An Invitation

For those of you who haven't yet noticed, I've started a second blog, in which I am presenting a novelized version of my second stage-play, The Cliffs of Incognita. That play was premiered several years ago, and I am still proud of the production and the script. Nevertheless, for some time now I've wanted to do something more ambitious with it. I want more villainy. More politics. More enchantment in the place. More oaks. More moss. More epistemology. More grief and joy. More girlhood and boyhood. More questions. More butterflies. More logging. More of a eerie sense of parallel between the story's world and ours. In general more.

And so I am presenting The Cliffs of Incognita in a blog, creating it week by week in serialized form for as long as it takes to unfold what I hope will be the gorgeous mental silk of the story. I do this partly as a challenge in literary improvisation—a mental lark, a DIY dare—and partly too because I consider blogging to be as practical a means as any to force myself to move forward with an extended tale, and at a clip that takes into account my mortal nature! It's natural to be a little afraid of the larger project. It's a big, fat, and rocky something-to-climb and you look up and the whole unaccomplished thing looks down at you and says "ha, you?" You wonder how, page after page, you'll be able to keep up the quality. You worry for the integrity of the plot, which should be like a well-made dome; supporting itself from every testable spot. But the only way to see your way up to the view is to trust to your gifts and get to work and climb. And again, what better way to encourage the daily work of the literary ascent, than to publish your work piece by piece, and in a forum in which the whole argument all at once is neither expected, nor desired? A place where piecemeal improvisation and experimentation is almost the expectation. 

So. I think the blog's the ticket.

Vladimir Nabokov once compared literary drafts to sputum, and roundly condemned anyone who would show theirs around for observation. Hmm. That's a pretty strong opinion, one that's based on an image of writer-hood that I doubt was ever really embodied in any actual human being, even great VN himself. Here I mean the image of the indomitable and indefatigable craftsman, working in utter privacy, hunched at the desk. His many drafts snow him in. But the great salty snowplow of his mind plows on. 

I'm saying that the creation of literature actually happens much more socially than this, whether or not it feels that way to the writer. A writer may be responding to someone else's work (the Cliffs fits into this category.) Or maybe the writer has an argument with society at large—some injustice or evil to expose. Or maybe she sees something beautiful and holy and worth rejoicing in, and wants to hold that up for others to see and love and admire as well. Or maybe it's just the phenomenon of the world itself that fascinates or obsesses her, and she just has to get it all down dammit on paper. And the list goes on as lists tend to do, but in any case, none of this happens from one side. Nor by any means exclusively at the desk. I know I draft a lot of my work in discussion with friends and family, and in readerly conversation with my books. All of this is social. Changing. Relational. Inchoate. Provisional. Sputum-like, I suppose, if that's the way you have to think of it. Germy. Full of life's beginnings.  

Even when it comes to the actual written words, no writer can write at optimum quality without a sympathetic reader's eye as a guide. Again, even the great V. Nabokov—and he is truly great—had his canny and long-suffering wife Vera alongside him day after day, playing chess against him, driving him here and there to his butterfly-catching venues, and yes, critiquing his stories. 

Now of course with a extended project like The Cliffs, I expect that once the initial draft has been blogged to completion, all sorts of things are going to have to be taken apart, pieced together, and adjusted to get the whole machine to really fly. That's the breaks. That's the way the ball bounces. But none of this—none of it—means that a good writer, just like a good jazz musician, can't make something week after week, that's worth checking out. Fearless improvisation is the stuff of art. It's where the whole kit and kaboodle kicks off. It's how the game is played. 

All of which is to say that I can't promise a perfect Cliffs of Incognita the first time around. Only a fool would make a promise like that. I can, though, promise to make its creation an interesting ride, week after week, until a decent draft is done. 

So, if you haven't already checked it out, and you're willing to take the chance, please come over for a visit! The Cliffs of Incognita await you!

HB
(Next Post for 9-volt Nomad will be November 11)