When it comes to similes...

Jones, aren't you contradicting yourself here?
You did have to think about it to get to the third option. Some of the metaphors/similes that have gotten the best reaction from my editors were things I gave considerable thought to, and some have been those that just flew off the tips of my fingers.

 

Twoback---the 'don't think about it' option really applies to the occasions when you're pacing around the house cramming Oreos in your mouth and muttering....The night was dark...as dark as the...ummm...dark as the inside of a refrigerator when the door is closed...although how do you know how dark it really is in there unless you've been in there....okay....it was dark...so so dark....dark dark dark....dark as the eyes of that girl on the subway you wanted to say hello to but then it was her stop and she was gone...I don't know, the subway really isn't very dark, might give the wrong mood....MAN, it was dark, I mean freakin dark!! Darkness like only a blind man could know! I mean, how dark is that?!

Way too hard. But there are plenty of times you have the image right there...you're so close....you jostle it around, flip it over....and it pops just right. A ten second pause.

Or, I'll write through it....'It was dark (as what?), and blah blah.... And fix it later. If it's still not there, sometimes you just have to let it be dark, period.

 

Great piece of advice my man.

 

Don't go overboard with them.


Poetry, eh? Good advice.

 

I agree with that, about putting it in and fixing it later. I do that all the time. I might go with one I don't think is just right, figuring I'll fix it later. Sometimes I come back and make it better. Sometimes I come back and decide what's there isn't so bad.

 

Sometimes the advice here is so damn good, I feel like I should be paying for it. Thank you sirs and madame.

I do, however, think that it's easier to say "If you have to think about it too much, it's not working" than it is to do. Seems to me the key is to make it seem effortless, even if it's not, yes? I remember reading once that Tim O'Brien spent a year rewriting a single sentence. (Mr. O'Brien, I'm confident, had some other issues going on, but still.) If it really is supposed to just come to you like a lightning strike, all the time, boy am I in trouble. But that's part of my fear, I guess. I feel sort of like an Andy Roddick, whereas the real writers out there are more like Rodger Federer. My game is nothing to feel ashamed of, but it's still stiff, awkward, and mechanical when compared to the fluid artistry of those who aren't forced to labor over each forehand.

As to the issue of the skull-shaped bong in the closet, I wonder often if that isn't part of the problem, Mr. Jones. In my youth, I fancied myself something of an athlete, and my sum experience with mind-expanding/altering drugs, as a result, is sadly nil. (Though I have no moral objection to it, I have never been, even marginally, stoned. Tragic, yes?) I certainly did my share of drinking, but beyond a few drunken philosophical discussions that would make Chuck Klosterman read like Immanuel Kant by comparison, alcohol did little for me artistically besides help me remember a high school Spanish vocabulary I assumed I'd forgotten long ago.

On the other hand, that feels like an easy way to rationalize a dearth of, well, talent. The combined stashes of Willie Nelson and Snoop Dogg probably couldn't make Thomas Friedman into Jack Kerouac.

Either way, I truly appreciate the discussion. I'm off to score a dime bag and read Emily Dickenson in my hammock.

 

Absolutely a different thread, but I have no idea how people can write while high or drunk or wasted or whatever. I can't even write if I take cold medicine. Like swimming through mud.

 

DD, just passin' along some advice that I heard from a pretty good writer one time. Figured I'd hold onto it in case I ever needed it again. (I will.)

Doesn't really have much to do with similes, but what the hell. We're all trying to get better, aren't we? There's never a bad time to pull it back out:

 

That sounds like a supersweet afternoon, DD.

Twoback -- you're correct, my earlier post reads like a contradiction. But 21 has it right, yet again. What I mean is, I can't remember one instance where I paced the room before the light came on, and it was worth leaving on. In the case of the testicle-boner-heart sequence, that probably took 15 or 20 seconds all told. Yes, there was conscious thought involved, but I'm not sure my hands left the keyboard. (Except, of course, to fidget with my balls; that's inevitable.)

As to the bong thing, lest it seems like I'm advocating bad behavior to the kids out there, I don't write stoned that often. When I have, it usually feels good at the time, but then you go back and read it and think, Man, was this dude stoned? I will say that the occasional door has been opened, however, by a good night of Pink Floyd. I carry a notepad with me most of the time, and I usually write down what weird thoughts have struck me while bent. Those sometimes appear later. Thinking on it, quite a few of my favorite similes are survivors and transplants from my stoner Eurekas. A lot of that stuff is total shit, though.

Of course, the bottom line of all of this -- DD, your bringing up O'Brien rings this true -- is that we all have a different process. There's no right or wrong way. Some of us write in the morning (the perverts among us) and some late at night; some with music blasting and some in total silence. By this stage in your career, you probably have those patterns pretty well set.

What I will argue, though, is that it's best when you're writing "turned off" somehow. Zito said this to me, and I've shared this before, but I think it bears repeating: When he's pitching, he says he's an instrument being played, that he's not doing the work -- "Let the universe work through you." I believe that. The best writing comes when you're just going, everything's flowing, when you feel like your fingers can't move fast enough, like you're taking dictation from on high. Why that happens when it happens -- fuck knows.

And no, I'm not stoned right now.

But yes, threads like these are the reason I stick around this gin mill.

 

And buckweaver, that's a nice card to pull out. Says a lot about you and DD. I am sending you good karmic wishes.

 

21, I don't think anyone is advocating, certainly not in a professional sense, that writers get liquored up or stoned with the hope that it will improve their prose. But certainly throughout time -- and I think there is a lot of evidence to support this -- writers and artists have used drugs and alcohol to attempt to see the world differently. jgmacg attempted to broach this topic once before when someone brought up the topic of having a beer while writing a gamer, and for the most part, he was ignored or shouted down by those who spoke up in the name of professionalism. I understand that argument -- we're mostly journalists, after all, and accuracy and professionalism have to matter above all things -- but when we expand the conversation to the artistic endeavor of writing in general, I think the drug question is a fair one to ask. Could the Beatles have written Revolver without the assistance of drugs? Could Kerouac have penned On The Road? I'm not sure it's a question so much of writing words or music WHILE drunk or stoned as much as it is using those things to see the world differently, more figuratively, and then in a state of sobriety (perhaps the next day) mining all that gibberish for some insight.

Again, it's kind of a dicey discussion to have here, because no one would want an employee showing up at the Suns-Spurs playoff game after smoking a banana-sized joint because he or she thought it would help them piece together an eloquent gamer.

I fear this is going to sidetrack this discussion into a parade of posts ranting about journalists who use drugs or alcohol as a crutch, and I think that's missing Mr. Jones' point.