Inspiration’s Muse

16 Wednesday Aug 2017

Posted by Jay Magidson in art, discovery, writing

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art, creativity, Inspiraton, Muse, Writing

Writing is a lonely sport. The cursor blinks menacingly on the empty background, angry photons burning trails onto doubt-filled retinas. What will appear is unknown, something between garbage and genius, or worse…nothing. When all seems lost, inspiration flutters down like a timorous butterfly. And like magic, writing begins, timid at first, then braver, growing into a furious boldness that seems uncontainable, unstoppable, but then finally peters out to a whisper. It is a type of alchemy, lead into gold and ultimately – sweet torture.

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“The Dream of Reason Creates Monsters” by Goya

Inspiration is Courageous

Where does inspiration come from, and with it – courage. What is brave about banging on a keyboard? Fear permeates the creative process, scratching roughshod into a reluctant spirit, stealing jewels from the claws of a sleeping dragon. It is not the fear of a known physical force, injury, pain or death; it is far worse. Physical wounds heal. It is the fear of having nothing to say, of having an empty soul. That is truly awful.

“The Empty Chair” by Eva Cellini

Creativity is a Job

I lost a dear friend recently. She was an artist. She inspired me to write, encouraged me when things seemed at their most difficult. “Touch it every day.” She would say. “No one knows where creativity lives. It is a job, and if you don’t show up, you cannot succeed. You must set the table if you expect your guests to arrive.” She was right, it is a job, the most difficult one possible. To be honest all the time, to never accept compromise, cowardice or timidity, to stare into blinding infinity and pull something from nothing. To never give up, knowing that there is no end to your journey.

“The Red Leaf” by Eva Cellini

The Muse is Selfish

The muses of creativity care nothing for our pain, discomfort or insecurities. They kick at our heads when we are sleeping, driving or eating dinner with friends. Like selfish children they demand our attention RIGHT NOW, not when it is convenient or expedient. Ignore them and they will dart away like frightened deer. Maybe they’ll come back in a day, a week, maybe never. Obey their cruel reason and be rewarded with something new, the blissful loss of time, but also with more insanity. Because the muses are insane, exquisitely beautiful crazies.

Science would have us believe we are bundles of chemical reactions, an accident of evolution that created consciousness. All that we call beauty is just a hormonal reaction to certain frequencies of light and sound. But that doesn’t explain Michelangelo, Shakespeare and Beethoven; where did they get their inspiration to bring such sublimity to the Earth. Science stumbles at the gates of art and we have to look beyond the mundane explanations of logic, through the iron bars of rationality into the swirling mist of creativity – where the muses dance.

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“Memories of Cornell’s Lost Muse”by Ingrid Dee Magidson

Inspiration is the Paint, We Are The Canvas

Polyhymnia, sacred muse of poetry, and her eight sisters live beyond the limited mind. They kiss our eyes when we sleep, pulling us into the soul-ripping abyss. They temp us with words, shapes and colors, impossible ideas that would make others scoff or shrug. Inspiration is their paint and we are their canvas. One only needs to step aside, lower one’s head in humility and accept their gifts. Gifts that must be passed on or fester like rotting fruit.

Through the Blackness of Fear – Origins of a Short Story

17 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by Jay Magidson in colors, fiction, Horror, ideas, writing

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black thoughts, colors by jay magidson, dreams, fears, ideas, inspiration

Colors by Jay Magidson

Sometimes an idea builds inside like a kind of spiritual pressure, threatening to overwhelm the holder, even consume him. This happened to me about ten years ago. I had been writing short stories over the past year. There was no thought to what they might be used for or why I was writing them, just when they came up, I would commit them to paper. It was only recently that I even understood their purpose, and their power in my life.

Each story had a single color as its title. The first was Gray, the Kafkaesque tale of a man lost in a featureless city. Another was Yellow, about an antique’s dealer consumed slowly each night by a dead cat representing his contradictory life.

The story that began to overwhelm me, I later called Black. It started as only a seed of a feeling, a bit of undefined anxiety. I would wake at night with a deep, unexplainable fear. Everything was going well in my life and I had no reason to feel this way. I pushed it aside, ignoring it as just general anxiety about life. But it grew stronger until it began to consume me, holding a kind of opaque fabric in front of my vision.

