, but what feels like a breathing, tasting avatar and the reader can climb inside, thus wearing the writer’s hands and standing inside her shoes. The reader gets zipped into your skin.” – pg. 78
What if it doesn’t come out right? It may never be exact unless you have an exquisite picture-perfect memory. Do your best to express it because if it’s true to you, then it’s true to us too.
“The line between memory and fact is blurry, between interpretation and fact.” – pg. 87
So if I leave off with you for anything, it is to write regardless of who is looking or what is happening. To continue expressing yourself to the best of your ability because this moment is another dot in the grand scheme of the beauty we call life.
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Additional Book Quotes
5) Don’t Try This at Home: The Seductive, Narcissistic Count
“‘...I mean what would you do if you had to create Beauty? I’m afraid I’d start screaming, the most irksome forms of insects coming from my mouth. I’m afraid I’d come up with death.’ – Dean Young, ‘One Story’” – pg. 55
6) Sacred Carnality
“‘My holy of holies is the human body.’ – Anton Chekhov, May 1888” – pg. 71
“Getting sophisticated about carnal writing means selecting sensual data – items, odors, sounds – to recount details based particular in a way that argues for its truth.” – pg. 72
7) How to Choose Detail
“‘Literature differs from life in that life is amorphously full of detail, and rarely directs us toward it, whereas literature teaches us to notice. Literature makes us better noticers of life; we get to practice on life itself; which in turn makes us better readers of detail in literature; which in turn make us better readers for life.’ – James Wood, How Fiction Works” – pg. 79
“These concrete images made me trust my memory of the whole scene as mine, not just something I heard about. And the carnality of the burned tongue is something anybody who’s ever sipped scaling coffee can practically feel. There’s an intimate ‘truth’ that helps the reader enter the scene–small and particular.” – pg. 80
8) Hucksters, the Deluded, and Big Fat Liars
“‘I saw prophets tearing their false beards, I saw frauds joining sects of flagellants, executioners in sheep’s clothing, who fled the people’s wrath, playing shepherd’s pipes,’ – Zbigniew Herbert, ‘What I Saw’” – pg. 81
“What I’, guessing: many just shrugged past it, because we’ve all chosen to accept that the line between fiction and nonfiction is too subtle for us to discern.” – pg. 86
“Whoever believes the least wins, because he’ll never be found wrong.” – pg. 89
9) Interiority and Inner Enemy – Private Agonies Reade Deeper Than External Whammies
“‘It is a misfortune, in some senses: I feed too much on the inward sources; I live too much with the dead. My mind is something like the ghost of an ancient wandering about the world and trying mentally to construct it as it used to be, in spite of ruins and confusing changes. But I find it necessary to use the utmost caution about my eyesight.’ — George Elliot, Middlemarch.” – pg. 91
“The split self or inner conflict must manifest on the first pages and form the book’s thrust or through line–some journey toward the self’s overhaul by book’s end.” – pg. 92
“The memories I’ve gnawed on and rehearsed are the ones most key to what’s eating me up, and only those can help me to find a book’s shape.” – pg. 98
“In almost every literary memoir I know, it’s the internal struggle providing the engine for the tale.” – pg. 100
10) On Finding the Nature of Your Talent
“‘Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he cannot distinguish the truth within him or around him, and so loses respect for himself. And having no respect, he ceases to love.’ – Fyodor Dostoevsky” – pg. 101
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