Closet Archaeology
I had an inkling that I'd go through some of my old stories tonight, so I dug deep into the inky blackness of the closet and pulled out a box-load of papers that have traveled with me since 1969 (oh God! that's 42 years!)
I found out things I had completely forgotten, which is why documenting your life in some fashion as you live it is a really good idea. I have not done that. There are vast stretches where I couldn't begin to tell you anything about what I did, who I met, or where I went. Such is the frailty of the human memory. But this period, this aspect of my past is allowed to live because I actually kept a record of it.
One of the interesting things I discovered was a chronology of my early writing. Apparently I wrote 45 pages of a book, long-hand, called "This is Andromeda", which I started before I wrote what I consider my first real attempt at writing fiction ("Joshua Hamilton"). It is noted in the chronology that it was destroyed. A deserving fate, I'm sure. It was also noted that the problems were a runaway, out-of-control plot, and the introduction of two new characters in each chapter, making it completely unwieldy only 45 pages into it.
I also discovered the original draft of the screenplay for "Planet of the Naked Apes", which shows a shared writing credit with Robert C. Wilson. (You can download it here.) This was a 3-minute 8mm film which, in the original conception, would have run over 5 due to lengthy humorous but irrelevant fake closing credits. Ah... for the want of an extra couple of dollars... I had no idea I'd hung onto that screenplay. So that was a particular joyous moment when my eyes landed on it, since that time is really one of only a handful of places and times where my memory is fully functioning.
I apparently also had a penchant for writing historically relevant commentaries on what was wrong with the things I'd written, and why I abandoned (or didn't) certain stories. After several hundred thousand words, I saw value in only two or three stories. But that's not the point, ultimately. The point is that even then I was critically capable - I could tell why what I was doing was horrid. Paul Nowak, a former editor of the Financial Post, who for a time taught a few writing courses at Ryerson that I enrolled in, called me a "natural editor" and here, looking back at these notes, I can see that he was right, even if I didn't think I had the evidence of it at the time.
Interestingly, in re-reading some of them (at least the first pages), they actually aren't all that bad. They do all go off the rails at some point, heading down that craggy slope toward a disastrous death among the ruins of failed story-telling and imagination, but surprisingly a few of them actually seem salvageable.
I don't know that I ever will salvage them. But it was a very interesting couple of hours to drag them out, dust them off, smell the acrid odor of the aging paper and recall for a while all the hellish agony they caused me.
It's been said many times before, but it's worth saying again: If you want to write, it's important to document your life. Keep a diary. Write a blog. Do something that you can look back on in twenty, thirty, or forty years to bring back to mind just who you were on that particular day. It's a fascinating reflection. But more than that, it establishes in a concrete way your journey through this short life, and, if you can be honest about yourself, what you've learned about who you are as you've gone through it.
I found out things I had completely forgotten, which is why documenting your life in some fashion as you live it is a really good idea. I have not done that. There are vast stretches where I couldn't begin to tell you anything about what I did, who I met, or where I went. Such is the frailty of the human memory. But this period, this aspect of my past is allowed to live because I actually kept a record of it.
One of the interesting things I discovered was a chronology of my early writing. Apparently I wrote 45 pages of a book, long-hand, called "This is Andromeda", which I started before I wrote what I consider my first real attempt at writing fiction ("Joshua Hamilton"). It is noted in the chronology that it was destroyed. A deserving fate, I'm sure. It was also noted that the problems were a runaway, out-of-control plot, and the introduction of two new characters in each chapter, making it completely unwieldy only 45 pages into it.
I also discovered the original draft of the screenplay for "Planet of the Naked Apes", which shows a shared writing credit with Robert C. Wilson. (You can download it here.) This was a 3-minute 8mm film which, in the original conception, would have run over 5 due to lengthy humorous but irrelevant fake closing credits. Ah... for the want of an extra couple of dollars... I had no idea I'd hung onto that screenplay. So that was a particular joyous moment when my eyes landed on it, since that time is really one of only a handful of places and times where my memory is fully functioning.
I apparently also had a penchant for writing historically relevant commentaries on what was wrong with the things I'd written, and why I abandoned (or didn't) certain stories. After several hundred thousand words, I saw value in only two or three stories. But that's not the point, ultimately. The point is that even then I was critically capable - I could tell why what I was doing was horrid. Paul Nowak, a former editor of the Financial Post, who for a time taught a few writing courses at Ryerson that I enrolled in, called me a "natural editor" and here, looking back at these notes, I can see that he was right, even if I didn't think I had the evidence of it at the time.
Interestingly, in re-reading some of them (at least the first pages), they actually aren't all that bad. They do all go off the rails at some point, heading down that craggy slope toward a disastrous death among the ruins of failed story-telling and imagination, but surprisingly a few of them actually seem salvageable.
I don't know that I ever will salvage them. But it was a very interesting couple of hours to drag them out, dust them off, smell the acrid odor of the aging paper and recall for a while all the hellish agony they caused me.
It's been said many times before, but it's worth saying again: If you want to write, it's important to document your life. Keep a diary. Write a blog. Do something that you can look back on in twenty, thirty, or forty years to bring back to mind just who you were on that particular day. It's a fascinating reflection. But more than that, it establishes in a concrete way your journey through this short life, and, if you can be honest about yourself, what you've learned about who you are as you've gone through it.
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