Ilana's Journal Week 28: OULIPO Messes with the Head [ Edited ]

[IlanaSimons]

Ever heard of the OULIPO (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, or The Workshop of Potential Literature)? They’re a French coterie of writers and mathematicians who sponsor regular events in Paris and have a novel approach to creativity.

Their big idea is that the conscious mind is a retentive artist. The brain has trouble stretching outside of its known routines. Take an example: If you sit down to write a story about some subject like love or war or jealousy, you’re going to find yourself relying on some rather predictable plotlines, no matter how hard you tell yourself to think new. It’s fun to say “be original” but a harder task to do it well.

You see the same thing in dreams: I’ve often woken up from a dream frustrated with my waking head: Why aren’t I that witty or creative in person? In dreams, a lot of us become better artists.

In order to access the art you can do but you can’t quite force, this group of writers offers up writing exercises. These exercises are meant to derail overly conscious plotting or stylizing. In one, you’re supposed to write something without a certain letter. George Perec wrote his 300-page novel La Disparition without the letter “e.” Gilbert Adair translated the whole thing into English, calling it A Void. In another of Perec’s books, he uses a mathematical problem called the Knight's Tour to plan who meets whom in which scene.

There’s also the "N+7" method --a game in which a writer replaces every noun she’s written with the noun seven entries after it in a dictionary. "Call me Ishmael. Some years ago," from Moby Dick, can morph into "Call me islander. Some yeggs ago...."

Oulipeans don’t think “consciousness is bad.” But they do claim that creativity thrives on structure. That is, rules are strangely liberating, as one Oulipo member, Raymond Queneau, wrote: "The classical playwright who writes his tragedy observing a certain number of familiar rules is freer than the poet who writes that which comes into his head and who is the slave of other rules of which he is ignorant."

It’s silly to think we’re freest and most creative when left to our purely conscious and unrestricted thoughts. Sometimes, rules force us to focus or to say what we’d otherwise only say in our dreams.

Love
When I was about 22, I was frustrated with my own predictable thinking, and I fell in love with the only American-born Oulipo member, Harry Mathews. I had tripped across his books in some Miami bookstore, and didn’t know anything about the Oulipo. His books just seemed lively, odd, enigmatic, and intelligent--like a loving genius’s maze. The mathematical methods behind his prose are not at all obvious in the finished work; his novels just read like very seductive stories. That summer, I was Mathews-inspired and went to Paris, where he'd moved, to faux-stalk him for a month. I knew no French--just woke up every morning, tried to write an enigmatic novel, and took “hunting for Harry” walks in the afternoons. That was my own Oulipean strategy of sorts: I walked every day, not really trying to find Harry, but structuring a day. Without the strange structure I had imposed, the days might have had less punch.

What do you think the relationship between structure and creativity is? Have you ever read Harry Mathews or other Oulipo members, like Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec or Italo Calvino? Or: Do you know any artists who do neat things with structure to make themselves more creative than they’d otherwise be?

---

-Ilana
Check out my book.
Visit my Website, here.

Message Edited by IlanaSimons on 12-19-2007 05:15 PM

[KathyS]

This is strange. I've spent one hour, today, writing about my love affair with clay, then the next four hours formatting it into something so structured, resembling a 'real' love affair....no rhymes, just lines...... Gads....I read it and now I'm wondering where my mind went today! It's strange what the conscious does when structured, apposing the liberating subconscious---then consciously switch it back and forth. I looked at the clock, and wondered where my day went!

I've talked a lot about art, and it's always a topic of conversation when my fellow potters see me doing something they've never seen me do before. Most stick with what they know best. I love structure, I love balance, I love the black and whites.....for certain reason. It gives me something to relate to, when I go....off balance....and create in the abstract. I love the changes. I get bored easily with doing the same things, day in and day out. It's fun to change out of staying within the guidelines of rules. I love to challenge myself with edges that aren't there....taking the norm away.....like making a thumb rest on a mug! ....with funky stuff on it....nothing too crazy......but I've never done it before.

When I throw a large platter, or bowl, I've had people comment, after they've only seen me do crazy Toad Houses, or fountains.....or bookends. Anyway, it's fun to challenge clay, but I have to know the rules, first. Today I broke the rules, and messed with my head.

With writing, never taking a creative writing class (which I'm sure shows) - so as far as that goes, I'm on my own - and I really don't give a care what comes out of it. It's just fun to mind wander, challenge words.....and then rain it in when it goes too far.....or go back and forth, like I've done, today. I said I was breaking out, with Kermit's song ringing in my ears........"it's not easy being green........"

Message Edited by KathyS on 12-19-2007 04:21 PM

[Lathan]

I was thinking about Oulipo while reading Mark Z. Danielewski's experimental novel Only Revolutions. It's not Oulipo, but it's written in blank verse, and there is a constrained structure in the pages, word counts, fonts, and coloring. The novel features two perpetual teenagers who battle against the way the constrained structure tries to control the narrative. (Or at least this is how I saw it.)

"What do you think the relationship between structure and creativity is? Have you ever read Harry Mathews or other Oulipo members, like Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec or Italo Calvino? Or: Do you know any artists who do neat things with structure to make themselves more creative than they’d otherwise be?"

[KathyS]

I'm sorry, I really hadn't intended to post today, now taking up more space.....but something was unsettling me. After I had posted, I was still wondering what it was. I couldn't put my finger on it until this moment. Hence the P.S....I was too late to delete, or change my post.

