Writing and William Faulkner's Advice

On the trip home from Taos, closing my writer's residency at the Frank Waters Foundation, I encountered the Very Large Arrays, Radio Telescopes of the National Science Foundation. I pulled into the visitor center, curious to learn the purpose of this amazing site with over twenty giant discs aimed toward the heavens. A storm brewed, kicking up winds that found no obstruction across the high plateau in southwestern New Mexico. I always imagine sinister plots at sites like this, some covert U.S. operation underneath the veneer of science research. I learned that these telescopes use radiowaves, not to listen to sounds emanating from space, but to visualize the far reaches of our galaxy. In fact they produce images of places that may be from the beginning of time, fourteen billion years ago. That seemed more mysterious than a covert plot. At its least, it might afford me an idea for a new chapter in the book I just finished drafting at the Waters' Foundation studio.

Writing itself is somewhat of a mystery. Beyond the obvious need to learn to write in correct format and convention (something I am still learning), writing taps into streams of consciousness hidden even from the writer herself. Where, for example, do names of characters come from? I was writing about a minister recently and the name Cleveland Sturgess popped in my mind. Now where would a name like that come from? I have no idea, but I rather liked it and incorporated "him" into my story. Maybe he even exists somewhere on the planet.

Then two days ago I felt the need for redirection in my writing. Scanning my library I picked The Faulkner Reader from the shelf. William Faulkner inspired me early in my life when I studied his works as an English major at East Tennessee State University in the rolling foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Ike McCaslin and Old Ben (The Bear) remained powerful images in my own psyche and probably led me to become an environmental educator later in my life. There in the beginning of the Reader is Faulkner's address upon receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. Therein I found the redirection I sought:

"Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in this workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed- love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice....

It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart...."

Now how did I know to pull that book from the shelf just when I needed a lighthouse?

For more about William Faulkner go to William Faulkner on the Web:
http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/faulkner.html

~ Susan

P.S. That same evening the owner of the B&B in Alpine, Arizona told me his military friend believes that, indeed, the Very Large Arrays sometimes engage in spy operations here on planet Earth. The wheels are turning.