I lost quite a bit of sleep, lying there, desperately trying to push the horrible feelings away, running from this undefinable dark fog. Out of desperation on the third night, I got up, my stomach in a deeply clenched knot and sat in front of my computer and began to write. Without thinking about it, the words began to pour out of my fingers and instead of feeling relief and peace, the way I usually do when I sit down to write, the fear grew worse. I realized there was no way around this feeling, that the only way out, was through the blackness. I was terrified.

With a deep breath, I dove into the bleak feeling and for the first time, touched it. The best I can describe it, was like a kind of river flowing beneath the surface of my life, a river of unexplored pain. I dipped my hand into that river, touching its icy thickness. The fear and anxiety only grew worse, and I knew what I must do in that moment. I had to jump in.

The story began to flow like nothing else I had ever written before, nothing related to my life, as if I were a completely different person releasing this horrible and dark crime that had been eating at me, consuming me with guilt until I couldn’t bear it anymore.

The entire story came out that night, in one marathon sitting. And when I laid done the final period I was free. The fear had left me, replaced with a deep sense of gratitude and wonder at life. I had dove through that river of pain and had been cleansed by its fire, rising up on the other side a different, better person.

I’ve put the short story online here, if you would like to read it. It is surreal and personal, without any reference in my life. I read it now, still wondering where it can from, or why I wrote it, not really sure what it means. I only know that I had to write it, had to release it, or would have been consumed by it.

I think we misunderstand fear, shying away from it, avoiding the pain it represents. And when that suggests bodily injury, that’s probably wise, a mechanism for keeping us safe, built into our DNA. But there is another kind of fear, that which we need to embrace. It holds a deep kind of meaning on the other side of its invisible veil; we must leap the chasm with only our faith to keep us aloft. And on the other side is peace, growth, understanding, and maybe if we are lucky, a bit of wisdom.

When There was an East Berlin

24 Wednesday Jun 2015

Posted by Jay Magidson in books, colors, discovery, fiction, Science Fiction, writing

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Berlin, Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, Copenhagen, DDR, East Germany, Eurail, Soviet Union

The dark sky overhead threatens snow as I walk the nearly deserted streets. Ominous gray buildings with their unlit windows reflect the steely sky, glowering down at me. Out of nowhere, a lone man rushes by, I can’t see what he looks like, the collar of his long wool coat pulled up to hide his face. He moves close enough that I hear his accented whisper, “Go home, this place is not for you.”

That was winter 1980 in a city that no longer exists today. Well, it does exist, but not its name, East Berlin. This is the real story of how I found myself in a city surrounded by razor wire and land mines.

Copenhagen

I spent my final year of college in Copenhagen, Denmark, a fantastically beautiful city, full of charm and history. In between semesters, many of the foreign students traveled, bought ridiculously affordable Eurail passes and used them to go as far and as wide a possible during the two week break. I went with a friend to Germany, along the Rhine visiting castles and breweries. We parted ways to travel alone and increase the adventure. You meet people when you travel alone; you have to, or you go crazy. I learned quickly that language isn’t the biggest barrier to communication, fear is. I found that if you try to talk to someone, whether you know their language or not, you can communicate pretty well.

So somewhere in Western Germany at a youth hostel on my winter break, I decided to go to Berlin. Sounded good, why not. After World War II, Germany was divided into two countries, West Germany and the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik), or East Germany, as everyone outside of the country called it. They were still divided in 1980 and I wanted to see the scary half. West Germany was like the rest of Europe, easy travel, friendly people and they honored my Eurail passes. But East Germany was verboten, off limits, a Soviet state, unknown and tempting. So crazy 20 year-old me had to go.

By this point in my European travels, I had been to Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia, also Soviet block countries. I didn’t know it at the time, but I think I had a sense all of this would disappear in time, the separateness, the old countries held onto with the iron grip of the USSR. And I wanted to see it before it went away.

Berlin

Berlin, the giant decadent German metropolis, was also split into East and West, a city arbitrarily cut in half. The strange thing about this arrangement was that West Berlin being in the Eastern part of Germany was surrounded by East Germany, essentially an island in another country. So when I and my fellow travelers took the train from Western Germany to West Berlin, we traveled through miles and miles of East Germany. The train was like a space craft, rushing through the forbidden void, where we were allowed to breathe the air, look out the window, but nothing more.

The train stopped just before entering Berlin in a kind of special security station. The doors were not opened and no one was allowed off the train. Soon, black uniformed police officers and dogs (yes, German Shepherds) worked their way through the compartments, inspecting bags, lifting seats and pulling parts of the ceiling down looking for illegal and smuggled substances, drugs I assumed, since I didn’t speak any German.