I was thinking about the first things I had said/written on this board, about the creative process....how I couldn't write, and create visual art at the same time, not being able to separate the two, being at odds, fighting one another, taking up more space in my head then I could contain. I missed my piano.

The strangest thing is, it feels like another full circle I've come, not just here on your board, but in my mind. I'm ending where I began, but with a different perspective. I said this before, in that long story and list of books that brought me here. It's been a circle. I see something else in these new books - these new authors, and ideas, and stories you keep introducing me to; through your teaching, it has all given me something I hadn't expected.

In my private writing, today, I wrote about seeing things more clearly, which pertained to my love song for clay. Music is in everything I do. As of this moment, I'm actually feeling those words. Ilana, you've allowed me to allow myself that creative process to expand inside of me. I had thought I felt everything there was to feel, when creating art.

It's not that what I said in the beginning wasn't true, it was, for me at that period in my life. But I feel as if I've learned to incorporate the best of all of these worlds, being able to expand my own self imposed limits. The structures I set up for myself were limiting me. As I've said, I am a structured person, but I think that too much structure can stifle you, if holding them too ridged. I think this applies to people, and relationships, as well as the arts.

In my private world, I've written more than I ever have, and created more daring pieces in my art of pottery. It is an incredibly satisfying feeling, to learn this about myself, what I am capable of doing. Even during those moments of depression, you generously gave me your board as my giant writing tablet.

This outlet has allowed my mind to go into spaces I had never dreamed of. I've touched corners I never knew existed, because of you.
Ilana, you know this. I don't really have to tell you....
just thanks, for blowing up my brain, again.[smile]
Kathy

[IlanaSimons]

Nice. I don't know Danielewski--but I like the tension between content and form you describe there. His characters fight against their constraints--in being perpetual teenagers and in the blank verse they live in.

One guy who sometimes posts notes in this club, Jim Stallings, does something similar in his flash fiction. Jim showed us some of his work earlier this year--and as far as I remember, I was struck with one piece in which a character both fights against aging(?) and also against the form of the short prose work he lived in.

---

Lathan wrote:
I was thinking about Oulipo while reading Mark Z. Danielewski's experimental novel Only Revolutions. It's not Oulipo, but it's written in blank verse, and there is a constrained structure in the pages, word counts, fonts, and coloring. The novel features two perpetual teenagers who battle against the way the constrained structure tries to control the narrative. (Or at least this is how I saw it.)

"What do you think the relationship between structure and creativity is? Have you ever read Harry Mathews or other Oulipo members, like Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec or Italo Calvino? Or: Do you know any artists who do neat things with structure to make themselves more creative than they’d otherwise be?"

---

[IlanaSimons]

I hear you: Art feels good when we feel no restraint. That is, getting over initial fears or self-doubt helps us out in creation. I'm glad this space has sometimes let you feel free in expression.

I guess the Oulipians would add to that—saying that one good method for overcoming self-doubt is to put some structure into our creative projects. With structure, we can just focus on creation itself, rather than the feeling that "*I'm*" creating now. With a lot of structure (rhyme schemes, formal challenges with clay, etc.), we've got to put all of our energy into fulfilling the rules of the game, and so attention shifts away from the self, and toward the project. That sometimes helps us do what we didn't think we could do.

---

KathyS wrote:
I'm sorry, I really hadn't intended to post today, now taking up more space.....but something was unsettling me. After I had posted, I was still wondering what it was. I couldn't put my finger on it until this moment. Hence the P.S....I was too late to delete, or change my post.

I was thinking about the first things I had said/written on this board, about the creative process....how I couldn't write, and create visual art at the same time, not being able to separate the two, being at odds, fighting one another, taking up more space in my head then I could contain. I missed my piano.

The strangest thing is, it feels like another full circle I've come, not just here on your board, but in my mind. I'm ending where I began, but with a different perspective. I said this before, in that long story and list of books that brought me here. It's been a circle. I see something else in these new books - these new authors, and ideas, and stories you keep introducing me to; through your teaching, it has all given me something I hadn't expected.

In my private writing, today, I wrote about seeing things more clearly, which pertained to my love song for clay. Music is in everything I do. As of this moment, I'm actually feeling those words. Ilana, you've allowed me to allow myself that creative process to expand inside of me. I had thought I felt everything there was to feel, when creating art.

It's not that what I said in the beginning wasn't true, it was, for me at that period in my life. But I feel as if I've learned to incorporate the best of all of these worlds, being able to expand my own self imposed limits. The structures I set up for myself were limiting me. As I've said, I am a structured person, but I think that too much structure can stifle you, if holding them too ridged. I think this applies to people, and relationships, as well as the arts.

In my private world, I've written more than I ever have, and created more daring pieces in my art of pottery. It is an incredibly satisfying feeling, to learn this about myself, what I am capable of doing. Even during those moments of depression, you generously gave me your board as my giant writing tablet.

This outlet has allowed my mind to go into spaces I had never dreamed of. I've touched corners I never knew existed, because of you.
Ilana, you know this. I don't really have to tell you....
just thanks, for blowing up my brain, again.[smile]
Kathy

---

[KathyS]

A million times I've read what you've said. I always have trouble getting in and out of these nutshells. They encase me, and my thoughts. It sounds easy, this idea, when it's read like this, but it's not easy. I get myself into these blurry lines, trying to separate ideas, then trying to put them into hard concepts, then trying to incorporate them into a reality I can wrap my mind around. I know you draw me pictures, I just don't always absorb them well, because my mind bounces from one concept to another, until I have to sit on them!

