Category: writing about writing

Ode to the Paper in My Hands

Joseph Dante2 Comments

I had a pen pal from New Zealand when I was in the seventh grade, but I don’t really remember a thing about him. I figured I must have just treated the whole thing like another assignment for school. It’s funny how, looking back on that, I ended up going on to build so many relationships like that anyway – something I would’ve probably completely ignored before. Now, having friends that I’ve kept in contact with from all over (the U.K., Singapore, Australia, and yes, even New Zealand), it’s quite different. And it grew different quite fast.

I started writing notes to my friends in high school, even if we saw each other regularly. We wrote to each other when we didn’t have any work in class to do, or when we were bored. That was when I also started writing letters to these other friends across the sea. It’s even stranger now, how we’re always hooked up and stuck in the clouds, how the internet has become so entirely ubiquitous – we are always attached, but only just hovering. Only just glancing and skimming through. When you pull out of the stream for a while, you really do look forward to having a message on paper in your hands. You look forward to an earnest conversation. You sit down, gather your thoughts, write them down, and send them out. And you wait. You wait for a while too, and it seems like a century in comparison to all the comments, messages, tweets, and reblogs happening all at once.

It seems almost nostalgic, the letter-writing, even though it wasn’t long ago and despite the fact that I still do it. I still keep pen pals anyway (I’m writing to my friend Thea right now, from Wisconsin) even though it really could be instantaneous now – you really could just send an email. But I think there is something to be said about taking that time and waiting. Waiting a week or two in anticipation for a response, and having a quiet, intimate conversation develop in between the spaces. Especially now, in 2012, when you can feel so entirely detached and alone, despite all the fast-speed connections going on around you. It’s hard to really listen to anyone with all the noise.

The Best Thing of All

Joseph Dante2 Comments

I have a simple question for you: What is the best thing you’ve written?

I’ve been asked this before, but I always find myself unable to respond. Was it the short story I won an award for in college? Was it the first time I ever got paid? Was it the unfinished, self-indulgent fantasy novel I let my friends read in pieces on the bus ride home? Was it the children’s story I made out of construction paper for my mom when I was just a kid? Was it that even more macabre retelling of the Cinderella story? Was it a random personal journal entry that I wrote in a fit of angst late one night and never let anyone else see?

I’m never sure, and it doesn’t help that I’m always changing. It doesn’t help that I’m always reading and writing, and most of all: going back and revising. The books I like are always changing and the way I write is always changing. My creative writing teacher in high school called me a Romantic (not lower case, not the same thing! she says), a creative writing professor in college thought I was reading too much Virginia Woolf, another professor appreciated my newly discovered minimalism. I’m like a literary chameleon, and I’m always confused how anyone can find something they call a “voice.” I seem to be unable to settle into a style or a genre. I can’t get comfortable or cozy with what I’m working with. I want to write essays, journal entries, poetry, short stories, children’s books, adult fiction novels; I want to play around and laugh, but sometimes I want to unsettle and creep around; I like to dance around in tangents and I like to cut it straight down the middle. I never feel cohesive because each new opened document sits by itself and doesn’t want to have anything to do with the others. My issue has never really been the actual writing process, but just figuring out where to get started with all the sorting and rearranging I have to do.

Am I just a curious wanderer or am I really completely lost?

Maybe this question isn’t so simple if you write a lot, but I’ll still leave it out there. Or let’s rephrase it like this: Is there any particular piece that keeps coming back to you?

Online Personas and Fiction: PixelVixen707, UltraNeko

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Ever since I first started writing on the internet, I’ve had my name out there in some form. Not necessarily my full name and all my personal information, but simply my own perspective and who I am as an individual – I’ve always attached my own identity to the words. I’ve never seen the point in remaining completely anonymous or creating a separate fictional persona for myself.

But some people do these things all the time. I remember once coming across a story in which a blogger confessed to creating a female fictional persona for a freelance writing project that caused somewhat of a stir. The handle of his female character was PixelVixen707, and she was a video game critic. Her blog became somewhat popular and people grew quite attached to the character he wrote as. He gave this girl, Rachael Webster, a life of her own: an art therapist boyfriend who worked at an asylum, a home in New York, tattooes and purple hair. Her criticism was linked to other video game sites because it was often very insightful and intelligent. So, naturally, when the blogger revealed his true identity, many people were very angry that they had been writing to someone who wasn’t “real.” They felt duped because they had grown so attached to her presence.

I actually got to experience this feeling firsthand – though still a bit vicarious – through a similar situation. A few years ago, there was a video game blogger that went by the internet handle UltraNeko. She made weekly video reviews on Youtube, in which she played through a game for about an hour or so (edited down, obviously) and showed her reactions. Her personality and enthusiasm was pretty infectious (her show was actually called “Sadie’s Game Infection”). She often dressed up as characters, and even got to interview some really well-known voice actors. After a while though, she stopped. She suddenly told everyone she was on a hiatus. People waited for a long time, but she never returned. Many suspected she was pregnant during this time, and started spreading pretty malicious rumors about her. An internet troll created a Twitter and wrote as if it were her talking, often making very racist remarks and saying that she was really an actress that was just in it for the money. People were also upset because they had sent her donations and video games for her to review. Her Youtube was eventually shut down completely and no one heard from her again. No one had conclusive evidence for why she left and whether or not she was just a fabrication. Obviously, many people were upset by this. I know I was. But was I upset by the fact that Sadie may not have been “real” in a sense (if those particular rumors were true)? Not really. I guess I was more disappointed by the fact that I would no longer be able to watch her really entertaining reviews and playthroughs, even if they were partially fictional. I imagine I would have felt the same way if I had read PixelVixen707’s blog from the beginning and learned she wasn’t a person either.

