{"id":9575,"date":"2020-08-24T10:30:55","date_gmt":"2020-08-24T17:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=9575"},"modified":"2020-08-24T10:31:02","modified_gmt":"2020-08-24T17:31:02","slug":"all-you-need-is-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/all-you-need-is-love\/","title":{"rendered":"All You Need Is Love"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Today\u2019s Guest Blogger, Lindsey Crittenden,<\/a> muses about fiction and decides to take a risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few weeks ago, early planning started for an upcoming fiction class during which I\u2019ll be giving a talk: What Is Fiction? Yes, it\u2019s a question both daunting and exhausted. Nothing I can say here that\u2019s particularly new. And I\u2019m wary of definitions that suggest fiction is any one thing. Escapism? Moral duty? Truer than truth? Totally amoral? A pack of lies? All of the above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the more I keep thinking, the more excited I get. Examples tumble out like toys from a cupboard, begging my attention\u2014and they surprise me. I\u2019ve taught fiction long enough to have the anthologized standards at the ready. You know, those classics with clear, dramatized change manifested in action or image: \u201cBarn Burning,\u201d \u201cAraby,\u201d \u201cRoman Fever,\u201d and, for a more contemporary example, a terrific Dagoberto Gilb story called \u201cUncle Rock<\/a>.\u201d Great examples, all. In most of those stories, there\u2019s a character you can easily identify with, a character you can readily see yourself as. But the stories clamoring for my attention right now fall into another category.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Denis Johnson\u2019s \u201cWork\u201d and Grace Paley\u2019s \u201cThe Little Girl\u201d; Flannery O\u2019Connor\u2019s \u201cEverything that Rises Must Converge\u201d and Tobias Wolff\u2019s \u201cBullet in the Brain\u201d feature liars and pimps and junkies and addicts, bigots and fools and snobs. People you\u2019d want nothing to do with, in situations you\u2019d pray to avoid. That\u2019s exactly what makes the stories particularly useful, I think, in looking at love. Love, not like.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many students who take the upcoming class are new to fiction writing, and to workshops.  Because of this, their reactions often touch on how much they like, or relate to, the characters and situations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe just didn\u2019t love Ed,\u201d an editor told a friend of mine, by way of passing on my friend\u2019s novel. Ed is a key character in the book, but not the main protagonist. He\u2019s a bit of a jerk\u2014self-absorbed, haughty, manipulative. Human, in other words. Flawed. Who among us isn\u2019t? Who among us doesn\u2019t love others who are? If love allows us to see the whole person, to glimpse the humanity in even the most despicable behavior, I can think of fewer better venues than fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, the insufferable book critic Anders, in \u201cBullet in the Brain,\u201d and the tiresome Grandmother from \u201cEverything That Rises Must Converge\u201d do undergo change. Or, in the word used by Aristotle, metanoia\u2014<\/em>the same Greek word used by the writers of the Christian gospels to signal repentance, turnaround. The book critic and the grandmother pay an enormous price, but their completion brings grace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a fiction writer, I struggle with the tension between narratively earned resolution (to borrow from workshop-speak) and credibility. Hearing a reader say, \u201cI just don\u2019t believe this would happen\u201d tells me something different than if she\u2019d said, \u201cI just don\u2019t believe he would do this.\u201d The second sends me back into the words, back into craft. The first sends me to a place beyond words, a place I don\u2019t like visiting, as much as I need to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few months ago, a writer friend spoke of spending a week in her office thinking. Not writing, not even making notes\u2014just thinking. I shuddered. I couldn\u2019t imagine doing that. I need to feel productive, to feel constructive\u2014and what better way than to keep tapping words on the keyboard? Stuck? Write some more! You\u2019ll write your way out of it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And often, I do. But other times I just create more words. My friend\u2019s experience got me thinking. What if I did just what she\u2019d spoken of? What if I sat in my office\u2014okay, maybe not all week, but for a few hours\u2014and didn\u2019t write a word? It would be like sitting with someone in silence\u2014not my favorite thing, either (unless I know the person very well). It would be like prayer, when I stop thinking and asking and worrying and start listening. It would be difficult and perhaps a bust. Or perhaps completely transformative. Or, most likely, something in the middle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I might consider an ugly act, or a tawdry thought. I would need to stay open to such possibility, suspend my oh-so-eager judgment, take a risk. The kind that takes my breath away. The kind of love that earns the word. This week, as I work on an unlikeable character in my fiction, as I try to make her a full person if not a commendable one, I decide to try.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lindsey Crittenden<\/a> is the author of\u00a0The View From Below: Stories\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0The Water Will Hold You,\u00a0<\/em>a memoir. Her essays have appeared in\u00a0Cimarron Review,\u00a0<\/em>the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>, the\u00a0New York Times, Best American Spiritual Writing, Real Simple,<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Image<\/em>. Lindsey\u2019s award-winning short fiction has been published in\u00a0Mississippi Review, Cimarron Review, Glimmer Train, Quarterly West,\u00a0<\/em>and elsewhere.\u00a0In November, 2019, her story \u201cThe Ruins\u201d was performed onstage by Word for Word Theater Company as a winner in the \u201cExactly!\u201d They Said celebration of California short fiction.\u00a0Lindsey lives in San Francisco and is a member of the Writers Grotto.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lindsey read “Ice Cube Moon<\/a>” at her recent Writers Forum <\/a>event. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amazon link to Lindsey\u2019s books<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Today\u2019s Guest Blogger, Lindsey Crittenden, muses about fiction and decides to take a risk. A few weeks ago, early planning started for an upcoming fiction class during which I\u2019ll be giving a talk: What Is Fiction? Yes, it\u2019s a question both daunting and exhausted. Nothing I can say here that\u2019s particularly new. And I\u2019m wary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[104],"tags":[1411,1410,1415,1414,1412,1413],"class_list":["post-9575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-bloggers","tag-dagoberto-gilb","tag-lindsey-crittenden","tag-the-view-from-below","tag-the-water-will-hold-you","tag-uncle-rock","tag-writing-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-2ur","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9575"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9585,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9575\/revisions\/9585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}