When we talk of creating, there are a million and one things we can create. Not just writing, or the physical act of art making - It's the tangibles, versus the concepts. I create concepts when creating the tangibles. If that makes sense.

When we put [as you've said], "all of our energy into fulfilling the rules of the game", where does that leave room for freedom of expression? When I 'have to think' about the energy it takes for structure, or rules, somehow I loose the ability to express myself in a creative way. I know I've said I like structure, but once I know those boundaries/rules of structure, I feel the need to throw them away, or at least not consciously think about them when I 'physically' perform the act of creating. Maybe it's just a matter of knowing yourself well enough, and what you do so well, you've allowed yourself to feel comfortable leaving that structure. I never think about myself, or the rules, at those moments of creativity. If I did, I don't think true creativity could exist.

I'm not saying I don't step back, as I've mentioned before, and view the situation, the process, the visual as a whole, but I try to 'not' allow the outside world to come into that process. I stay in my mind (Maybe that is an unrealized structure). If concentration [or the freedom to be in that void], finds that process broken, these are the blurring factors, bring me back to the hard and fast lines I wanted to leave in the first place.

Anyway I look at it, or try to explain it to myself, or to you - or you to me, I'll probably never understand the process. I know the variables are incredibly enormous, for each individual, and eventually it becomes a personal action/reaction to structures of any kind. Now I'm back to the blurry lines!

---

IlanaSimons wrote:
I hear you: Art feels good when we feel no restraint. That is, getting over initial fears or self-doubt helps us out in creation. I'm glad this space has sometimes let you feel free in expression.

I guess the Oulipians would add to that—saying that one good method for overcoming self-doubt is to put some structure into our creative projects. With structure, we can just focus on creation itself, rather than the feeling that "*I'm*" creating now. With a lot of structure (rhyme schemes, formal challenges with clay, etc.), we've got to put all of our energy into fulfilling the rules of the game, and so attention shifts away from the self, and toward the project. That sometimes helps us do what we didn't think we could do.

[KathyS]

HELP!
Give me an ax to sharpen the blurry lines... OR A SHOVEL to help me dig my way out of this muck I've burried myself in! How do you spell the sounds of feet walking knee deep in mud? Plop, plop......Shhhloop...plop....Shhhhloooppp...squiiiiiish....plop.....huff, puff, shhhloop...plop....squiiiiish......hellllllp....SPLAT! oops

never mind...i'm out

Message Edited by KathyS on 12-21-2007 04:04 PM

[Fiction4Sale]

Hi Ilana, saw this interesting post about OULIPO. As a writer I take weekend breaks from the novels or other projects I'm writing. I make a habit not to talk about works in progress because it steals from the magic of its composition. But finished works, hey, I love having an opportunity to share. Thanks for mentioning my flash fiction. I have completed this fall a collection of flash fictions, an adult short fiction storybook, called as a working title, "Undisciplined Characters." It's not yet published. I'm looking for an agent for it but short story collections are a tough sale in the trade markets...just don't make the profits of novels, particulary genre novels. I write literary stuff, that breaks the genre rules, somewhat at least. I thought I'd publish here a sample from the flash fictions; it may be what I posted earlier. But indulge me because it relates to Zen mind composition, let's call it; you sit fresh in the morning, clear your mind and wait for an image, idea, form...word...whatever...then go with what ever arrives. Grab the image and follow it. For the past decade or so I've handwritten (using my left hand, I'm right handed normally) a spontaneous whatever each morning. In the beginning they were stories. The length of the story depended upon the size of the page of the notebook. The size of the notebook depended upon collecting notebooks given to me by friends who traveled abroad. (Frankly I hate traveling...tourist traveling...trains, planes, buses, cars...dirigibles...; much prefer getting to some place and staying there). Anyway I've had many different sized notebooks from around the world. I fill a page with improvisational writing and try to make a complete something given the space I encounter. The bigger notebooks have short stories usually, the smallest notebooks, little poems, like haiku. Over time the decade though, I first wrote five year or so of short stories, flash fictions, and gradually after more poems. In the last few years I wrote smaller and smaller poems...like the 17 syllable haiku. A selection of these haiku I just published this month, Dispatches from Tumbleweed. See my website http://www.jimstallings.com if you want to see the cover and summary of its content. Here's a sample of haiku: /the first three in the Dispatches narrative of 84 haiku/

Near la frontera,
Mexicans burn fallow fields,
Smoke signals fill sky.


We landed in X,
Lost leather luggage near Y,
Never got to Z.


Good sought evil's death,
River sand swallowed spilt blood,
At last none were safe.


Here's a sample story from Undisciplined Characters: flash fictions:

The Red Burrito


Tim Robbins and his agent, I didn't catch the name, were in the Red Burrito off Cienfuegos, and I was out of work, and Tim was having a lunch with Anton Chekov. It was that kind of tabloid hyper-realm, and you know, I'd met Tim and his wife, what's her name, you know, she was in Bull Durham...beautiful golden face, and Costner did her on the breakfast table, oh yeah, Susan Sarandon...and now she wasn't there--and I overheard Tim asking Anton if he had any new stuff since The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya...and Anton was "without my agent" and unwilling to discuss anything in detail...but there were several things still on the backburner...something about neurotics on a horse ranch in the San Berdo mountains...wow, then about that time Tim seemed to get pissed about something--"Say, isn't his agent the one in the Russian mafia?" Tim says to his agent...and the agent wags his finger and does a funky thing with his eyebrows...maybe he wasn't Tim's agent...just some production assistant, some remora from the studios ...and well Chekhov got an attitude, got his panties in a bunch, and there were some seething, hissed remarks back and forth--I did hear the word "butcher..." but god knows, they barely touched their food and shoved (wanted to doggie bag the untouched burritos & beans!)...I jumped at the chance to leverage.
"Hey Tim, buddy," I said on the sidewalk and introduced myself again. Tim gave me the look, bottom feeder, but liberal that he is, he took pity, towering above me. I asked about his wife--
"Bad day..." he grumbled. "Susan's got me in the doghouse for--never mind--and Chekhov--the big shot! These nineteenth century guys really take an attitude...they think we moderns are a bunch of overstressed lab rats..." He wrinkled his nose like a rodent, sniffing...and I cued in, and we began sniffing and snorting and making fun of our times--and Chekhov.
"Got a major stick up his ass," Tim laid it on; we kept laughing. "Ah, here's my car. Good luck in your acting...send your resume to my agent...wait...get an agent first--"
"Tim, I need work, real work. I'm hungry..."
He whipped out a fifty. "No, take it," he said. "Don't be proud and talk to Eduardo in there," he motioned to the Red Burrito. "Tell him I sent you..."
"Thanks, Tim," I said, disappointed, but hey, you take what you get...maybe Eduardo knew some people who knew...yeah...beggars aren't all losers...
In the kitchen of the Red Burrito, Eduardo demonstrated heating tortillas to a golden, flexible tan. "Not too hot, go hard, see...back and forth..." he showed off. I tried it and did a few proper flips.
"Hey, you learn fast," Eduardo said. "You're hired!"
"How much you pay?"
"Two dollars per hour, all you can eat."
"Two dollars! Jesus!"
I was on the sidewalk, rocking my heels outside the Red Burrito. Time to shake a leg...but wait a minute, isn't that Shakespeare in the corner booth greasing on Faye Dunaway? I know Faye...kinda...just wait out here for her and the Bard, yeah...


Thanks for letting me share my recent work. Happy holidays. jim

[IlanaSimons]

Thanks for checking in, Jim.
I love those two Oulipian-like methods: forcing yourself to write with the hand you don't normally use, and letting the shape of a page or notebook dictate the length of your work.

I think I'm going to try the write-with-the-other-hand method.
Tho these days I only type...

I once had a writing teacher who said it was good to write when you have a fever. It forces you to write differently than you usually do.

And: I utterly agree about travel.

---

Fiction4Sale wrote:
Hi Ilana, saw this interesting post about OULIPO. As a writer I take weekend breaks from the novels or other projects I'm writing. I make a habit not to talk about works in progress because it steals from the magic of its composition. But finished works, hey, I love having an opportunity to share. Thanks for mentioning my flash fiction. I have completed this fall a collection of flash fictions, an adult short fiction storybook, called as a working title, "Undisciplined Characters." It's not yet published. I'm looking for an agent for it but short story collections are a tough sale in the trade markets...just don't make the profits of novels, particulary genre novels. I write literary stuff, that breaks the genre rules, somewhat at least. I thought I'd publish here a sample from the flash fictions; it may be what I posted earlier. But indulge me because it relates to Zen mind composition, let's call it; you sit fresh in the morning, clear your mind and wait for an image, idea, form...word...whatever...then go with what ever arrives. Grab the image and follow it. For the past decade or so I've handwritten (using my left hand, I'm right handed normally) a spontaneous whatever each morning. In the beginning they were stories. The length of the story depended upon the size of the page of the notebook. The size of the notebook depended upon collecting notebooks given to me by friends who traveled abroad. (Frankly I hate traveling...tourist traveling...trains, planes, buses, cars...dirigibles...; much prefer getting to some place and staying there). Anyway I've had many different sized notebooks from around the world. I fill a page with improvisational writing and try to make a complete something given the space I encounter. The bigger notebooks have short stories usually, the smallest notebooks, little poems, like haiku. Over time the decade though, I first wrote five year or so of short stories, flash fictions, and gradually after more poems. In the last few years I wrote smaller and smaller poems...like the 17 syllable haiku. A selection of these haiku I just published this month, Dispatches from Tumbleweed. See my website http://www.jimstallings.com if you want to see the cover and summary of its content. Here's a sample of haiku: /the first three in the Dispatches narrative of 84 haiku/

Near la frontera,
Mexicans burn fallow fields,
Smoke signals fill sky.


We landed in X,
Lost leather luggage near Y,
Never got to Z.


Good sought evil's death,
River sand swallowed spilt blood,
At last none were safe.