After an hour or so of this unnerving experience, the train continued on to Berlin. It was about 4 in the afternoon, in late December, and like most of Central Europe in the winter, dreary and cold, but it wasn’t dark. Berlin was brilliantly lit and lively. That was a long time ago, but I assume it is even more so today. A big lively, energetic city in the middle of this other country. It was a strange feeling, like they were trying to make up for their oppressed brethren by being even livelier than they had to be. “Party like it’s 1999” and all that.

I didn’t have much money, so I stayed in some youth hostel or cheap hotel. The next day, I went to the American Embassy to get a visa to visit East Berlin, that’s why I came all this way after all. The young woman at the window asked me why I wanted to do that, did I have family, business, diplomatic interests? Nope, I just wanted to see it. “Are you sure?” She asked. “Yeah, I’m sure.” I replied, not at all sure. I gave them the $25 and got a huge colorful stamp in my passport that allowed me 24 hours in East Germany. “Be sure to be back before your visa expires.” She warned me. “What happens if I don’t make it in time?” I asked. “Just be back.” She said seriously.

Berlin Wall

Of course, I didn’t have a car and you can’t exactly hitch-hike across a mine field, so I walked. This part of my travels was worth the entire trip. Forget East Germany, Berlin, lights, and whatever was on the other side of that high cinder-block wall, just walking through a military check point will satisfy almost any travel junky.

If you are under 40 years old, you may have no idea what I’m talking about, but try to understand, West Berlin was big and exciting, tall buildings, music, food, beer, you know, a modern energetic city. And East Berlin was the complete opposite, gray and dark, no lights, low rise, oppressive Soviet style buildings and probably (just to torture the Germans) bad beer. Berlin is built on a slight hill, West Berlin was on the upper slope, so those in the Eastern half could see it, look up at all that shiny fun, they just couldn’t get there. That was just cruel.

Checkpoint Charlie

Friedrichstrasse or Checkpoint Charlie was one of the pathways from West to East. That’s what it was called before they pulled it all down and rejoined the two German halves back together in 1990. The two cities were divided by a tall, ugly cinder-block wall covered in graffiti on the eastern side. It was topped with razor wire and broken glass. After that, a wide, dead stretch of land filled with land mines ended in a tall chain-link fence, and also topped with razor wire, and you were on the western side of the city. Every 100 feet or so, a tower rose along the fence, each housed with soldiers armed with search lights and automatic rifles, and probably heavier weapons. Imagine guards in a prison tower and multiply that by 10. Checkpoint Charlie was the route through this dead zone. It was designed for vehicles, zigzagging, so you couldn’t force your way through. As I walked through this maze of soldiers and concrete, my visa and passport was checked three times. I was frisked, smelled by dogs, asked several times what my business in East Berlin was, and reluctantly allowed into the other side.

Checkpoint Charlie

Suddenly, and anti-climatically, I found myself in East Berlin with no plan, and no idea that my American passport with its current and legitimate visa was probably worth killing for. Only looking back now, do I realize how foolish and dangerous my actions had been. That scary wall and field of landmines was there for a reason, and people died regularly trying to cross it into West Berlin. But God protects children and stupid tourists.

East Berlin

They made me convert 100 of my precious US dollars into East German Marks. Two problems with that, 1) nothing to buy, and 2) you couldn’t take the currency out when you left. This was becoming an expensive trip for a poor college student. But I plunged on, there must be something to do here, it was a pretty big city after all. I walked into the bleak streets of East Berlin, heavy dark buildings greeted me on the wide boulevards, but there are no shops or restaurants, and more strange than that, no people. Everyone must be inside hiding from the KGB or something. I walked on, but the landscape didn’t change much and it was cold. No benches, no cafes or bookstores, no castles or even churches. This is where bad tourists go after they die, those who didn’t lead a good enough life to get into Paris. I looked back and there was West Berlin rising above on its hill, all lights and fun, and more importantly right now, food.A little bored, but not ready to give up, I walked on. That’s when the stranger passed me. “Go home, this place is not for you.” He said in a thick German accent, gone before I even understood what he had told me.

In that moment, I realized where I was and what danger I might be in. This stranger, too afraid to even slow down and talk to me, had warned me. It was like a scene out of a Cold War spy novel. I immediately turned around and walked back toward the transfer building, constantly looking over my shoulder, starting at shadows or any stray movement. An hour later, I arrived, relatively safe in the eastern check point building . There were lots of soldiers, and thankfully a diner. I spent as much of my play money on the food as I could. Unfortunately, it was as cheap as it was terrible. I gave up and went back through Check Point Charlie, somewhat disappointed and tired.

