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Dead End (How To Get Through It)

December 19, 2011 in Literary Fiction, Publishing & Authors with 0 Comments

Photo by Kilgub

Dead end.

 

I know you must be wondering why would I start a sentence with the words dead end, does it even qualify as a sentence? Probably not, but following the rules to make my point is not what is important.

When you arrive at a dead end you must stop, as you cannot go any further. Well duh, you must be thinking, it doesn’t take Sherlock to solve that mystery.

…And yet, you present yourself as a dead end all the time. Meaning you refuse to make yourself vulnerable to others; they become stuck and cannot go any further into knowing who you are.

This may not apply to you but I am sure that you have or had dead end people in your life. People who are brick walls that you just can’t seem to penetrate no matter how hard you try.

Conversations begin and end abruptly. The sharing of personal information is avoided like the plague, eye contact, smiles and any form of outward affection is shunned. It is strictly business all the time, every time, a clockwork mentality.

Where is the passion? Where is the excitement? Where is the drive? Where is the emotion? Where is the risk taking? Where is the raw vulnerability?

Where is…? Dead end.

Full Stop.

There is no further to go. So you simply stop trying to push forward, you may even stop caring.

If you’re the person exhibiting a dead end personality you feel triumphant, as you have abated the peeling away of your protective shell. But are you truly alive without the vulnerability?

You must be thinking…okay Ms. Literary Analyst what is your point, after all this is not a personal development blog, it is a literary blog.

I want you to think of this piece as personal development through the art of story.

Think of your favorite characters from books, movies and plays for a moment. Why did you favor them?

I can answer that for you, they had an awesome story. They unleashed who they were to the world and did not care, why? They had something they wanted to overcome and something they wanted to achieve…there were no obstacles too great.

When you are dead end you are too busy protecting who you are to really go for what you want…that requires vulnerability, openness, risk taking, and an unleashing of who you are to the masses…or simply to your family and friends.

Ever start to read a book and you could not get into the story no matter how hard you tried? Finally you abandon the book and find something else to read. The reason you abandoned the book was because you came across some dead end characters, producing a dead end story, producing a lack of interest in lifeless characters.

Do you see how the art of story can also inform your own personal development?

Authors and screenwriters alike spend countless time crafting the perfect story, plot, theme, concept etc. where characters have a passion and drive to achieve what they want and overcome all obstacles to do so.

The stories that make writers successful are the stories with characters that exhibit openness and vulnerability. A vulnerability that they recognize is necessary to overcome obstacles and achieve what they want.

What is the opposite of dead end? Well…the opposite of death is life and only you can define what is means to be alive.

I think we can both agree that putting up a wall between yourself and others may protect you from pain, risk, hurt, and being vulnerable. But it will also stop you from making the greatest achievements in your life and from people getting to know the awesome person that you are.

For the holidays, give the gift of yourself, your true, raw and vulnerable self, even for just a day. It may be the greatest gift you will ever give.

 

How Your Personal Growth Relates To Chinese Bamboo

October 25, 2011 in Literary Fiction with 3 Comments

Chinese Bamboo

Iam currently reading Aleph by Paulo Coelho and I have already gained a personal insight and life lesson that I would like to share.

What is this business about Chinese Bamboo anyway? I know this question must be buzzing around in your mind. When I first read it in Aleph, before the explanation was given, I could not make the connection. What does Chinese Bamboo have to do with my personal growth? What does a physical plant have to do with something as abstract as personal development? The two don’t seem to intersect.

But it turns out that they do. Chinese Bamboo and your personal growth have more of a connection than you may think. Chinese Bamboo spends five years in its growth process as a little shoot, the only visible aspect of its existence. However, during those five years the Chinese Bamboo is developing its root system. After the five years of being a little shoot and developing its root system the Chinese Bamboo goes through a growth spurt and overtime becomes 25 meters high.

How does this knowledge connect to your own personal growth?

Well think about the amount of time and energy that you may have put into a passion of yours, a project, a relationship; time that may have spanned for years. Does it sometimes, or all the time, appear as if you are not getting any results? As if you are only witnessing a little shoot after putting in so much time?

