wall to wall writing

Moss Wall by Olafur Eliasson

Just took a walk and saw a new house going up. There is no yard. I don’t exaggerate – nothing in the front, nothing in the back. The entire  lot is filled with house as close to the property lines as the law allows. Saw the same thing at a huge lot near UCLA. Got me to thinking about the idea of leaving room. In narrative, you need to leave room for the reader to imagine, to breath, sometimes to rest from the action. It’s part of why it’s necessary to vary the way you use language, sentence length and so on.

In his ongoing discussion of first lines, writer Aaron Gansky discusses compound-complex and run on sentences, including Dickens’ epic compound comma splice. There are points there to keep in mind for every sentence.

Beyond playing around with the sentence, it’s the way you present the action and characters and probably most essential, the manner in which you choose to narrate your story. If the narrator is overbearing and must tell the reader everything that’s going on, what is left for the reader to figure out? How can the reader possibly engage when there is nothing left to do? Give them a little space and your reader will do a lot of work for you. Use it to your advantage. Allow them the time and space to use their imaginations and they will love you for it. And love your book. Now get to work and write it.

 

the writing you do

see how industrious I look?

…as opposed to the writing you don’t. You will be commended on the writing you do, not the writing you intend to do. I knew a woman who claimed to be a writer because it was all inside her head. She never put it down on paper. Sorry, not a writer. A writer writes. Do you write for yourself or an audience? Why only write for yourself? True, it can help you attain clarity, getting your thoughts down on paper. But if you consider yourself a novelist or short story writer, definitionally you need to be writing, um… novels and short stories. Doesn’t matter what you intend to do. No one can see that.

Emerson wrote in his 1841 journal, “Yet if I am born to write a few good sentences or verses, those shall endure and my disgraces utterly perish out of memory.”

A friend died last week. He should have been around much longer, but sometimes that’s the way things go. Life is short, live big. Get the novel done because there are no guarantees as to how much time you have left to work. Say you are 38 and live to, oh, 75 (beating the world average by 8 years). 37 summers. You can adjust the math accordingly. Now, if you write a novel a year, that’s an impressive output, but most of us don’t do that and if we do, those books will probably not last, certainly not all of them. If you’re aspiring to the level of a Steinbeck, Twain, Faulkner, Dostoevsky (go big!), think about how many books they are remembered for – it’s just a few, 2 or 3. Say you write a book every 3 or 4 years = 10 books to write. If you are talented and very lucky, some will get published and one or two may last more than a generation. Suddenly seem more serious? Like your options are limited? Make the shift in your thinking that you have all the time in the world (you don’t) and get to work! Yes, now.

 

the citron review

I have a piece up at The Citron Review. Their Fall issue is primarily devoted to second person point of view.

 

sayings

It’s your writing: go deeper. Think about things. Don’t use the first metaphor or simile that comes to mind and don’t rely on them; use stronger, more precise nouns and verbs. Get past the surface of things.

Here’s something to consider. Look at two phrases that entered our consciousness with a kind of blind acceptance: ‘the road less traveled‘ and ‘dream things that never were and ask, why not?’

Critics seemed to have penetrated the noise to let us know that the phrase ’the road less traveled’ from Frost’s poem THE ROAD NOT TAKEN has been misunderstood for years. There are two readings of Frost’s poem, the literal and the ironic. Frost warned against the literal, calling it a ‘tricky poem.’ His point was that the roads are the same, supported by Frost’s 1925 letter. Read for yourself…

ROAD NOT TAKEN by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

According to William Pritchard, Frost intended the poem as a gentle jab at his great friend and fellow poet Edward Thomas, with whom he used to take walks through the forest (Thomas always complained at the end that they should have taken a different path). He was amused that the poem was taken as inspirational.