The thing about travel adventures is that they are always better in remembrance than at the time. I didn’t really give the experience much thought in my two days in Berlin, but only later when I saw myself standing in that empty bleak city with the gray sky. Everything about it was oppressive, as if it were designed to crush the spirit of all who lived there. I’ll never forget the feeling of that city, or the man’s voice who warned me.

Colors by Jay Magidson - Now Available in Print

Colors, the book

Prologue:

I told you this story so I could explain where ideas come from. This experience gave me the idea for a short story I titled, Gray, which I wrote 30 years later. While writing it, I hadn’t realized where I had seen the gray city or the steel sky of my story. But it had stayed in my consciousness, all those years, like a seed waiting patiently to germinate. That year, I wrote eight more short stories and combined them into a book called Colors. Only looking back now, as I write this, do I realize that all of it, the experience, the stories, even this essay is an attempt to understand and describe the feeling of East Berlin on that winter day, so long ago.

You Are Smarter Than You Think

24 Sunday May 2015

Posted by Jay Magidson in criticism, writing

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criticism, social media, Writing

Do you give more credit to strangers or critics than to yourself? How would anything ever get created if we let these self-chosen gatekeepers actually run everything? The truth is, nothing would be created. Critics are there as afterthoughts, telling us about movies, books or art they loved or hated. But they come only AFTER all the creative blood has been spilt.

Is our work being judged or thickness of our skin

When did we all become critics anyway? It is encouraged—no—required that we act as critics daily. Don’t believe me, post a video of a famous performer on Facebook. You’ll get dozens of comments ranging from how great the performer is, to how horrible they were to their ex. If you want to really torture yourself, put a political statement on social media. You’ll get loved and hated, complimented and slandered.

Why have we become so critical?

I don’t know why, but we have and it is not healthy for new ideas. It crushes the spirit of budding creativity. It you are working out a complicated or fragile idea and you put it online for comments, you might as well erase the thought from your mind or the file from your computer first. It will be crushed under the weight of petty commentary, and the reasons for their ire will be banal: “I liked the story, but the lead character has the same name as my ex-wife, so how could I like a story with my ex in it?” W.T.F.

There is such a thing as good and bad

Only time decides what is good or bad, what should be cherished and what should be discarded. But that is not the point, ideas need to be born, nurtured and matured before they are judged. If you believe in your story, flesh it out, work on it, polish it, rewrite it again and again, until it is the best you can make it. Then release it to the world. It is not yours anymore and if it flies, it flies and if it sinks, it sinks, but at least it exists. You gave birth to an idea and saw it through. This is a big deal and should be honored, not scoffed at, not ever. Creativity is such an important human endeavor, god-like in a way. We take an idea and bring it into reality, from nothing to something. Good or bad, you brought it to life. Dr. Frankenstein couldn’t do better.

If you hesitate to bring your ideas to life because you are afraid of criticism or ridicule, then remember to nurture them like babies, protecting them until they are old enough to go into the world on their own. Then let them go. Like our grown children, they will have to make it on their own someday. If your work gets judged and criticized, positive or negatively, put that aside. Who are these people, and why are they smarter than you? They probably aren’t actually. And if that’s true, then why do you care what they say.

Where Do Ideas Come From?

17 Sunday May 2015

Posted by Jay Magidson in ideas, writing

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dreams, goya, ideas, Writer's block, Writing

Granted, this is not new territory, but the question continues to get raised, by readers, and by writers looking for new story ideas. I can’t speak (write) for anyone else, so I’ll tell you how ideas sometimes come to me.

One place I go for ideas is that sweet spot between waking and sleeping. When I go to bed at night, I kind of play with that twilight zone before sleep, not quite awake, not quite asleep, seeing how wide I can stretch it. It is kind of like daydreaming, but much richer, crazier, none of the rules of reality get in the way. It’s like a kid asking, what if I could fly, or be invisible or jump inside of other people’s dreams? And I just let the ideas come, the wilder the better. Some I grab and tell myself. “I’m going to remember you.” Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t, but it doesn’t matter. It is far more important to keep the ideas flowing then destroy the process by getting up and writing something down. How pedestrian can you get?