Here's a sample story from Undisciplined Characters: flash fictions:

The Red Burrito


Tim Robbins and his agent, I didn't catch the name, were in the Red Burrito off Cienfuegos, and I was out of work, and Tim was having a lunch with Anton Chekov. It was that kind of tabloid hyper-realm, and you know, I'd met Tim and his wife, what's her name, you know, she was in Bull Durham...beautiful golden face, and Costner did her on the breakfast table, oh yeah, Susan Sarandon...and now she wasn't there--and I overheard Tim asking Anton if he had any new stuff since The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya...and Anton was "without my agent" and unwilling to discuss anything in detail...but there were several things still on the backburner...something about neurotics on a horse ranch in the San Berdo mountains...wow, then about that time Tim seemed to get pissed about something--"Say, isn't his agent the one in the Russian mafia?" Tim says to his agent...and the agent wags his finger and does a funky thing with his eyebrows...maybe he wasn't Tim's agent...just some production assistant, some remora from the studios ...and well Chekhov got an attitude, got his panties in a bunch, and there were some seething, hissed remarks back and forth--I did hear the word "butcher..." but god knows, they barely touched their food and shoved (wanted to doggie bag the untouched burritos & beans!)...I jumped at the chance to leverage.
"Hey Tim, buddy," I said on the sidewalk and introduced myself again. Tim gave me the look, bottom feeder, but liberal that he is, he took pity, towering above me. I asked about his wife--
"Bad day..." he grumbled. "Susan's got me in the doghouse for--never mind--and Chekhov--the big shot! These nineteenth century guys really take an attitude...they think we moderns are a bunch of overstressed lab rats..." He wrinkled his nose like a rodent, sniffing...and I cued in, and we began sniffing and snorting and making fun of our times--and Chekhov.
"Got a major stick up his ass," Tim laid it on; we kept laughing. "Ah, here's my car. Good luck in your acting...send your resume to my agent...wait...get an agent first--"
"Tim, I need work, real work. I'm hungry..."
He whipped out a fifty. "No, take it," he said. "Don't be proud and talk to Eduardo in there," he motioned to the Red Burrito. "Tell him I sent you..."
"Thanks, Tim," I said, disappointed, but hey, you take what you get...maybe Eduardo knew some people who knew...yeah...beggars aren't all losers...
In the kitchen of the Red Burrito, Eduardo demonstrated heating tortillas to a golden, flexible tan. "Not too hot, go hard, see...back and forth..." he showed off. I tried it and did a few proper flips.
"Hey, you learn fast," Eduardo said. "You're hired!"
"How much you pay?"
"Two dollars per hour, all you can eat."
"Two dollars! Jesus!"
I was on the sidewalk, rocking my heels outside the Red Burrito. Time to shake a leg...but wait a minute, isn't that Shakespeare in the corner booth greasing on Faye Dunaway? I know Faye...kinda...just wait out here for her and the Bard, yeah...


Thanks for letting me share my recent work. Happy holidays. jim

---

[KathyS]

Yeah, write when you're in a fog-of-a-fever, that always works for me. Be creative, try typing with only one hand.....or with gloves on....or....better yet, use your nose, or toes. That really pushes the hidden creative keyboard buttons! (just make sure your feet are washed, first, and your nose isn't running. Playing the piano with those digits...try it, the face makes great sounds on a keyboard....if you're drunk, then it doesn't hurt so much. You think I'm kidding?

---

IlanaSimons wrote:
Thanks for checking in, Jim.
I love those two Oulipian-like methods: forcing yourself to write with the hand you don't normally use, and letting the shape of a page or notebook dictate the length of your work.

I think I'm going to try the write-with-the-other-hand method.
Tho these days I only type...

I once had a writing teacher who said it was good to write when you have a fever. It forces you to write differently than you usually do.

And: I utterly agree about travel.

---

Fiction4Sale wrote:
Hi Ilana, saw this interesting post about OULIPO. As a writer I take weekend breaks from the novels or other projects I'm writing. I make a habit not to talk about works in progress because it steals from the magic of its composition. But finished works, hey, I love having an opportunity to share. Thanks for mentioning my flash fiction. I have completed this fall a collection of flash fictions, an adult short fiction storybook, called as a working title, "Undisciplined Characters." It's not yet published. I'm looking for an agent for it but short story collections are a tough sale in the trade markets...just don't make the profits of novels, particulary genre novels. I write literary stuff, that breaks the genre rules, somewhat at least. I thought I'd publish here a sample from the flash fictions; it may be what I posted earlier. But indulge me because it relates to Zen mind composition, let's call it; you sit fresh in the morning, clear your mind and wait for an image, idea, form...word...whatever...then go with what ever arrives. Grab the image and follow it. For the past decade or so I've handwritten (using my left hand, I'm right handed normally) a spontaneous whatever each morning. In the beginning they were stories. The length of the story depended upon the size of the page of the notebook. The size of the notebook depended upon collecting notebooks given to me by friends who traveled abroad. (Frankly I hate traveling...tourist traveling...trains, planes, buses, cars...dirigibles...; much prefer getting to some place and staying there). Anyway I've had many different sized notebooks from around the world. I fill a page with improvisational writing and try to make a complete something given the space I encounter. The bigger notebooks have short stories usually, the smallest notebooks, little poems, like haiku. Over time the decade though, I first wrote five year or so of short stories, flash fictions, and gradually after more poems. In the last few years I wrote smaller and smaller poems...like the 17 syllable haiku. A selection of these haiku I just published this month, Dispatches from Tumbleweed. See my website http://www.jimstallings.com if you want to see the cover and summary of its content. Here's a sample of haiku: /the first three in the Dispatches narrative of 84 haiku/

Near la frontera,
Mexicans burn fallow fields,
Smoke signals fill sky.


We landed in X,
Lost leather luggage near Y,
Never got to Z.


Good sought evil's death,
River sand swallowed spilt blood,
At last none were safe.


