The Welcome

The writer, Truman Capote, was allegedly once asked what he thought about Jack Kerouac's novel, On The Road. It was one of the first descriptions of the restless, rootless lives of "The Beat Generation" of post-World War II American youth. The book was a best seller.

Capote, the famous author of the book, In Cold Blood, was not very impressed with Kerouac's writing efforts. "That's not writing, that's typing!" Capote is said to have fumed after reading On The Road.

Blogging gives the writer the opportunity to speak directly to others by melding the convenience of technology with the possibility of art. You are able to convey your ideas rather faster than your peers of even six or seven years ago. At the breakfast table of modern writing computers have served us up instant oatmeal... easy to fix... just add water...or words.

Herein lies the first pitfall awaiting the impatient and/or the unwise. Kerouac, the failed athlete- turned seer of his generation was so focused on maintaining the "mood and the continuity of his writing that, because he only had a manual typewriter (go see one in the museum someday), he attached pieces of paper together like a scroll and fed the scrolls into the typewriter carriage. That way he didn't have to stop to change, organize and adjust each sheet. He could let the story flow. This served Jack well. He wrote a book. It made him famous. I wouldn't recommend it as a way to keep thoughts flowing, however. Most of us are not "stream of conciousness" writers who need to maintain the paper to think. Kerouac was a demon-haunted genius and it worked for him. Sadly, he died very young of alcohol-assisted illness.

We are enwrapped by modernity. Technologically we can create fast, edit even faster and hold up our products to acclaim or condemnation more swiftly than Mercury could deliver messages god to god. This is a good thing. No more sitting around waiting for the ink to dry on the papyrus. No more smudgy hands jimmying recalcatrant ribbons on stubborn machines. We push the buttons to pack our urges in neatly wrapped parcels called sentences. These we fashion into larger paragraphs and submit as stories. We are sometimes congratulated and too often feel we are, for our efforts, made fools.

Building is still building. Strive to welcome into your musings only those characters whose looks, moods, beliefs and actions move your story to its storm. Don't bandy about a dark stranger unless that stranger shall be, in your future, cast into the light. Design authenticity into your setting. Why have the salesman murdered in Venice when, not only have you not sat in a gondola as it has drifted under The Bridge of Sighs, but you don't even know what someone might sell in that sea-scoured place? Better your blade-hawking sales-victim be sucked under a grain thresher by an Iowa madman near where you might have summered in your youth. At least it might be more "interesting" piecing together the clues strewn about the place with an almost fan-like force!

In your plot-"know what you have got". Tie a mental string from start to finish. Follow the string. If it knots uncontrollably, retie it- adjust it- pull it taut. Better your plot be loosely directed than you risk scattering breadcrumbs before you so that you might get to the conclusion unlost. Flocks of doubt alight aound the aimless so numerous they will devour each crumb and crust and leave you to starve in literary purgatory... the "Wilderness of Round and Round". Trust me, every hour of every day they discover bodies loosely covered in poorly-marked plots, some of them so "decomposed" they are mercifully left to the Grim Delete Button.

Make the climax so that the climber arrives winded but not so winded that she or he cannot appreciate the view. Make the climb to the summit of your writing steep but straight. You can "twist" the climber but make each pitfall, false path and seemingly simple leap to conclusion one whose odds of survival are in the pocket of the reader. Don't insult the intellegence of the reader, even if you have proof positive that their ancestors never waded in any but the shallow end of the gene pool. "Then I woke up", or "It was a surprise party" are not only cop-out ways of ending a story, they are the stock of the stupid. Make someone throw up for well-painted passion and not into barnyard dreck.

If you didn't comprehend all of this or you suspect the writer to have taken a long walk off of a short pier, it is of little matter. Understand that, while many still debate Capote's view of Kerouac's "ode" to the outsiders of his generation, there is a not-so-subtle invitation in his disgust... for goodness sakes, write, don't type! Please. Jeff