The next one is ‘some men dream things that never were and ask, ‘why not?’” Ted Kennedy? Bobby Kennedy? No, George Bernard Shaw. To dream and ask ‘why not’ can be great if you’re talking about space exploration or new inventions. The problem arises in not acknowledging that there’s both a light and dark side to these things, in accepting something just because it sounds nice or altruistic. In Shaw’s case, the dark side had to do with social engineering. He had a dream that ‘never was’ of a better world full of marvelous intelligent people. Even if you believe he was going overboard to make a point in his play Back to Methuselah (where Bobby got the line from the character of the Serpent), at a meeting of the Eugenics Education Society on March 3, 1910, he suggested the need to use a “lethal chamber” to solve the ‘problem’ of getting rid of ‘inferior’ people. Sound familiar?

The point of all of this is to consider what we tend to gloss over or take for granted. We too often give up really thinking about things, let alone thinking them through. To create something wonderful, begin by taking some time to question common assumptions, to look beyond the surface of notions that sound nice or make you feel good. There might be a story waiting for you.

 

remembering 9/11: Project 2,996

I’ve paid tribute to two men, both of whom died in the World Trade Center. At the beginning of Project 2,996, I paid tribute to Robert Halligan and through him, found his son, Rob, a musician, who sent me a note of thanks and now I keep up with him on Facebook. Rob is putting together his own project for the 10th anniversary next year of how musicians responded to 9/11. Last year, the tribute was for Ehtesham Raja, which I’ve reposted below Mr. Halligan. On a personal note, my mother’s birthday was September 11 and last year turned out to be her last birthday. I’m glad I posted early and went down to spend the day with her. Rest in peace, mom.

Robert Halligan

SHOPPING ACROSS THE POND

To a proud Englishman, America is a country of vexing insufficiencies. Its supermarkets know not of H.P. (House of Parliament) sauce and tins of steak and kidney pie. Marmite, sadly, remains a mystery.

Several times a year, London-born Robert Halligan, 59, a vice president at Aon, an insurance brokerage firm, would cross the pond to stock up on such indelicacies. He would cheer on his beloved Tottenham Hotspurs, visit his sprawling family, including five adult children, and drop by a specialty shop to add to the locomotive steam engine models he had been collecting since his trainspotting boyhood. Every weekend he brought the old country to his wife, Jerrie, and their son, Trevor, in Basking Ridge, N.J., by cooking a lard-loving British breakfast (sloppy bacon, fried bread, eggs splashed with grease) and Sunday lunch (roast, two vegetables, potatoes, Yorkshire pudding).

Yet for someone who clung to his British identity, Mr. Halligan flourished in America, where he moved with Jerri, his American wife. He gardened here, played golf and danced beautifully. He was a kind, solicitous grandfather of 10 with a knack for joke- telling. And here he celebrated the holiday he loved even more than Christmas: as a citizen of two countries, Robert Halligan adored Thanksgiving.
Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on November 15, 2001.
ROBERT HALLIGAN, LIKED THE SIMPLE THINGS

Despite his obvious success in life, Robert John Halligan of Basking Ridge was a very approachable person who always tried to make others feel comfortable around him, said former neighbor Robin Day.

“He was very down-to-earth and charming. He loved some of the simple things in life,” said Day, comparing Basking Ridge to Seven Oaks in Kent, the English village in which Mr. Halligan grew up. “It was more a cottage-type lifestyle.”

Mr. Halligan, 59, died Tuesday, Sept. 11, in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. A reinsurance broker for Aon Corp., he was at work on the 99th floor.

An avid tennis player, Mr. Halligan passed on his passion for the game to his son, Trevor, 20. Trevor became a well-known tennis player at Ridge High School, and also shared his father’s love of golf.

“He had an opportunity to play golf with his customers. This was one of the things he enjoyed about his job,” said a business colleague, Paul Napolitan of Pottersville.

Before he took the job with Aon, Mr. Halligan worked for Paul Napolitan Inc., first on Maiden Lane in Lower Manhattan, then at the World Trade Center. Napolitan has since retired.

But whatever Mr. Halligan’s abilities as a tennis player and golfer, Napolitan said, his passion was British football (soccer in this country). He especially liked Manchester United.

Born and raised near London, Mr. Halligan worked for many years as an insurance broker for Lloyds. At Aon and at Napolitan, Mr. Halligan worked in what is called reinsurance, meaning companies that insure other insurance companies.

