–Berthold Gambrel
This is in response to Mark’s post about his dream as a writer. Mine is somewhat similar to his. After all, who wouldn’t want to write something that people go back and re-read?
But as I thought about it; there’s a bit more to it than that for me. Bear with me; it takes a little while to explain.
First, if you read my personal blog, you may know I write lots of book reviews. And I have an idiosyncratic style of reviewing. I like to ponder the story behind the story, even try to find allusions, references and subtle things in the text. I don’t feel like I’ve done my job as a reviewer unless I can say I’ve figured out something about a book that isn’t obvious. (I think I only succeed at this about 10% of the time.)
For this reason, I like a good, meaty book that has layers to it. A lot of things to analyze. Something that someone could write a whole essay about. It doesn’t have to be long, but it has to have something really compelling in it.
And, by extension, this is the kind of book I want to write, too. I want to write a book that a reviewer could sit down with, take apart, analyze, critique, and maybe find a few subtle points that add some depth to it. And even when they’ve finished doing all that, they still feel like they haven’t said everything there is to say.
Basically, I want to craft the sort of book I enjoy reviewing. A book that has something in it that makes you feel you could just go on and on and on about it…
What’s your dream?
Writers Supporting Writers 
You want to write a book that people can chew on.
The interesting thing is that most fiction is multi-layered, even if an author didn’t intend it that way. I think about the different kinds of comments I’ve received from different people about something I’ve written. What they see in the story, versus what others see in the story, versus my intent (assuming I had an intent), and there are all sorts of variations and frequently, at least in my head, I find myself responding to those kinds of comments with “Really? That’s what you saw in my story? Wow! So, not what I intended.”
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This is a thought-provoking question, Berthold. At this point in my life, my writing dream is to retain the ability to keep writing.
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Me too, Liz! It’s too easy to say, well, I’ve written [x] number of books. I may as well quit, especially given the effort needed to imagine, turn the imagining into words, and assemble the words (i.e., write). But quitting feels like a defeat.
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I’ll post my essay on quitting next week, as it just happened to be my topic of the month, which is written and ready to go.
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When it comes to reading, I’m the opposite of Berthold. I’m all about the sunlight sparkling off the glittering sea with no interest in its deep, dark depths. Bright, clever, and playful writing and stories are my thing. So my dream would be to be clever and witty enough to write stories like that. You’re free to dream…
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But you never know what a reader will bring to your story, or what they will take away from the experience of reading it. That’s the real magic.
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Nothing wrong with some bright, clever and playful writing. I know you’re a fan of Wodehouse, as I am, and he was the master of that kind of writing. While I guess there aren’t exactly depths to Wodehouse in the way we normally think of them, the sheer awe I feel at his skill makes his books the sort I could go on and on about. How did he do it? What made him so good, and how did he make it look so easy…?
If I could write stories half as good as his, I’d be happy with that, too. Call that my other dream. 😀
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From what I know of Wodehouse, he was good because he worked very hard at it. He is said to have taped the pages of his story around a room, with pages that he didn’t think were quite good enough lower than the rest and would rewrite them until they were good enough. And I seem to remember that writing was his obsession. Greatness comes at a cost.
The question of how much depth one puts into one’s story might be an interesting subject to explore. There are writers like Gene Wolfe of P K Dick who people claim that you have to reread half a dozen times to understand what they are saying because their stories don’t make a lot of sense on their first reading, so deeply/intricately written are they. Some writers like writing stories as puzzles and some readers like solving those puzzles.
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You’re right; maybe this would be a good subject to explore. I wouldn’t like a story that didn’t make sense on first reading, though. The best stories (IMO) work just fine on the first try, but then you reread them and start noticing little details you didn’t pick up before.
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I will beaver up a post about my writing dreams later tonight!
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Looking forward to it!
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