Other ideas come from daydreaming. I daydream all the time. I doubt my family has any idea how much. Except maybe my daughter, she is a master daydreamer too. It is likely most writers and artists are great daydreamers. A cloud floats by and it reminds you of a clown, which makes you think of the circus, which makes you think of all of mankind locked in a freak show without knowing it. And on it goes.

Maybe you’re sitting at a restaurant and you overhear two people talking. “What a great baritone voice that man has.” You think he could be a radio personality with that voice, but maybe that is just a cover and you create some spy scenario in your head. OK, I know, most of life is not all that interesting, but add just a drop of untamed imagination and it is never boring. I have no idea what it’s like not to have an overactive imagination, telling oneself stories all the time, inventing characters and scenarios. People without wild imaginations probably get a lot more stuff done.

Ideas come from nowhere too, and those are the best ones of all. I get up early, before anyone else, when the house is quite and I can write, not feel guilty that I should be helping with the millions of things that need to get done when you have a family. Many times, I have a blank page and no starting place. I know I need a new chapter, but have absolutely no idea what is supposed to come next. I don’t agonize over it, I just write. It starts out as pure shit, but I don’t stop, because I know what’s going to happen if I just trust the process. And pretty soon, my fingers kind of disconnect from my brain, and out comes…stuff. Pretty good stuff, sometimes even great stuff. Then I hear a soft peep out of the critical part of my mind, “hey what’s that, where did that come from, that’s not you, you can’t write like that.” But I give him a good gagging and let the process continue. Maybe it lasts a few minutes, maybe a few hours. And damn if it isn’t pretty good.

Where did it come from? I have no idea. Call it the muses, call it intuition, the subconscious, long buried memories, call it God. What difference does it make, but by all means don’t stop it. That is the most creative a human being can be. And it is way cool!

Writer’s Block and Root Canals

07 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by Jay Magidson in books, fiction, writing

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Castaway, fiction, meditation, root canal, tom hanks, Writer's block, Writing

Lately I have been somewhat stymied by writer’s block. Not in all my writing, just with my fiction stuff. It happens sometimes and I don’t take it too seriously. I give it a break and work on other things. And when I’m back, I’m usually better for the time off.

A few days ago, I had a third surgery on the same tooth in three years. The patient refuses to get better or die quietly. So the Oral Surgeon is using heroic measures to save it. He is more tenacious than I would be. All I can think of is that scene in “Castaway” where Tom Hanks uses an ice-skate for his dental work. I should be grateful, right? Swollen cheek and a rack of stitches in my gum is pretty minor compared to that. But pain tends to focus the mind and good ideas are starting to come out again. I’m ready to write. Or more accurately, I am writing again.

Writer’s block is one of those strange events that happens to all writers, and in many forms. For me, it is not so much not being able to write at all. I’m always able to put words on paper, but the words that come out are trash and uninspired. I read back over what I’ve written and cringe. It just sucks. I’m not really sure if it is actually that bad. Maybe it’s just my perception of my own writing that sucks. Or I’m just being ultra-critical of my own work. Anyway, I don’t like it, and I can’t keep writing, so I stop. My real problem is that my objectivity is gone, my love of the work is on vacation.

I’ve learned not to push during these times, but also not to wait too long either. A week is a break, two weeks is an extended vacation with nagging guilt about piled up work, a month is a layoff delivered from an angry boss, and anything over a month is just self-pity. And nothing is as ugly as self-pity. Work is always the solution to unemployment.

Ever try meditation? It works wonders for anything involving self-fill-in-the-blank. The ideas tend to come when they’re not forced. Like playful kittens, run after them and you will never catch them, but dangle a string and they’ll grab on like the living Velcro strips that they are. Meditation is dangling the string. One’s goal is to stop thinking, to quiet the mind. Of course the mind hates that and starts laying out all kinds of goodies at the altar. Well, if you’re going to offer such treats, it would be rude not to taste a few. So pretty soon I’m writing again and everything is good.

As for the tooth, I’ve almost forgotten it’s there. Almost.

From Art to Author

01 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by Jay Magidson in books, fiction, Sartre, writing

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books, Bruegel, Falkner, fiction, Hugo, Kafka, Maugham, museums, on Writing, visual, Writing

I grew up with art, was surrounded by it, breathed it. My father is an art dealer, so our house became an annex for his San Francisco art gallery. At ten I took a book of Bruegel etchings from his bookshelf and began the laborious task of copying the images. If you are not familiar with Brueghel, his works are similar to Hieronymus Bosch, lots of strange little characters with animal heads and creepy figures crawling out of eggs. It is a child’s dream (nightmare) of strange creatures and imagination. I still love his work.

