When the things we want are out of reach, we give thanks for the things we need.

Some people are struggling to have even that.

Lately though, I think my favorite stories come from an adventurer named Kino. They are collected in a nice little box called, appropriately, Kino’s Journey. Kino is not a professional, though she is very good at adventuring. Like your friendly neighborhood Catboy (me), Kino is short, friendly, cheerful, and often not entirely sure where she is going (professional adventurers know where they are going, even if they are not sure how to get there exactly). She does have a map, which is helpful, and the ever-important distinctive hat. Most importantly, though, she (and her companion, a talking motorcycle named Hermes) understands that is the getting-there and not the “there” at the end that is important about adventuring.

Kino’s world is a place full of wonder, slightly super-technological and slightly magical at the same time. Most notably it is missing airplanes and CD players and things like this, even though there are holograms, clever Victorian-looking robots, and very big computers with mysterious panels of blinky lights. It is almost like a fairy tale that way, a little bit out of step with the normal flow of time. Also it is like a fairy tale because it is a compellingly moral sort of world; Kino spends an awful lot of time having to consider the necessity of her guns and the strange justice (or injustice) of the countries she wanders through (most of the time they are really closer to large walled towns).

Even though some of the countries are not very nice (some of them are just plain dangerous), Kino believes that “the world is not beautiful; therefore it is.” What she means by this is that even the unpleasant and dangerous parts of the world make the world a more beautiful place in which to live, because they make people appreciate how wonderful the rest really is.

This is a thought of which I approve very much, partly because it is a little bit like my “flakes, raisins, and almonds” theory. I do recommend that you enjoy Kino’s story for yourself.

Now that my exam is over, though, I’ve been catching up on my pleasure-reading.

I came across this passage in David Neiwart’s In God’s Country. It’s a book about the patriot/militia movement, interesting mostly in the politics of marginalization and probably relevant to Senator Obama’s recent comments about guns, religion, and xenophobia.

The villagers, he said, knew about the camp, and watched daily as thousands of prisoners would arrive by rail car, herded like cattle into the camps. And they knew that none ever left, even though the camp never could have held the vast numbers of prisoners who were brought in. They also knew that the smokestack of the camp’s crematorium belched a near-steady stream of smoke and ash. Yet the villagers chose to remain ignorant about what went on inside the camp. No one inquired, because no one wanted to know.

“But every day,” he said, “these people, in their neat Germanic way, would get out their feather dusters and go outside. And, never thinking about what it meant, they would sweep off the layer of ash that would settle on their windowsills overnight. Then they would return to their neat, clean lives and pretend not to notice what was happening next door.

“When the camps were liberated and their contents were revealed, they all expressed surprise and horror at what had gone on inside,” he said. “But they all had ash in their feather dusters.”

We’ve all heard this story, of course, one way or the other, but this particular telling of it seems uniquely chilling. There’s something compellingly, disappointingly human about that final detail.

Gas is expensive in big cities, but it’s even more expensive out in the middle of nowhere. A reasonably efficient car can take you a very long way on three or five gallons of gas, and it’s nice not to be held hostage to gas stations on the side of the road. So part of this habit is just good economics.

From time to time you find stranded drivers, out of gas on unfamiliar roads. I’ve coasted from station to station, raiding the dregs left in the hoses, and pulled into an all-night gas stations with the needle scraping bottom, so I know how it can feel. It’s a very uncomfortable, helpless kind of feeling. With a gas can, I can pull over and offer a little assistance. Even if I’m low myself, splitting the can will usually take someone to safety (unless he drives an H2 – then it’s his own fault). I never take money for the fuel, just a promise to buy a gas can and make the roads just a little bit safer, just a little bit friendlier.

Pay it forward.

The seals on my old plastic can have been degrading and I don’t feel comfortable with it anymore, so I looked around for a new one. Justrite Manufacturing makes a fantastic Type 2 safety can, one with a vent hole to relieve pressure and make pouring easier. It’s a fairly pricey can, more than twice what I paid for the plastic one it replaces, but the safety features are fantastic. I couldn’t be happier with the construction.

