Here is the link to the interview I did for the Missouri Review’s Working Writers Series. It was a fun interview, and we talked about a lot. Read on.
http://www.missourireview.com/tmr-blog/2013/12/working-writers-alexander-n-miller/
Here is the link to the interview I did for the Missouri Review’s Working Writers Series. It was a fun interview, and we talked about a lot. Read on.
http://www.missourireview.com/tmr-blog/2013/12/working-writers-alexander-n-miller/
I don’t know why it’s hard to write on the keys sometimes. I guess it’s a thing of finality—like, what I’m writing is final, and this must be something. I guess that’s natural to feel that way since people often type things up when they are done. It’s like you don’t want to hit the delete button, or the backspace button. I don’t mind it. I’m not from a generation of using a typewriter. I write on my laptop. I’m not ashamed. This is my typewriter. This is my journal sometimes. I try to write perfectly most times though, and abhorrent ‘backspace’ key sits on my shoulder like a ghost, waiting to be called on.
I haven’t had anything serious to write about since finishing another draft of my novel, but I hope it comes soon. I don’t feel like I can go on to something of longer form until I’m finished COMPLETELY with this novel. When I’m finished with it I’m saying goodbye to it, and that’s all I want to do. It would be hard to keep returning to that world I’ve created—editing, re-reading, etc., while trying to write something completely new. I admit I’ve been starting things, but they’re just studies, or samples, scenes maybe, background, and nothing concrete ready to be continued. I like doing it like that. It’s comfortable for now, yet uncomfortable because I like to know where I’m heading after this thing is done. I still have that collection of short fiction out right now too, and that was hard to have in the back of my mind while I worked on the novel (the one I just spoke about). It’s the bouncing back and forth I don’t like. but this is my first time around with writing something longer, completely, so I’m training myself to know what I am capable of doing, and how I’m capable working, and what makes me comfortable working. I have this burning feeling to get the first thing right.
The ways in which we qualify things are getting worse. I read around just about every day and I gather opinions about the ways in which we qualify things. There was a quote from a writer of some sort (forgive me, I don’t remember the name of the writer) I read on tumblr saying that everyone nowadays is afraid of the big idea, or anything grand. He went on about the ways people speak—saying ‘like’ a million times, ‘I feel’, ‘in my opinion’, and there were so many. He said no one states anything clearly anymore. There are no more real proclamations. I agree. I saw Kanye West on Jimmy Kimmel’s show recently. I hate to reference this, but what he said while on the show was important. He said everyone is so concerned with limiting you and fitting you into a box, and he called himself a ‘creative genius’ (whether we believe him to be one is irrelevant). Then he said if he were to say he were not a creative genius, he would be lying to himself and to people when he talked to them. The crowd laughed. I laughed when I watched the video. The rest of the interview isn’t important for what I’m talking about, but what I’m getting at is the uncertainty in all of us. It spreads. It’s popular. I realize we can’t all be the same. We can’t all have the same type of confidence, or any confidence at all.
I talked to a friend out on the west coast the other day. She’s an aspiring actress, and she models. After seeing 12 Years A Slave I text messaged her telling her to go see the film. She saw it maybe a week later and told me she thought it was incredible and the woman that played Patsy will get an Oscar. I said I hope she gets something (if anything). The next thing she said was ‘this is her breakthrough role. She went to Yale.’ I didn’t say anything after that. I knew it meant nothing, but still after my friend said that I thought—what does any of her acting have to do with her going to Yale? Or, how does her potential to win awards (whichever ones) depend on where the hell she went to school? My friend’s logic poses that the academy puts nominees into a perspective based on not only their performances, but also their ‘story’, when they’re considering who should win. Everyone’s talked about people and celebrities about their careers, or their lives, and adding where he or she went to school, and it’s sad. I don’t do it anymore. We throw these things into conversation casually, and unknowingly, as if to say that we are nothing without Yale, or Columbia, or Harvard, or some other qualifier. There’s nothing wrong with being proud of where someone went to school. But, look at how many people are successful in careers without formal education, or if they had formal education, look at their success without accolades. People are using accolades alone to determine whether something is great, or worthy of attention—their attention. We do it with athletes. What is a quarterback without a superbowl if he is to be considered for the hall of fame?
There was a WordPress post I read sometime earlier this year. It was an excerpt from another writer about there being no other greater mark of mediocrity than an author winning the Nobel Prize for literature. I don’t think that every laureate is mediocre. But I don’t think I should choose what books I read based on the list of past laureates. I don’t think it should be among the criteria schools use to develop curricula for their literature courses. I don’t think it means a writer is ‘bad’ or ‘not as good’ because they did not win the Nobel Prize, or Pulitzer Prize, or Book of The Year, or any other award. You may compare the concept to recording artists winning awards too—artist wins award for making something that appeals to an ideal or the greatest number of people. In the words of Alfred Nobel: “in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”.
Awards are a guide if you want to use them that way, but I don’t use them as incontrovertible criteria—like I’m diseased with linear thinking. We do artists a disservice by mentioning the awards the ways we mention them. We use them as attachments that for the artist, without them the artist is nothing and has done nothing worthy.
At least I think it’ll be soon. I’ve come a long way. I’m not rushing.