Guess what? It is not time for you to give up. During the time that you are putting in all your effort, energy and resources you are slowly but surely building a root system that will eventually provide results that you may not even be able to sustain.

The idea is that you must be persistent and keep at it. There is a trend in society today that everything has to be quick with minimal effort, if the results are not seen immediately it means that you are not doing enough, it means that you should quit and try something else, it means that your passion is not worth while, it means that you are a failure.

But are you a failure? Time may very well prove that you a lot more successful that you think. However, you must give it time and your maximum effort. Do not under any circumstances give up.

Anything that is worth it in life requires a lot of time and persistence before any results can be seen.

Is there a project, relationship, passion or dream that you have abandoned because you didn’t see results right away? I encourage you to once again pursue that project, relationship or passion relentlessly and put in all of your effort. Others may only see the little shoot and criticize you and put you down but you must become aware of the intricate root system that you are building and let this be your motivation to continue.

What Makes a Good Story?

October 20, 2011 in Literary Fiction with 0 Comments

What Makes a Good Story?

W hat makes a good story? What makes you want to pick up a book and read from the beginning to the end. These days I find it hard to find a story that makes me want to keep reading. The type of story that makes you crazy. That type of story that makes you stay up all night even though you have work the next day. You just can’t put the book down. What is that experience made of? What sparks it? What sustains it? What keeps you reading? Are there stories that are universally good, that no matter who reads the book they will find it addicting, like the Harry Potter Series. Or are there stories that are good only because of your own life experiences, personality and personal taste?

I have had the experience of a friend recommending a book to me saying, “This book is just amazing, you have to read it!” Only to abandon the book after the first 100 pages or less. What made the difference? Why was my experience different from the experience of my friend?

There have been times that I have struggled to read a 120 page book but then read a 1000+ book in two days. I am curious about what builds that momentum. Are you? Is it character? Is it a unique plot? Is it the theme? Is it the concept? It it a combination of all? These questions have been tugging at me for a long time.

Why did The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo resinate with so many people? Is it psychology? The psychology of literature would be a fascinating topic. To explore why we like, hate, adore, and become addicted to characters and certain stories would fascinate me. Does it fascinate you?

Does art imitate life? Is this the draw? Does art veer from reality? Is this the draw. What is it for you? Do you read fiction to escape or do you read it because it resonates and reflects your real life? Some argue that they don’t read fiction because there is nothing to learn from it. Is this true? What life lessons have you been able to learn from reading fiction, if any? What novel deliberately impacted the next steps that you took in your life? Has a fiction book drastically impacted your life? I am really interested in hearing your thoughts. please do share in the comment section below. Let’s start the discussion on what makes a good story together.

A Work of Fiction: Connected or Disconnected?

August 28, 2011 in Literary Fiction with 0 Comments

I wake and the black box is there greeting me, I gently caress it  with a single swipe and it glows offering a numerical welcoming. Four playful taps later and I am granted access into a world that has suddenly consumed me. A connection that has me connected but disconnected from true warmth that is more organic. Instead I embrace the digital and it embraces me back, the coldness of it somehow warm, an escape that is almost meditative.

Distant voices call to me competing for my attention, a human connection lost forgotten and seemingly unneeded. The warm glow before me draws me in. Hypnotized into its dance, the click click akin to rhythmic drumming, I sway to its beck and call, summoned into promises that cannot be refused.

My hand goes up, completely dismissing the human call, the voice is distant now. I remain oblivious to the dimming eyes, the downward turn of the mouth, the silent cry of disappointment, the gradual slumped down shoulders and disquieted spirit. The slow movement away from my cold presence and quick brush off. The door is closed, disturbance abated, the digital connection continues…

A Work of Fiction: An Emotional Famine

July 23, 2011 in Literary Fiction with 0 Comments

An Emotional Famine

The bathroom mirror reflects my bedroom, through it I glimpse at the clock on my night table and it reads:

8:00AM

The water is running and the tub is almost full. My knees and breast are still visible, gradually becoming buried under the water.

In the distance I hear the door shut, the exit of a presence that is absent.