A talented broker, he had a great affinity for the Spanish- speaking world, and although he didn’t speak Spanish, he did a lot of business in Puerto Rico, Napolitan said.

Mr. Halligan — he was always called Robert, never Bob — emigrated from Britain on July 4, 1980. He became an American citizen in 1996.

A memorial service will be held Friday at noon at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 140 S. Finley Ave., Basking Ridge.

The family has asked that contributions be made to the American Cancer Society, 600 First Ave., Raritan, N.J. 08869, in lieu of flowers.

Mr. Halligan also leaves his wife, Jerrie, who was working as a flight attendant for TWA when they met in the elevator at the Concorde Lafayette Hotel in Paris. They were married in 1980, one year to the day later.

Besides his wife and son Trevor, Mr. Halligan is survived by his mother, Brenda, who lives in England; children James, Robert, Lara, Emma and Sarah; his brothers and sister, David, Mary and William; and many grandchildren, nieces and nephews.

Profile by Patricia Turner published in THE STAR-LEDGER.

**************************

EDITED & REPOSTED: I’ve included all the obituaries I could find. Rest in peace, Mr. Raja.

Ehtesham U. Raja of Clifton, NJ was 28 years old when he died in the World Trade Center.

Stop and think about what we lost that day. His mother and brother are in Pakistan. No parent should have to see their child die, but it happens all too often. There’s no closure for such an event. If you are fortunate, you learn to bear it with the love of family and friends. There is a woman in Pakistan, a Muslim woman, who lives with the fact that her brilliant and successful son, so full of life and promise, was killed when a plane (full of terrified mothers, sons, uncles, bosses, etc facing their own death) was deliberately flown into the building where he’d gone for a meeting. Her son, Mr. Raja, made our country, our world, better. He did not have the chance to marry, to have children. She carries that grief all her days. We cannot forget. We lost solutions and inventions and novels and laughter and comfort and cures and films and businesses and solutions and bridges and music and future children that day. Mr. Raja made things better while he was here. We must not and will not forget.

He’d gone there for a conference and was in Windows on the World. He was a 1996 graduate of The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia. He had his MBA from Goizueta Business School at Emory. His last call was to his girlfriend.

Occupation: TCG Software http://www.tcg-software.com/About%20TCG%20Software.php

Location: World Trade Center

mother: Asmat Fatima

nickname: Shamu, from his friends in Pakistan

——-

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on November 14, 2001:

NO FAN OF FUNDAMENTALISM

Ehtesham Raja loved to party and loved his $70,000 BMW 740iL. He was a Muslim from Lahore, Pakistan, and worked for TCG Software in Bloomfield, N.J. Like many Muslims from India and Pakistan, Mr. Raja, 28, loved Hindi music. He sang it in the shower, and was also crazy about the Hindi movie star Amitabh Bachan.

His best friend in the United States was Maneesh Sagar, a Hindu from India. Mr. Raja talked about how some friends from Pakistan had become fundamentalists. “He hated how fundamentalism rears its ugly head,” Mr. Sagar said. “To all of us, religion is more a spiritual and personal thing than dogma.”

Recently, said Mr. Sagar, Mr. Raja was thinking of giving up partying and marrying his girlfriend, Christine Lamprecht, an American.

On the weekend before he was to attend a conference at the World Trade Center, he and Mr. Sagar went partying. They talked about their dreams, and at 5 a.m. ended up at an Indian restaurant for tea and tikkas, skewered lamb. “It was a guy’s night out,” Mr. Sagar said. And that’s how he would always remember his friend.
—–

FAVORITE STAR Amitabh Bachan http://bigb.bigadda.com/ blog, now the father-in-law to  Aishwarya Raihttp://www.aishwarya-rai.com/

His birthplace: Lahore, Pakistan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahore

His car: BMW 740iL

Comments from the 911 Memorial:

“He was very dedicated to his work, following up quickly and thoroughly, and I know that the dedication he demonstrated was apparent in all things that he took on.”