Here's a sample story from Undisciplined Characters: flash fictions:

The Red Burrito


Tim Robbins and his agent, I didn't catch the name, were in the Red Burrito off Cienfuegos, and I was out of work, and Tim was having a lunch with Anton Chekov. It was that kind of tabloid hyper-realm, and you know, I'd met Tim and his wife, what's her name, you know, she was in Bull Durham...beautiful golden face, and Costner did her on the breakfast table, oh yeah, Susan Sarandon...and now she wasn't there--and I overheard Tim asking Anton if he had any new stuff since The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya...and Anton was "without my agent" and unwilling to discuss anything in detail...but there were several things still on the backburner...something about neurotics on a horse ranch in the San Berdo mountains...wow, then about that time Tim seemed to get pissed about something--"Say, isn't his agent the one in the Russian mafia?" Tim says to his agent...and the agent wags his finger and does a funky thing with his eyebrows...maybe he wasn't Tim's agent...just some production assistant, some remora from the studios ...and well Chekhov got an attitude, got his panties in a bunch, and there were some seething, hissed remarks back and forth--I did hear the word "butcher..." but god knows, they barely touched their food and shoved (wanted to doggie bag the untouched burritos & beans!)...I jumped at the chance to leverage.
"Hey Tim, buddy," I said on the sidewalk and introduced myself again. Tim gave me the look, bottom feeder, but liberal that he is, he took pity, towering above me. I asked about his wife--
"Bad day..." he grumbled. "Susan's got me in the doghouse for--never mind--and Chekhov--the big shot! These nineteenth century guys really take an attitude...they think we moderns are a bunch of overstressed lab rats..." He wrinkled his nose like a rodent, sniffing...and I cued in, and we began sniffing and snorting and making fun of our times--and Chekhov.
"Got a major stick up his ass," Tim laid it on; we kept laughing. "Ah, here's my car. Good luck in your acting...send your resume to my agent...wait...get an agent first--"
"Tim, I need work, real work. I'm hungry..."
He whipped out a fifty. "No, take it," he said. "Don't be proud and talk to Eduardo in there," he motioned to the Red Burrito. "Tell him I sent you..."
"Thanks, Tim," I said, disappointed, but hey, you take what you get...maybe Eduardo knew some people who knew...yeah...beggars aren't all losers...
In the kitchen of the Red Burrito, Eduardo demonstrated heating tortillas to a golden, flexible tan. "Not too hot, go hard, see...back and forth..." he showed off. I tried it and did a few proper flips.
"Hey, you learn fast," Eduardo said. "You're hired!"
"How much you pay?"
"Two dollars per hour, all you can eat."
"Two dollars! Jesus!"
I was on the sidewalk, rocking my heels outside the Red Burrito. Time to shake a leg...but wait a minute, isn't that Shakespeare in the corner booth greasing on Faye Dunaway? I know Faye...kinda...just wait out here for her and the Bard, yeah...


Thanks for letting me share my recent work. Happy holidays. jim

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[KathyS]

Jim,
I'm LOVING Getting To Know You !
Third of the way through...can't put it down!

Later,
Kathy

[Fiction4Sale]

Ilana, on the left/right handwriting gambit...I was always fascinated watching lefties write or do anything, like play golf or tennis. By chance (?), I took a portrait drawing course years ago, sketching faces with charcoal sticks or soft pencil leads. I started out in formal education in mathematics and physics, a very left-brained person, but there was this "other side", the right side that felt left out in seeing "holographically." That is, seeing not the part but the whole. And again, just fooling around I started trying to sketch imaginary people without a subject before me. The first mark led to the next and so on until a face portrait evolved. Then I discovered that if I sketched imaginary people or "real people" with my left hand instead of my overworked right hand, the faces had a kind of extra quality that's hard to describe. But that extra something was an authentic-ness, a kind of personality that jumped from the lines, a curious kind of whole-ness was more easily there than the right handed faces. This was noted by the instructor and by other observers. I wish I had a way of demonstrating here in print but can't at this point. Take my "word-image" for it! For me, the left hand seemed to connect with the right side of the brain where images are seen or "felt" whole in 3-D(holographically); and thus, the rendering in lead or chalk lines and smears captured a more unique take of the person.

When I started writing a flash fiction each morning as a warm up exercise, for the pure joy of improvisation, I first started handwriting in the notebooks with my right hand; but things felt flat somewhat, almost dull and tired. So I switched to left-handed writing and once again...yes, the little stories had a new edge, a kind of full-ness in the round...and curiously enough, I kid you not, as I wrote left-handed I felt a kind of delicious feathery tickle in the right side of my head. That tickle still happens occasionally after a decade of writing left handed, but it was in the first year or so that it happened more regularly...in part I think because left handed writing required so much concentration to make the cursive hand readable. Finally, here's another curious thing that happened. My right handed cursive style is more or less like the standard school Palmer style (I think it's called); but the left handed cursive is a distinctly different, strong sharply driven hand, a cursive with a look about it when you stand back and disassociate from it...(like walking into the writing room and seeing a page or two of the cursive all at a glance and not remembering its "yours")...of being antique, like something written in the 18th or 19th centuries, perhaps with a quill and inkwell. Not a hand familiar with typewriters or keyboards or loopy modern cursive. Who or what is it? I don't question it as method given the extra definition and confidence expressed so easily. However, like you, I enjoy writing with both hands on the keyboard, touch typing, and that I taught myself after learning to play the piano. Who knows for sure? It's whatever for works for you and it's always great to play with the rules...the play is the thing. I know I'm running against the commercial tide of this blog/bb here but here's a link to a sampler of my flash fiction collection recently published online:
http://www.amazon.com/Undisciplined-Characters/dp/B000Y353WS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=11973198...

