writing camp 7/11 part 2: the lyric register & swofford's new one

writing camp 7/11 (cont.) from schedule: 3:00 pm WRITING IN THE LYRIC REGISTER: Raising Your Prose to New Heights Seminar with Steve Almond "In every narrative, there come moments when the prose must rise into the lyric register. These passages, marked by a compression of sensual and psychological detail, are the closest writers come to singing. Using the work of Frank O’Connor, Denis Johnson, C.K. Williams, and others, we’ll examine how the lyric register operates—and why your work should, in the crucial moments, aspire to song." This seminar was equal parts inspiring & depressing...as my manuscript was being workshopped the following day & I can be a little (?!?) too heavy on the "lyric" side of things when I write, during the entire seminar, Ikept asking myself...WAS it EARNED? anyway, here are my notes...Starting with a brief quote from the Iliad, Almond launched into his thesis that written story comes from oral story which comes from song. Writing in the lyric register wherein writing becomes "lyric - full-throated"...the lyric register - a cousin of Joyce's epiphanic moment although he posits that ephiphany involves realization whereas the lyric moment is one of revelation. [I could bore you all by quoting from my undergrad Sr Thesis on Joyce & the ephiphanic moment wherein I discuss both revelation and realization...but I won't]. Back to my notes from the seminar..."slow down where it hurts" "if you cannot move forward, you must move inward" "the lyric moment has to feel EARNED" "You can't just throw beautiful words at the page & hope to achieve truth OR beauty" [this is where I started to get really nervous about my own writing...ouch]..."the path to the truth runs through shame & involves self-revelation" "get rid of the unnecessary words"...Almond referenced a hand out with several excerpts (I'll add titles soon, promise)..."Shame & On the Hand" - euphony/internal rhymes - isolate a particular moment & do not stop" "using commas, etc. to create rhythm - not just finding the right word but figuring out the rhythm...""Green's 'Heart of the Matter'" and the art of "dwelling"..."Longfellow's Happy Accidents of language" "it doesn't try to give the 'correct' version"...Tim O'Brien's "The Things they Carried" & allusion to Isaiah...Frank O'Connor's "Guests of the Nation"[these are 2 of the excerpts included in the handouts]..."Mistakes: 1 - refuse to heed O'Connor & write slice of life stories - the stakes are not high enough; fail to recognize plot as the mechanism that forces the protaganist up against intensity - writers tend to bail out in peaks of emotion 2) lapsing into sentiment - emotion asserted by the author - failure of security - extra words - worry that the read isn't getting it" ... "risk sentimentality rather than striking a pose; write towards the moment of lyric intensity"...Borges "On Blindness" "the tragic mistake of cleverness"..."As you get better as a writer, your work looks worse & worse"..."point of view is the means to the end - 1st person immediately; close 3rd the same work" "2 Questions the reader asks: who do I care about [character], what do they care about? [character motivation]" "lyric register HAS to be earned - an organic effort - not asserted, not forced - you BETTER make sure you EARNED that moment"..."the precise descripton of something conventionally horrifying is beautiful" "beauty resides in your fidelity as writers" Almond is "not interested in ideas but emotions - the emotional fate of the characters"...and that's all I wrote before I headed off to do some reading & have a beer & feel thoroughly insecure about my own writing...I missed the 5:30 reading but thoroughly enjoyed the 8pm reading with Lee Montgomery, Anthony Swofford & Charles D'Ambrosio. Lee Montgomery read from her memoir (which I highly recommend!), D'Ambrosio read from "The Screenwriter" - an amazing piece in his latest collection & Swofford read from his novel, EXIT A, out in January of '07. Very good stuff & very much looking forward to reading the whole thing soon.