“worked at a start up in Connecticut – he was the best guy – encouraging everybody even in the worst hour!”

“My college years at Boston University were spent dashing back and forth from Boston to NYC on weekends only to go partying with Raja jee when he was an undergrad at Columbia…We explored New York City together…then LA.. then Vegas ..Hell even during High School at Aitchison we explored all of Lahore.”

“One time a famous movie star came to visit Aitchison she was beautiful… As we feasted our eyes suddenly Raja thanked me for being there to share that moment with him because he was of the view that any other person would be unable to understand the excitement that goes with seeing an attractive women. We being high school and then later college buddies had a strange bond and a level of understanding very rare in people of such different backgrounds. Raja was a big Sangeeta Bijlani fan and LaterRaveena Tandon….and from his days at Columbia i had to suffer through all his girl friends and later before making a decision to marry Katherine he had a lengthy discussion with me. Trying to recollect that discussion i realized, if anything, he was an embodiment of the true spirit of America… devoid of any racial inclinations…a true beliver in freedom of expression and militant proponent of a diverse and global world view. A master politician and a shrewd business mind…he would research his material to the minutest of detail and had an amazing ability to market his ideas and convince people.His was the death was a global citizen. A 22nd century mind struggling with 21st century problems.”

http://www.newsline.com.pk/NewsOct2001/cover7.htm:

The last to hear from Lahore-based Ehtesham Raja was his girlfriend. The 28-year-old financial analyst phoned her from the Windows on the World restaurant and said there had been “a bomb blast and that he had been thrown 10 feet.”  He said he was trying to get out.  He has not been heard from since.  Raja, a graduate of Columbia University did his A levels from Aitchison College, Lahore, before moving to the USA.  He  lived in New Jersey and had gone to the WTC  for a meeting that fateful day.  Raja’s family members have flown in from around the world in an effort to find him.  His parents  and younger brother  flew in from Lahore, his uncle from Canada.

They have trekked wearily across Manhattan looking for clues, any scrap of hope. His uncle Javed Rai says, “We have been to all the hospitals, the Red Cross and every New York City agency.  We have given in his  DNA sample. Hope is fading; it has been more than 12 days.”

Raja’s family says the Pakistani embassy has helped them a great deal but they have not been contacted by any Islamic organisation to date.  Raja’s grandmother who raised him is shattered.  The family prays for a miracle.

——–

FROM COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY:

http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2001/12/07/ehtesham-raja-seas-96

Ehtesham Raja, SEAS ’96

Published Sunday 30 November 2008 06:53pm EST.

Ehtesham Raja didn’t believe in planning ahead. A party animal at heart, Raja loved his car, a BMW 740iL; his girlfriend, Christine Lamprecht; and the excitement of New York. According to Shahab Alam, human resources head for TCG software in Bloomfield, N.J., where Raja had worked since February 2000, Raja believed only ”in laughing and smiling–[he believed] life just happened.”

In fact, the only pressing plans in Raja’s near future were to fully
devote himself to Lamprecht in the early half of 2002, finally giving
up his “male activity” to marry his love. With laughter Alam recalled
Raja as “a hell of a naughty guy.”

“He once got into trouble by asking two ladies to call him at the same time,” Alam said. “He loved that situation!” Raja’s freewheeling spirit often took comedic turns, which he shared with those around him in his normal good-natured, self-mocking way. His deft maneuvering after angering a girlfriend by calling her by the wrong name was the source of much office laughter. “He was that kind of guy,” chuckled Alam, “all over the place. [And he] loved
being in the company of women.”

Raja’s nature included and infused those around him. Often, after working late, Raja would pool together his coworkers for a late-night romp in the city. He loved to dance and stay out as late as humanly possible. He worked as hard as he played, though, and after such evenings would show up at work on time the next morning without a problem.

“Guys loved him for his competitive attitude and for the fact that he loved having people around him”, Alam said.

Raja, who did his engineering work at Columbia University and his management at Emory, loved playing cricket with his office buddies. Raja was the creator and captain of the cricket team while he attended Columbia.

