Tuesday, December 7, 2010

can i hold both in awareness?

my editor says, suk wah, you write so beautifully, i've never seen anyone writing about food as beautiful as you do, the metaphors, the way you write about it, are just...i can't write better than you do. sometimes a writer says to me, i write this way because it's my 'voice.' i would say, you don't have a 'voice.' anyway, my editor goes on to say, you write best when you just write, paragraph after paragraph, but you can't write forty pages of 'eating lox and bagels.' i really can't bring myself to say, one of the reasons i end up having forty pages of 'eating lox and bagels' is this. marquez writes eighty pages about a couple moving around each other in the night. well, all i can say is it is not working out for me. not yet. marquez is marquez. suk wah is suk wah. i have to deal with suk wah's reality as it is. don't compare, suk wah.

so, what's the point i am trying to get at? let me see. o yes. this morning, in meditation, it comes to me that i get lost, in a good way, when i just write and write. but then i lose the narrative, pacing, rhythm. i am very good at writing scenes, dialogues. i love it. i get so much joy doing it. but i want to get the book done in a proper way. so i have to be able to hold the scene and the story together in my awareness while dialogues and details are flowing out from the inner self. my editor says, can your mind work that way? right now, i don't know. not yet.

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