How Do YOU Tell Time?
Consider that you always tell stories, you create stories and share them whether or not you call yourself a “writer.”
Every moment you’re awake or dreaming – you have what some cultures call your “Monkey Mind” chattering and yammering, trying to make sense of and resolve every sensory detail you encounter. That little voice that has to find a “meaning” in every event. That voice that replays every moment you’ve just lived.
Accepting this idea, your practice to become a better storyteller: more observant, more able to shape and present your stories, better at communicating to create a specific effect in your listener – whether or not you sell your work -- that quest could give you a better life.
On an interesting side note, a recent study shows that advertisers and quick-cutting video editors might be exploiting the human need to watch and evaluate new events. According to this study, when we’re faced with something new, something that doesn’t “fit” in a series of preceding events, human beings must fixate on this new thing and watch it long enough to make sure it’s not a dangerous predator.
Imagine, some primitive human or animal suddenly seeing a tiger or space alien on the veldt where there are usually only zebras. Of course you’d snap to attention, alert and soaking up every detail so you’d know whether to fight, run or relax. In this same way, we use a zillion sensory details to evaluate each person we meet. Friendly versus hostile. Sexy versus not. Young versus old.
Knowing this, advertising can flash from one detail to the next, quickly. Or film editors can cut rapidly, image after image, knowing that viewers have to watch. That this instinct to evaluate the danger of something new, this will keep us watching a cascade of rapid-fire images for our own self protection. Even if the product is something we’d never buy, our instinctual mind is scrambling to catch up with the images and sounds that present the SUV or fast-food burger or exercise contraption as many ways as possible in 30 seconds.
So, consider that you have no option but to be a story teller. Through music or prose or video animation. That your mind has to make up stories in order to make sense out of the world around you. And consider that accepting that, building your skill as a storyteller might be your best way to function in the world.
Consider that – as a story teller – you use the events of your life; you’re aware of, and exploiting them, instead of letting those events exploit you. Consider that it’s the stories we can’t tell, that we haven’t the skills to make funny or entertaining, those stories we can’t share and exhaust, those stories are the secrets that usually kill us.
With this in mind, writing becomes something beyond just a hobby or vocation.
No matter how much you bury your real-life in fiction – you can never write anything that’s not some form of diary. It’s an old saying in art that “Everything is a self portrait.” I heard it from Tom Spanbauer, but he heard it somewhere else. Maybe Pablo Picasso. The source doesn’t matter. The sentiment does. Nothing you’ll take the time to conceive and execute isn’t some aspect of you. Your experience and your education, even your physical and mental abilities shape how you see the world. And therefore what you create.
You are doomed to painting self portraits and writing diaries -- the same way you’re doomed to that chattering “Monkey Mind,” that little voice in your head, always telling you what’s good or bad or fat or slow or lovely. Every novel (or picture or song) is really veiled memoir.
Perhaps the only escape from that little voice is to embrace it. Accept that you’re doomed to storytelling – in effect, experiencing your life and making stories out of it – and then use that impulse instead of letting it use you. In that way, the act of creating anything – a painting, an opera, a book or movie – overwhelms that annoying little voice by forcing it to do something productive. To build something. Something that can be explored and crafted, shared and exhausted.
To do that, the creative person has to be aware, always listening and evaluating the little “Monkey Mind” voice as it tells stories about the world. The creative person uses this increasing self awareness – how he or she reacts, why they judge, why they react emotionally – to write a report or diary or “novel” that exploits that annoying, never-ending little voice.
Again, the creative person stays self-aware and uses the “Monkey Mind” instead of being used by it.
Accept the idea that you’re always depicting yourself – some story of crisis or identity or survival – and use the practice of research and writing and presenting your “work” as a way to explore and exhaust your emotions related to issues you can’t resolve or tolerate.
This is another reason to read your work out loud. Actually speaking it will help you exhaust and vent -- in a productive way. The speaking will help turn that personal issue into a product crafted for an audience. Speaking will remove the story from you.
Embracing your need to tell stories, start to see it as a “craft.” Then, use this detachment as a route and permission to dig up your personal shit and make it into “art.” Again, by holding the issue at arms length, you can have more freedom and license to explore it – to make it funny or exciting or tragic. Plus, by crafting it into something larger than strict memoir, you turn your personal issue into a story that doesn’t exclude others. A bigger, fictionalized story lets other people see, explore and exhaust their own issues.