He took pride in crafting his own identity as distinctly separate from religion. He was a self-proclaimed atheist who detested fundamentalism and was quick to dismiss conversation on it. “He felt it [religion] was useless, he wanted to maintain an identity that wasn’t tied to religion in any way.”

Raja was an original in the workplace as well, one of the architects of Internet banking. Before coming to TCG, Raja worked for IMG in Amsterdam, Bank 1 in Delaware, and a Connecticut company called Neweius.

He is survived by his mother and his brother, who are currently living in Pakistan.

——-

FROM EMORY:

http://goizuetamag.emory.edu/winter2002/portfolio1.html

Ehtesham Raja

“He was a very kind, caring, compassionate, loving, and intelligent person,” says his mother, Asmat Fatima. “He was respected and admired by those who knew him. His talent and sense of humor made him standout in any crowd. But it was his loving and caring attitude that always made me proud.”

Raja, born in Lahore, Pakistan, worked for TCG Software in Bloomfield, N.J. After graduating with a bachelor of science in industrial engineering from Columbia University in New York City, he worked as a security engineer at Citibank on Wall Street, then, according to his Goizueta Business School application, he returned to Pakistan to work for Citibank Lahore, take the GMAT, and apply to business school.

“He was in the best years of his life,” says Fatima. “Everything seems to be going in his favour. After years of dedication and hard work he finally achieved this status. He had all the plans to pursue his career in finance. He was full of hope for his future.”

Raja also enjoyed sports. He was a swimmer and played cricket, squash, soccer, tennis, and polo while at Columbia.

A memorial service was arranged by TCG Software. “They were proud to have him working for them,” his mother says.

“It is still very hard to believe that he is missing and lost forever,” she continues. “I have to be emotionally strong as Ehtesham has a younger brother, who is at a very impressionable age.

“[Ehtesham] knew life and lived life. His time was limited but in that time he touched so many people. . . . May peace be with him now and forever. He will stay in our hearts and memories forever.”

http://www.emory.edu/EMORY_MAGAZINE/winter2002/911.html:

EHTESHAM U. RAJA ’98MBA, an Oxford University-educated economist, had worked as an adviser to the Ministry of Commerce and Trade in Islamabad, Pakistan; a security engineer at Citibank on Wall Street; and a staff analyst for the city of New York before coming to Emory.

“I can assure you of a perfect score during my study at your prestigious university,” he wrote on his Goizueta Business School application.

Raja, twenty-eight, died September 11 while attending a conference at the World Trade Center. He was a Muslim from Lahore, Pakistan, but friends say he had embraced the American dream.

 

beauty

After considering that narcissism has no place in creating fiction, the question is, what does? That brings me to beauty. A friend has spent most of the summer in the hospital – details aren’t important – they need their privacy. However, among the visitors while I was there last week were a couple of lovely young women who sang the Beatles’ song, In My Life in harmony. We heard later that nearly everything on the floor stopped for those few minutes as people listened. Nurses, orderlies, other patients, visitors were taken out of their daily problems with those moments of beauty. I think we’ve largely lost sight of that in our art, music and literature. John Keats famously ended his Ode to a Grecian Urn with, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

But what happens when truth becomes relative?  Apparently Beauty as a consideration disappears, but we still yearn for it, search for it and appreciate it when it does appear. And by Beauty I don’t mean merely pretty. Real beauty is evocative. It allows you to see anew. It lingers. It is refreshing.

There are still writers working who use moments of beauty or lovely language in their writing. Denis Johnson comes to mind. For most writers (well, good writers) language itself is important and part of the craft is creating beautiful sentences, reiterating imagery and themes in various ways. Jesus’ Son is one of the best examples and it’s achieved by looking very closely and then not settling for the first cliche that comes to mind. Instead, “The jolt of fear burned all the red out of my blood.” or “Midwestern clouds like great grey brains…” (those are mammatus clouds in the thumbnail above) Stop and consider beauty, even (especially) that which is unconventional, and you might create images that stick with your reader.