It was then that I decided to be an artist, to draw great works. Not painting, drawing, I loved the line and shading. So I continued copying other artists and kept it up until high school. By this time in my life I’d probably been to more museums and art galleries than all my classmates combined. But something inside fizzled. I didn’t want to be an artist anymore; the fire had burned itself out.

Don’t get me wrong, I still loved art, always will. It’s like a second blood supply for me. But the fire to create it had gone out. During this same period, I had been reading, reading a lot, fiction and science fiction mostly. There wasn’t really such a thing as young adult fiction at this time. There were just books that were a little easier for teenagers to read. I would find a writer that I liked, then consume every book he or she wrote. Clark, Asimov, Heinlein, H. G. Wells, Bradbury, Maugham, Golding, Salinger, and many more. I didn’t realize it at the time, but all those words sunk in, shaped my mind and eventually, my desire to create.

Strangely enough, I studied business in college. Oh it was tedious and awful as you would expect for an art lover. To make it bearable, I took lots of literature classes, Shakespeare, poetry – no business students in there. In my junior year, just as I was ready to drop out, I received a letter inviting me into the foreign exchange program. I grabbed it like a life-preserver to a drowning student, and spent my final year studying in Copenhagen, Denmark, then traveling around Europe. Wonderful experience, I recommend it to all students, drowning or not.

What a crazy thing life is, somehow everything comes around to be exactly what it was supposed to be from the beginning. After college, I followed in my father’s steps, becoming an art dealer and later a gallery owner. During this time, I wrote lots of things, mostly business related stuff, copy for ads and PR. Then I tried my hand at essays. I was invited by the editor of the Aspen Daily News to write a weekly column about art. I was given plenty of rope with which to hang myself.

I have never studied writing, had only a general idea about journalism. But why should that stop me. Unafraid, I just wrote about what I thought would be interesting. The articles were stupid sometimes, one was about art that had killed people (falling sculptures and poisonous paint), but sometimes it was very deep, a two part article about the Nazi plundering of artwork in Europe. I got plenty of good feedback, people liked my stories and I kept it up for about two years. Then the pressures of time and the demands of my art gallery forced me to quit.

But I didn’t stop writing. Fiction has always been my love. Sure, I love great science fiction, but my real love is 19th (and early 20th) Century literature, Dickens, Tolstoy, Melville, Falkner, Twain, Hugo, Kafka and dozens of other. It is difficult sometimes, paragraphs that span pages, descriptions that go into minute detail, but they are always rich with meaning and discovery. These giants could write. Great literature is the equivalent of seeing a great painting. That sigh that is released from your soul when you realize you are witnessing genius.

File:Ebcosette.jpg

So here I am, putting the two things together, art and writing. Sure, I could write about art, I still do that, but that is not really what I mean. Art has taught me how to see, how to imagine a scene, the characters, the situation unfolding in my mind. When I write, I literally see everything happening in the story and just describe it on paper. Many readers have commented how visual my writing is. I don’t see how it could be otherwise, that’s where it comes from.

Like I said earlier, life has a way of putting us on the path meant for us. I guess I should have gotten a degree in literature, studied writing, but it didn’t happen that way. I learned to write by reading (still do) and how to see by viewing and making art. Regrets are for the dead. This is how it is and I’m grateful I get to do what I love.

Even if it took a few extra decades…

The Writer and the Critic

29 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by Jay Magidson in books, fiction, Madness of the Muses, writing

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Charles Dickens, Critics, Goliath, madness of the muses, Oscar Wilde, Stephen King, Theodore Roosevelt, Writing

Too often, the critic stands on the shoulders of the artist. Perhaps it is set up that way. We write for years, then send our work to agents, publishers, critics, reviewers, contests, to judge our work, certain that they know if it’s good or not. Haven’t we, in a way placed their opinions above our own, made them smarter than ourselves? And when we read a bad review of our work, perhaps we take it hard. Why? What makes the critic so much smarter than the author?

Why should the artist be troubled by the shrill clamor of criticism? Why should those who cannot create take upon themselves to estimate the value of creative work? What can they know about it? If a man’s work is easy to understand, an explanation is unnecessary… And if his work is incomprehensible, an explanation is wicked.