The greatest thing, though, is Justrite’s service. As it turns out, I bought a slightly different can than I needed – mine came with a 1″ nozzle, which turns out to be slightly larger than the average car is actually designed to accept. The nozzles are detachable, so I emailed them about the possibility of ordering and fitting the 5/8″ tube and nozzle to make refueling just a little bit easier.

Monday evening I checked my mail and found that they’d sent me the parts I needed, no charge, no questions. It was just their friendly way of standing behind their product and taking care of me, of making sure that it was as safe and effective as they promised it would be.

Given the reasons I carry one, that seems appropriate, somehow.

I’m still not sure what I expected to hear when she wrote back. Whatever it was I’m pretty sure this wasn’t it:

to anser the last part im not happy with what i make anyway because when ever i finish i think i need to add more and make it better and then even when i do finish it isint my vision of perfect and somewhere along the rode after adding it to be how i want it to be i finally just say fuck it this is how it will be so to answer that question of if thats what i really want to tell u the truth its not that big of a change

I’m not sure why I decided to give her the benefit of one more doubt. Maybe I’m stubborn that way; maybe I have a hard time admitting that sometimes people are lost beyond help. Sometimes people know their shortcomings but can’t summon up the drive to begin correcting them, but I believe in bootstraps, and sometimes you have to try, one more time.

Let’s begin at the beginning, shall we? Find your mistakes in this letter and correct them.

You don’t have to make it perfect; you only have to make it right.
-Adrian

I like to believe that I really would have helped her, if she could do this little thing; I like to believe that making the difference would be worth it. Writing is a hobby to me, and missing a contributor’s copy of the YaoiCon anthology is no big loss. This website didn’t exist then, only my old one, and I already abandoned for months at a time.

She didn’t make it better, though. She gave me this:

To answer the last part, im not happy with what i make because whenever i finish i think i need to add more and make it better, then finish. When i do finish it isint my vision of perfect and somewhere along the rode after making revisions after revisions I finally just say ” eh fuck it this is how it will turn out.” So to answer the question of “is this what you truely want?” the truth is its not that big of a change.

---

Is this what you mean?

This time I didn’t write back. I’m not that patient. I’m not that good.

I think about her sometimes in hindsight, usually when she sends me some inane chain-letter or an invitation to IMVu. It’s not very pretty. Subliteracy isn’t much of an option anymore, not in the modern world. Even high-school graduates barely scratch middle-class; we’ve all but written dropouts out of the American dream. At her level, it isn’t about art, but competence. As I said, You don’t have to make it perfect; you only have to make it right. She couldn’t even do that.

She still has five years, maybe four by now. When (if) she graduates high school, the system will cut her loose. In that time someone might make her see how much she’s missing; someone might make her care; someone might make the most important difference of her life. That someone just won’t be me.

My door stayed open for months.

I will shed no tears.

im willing to lern im only thirteen but i want to be a great author more than anything

I spent a lot of time wondering if I should write back. My day job cuts into my writing time enough as is, and I’m not really sure I believe that she wants to improve. Particularly in fan communities, many writers will praise each other and enjoy being praised, even if their work simply doesn’t measure up. Writing is less an end and more a means for growing closer. They write for community, because humans are storytellers by nature, because they enjoy sitting around the virtual campfire.

Basically it’s a circle-jerk of the ego.

It’s too bad that I’ve never really been friendly enough for that sort of thing.

I thought about it until she wrote to me again.

i went to ur website cuz i was interested in more of ur stuff cuz that first link you gave me was pretty cool im wondering if u care if i use ur stuff in some of my storys not published or anything like that im not that stupid ive seen ur copyright but as inspiration do you mind?