Best wishes to all, keep on scribbling...now and in '08...
Jim

[Fiction4Sale]

Kathy,
thanks for the book purchase and narrative reaction...I look forward to your full read's reaction. That novel was quite a scary experience to write. I'll share more when you're finished...but not the specifics of act three of course. Enjoy your trek to the Grand Canyon...happy new year.
Jim

[IlanaSimons]

More on the Left/Right thing:
It's true that when you use the left hand or nearly any left body part, you activate the right side of the brain, which is more attuned to images and emotion than the left side is (the left is more attuned to language). But the right side of the brain is also, in particular, more tuned into negative emotion than the left side is. So psychologists have done studies to show that when we smile with just the right side of our faces, we feel happier than when we smile with just the left. (try it. I can feel it...)
You can also put your hand over photos to see that the left side of the face generally expresses more intense emotion (fear especially) than the right side does.
they say that left handed people (me!) are emotional and often sad. alas!

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Fiction4Sale wrote:
Ilana, on the left/right handwriting gambit...I was always fascinated watching lefties write or do anything, like play golf or tennis. By chance (?), I took a portrait drawing course years ago, sketching faces with charcoal sticks or soft pencil leads. I started out in formal education in mathematics and physics, a very left-brained person, but there was this "other side", the right side that felt left out in seeing "holographically." That is, seeing not the part but the whole. And again, just fooling around I started trying to sketch imaginary people without a subject before me. The first mark led to the next and so on until a face portrait evolved. Then I discovered that if I sketched imaginary people or "real people" with my left hand instead of my overworked right hand, the faces had a kind of extra quality that's hard to describe. But that extra something was an authentic-ness, a kind of personality that jumped from the lines, a curious kind of whole-ness was more easily there than the right handed faces. This was noted by the instructor and by other observers. I wish I had a way of demonstrating here in print but can't at this point. Take my "word-image" for it! For me, the left hand seemed to connect with the right side of the brain where images are seen or "felt" whole in 3-D(holographically); and thus, the rendering in lead or chalk lines and smears captured a more unique take of the person.

When I started writing a flash fiction each morning as a warm up exercise, for the pure joy of improvisation, I first started handwriting in the notebooks with my right hand; but things felt flat somewhat, almost dull and tired. So I switched to left-handed writing and once again...yes, the little stories had a new edge, a kind of full-ness in the round...and curiously enough, I kid you not, as I wrote left-handed I felt a kind of delicious feathery tickle in the right side of my head. That tickle still happens occasionally after a decade of writing left handed, but it was in the first year or so that it happened more regularly...in part I think because left handed writing required so much concentration to make the cursive hand readable. Finally, here's another curious thing that happened. My right handed cursive style is more or less like the standard school Palmer style (I think it's called); but the left handed cursive is a distinctly different, strong sharply driven hand, a cursive with a look about it when you stand back and disassociate from it...(like walking into the writing room and seeing a page or two of the cursive all at a glance and not remembering its "yours")...of being antique, like something written in the 18th or 19th centuries, perhaps with a quill and inkwell. Not a hand familiar with typewriters or keyboards or loopy modern cursive. Who or what is it? I don't question it as method given the extra definition and confidence expressed so easily. However, like you, I enjoy writing with both hands on the keyboard, touch typing, and that I taught myself after learning to play the piano. Who knows for sure? It's whatever for works for you and it's always great to play with the rules...the play is the thing. I know I'm running against the commercial tide of this blog/bb here but here's a link to a sampler of my flash fiction collection recently published online:
http://www.amazon.com/Undisciplined-Characters/dp/B000Y353WS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=11973198...

Best wishes to all, keep on scribbling...now and in '08...
Jim

---

[KathyS]

This whole left hand-right/brain-hand discussion is interesting. I've studied it, but never really linked the personality/facial expressions, etc., into it much. Other than there are more left handed artists, than right. I see it all the time at school.

This made me think about my mother.... She was left-handed. I remember her telling me that when she was a child, she was in a convent for a period of time, and when the nuns caught her using her left hand to write, they would hit the back of her hand with a ruler, and make her write with her right hand. But as long as I'd known her, she wrote with her left hand. She didn't write with the usual 'upside down' penmanship, she wrote as a right hander would, under the words.... and had the most beautiful style of letters I've ever seen in my life. It was fascinating to watch her hand move across the page.

I don't know how her screwed up personality came into play, but her left hand was a constant topic of conversation...with her. You could never go out to dinner, without her bringing it up...she never could have anyone sit to her left....she felt like she was always going to be bumping into that person. She always made such a BIG deal of it...I mean, really, we all knew she was left-handed, we all knew the "rules of seating order"....but by the time we would all sat down....even the people in the restaurant knew! There's no one else in our family who is left-handed. I tried to write like my mother, but never could, just too unique. Now, when I write, I much prefer to print like my dad always did. It was always neat, and precise....Now my penmanship is sloppy, and it slows me down to have to think about being neat. Anal about penmanship?

Four years of typing in high school, and two in college - I much prefer to type. I wonder what that says about me? Let's blame it on my mother...much easier that way![She says, and smiles as she types.]