-Oscar Wilde – The Critic as Artist

How necessary is this insatiable need to criticize anyway?

When buying a book on Amazon.com, I look to the reviews for guidance. Will it hold my attention, is it my taste? I’m not really looking for an in-depth critical review, I’m there to find out more about the story. Since I don’t have the book in my hands, I need a little more than the publisher’s fluff description. Right? Probably like you, I find many scathing critiques of the writer’s work. Even some of the classics get torn to shreds by so called critics. And why? What is the point of all these destructive reviews really? Isn’t it about the critic trying to sink his teeth into the writer’s neck while everyone looks on. “Yeah get him, pull him back into the mud with the rest of us.”

The bigger they are, the harder we want them to fall.

The best example of scathing critical reviews by anyone and everyone, surrounds the works of Stephen King. So many feel the need to bring this extremely popular writer down a notch. But frankly, I enjoy his writing and find him quite talented. There are some elements of his writing I don’t care for, but so what, he didn’t ask my opinion, and I don’t see what good it will do to offer them up. Reading is often done for education, but fiction is read for pleasure. At its best, it becomes literature and art; at its worst it is simply ignored, then forgotten.

Charles Dickens was wildly popular in his time, serializing his works and releasing them a chapter at a time in popular publications. We just take it for granted that he was always regarded as one of the great writers. But this was not entirely true. There were many critics who found fault in his writings and said so quite loudly. wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens Sorry to compare King to Dickens. I only make the point that criticism is nothing new for popular writers, that their skin must be as thick as an elephant’s hide to plow through the insults.

What of the rest of us trudging novelists? Do we take the criticism and crumble under its weight because the critics are so brilliant, or do we shrug it off, knowing that what we write is our small leap at the moon. The critic is only heard so long as he clings to the neck of his prey. You certainly know who Stephen King is, but how many of his critics can you name?

Here’s another quote to firm your spine should you find yourself bending against the gale force of the critic’s foul wind:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles…the credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who at his worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

– Theodore Roosevelt, 1910 speech at the Sorbonne, Paris

* These and many more inspiring quotes from Madness of the Muses, the Art of Ingrid Dee Magidson

Writing Your First Book

26 Saturday Oct 2013

Posted by Jay Magidson in books, fiction, Threshold of the Mind, writing

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Critics, fiction, New Books, on Writing, Threshold of the Mind, War of Art, Writing a Book

It took me 12 years to finish my first book, 3 years for the second one, 9 months for my third, 6 months for the fourth, and 3 months for the fifth. At this rate, I’ll be writing a new book every week, right. Not quite, but it does get easier and certainly more pleasurable. My first book, Threshold of the Mind (formerly In the Image of God) is my first book, even though it was published as my third. The first version was complete in about 8 years, after 3 complete rewrites. It weighed in at a whopping 200,000 words (approx. 700 paperback pages) and included every idea I had ever had about the future, politics, human relations, and yes, the kitchen sink. It was dense and rambling, not altogether bad, but not what I had hoped for.

I set the book down for about two years and beat myself up for being a hack. In the meantime I wrote newspaper and magazine articles, short stories and poetry, things I could complete in a few days. The opposite of a book.

But in the back of my mind, my book kept whispering to me, “I’m not done, rewrite me.” No way, not after close to a million words piled in a drawer, backed up on 42 floppy disks (remember those?). It seemed indulgent, the book that would never be done, just writing and writing, until one day it would be 27 volumes completed the day before my death. My children would shrug when they saw it, then stuff me and the volumes into a casket.

Finally, I woke up ready to face it. Enough time had passed. I promised to be objective and honest about it, throw it away if it was no good. I would approach it as if someone else had written it and needed my help editing it. I sat down and read it cover to cover, without a pen, thoroughly subduing the desire to cringe and make notes. I just read it like a reader would. Hey, it wasn’t so bad, really good in spots, but there were problems.

I spent the next 3 months outlining the book, one chapter at a time. Who were the characters, the scenes, the action, the place, the plot developments? I used a spreadsheet to see the book in a logical way. It was a good exercise, one I hope never to have to do again. It was pretty tedious work.

When this was complete, I realized many things about my book. It had: too many characters; things I loved, but didn’t make any sense to the reader; action that was exciting and well presented, but didn’t advance the plot; and other stuff that didn’t help the story. I kept the core and began rewriting…again. It took about nine months this time. I went through again and cleaned stuff up (another couple of months), but essentially it was done. It was half the size now, 102,000 words, (310 pages). And best of all, I loved it, not liked it, loved it. That was my first book.