Soon I’ll be done with these two works- my collection or short fiction and my first novel, and maybe I’ll make this a real website. Right now it’s just a good place to put thoughts and promote my first works. I thank anyone that keeps up with me. Writing is difficult. Sometimes it’s easy. Most times it’s just hard. But writers do it, and keep doing it. This was just a thought.
LAVATORY BAR
by Alexander Noel Miller
Cornell University—autumn spawned the day before and just starting to feel cold to a Floridian like me. I just moved in and hadn’t bought a coat yet—stuck inside while other students roamed around from class-to-class, stressed with the semester propelling itself into test after test. The last thing I remembered was walking past one of the gorges earlier in the week when it was still warm. They talked about the sporadic weather, ‘odd’ was the word they used in The Cornell Daily Sun.
I was cold—too cold to go out. There I was—confined to my campus apartment walking back and forth, thinking of how I was going to get food being so far away from places I could get anything worth eating. The cafeteria—terrible food—coffee—didn’t want it. I think I wanted sushi for some reason and I couldn’t make it across campus. No one was going to check their email to make a food run for me. I needed to send a text message, which was trouble because I didn’t know where I had good phone service yet. The phone couldn’t decide whether it wanted to allow me to get in contact with the world, or shut me out to suffer. My stomach shrunk and I felt like my back was touching.
I walked throughout the apartment—the kitchen, tried sending a message there. I got nothing. Forget trying to make a phone call. I would get voicemails, or no ringing at all. The bedroom—where I could rest and try to send the message at the same time…got nothing. I folded my legs kindergarten style in the corner to get a better position. I had no luck. Food from yesterday must’ve been making its way down the large intestine by now and I felt my stomach gurgling, charging my legs in a locomotive chugging to the bathroom and I threw myself on the toilet. It all came down. For a while I was elbows-on-thighs, just pushing and sighing out all relief, resurfacing of pain and queasiness, and more pushing. I couldn’t take that kind of wavering—teasing between respite and sickness. I couldn’t remember what I ate the day before but it didn’t matter. I was hungrier now.
When you’re on the toilet that long you get bored. You look at your hands, notice that callus you forgot to peel off with the others, or maybe it came back after one session in the gym. You look at things around the bathroom—I need new soap. You check the toilet paper. You need more of that too—gee, I hope I can make it with that little bit left there. You look down at your junk and see if it grew even though you’re way past puberty and that ‘growing’ phase. The towels never looked frillier. Shower curtains looked dirty. Your armpit stinks. Do I have enough laundry for the rest of the week? Sitting there long enough everything seems to pile up on you. I needed to get the service I need.
I took out my phone. There were no bars—still domestic roaming. Wi-Fi worked. Internet is special, can never go wrong. Phones are better-equipped for internet than being a damn phone.
“What are you doing?” I sent it to Frida—good friend and study partner
A shot in the dark, now I waited. She would understand. We brought one another coffee when we were meeting in the library—took turns doing it too. She would understand.
“Nothing,” she said. “Heading your way actually.”
Zeus himself must’ve thrown a lightning bolt to my phone to get it working. It still said I had no service. How was it possible? I had to get her to get me some food. I was still there on the toilet though and incapacitated. I was also tired.
“Bring me something from the caf?” I said.
“What do you want?”
Shit! What did I want? I didn’t anticipate that question.
“Chicken and rice.”
“I’ll be there in five to seven minutes,” she said.
Messages were coming in promptly. I couldn’t feel my feet. I looked at my watch. 30 minutes I’d been there. It was time to get it together and wrap this up. Maybe I was just lazy to go through all this. I could have put on more clothes to get across campus to find something to eat. This was easier though. I stomped my feet on the floor trying to get the blood flowing back into my feet. There was a knock at the door.
“One minute!” I yelled.
There was a bang the second time. Was it Frida? I think she ran. I finished and pulled up my sweats and ran for the door not feeling a thing, pulled the door open. Maybe it was the stop that did it, but my calf muscle gave out and I crashed to the right into the wall. Frida put her hand over her face.
“What’s that smell?” she asked.
I was on the carpet moaning.
“Is that it?” looking at the brown paper bag the cafeteria issued for the to-go food.
She handed it to me, still on the floor.
“You don’t know what I’ve been through,” I said.
She walked in and the door shut behind her and I crawled a bit before getting to my feet in pain to sit down with her at the table. Her face was twisted and I didn’t bother getting up for a match to light to kill the smell, or to find air freshener.
I can’t tell you how hard it is to write, or I should say re-write this novel. My short story collection is being edited by a close friend right now. So, I’m working on that novel I wrote for Na-no-wri-mo last year. It’s hard, very hard. I didn’t think it all would be this hard. George Orwell described writing a novel as an exhausting process, and I’m beginning to agree. It’s also a cool thing to be doing—polishing it until you can’t do any more polishing, and it’s ready for the world. It’s a lot of work. For some people, I imagine it’s much easier. Trying to get it all right is the hard part, but the first draft is kind of easy sometimes.
The trouble with reading a good book is that you only want to read it more and more. You’ve gone to a new place, and maybe it’s somewhere you’ve never been. You don’t want to leave. You stay there by reading more, and you write less. But, that’s okay for me because it’s just reading, and I’m still learning how to write.