Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Too many aspirations

I don't really feel like a writer, but as I get more and more intrigued by different kinds of stories the more I find I'm trying to come up with them. The work I keep doing lately seems to mirror little elements of stories and the more I add these little developments like segments of a plot or little glimpses of a character the more interested I am in the skill it takes to make them up.
I think writing takes great empathy, diligence, imagination and just as much self indulgence as it does to do what I do. And the things I have been reading lately have been really inspiring. I like to read several things at once, usually a magazine article or two, a piece of fiction, and a piece of non fiction. Right now I have The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey (my first of his), David Quammen's The Reluctant Mr. Darwin (a biography focused on post Beagle voyage when he was stewing so hard on everything, and an interview with Robert Gober from an old Modern Painter I have in the bathroom. All of them are good so far and each have a little something that I want to copy or emulate in some way. That is usually my indicator of a success. Sometimes the parts I want to ripp off might be just that the author was so obsessed with understanding someone else's train of thought or how they observe something and then find the right adjective to put next to it.

So I'm going to keep on making elements of my sculptures seem as though they are from different narratives, or maybe the same, in hopes that I can soon come up with a good piece of writing soon. It will be a round about way to get to something but I think whatever happens it will make the process tough but fulfilling.