When I finished this time and showed my wife, strutting and proud of myself. She said, “good for you, now go write another one.” She had just read The War of Art too.

After that it got easier, much easier. The whole idea of a book being this enormous project that could take years and millions of words was behind me. I did it, I finished the first marathon and my feet didn’t break off, I got stronger instead. One step at a time, as they say. And that’s exactly what a book is, one word at a time. Find an idea, a story that you love and start it; don’t worry about how long it will be, or how long it will take. Don’t worry about doing it the way the experts tell you to, or agonizing if you should have a detailed plot or outline before you start, or if you should know the ending before you begin. None of that matters. It only matters that you do it.

Here’s another bit of advice, don’t tell anyone anything about it until you’re done (at least the first full draft). Maybe don’t even tell them you’re writing a book. Just pull it out one day and say, “hey you want to read my book?” Enjoy the jaw-drop effect. Because if you share it too early, your friends or family, or whomever you show it to, will have all kinds of helpful advice about your plot or characters. Or they’ll tell you it sounds like someone else they read, or the lead character reminds them of their ex-wife (whom they hate) or some other idea freezing crap. They can’t help themselves, they mean well, but everyone is a critic. And you’ll stutter or stop, and your great idea won’t seem so great anymore. Undeveloped ideas are like snowflakes, very, very fragile.

Do We Over Emphasize the Value of Originality?

24 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by Jay Magidson in books, fiction, writing

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art writing, Cavemen, creativity, fiction, imagination, Originality, primitive art, Shakespeare, Writing

Artists, writers, all creative persons struggle with the question of originality. “Am I creating something unique, earth shattering?” And the chances are, you’re not. But is that really all that important? Consider what would happen if everything we did was unique, new, never seen before. It would likely be incomprehensible. Concepts are built on a foundation of past ideas.

The visual arts provide the simplest example. Primitive art eventually led to realism, which led to impressionism, which led to abstraction, which led to minimalism, which led to conceptualism. Obviously these movements have branched in hundreds of tangential directions too. But the point is, one needs a reference point to step to the next level. The abstract movement would have been completely unique in the 19th Century, but would have also been discarded out of hand. Why, because there was no foundation yet, it was too big a leap, it needed the smaller steps that got us there as a society to appreciate it.

We see this in many other forms, certainly in writing. How many ways can writers rearrange the several hundred thousand English words and still be unique. Though the number is large, it is not infinite. It is math, a finite number of words combine into a finite possible mix. Yet, experience and intuition tells us this is not true. We will not run out of new stories, new ideas. This is because we are continuing to pile slight variations on top of a very broad foundation – a foundation that can grow infinitely.

Not all that long ago, most believed the sun and stars rotated around the earth. Copernicus and Galileo proved otherwise. Now, without individual proof or experimentation, we all “know” that the earth rotates around the sun, that the earth is round, that the moon is made of rock and not cheese. A million little factoids like that. They are our foundation, our jumping off point of a platform that continues to broaden.

Consider technology. We take for granted that we can carry around a portable Television studio disguised as a phone in our pocket, that we can use it to speak to almost anyone in the world just by pressing a combination of numbers. My parents grew up before computers. They use them, but don’t quite have the easy understanding my generation does. My children grew up with small portable devices and apps. They have an ease with them I can’t match. Their foundation is larger than mine. They add to this broader base easier, not bogged down in trying to get their heads around what is now commonplace to them, but still new to me.

These incremental additions are tiny bits of originality. And they are very valuable both culturally and artistically. Our whole base of knowledge is expanding, because we are a society and not just a mass of individuals, we share information, pass it not only to each other, but forward to our children. And the larger the base, the more possibility for incremental original additions. Think of our foundation of knowledge as a city. Long ago, it was a tiny village, it grew into a town, then a city, now it is a teaming metropolis. We can add a window, a building, or just paint a wall, but there are increasingly more ways to add to and change it. And the larger the metropolis, the more possibilities for change, for originality.

Every once in a while, a brilliant man or woman adds something completely unique to the whole, people like Homer, Newton, Joan of Arc, da Vinci, Shakespeare, or Einstein. But the geniuses stand out, because they are so rare. Most of the originality we experience is not from these rare geniuses, but from small additions, the ones each of us contribute as microscopic bits of brilliance.

Jay Magidson – Author

~ Books by Jay Magidson

Category Archives: writing