But the first step is to become self-aware. Watch yourself when you’re reacting, and notice what triggers your emotions. Figure out why you’re so attached to this trigger. And begin to turn all that unresolved emotion into a story you can share and exhaust.
Another important aspect of writing about personal issues, is the release, the continuing therapeutic “reward” you get just from the research and writing – that will keep you coming back to the work. You’ll be so much more invested in your writing projects. You’ll discover and accept so many hidden aspects of yourself that getting your work published and getting paid money for it will be beside the point.
The writing process will be the point.
Consider that, writing this way, using your un-shareable stories and personal shit to make a crafted “product,” then sharing and exhausting that product in a workshop, that will make writing fiction its own reward.
Now, for homework, ask yourself: “How do I tell time?”
Because you don’t use abstracts – hours, minutes, seconds – what do you use in everyday life to tell time?
Me, I usually section my morning by cups of coffee. Three cups equal one hour. My shower and shaving equals a half hour. My morning emails, about half an hour.
Watch yourself and take note of how you tell time. By tasks accomplished – I can write two letters in an hour. By the sun – when the bedroom curtains turn pale blue, then it’s time to get up. By entertainment – driving into town usually takes about three radio songs. Figure out how you tell time, then use this awareness to establish a different way for a character to tell time. Some method not your own, a method maybe unique to this character and no one else in the world.
Really, the same way you’re writing a diary when you’re writing a novel, when your characters describe time, what they’re really describing is themselves.
So, what does a half-hour mean to your character. A whole Sunday morning?
First, be aware and dissect your own perception. Then, invent a perception unique to a character.
If you’re up for a second homework assignment, please look back over the topics discussed this past year – establishing authority, hiding a gun, avoiding ‘thought’ verbs, writing on-the-body, Big voice vs. Little voice, etc. – and use the mid-month Q & A to ask about aspects of those previous topics.
I mentioned the following in the November questions, but I’ll repeat it here.
The edited first-draft manuscript of Fight Club is up for bids this month. I’ve donated it to a charity auction that will benefit a local domestic violence shelter. The auction is being conducted on-line by the Portland weekly newspaper, the Portland Mercury, and you can bid by going to the portlandmercury.com website and linking to eBay, or by searching eBay, itself.
The auction item includes the original manuscript, line-edited by my editor, Gerald Howard at W.W. Norton. The story itself is different from the finished book: among other things, in this early draft Marla Singer actually comes to live in the Paper Street house, and the police chief DOES get castrated. Included with the edited manuscript are Gerry’s long, detailed cover letter to me, and my letter in response to his edits. And pages of hand-written notes that led to the next rewrite.
I have some regrets about giving up the manuscript, but the auction is for a good cause.
For the rest of this month – and some of next – I’ll be responding to the letters sent in November. To date, only three are problems. None had their return address on the letter, and the envelopes are lost. I’ve got responses ready and would like to send them, but can’t until I get an address.
The letters are from:
Cory Kendrick
Dan Donche
And, Levi Teal
If they can write me again, soon, I’ll get their packages in the mail.
Thanks to everybody who yakked with me via the Barnes and Noble book club message boards. I’d never done this kind of back-and-forth messaging, and it turned out to be fun. There’s already talk about doing the book club, again, for the book Haunted next June.
It’s exciting and inspiring to read all the goals that people have committed to in their letters. Now, it’s time to get into action, keeping sharing those goals with people, but start the task-by-task process of getting things done. This year’s mail is a challenge, but please give me the time I need to answer it the way I enjoy. By over-doing it. God forbid this chunk of my life gets turned into another boring “job.”
Most folks should see an answer by Christmas – that’s my BIG goal – but some won’t hear back until early January.
As always, thank you for reading my work.
About the author
Chuck Palahniuk is author of the novels Fight Club, Survivor, Invisible Monsters, Choke, Lullaby, Diary, Haunted, Rant, Snuff, Pygmy, Tell-All, Damned, Doomed, and the upcoming Beautiful You. He also has two non-fiction books, the Portland travel memoir Fugitives & Refugees and the collection of true stories, essays, and interviews, Stranger Than Fiction.