Emotionally absent from my life but present in body…or not.

Emotionally mute, but with a deafening disdain that can be heard for miles, its reverberation making its movement from the shut door to where I lay.

I am covered in soap now, but how? When? I must have checked out.

I take the rag and gently begin to rinse away the suds, yet I remain dirty with the knowledge that I am unloved.

Cared for, but unloved.

I remove the plug and listen to the water as it slowly descends down the drain, an emptying that the white porcelain surround and I share.

I slip on my robe and quickly glance in the mirror, what I see is a walking shell staring back at me. Can anyone else tell? Is it projection? The knowledge of what I am reflecting back at me.

I suddenly and vigorously swipe my hands across my face, hoping to wipe away the evidence, I cowardly peek back at the mirror, I’m unsuccessful, and my shell is still intact.

My brief moment of insanity goes as quickly as it came.

I walk into the kitchen and see steam rising from a perfectly cooked omelet. As I step closer towards the plate I see a note, it reads:

Bye, I’ll be back at 11 tonight

Confused I sit and begin to slice the omelet open, the cheese begins to ooze and my mouth begins to water, I am hungry, but for far more than what is on my plate.

Written by The Literary Analyst

J. M. Coetzee’s Youth and the Pursuit of Your Passion

April 18, 2011 in Book Analysis, Fiction, Literary Fiction with 0 Comments

Youth by J. M. Coetzee

Welcome to the real world. No thanks! Keep your welcome and shove it. I rather suffer in anguish and misery for the pursuit of my dreams and artistic expression. So goes the battle cry of youth whose insistent pursuit of their dreams is uncrushable; until met with evangelist of ‘the real world.’

Youth will do anything to pursue their dreams and their passion. Youth will concoct in their mind ideals of what their purposed journey should be like, but when the pursuit of these dreams do not lead to the desired outcome this creates an ‘angst.’ This angst, an unspecified feeling of anxiety about the world and your personal freedom, is what forms the topic of J. M. Coetzee novel Youth.

John, the narrator in Youth, has an unrelenting desire to be a writer, but his ideals of what a writer should be keep him trapped. “He is not a good enough lover, not fiery enough, not passionate.”  According to John, writers should be; passionate, seductive, fiery, and unhindered. However, John is cold, distant, has trouble connecting with women, and finds it difficult to write. His own mother he claims is “distressed by his coldness.”

Furthermore, John is caught in a choke hold by the ‘real world’ in which he has to make a living by taking a programming job at IBM. However, the job at IBM is killing his creative pursuits and making him even more cold and distant:

“IBM, he can swear, is killing him, turning him into a zombie.”

“Should he soldier on until closing time, though he is racked with yawns?”

“He will sit in a corner, tight and hunched…waiting for his season in hell to pass.”

“He cannot go on like this. He cannot sacrifice any more of his life to the principle that human beings should have to labour in misery for their bread.”

The lights are beginning to dim and John’s passion is diminishing. The youthful yearning he once had is being crushed by his unrealized dream and the trappings of his cubicle at work. Somehow this diminishing passion John correlates with growing up.

Sound familiar? The advent of crushing dreams and the diminished pursuit of your life’s work or passion is branded as entrance into the ‘real world;’ the official ushering into adulthood and the zone of becoming comfortable with mediocrity.

John struggled with this:

“He has stopped yearning…Does it mean he is growing up? Is that what growing up amounts to: growing out of yearning, of passion, of all intensities of the soul?”

What about fear and failure, the gripping fear that is paralyzing, the kind that turns unsupported ideals into self-fulfilling prophecies, or the fear of failure that usurps perfectionism and unreachable expectations.

John later recognized that he needed to embrace his fear of failure and not allow his youthful yearning and dreams to die;

“What more is required than a kind of stupid, insensitive doggedness, as lover, as writer, together with a readiness to fail and fail again?’

And yet for him it is a question, he is uncertain about whether this is the answer to his ‘angst’ or whether he will make that move. He does recognize that if he continues in the direction that he is pursuing, he will be “playing himself, with each move, further into a corner and into defeat.”

For more depth see Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II

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