[KathyS]

Jim, haven't had time to read today...daughter and grandkids...doing the grandma thing, making pizza and baking cookies....now it's time to get back to your book. I'll give my "review" when I'm finished reading. And will look forward to hearing about your experiences while writing! Such interesting characters you write! And I love the dialogue...can't wait for the next 'foot-Day' to fall! I haven't figured out the plot yet - [Which is good], because I hate to figure them out too soon. It's captured me! I've been to the Grand Canyon, and it's always fun to be in a setting I've visited.
A mystery, for sure~

Happy New Year to you, too
Kathy

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Fiction4Sale wrote:
Kathy,
thanks for the book purchase and narrative reaction...I look forward to your full read's reaction. That novel was quite a scary experience to write. I'll share more when you're finished...but not the specifics of act three of course. Enjoy your trek to the Grand Canyon...happy new year.
Jim

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Message Edited by KathyS on 12-23-2007 06:32 PM

[IlanaSimons]

Interesting! Tonight I'm reading Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, in which there's a chapter on feminine narcissism--and it seems in tune with your description of your mother. De Beauvoir argues that women who feel left out from doing a lot with their lives (because men get to do all the big jobs) idealize their own body parts. That is: Because women already feel like mere objects in a man's world, they make the best of that situation by idealizing their own status as objects (idealizing their own bodies, their left hands, their necklines…).
Anyway: your post tells a great story.
well written...

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KathyS wrote:
This whole left hand-right/brain-hand discussion is interesting. I've studied it, but never really linked the personality/facial expressions, etc., into it much. Other than there are more left handed artists, than right. I see it all the time at school.

This made me think about my mother.... She was left-handed. I remember her telling me that when she was a child, she was in a convent for a period of time, and when the nuns caught her using her left hand to write, they would hit the back of her hand with a ruler, and make her write with her right hand. But as long as I'd known her, she wrote with her left hand. She didn't write with the usual 'upside down' penmanship, she wrote as a right hander would, under the words.... and had the most beautiful style of letters I've ever seen in my life. It was fascinating to watch her hand move across the page.

I don't know how her screwed up personality came into play, but her left hand was a constant topic of conversation...with her. You could never go out to dinner, without her bringing it up...she never could have anyone sit to her left....she felt like she was always going to be bumping into that person. She always made such a BIG deal of it...I mean, really, we all knew she was left-handed, we all knew the "rules of seating order"....but by the time we would all sat down....even the people in the restaurant knew! There's no one else in our family who is left-handed. I tried to write like my mother, but never could, just too unique. Now, when I write, I much prefer to print like my dad always did. It was always neat, and precise....Now my penmanship is sloppy, and it slows me down to have to think about being neat. Anal about penmanship?

Four years of typing in high school, and two in college - I much prefer to type. I wonder what that says about me? Let's blame it on my mother...much easier that way![She says, and smiles as she types.]

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Message Edited by IlanaSimons on 12-24-2007 08:00 AM

[KathyS]

It's a fascinating story, you've relayed. One I'd never seriously thought about. As far as what I've described to you, about my mother's left hand obsession, I simply chocked it up to having an obscene amount of attention being put on it as a child...a topic of focus and interest for my mother. Now that you've brought this to my attention, you've made me think further. My mother was a beautiful woman, and there were other things about her that was a center of focus, as well. The world [in her mind] was to revolve around her. She made it happen, because she knew how to control it. But when she lost that control

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IlanaSimons wrote:
Interesting! Tonight I'm reading Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, in which there's a chapter on feminine narcissism--and it seems in tune with your description of your mother. De Beauvoir argues that women who feel left out from doing a lot with their lives (because men get to do all the big jobs) idealize their own body parts. That is: Because women already feel like mere objects in a man's world, they make the best of that situation by idealizing their own status as objects (idealizing their own bodies, their left hands, their necklines…).
Anyway: your post tells a great story.
well written...

---

KathyS wrote:
This whole left hand-right/brain-hand discussion is interesting. I've studied it, but never really linked the personality/facial expressions, etc., into it much. Other than there are more left handed artists, than right. I see it all the time at school.

This made me think about my mother.... She was left-handed. I remember her telling me that when she was a child, she was in a convent for a period of time, and when the nuns caught her using her left hand to write, they would hit the back of her hand with a ruler, and make her write with her right hand. But as long as I'd known her, she wrote with her left hand. She didn't write with the usual 'upside down' penmanship, she wrote as a right hander would, under the words.... and had the most beautiful style of letters I've ever seen in my life. It was fascinating to watch her hand move across the page.

I don't know how her screwed up personality came into play, but her left hand was a constant topic of conversation...with her. You could never go out to dinner, without her bringing it up...she never could have anyone sit to her left....she felt like she was always going to be bumping into that person. She always made such a BIG deal of it...I mean, really, we all knew she was left-handed, we all knew the "rules of seating order"....but by the time we would all sat down....even the people in the restaurant knew! There's no one else in our family who is left-handed. I tried to write like my mother, but never could, just too unique. Now, when I write, I much prefer to print like my dad always did. It was always neat, and precise....Now my penmanship is sloppy, and it slows me down to have to think about being neat. Anal about penmanship?

Four years of typing in high school, and two in college - I much prefer to type. I wonder what that says about me? Let's blame it on my mother...much easier that way![She says, and smiles as she types.]

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Message Edited by IlanaSimons on 12-24-2007 08:00 AM

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[Everyman]

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IlanaSimons wrote:
More on the Left/Right thing:
It's true that when you use the left hand or nearly any left body part, you activate the right side of the brain, which is more attuned to images and emotion than the left side is (the left is more attuned to language).

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My wife, who is the principal of a small elementary school which specializes in brain-friendly teaching techniques and therefore has done a lot of reading in brain studies and keeps up with the research tells me that this theory as been mostly abandoned. It's much more complicated than the left brain-right brain theory postulated.