“Dance….and for years later you’re dancing around your kitchen with a pint of milk in your hand. The windows are open wide, the neighbours are still awake, and they are watching you fall in love with being alive.” – Morsus Engel
Category: Article
Most important American novel of its time
Last night I stayed up till midnight watching Ron Howard’s 2015 movie ‘In the Heart of the Sea.’ based on Nathaniel Philbrick‘s non-fiction book of the same name, about the sinking of the American whaling ship Essex in 1820.
The movie starts with Herman Melville, author of the novel Moby Dick, considered one of the most important American novels of its time, meeting the sole survivor of the whaling ship to find out what truly happened. He then creates a masterpiece fiction work of 600 pages.
Contrary to Herman’s expectations, the book was not well received during his lifetime, having sold little over 3000 copies.
It was only when the book was reprinted, on his death, that it got rave reviews from Carl Van Doren and D. H. Lawrence.
I have a copy sitting on my bookshelf, which I didn’t have the courage to pick up and start reading. It’s sheer size intimidated me. But after the movie, I couldn’t wait to start it. I have already read two chapters. There are 133 more to go!
It is not an easy read for lazy readers. Herman has used many literary devices including Shakespearean language. But it is the first-person narrative of the fictional character Ishmael that gives the book the legendary status. Who can forget the all-time most famous first line, “Call me Ishmael.” and equally compelling first paragraph to follow.
“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.”
I am thoroughly enjoying it.
Have a linear goal…
I was going through one of my old journals when I found one of my favorite quotes:
“Then she understood that what she needed was the motion to a purpose, no matter how small or in what form, the sense of activity going step by step to some chosen end across a span of time. The work of cooking a meal was like a closed circle, completed and gone, leading nowhere.
But the work of building a path was a living sum so that no day was left to die behind her, but each day contained all those that preceded it, each day acquired its immortality on every succeeding tomorrow.
A circle, she thought, is the movement proper to physical nature, they say that there’s nothing but circular motion in the inanimate universe around us, but the straight line is the badge of man, the straight line of a geometrical abstraction that makes roads, rails and bridges, the straight line that cuts the curving aimlessness of nature by a purposeful motion from a start to an end.
The cooking of meals, she thought, is like the feeding of coal to an engine for the sake of a great run, but what would be the imbecile torture of coaling an engine that had no run to make?
It is not proper for man’s life to be a circle, she thought, or a string of circles dropping off like zeros behind him–man’s life must be a straight line of motion from goal to farther goal, each leading to the next and to a single growing sum, like a journey down the track of a railroad, from station to station…”
– Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged (Emphasis and line-breaks are mine.)
We all need linear goals in our lives to rise above the monotony of circular lives. That is the only way we have to show something at the end of the day.
Twenty years ago, I chose to write as my linear goal. It has not only kept me sane through the madness of the daily grind but also has given me a purpose in life.
Initially, I had little goals such as writing childhood memories, remembering those sounds, smells, and scenes from the past, and learning to describe them. Soon I started attending courses. The first one was a Life Story Writing course. An offshoot of that was a writing group that still has been meeting in my home for the past fifteen years.
I joined another writing group and practiced reading my writing to others.
Encouraged, in 2014, I joined a novel-writing course A Year of Novel at ACT Writer’s Centre. Five of the writers from there continued to meet after the course to continue working on our novels. We are still meeting and critiquing each other’s work.
In between, I won NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) twice, wrote several short stories, and started two blogs.
With writing as my linear goal, I am achieving little milestones just like Ayn Rand said in the below quote:
“[A] man’s life must be a straight line of motion from goal to farther goal, each leading to the next and to a single growing sum, like a journey down the track of a railroad, from station to station…”
Publishing a book doesn’t make you a writer
There is a misconception that all aspiring writers have. They are not willing to accept themselves as writers till they have published a book or an article or a short story. They are over the moon if their story wins an award because now they can call themselves a writer. There is proof now. Someone has published their story and given them an award.
But it is a fallacy.
You were a writer before your story got published. Weren’t you? You wrote the story first, then you sent it for publication.
And chances are you wrote a lot many stories before you sent one in a competition. I can bet my last dollar that you had written much more before you wrote those stories. A diary. A journal too maybe. Some poems. Occasional letters. You have written them and that makes you a writer. Then why don’t you call yourself a writer?
It comes down to acceptance. You are not willing to accept the value of your own work. You are looking for authentication from someone else. To give you permission to add the title of ‘writer’ in front of your name.
I have been writing for at least sixteen years now. It took me at least ten to call myself a writer in front of others. Like many aspiring writers, I failed to see that publishing a book doesn’t make you a writer. It makes you an author. And the two are separate terms. The writer is the one who writes, and the author is the one who publishes her writing. You become a writer first and then you become an author. So start calling yourself a writer. And when you publish your book, you can call yourself an author.
Use this philosophy to bury the critic inside you.
Focus on the ‘verb’ of writing and ‘noun’ will follow.
Write, and if you are writing, you are a writer.