My answer that time was reflexive: I do care, and it bothers me quite a bit. While I admit to reading the Wulf Archives in my early teens, I can’t really endorse handing out shameless pornography to a thirteen-year-old, particularly one who can’t even write a coherent sentence. More than that, though, is the idea that someone could just “use ur stuff”; writing simply doesn’t work that way. It’s not like drawing, where you can develop muscle-memory in the process. Inspiration is one thing, but copying is quite another. Published or not, it doesn’t teach anything; it has no instructional value.

I closed out my reply with this thought: If you really want to improve, you could look at what you enjoy about my writing, and practice to achieve the same effect. It’s much more effort, but the work and the credit be yours, not mine, if you make something really worthwhile.

For a while that was enough, but later that night I sat down and wrote her a more complete explanation. She deserved that much, I thought, and ultimately it cost me nothing to sit down for an hour of downtime and try, one more time, to reach her. I’m actually rather proud of it.

> i want to be a great author more than anything

I’ve been trying to decide how to respond to this for a while now.

I can’t teach you to be a great author.

I can’t even teach you to be a great writer.

There is a subtle and important difference, and I hope you understand it. The way I’m going to use it here, an author, I think, is as much a matter of community as it is a matter of craft. An author is recognized by what he has accomplished; he has an audience and performs upon the stage of their expectations, both on and off the page. An author has a presence. By that measure, I am barely an author at all, let alone a great one.

So what am I, if I am not an author? I am a writer. I write. That is all. I claim no allegiance to any community, no responsibility to any fans. My loyalty is to the craft, to the endless pursuit of an aesthetic. To this end I am only an egg, unhatched. For the most part I have learned by doing, fumbling in the dark, and there is very little I know that isn’t taught in school.

Even if I were a great writer, I’m not sure that I could teach you, or that such a thing can even be taught. Almost by definition great writing transcends teaching. There are no magic pills, or even magic lessons; there is no list of things to learn that add up to greatness, at least not in any meaningful sense. “Bring your images to life.” “Omit needless words.” What do these things mean, really? What makes an image live? Which words are needless? I barely even know, and only then by the faint and painful whispers in the shadows of my dreams. Great writing has a certain sublime quality, a certain alchemical purity that I find hard to even quantify, let alone bottle up and teach.

I don’t think I can even teach you to write in my own style. It would be an empty lesson, a farce if not an insult. A style is so… so personal. I can step into Hemmingway’s style, for a few sentences, and it’s like stepping into his head, like seeing the stark cold lines of reality drawn and highlighted by his eyes, like feeling the hard, proud machismo pounding in his chest, and the weight of his existence upon his shoulders. It’s a profound experience, but it is also a profound wrongness; a style is like a man’s skin, like a suit cut for him and him alone. Wearing someone else’s bends you in places where you have no joints, or you wear out the fabric where a seam should have buttressed it. A style is like armor; if it is not yours, you will break it – and it will break you.

So what do I have to teach? I could, I think, teach you to write the same way I do, with the same process, but I ask you… is this really what you want? I don’t think you understand what that means. It is very simple. There are only two lessons:

1 – You must have the courage to see your mistakes, and the determination to find them all. What is a mistake? Everything that is not perfect is a mistake.

2 – You may never forgive yourself for any of them, ever again.

It’s that simple.

Writing is a slavery. I am a servant of my craft, an empty vessel for the words to fill. I suppose I am a good servant, or at least a competent one, but it is hard to tell; three or four years ago I would have been thrilled with what I’m writing today, but as you grow, so too does your understanding of perfection. You chase something that can never be caught, not in a thousand lifetimes of geniuses a thousand times better than you will ever be, but still you serve, because anything else would be unthinkable; you serve because anything else would tear away the piece of yourself that you’ve already poured into the craft. To write the way that I do is to sit trembling in the corner for hours, sifting your mind for the right word; to wake up gasping and desperate in the middle of the night, hunting for paper to catch the phrases before they fade; to beat your head on the shower wall, trying to make the words come; and to wish, at the same time, that you could stop, and that it would never end.