Back in the Livejournal days, I remember there being a journal that was supposedly written by twins who were in love with each other. It told of their abuse and how they had to hide away their incestuous affair, and it became fairly popular. Although it seemed so obviously a fictional blog to me, people continued to follow along anyway and leave them comments, giving them advice whenever they needed it.

There are all kinds of motivations for creating these characters or for being an anonymous internet persona. You can be more bold, you can exaggerate, you can impress…and sometimes, you can even get paid for it too. You can be anyone – you’re only limited by your imagination, in this sense.

Despite having always been obsessed with fiction, I still haven’t tried this out. It’s pretty funny how I don’t feel the need to lie or fool around like this like others have. I suppose I’m still caught up with the extremely egotistical idea of owning my words and reminding people that I’m my own person with my own thoughts.

Sleeping Through Hurricanes: Daytime Dreamscapes

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When it comes to the dream life, I don’t remember anything at all. It’s never really been a part of my routine like it is for other people. When I sleep, I don’t move and I don’t wake until it’s morning. I’ve slept through hurricanes before.

I always think it would be a curse to be one of those people who always remembers what their unconscious stirs up every night. My mom used to have a recurring chase sequence in her dreams that drove her crazy for over a decade. I have a lot of friends like that too and I feel somewhat sorry for them. One of my friends seems to always dream about killing people in a really graphic fashion, which unsettles her quite a bit. When I sleep, I like having that absolute oblivion. I don’t want cracks of light and colors creeping in. Or murders and dismembered body parts, for that matter. I want to forget and I want sleep-death.

On the other hand, it could make for good storywriting. A lot of writers and artists have worked dreams directly into their style and aesthetics, and I really love when that happens. I love the effects surrealism can have, despite the fact that I wouldn’t know anything about it on this more personal level. I like how things suddenly become more figurative and how worlds have the potential to run parallel or bleed together.

In high school, we had to keep a dream journal for my creative writing class. I ended up having to make everything up simply because I could never remember my dreams. Sometimes, there were scraps or residual images, but never enough to assemble a story from. One of the stories I tried to turn into a dream was of an ancient temple (everything was grainy or sepia-toned, no colors) that I was desperately trying to navigate. It was like a labyrinth and I was completely lost, running and running until a flood eventually carried me away to the exit. Or maybe it wasn’t an exit and I actually drowned instead. That was the moment when I was supposed to wake up.

I wonder if it is possible to navigate that temple for myself again while asleep. I’ve heard of lucid dreaming and the possibility of taking control of the plot yourself, but I wouldn’t know anything about it. It seems like an art completely lost on me. I also read a study once that somehow found a positive correlation between daydreaming (thinking creatively and critically) a lot during the day and sleeping well (and dreamless) at night. So, I suppose, it broke people down into daydreamers and nightdreamers, travellers of the conscious and the unconscious.

Maybe I’m just one of those insufferable daydreamers whose waking life is enough like a dream–or navigated like a dream–that nightdreaming is seen as irrelevant or stale by comparison. Maybe the borders are too strongly sealed off and it can’t bleed through (sorry, Mr. Murakami) and my unconscious knows its place. It knows how I suddenly wouldn’t be the pilot (or the author) anymore and I’ll lose my grip quickly. But then again, most of my time seems to be spent on thinking about things like labyrinths and floods anyway.

Why I Write – Part Infinity

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I’ve written about this plenty of times before, but it’s continuous anyway. I keep coming up with more reasons to give myself. But I suppose that’s a good thing. You need that sometimes. 

Why I write:

To say something. It should be obvious, but you’re surprised by how much you have to remind yourself. You slap down words because there’s something stuck in between your ears: a character, a conversation, a concrete image of sorts. It’s the hard “k” sounds that push themselves in when you’re busy trying to listen to some other music. They cut into you like a thorn and you try to pull them out. It’s cacophony building its way up.

To pray. You don’t believe in a god anymore, but you can’t think of anything more close to the divine and the act of meditation than creating things yourself. It’s ritual, it’s demanding answers from the void. You were once a Catholic, but now you suppose you’re an artist. You wonder if people think you’re more damaged and more ashamed now, ironically, or more helpless.

To kill. You light up the bottle or pull the pin and throw it at the mustached kid’s car. Just like a fist. As the fire flickers, you remember: That one kid who wore his pants down low and asked about your sexual orientation every other day during high school. You kick the giraffe in the testes when he sees your destruction and he wilts like a pansy (you come up with this pun, just like that, and you actually say it to him on your way out).

To heal. You knock on her door and ask her to tell you about the car crash. She finally tells you about what he did, how he hit more than you suspected. How he was exciting, his car flying on the highway and the two of you without seatbelts holding you down, screaming at the night. But she was done. Rolling her eyes, she says she’s done. He was gone and gone for a while now, and she was going to be a phlebotomist. I’m not so squeamish anymore, she says, and apologizes. She’s missed you, and it’s her fault. She wrote to you first, unexpectedly, and that was why you were here. You’d been waiting.

To listen. Your mother tells you about her aunt who believed her husband came back as a cat. Your friend tells you about her first kiss on an airplane with a stranger who read Hemingway. You should be writing this down, she says, and you nod. Your professor tells you how your essay was perfect and she gasps when you tell her you won a short story contest. Everyone else tells you to become a psychologist because you know how to sit still and you remember the right things for them, in the right order. You entertain the idea, but you conclude that you’d rather write about people’s problems than actually deal with the people and the problems themselves.