More than that, though, writing this way means that you will never again be happy with anything you ever make.

Is that what you really want?

Think about it.
-Adrian

I suspected that it would go over her head (to be perfectly truthful, I think basic sentence structure goes over her head), but maybe in five years she’ll open it again and understand what I’m trying to tell her. That’ll be worth it.

Realistically in five years I’ll be ‘that 1 meen guy who was 2 stuk up to help me’.

That’s a cross I’m willing to bear.

Forward to the Aftermath

do u think u can help me with my writing?

She made it sound so easy. I don’t think she understood what she asked.

I remember a story about a pianist, supposedly Vladimir Horowitz but probably apocryphal. After a concert, it’s said that a woman came up to speak with him, amazed by how well he played. “I’d give twenty years of my life to play like that!” she gushed.

Horowitz looked pleased. “Ma’am, that’s exactly what it takes!”

I wanted to tell her this story, because I think that was my biggest reservation. I don’t believe in “writing talent”. Writing is a matter of discipline and precious little else; writers who “naturally” do good work have internalized it, turned craft into instinct. It takes years – decades in most cases – to make a compelling writer from scratch. She told me later that she was thirteen. That puts her in eighth grade, maybe even high school, and still unable (or unwilling, perhaps) to spell out “you” or use any capital letters.

I’m not a miracle worker. I’m not extraordinary. I’m just a public-school brat with a good work ethic and a few good teachers; I started public school in kindergarten and stayed in public schools (minus a summer) until the day I walked off the stage with my bachelor’s degree. Teach For America turned down my application. In eight years or more, she couldn’t find the motivation to learn basic sentence structure; what made her think I could give it to her in my spare time?

Still, I wrote back, trying to nudge her in the right direction.

Do you really want the help I have to offer? I’m an infamously unforgiving tutor, as I believe that writing is an even more unforgiving master.
There are probably better ways to ask that question, if you really mean it.

-Adrian

A few hours later, my email alarm went off again.

my question is do u think in the futur u could help me with my own writing?

*headdesk*

Forward to part 3

This is a story about some email I got a few months ago, after I’d handed the link to Graveyard to a few people. The first one looked something like this (names excised to protect the dim):

Subject: i met u on gaia and love ur work
hi, i met u on gaia im g——— or on aim m————
after reading that link u sent me “graveyard” i really liked ur wrigting so i searched u on google and thats how i found ur site.
do u think u can help me with my writing?

Usually I’m thrilled when developing writers come to me and ask for some personal mentoring. I enjoy the opportunity to watch them develop and grow into themselves. I get to see myself make a difference, sometimes. One writer even told me that he hears me correcting him as he works. It’s quite a compliment, really, a vote of confidence, a reminder that someone out there thinks I know what I’m doing, and that I’m doing it well. I don’t get very many.

Sometimes I’m less enthusiastic. In general I like to believe that people with the benefits of computers and modern public education, for all the faults in both, ought to know the basic fundamentals of English usage. People who self-identify as writers, particularly, should have the discipline to avoid being outright idiots in that regard. I like to believe that writers coming to me for help are competent, or at least willing to meet me halfway and avoid wasting my time.

I tend to get a bit irritable when people work to undermine this basic faith.

On the other hand, I do try to give people the benefit of a doubt. As frustrating as they can be, the would-be writers who don’t grasp the fundamentals need help the most. A well-turned sentence can improve a good impression, but subliterate writing can make such a bad impression that nothing else will matter. My office regularly throws out résumés, unread, for laughable cover letters.

Part of me believes in salvation from ignorance and redemption from stupidity. Part of me believes that the effort is well-spent, that they really do want to improve. Part of me believes that, even if I don’t see any results, something I’ve said might click, a year or two later, and that I might make some small and important change.

Most of me knows that I’m a dreamer, but I still like to believe. It seems better than the alternative.

There’s plenty of time for mockery if things don’t work out.

Forward to Part 2