Among other things, Keith Nathan Brown wrote
this and
this. He has quickly become one of my favorite writers. Due to his long-term illness, Keith has a limited amount of time each day during which he can read and write.
Over the course of a week or so, Keith and I exchanged a few emails about writing, Derek White, frustration, and the internet. What follows is largely unedited.
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Me: I'm curious what your writing process is like, being ill. I'm sorry if this is intrusive, but process really fascinates me. How do you manage your writing?
Keith: writing process is a huge question with many boxes. to keep the answer short i'd break 'process' down into two types: inspired and uninspired; and i'd break 'writing' down into two types: computer and mental. i'd define uninspired as: writing because my only other options are depression and tv. and i'd define inspired as: being so immersed in a piece that i un-self-consciously experience the sensation of being engaged in something meaningful, experience the feeling of importance for no particular reason. uninspired writing (when i am capable of writing) generally occurs between 1-4pm; if not then, then maybe an hour or two in the morning or evening. also, uninspired writing is always computer writing, never mental writing. on the other hand, inspired writing occurs at any time, although i am never capable of more than 4hrs of computer writing in any given day. even so, as many hours might be put in by mental writing, which i then immediately transcribe to the computer whenever i am finished with whatever activity i was doing (which would either by lying down, eating or showering (which are the only primary activities i do on any given day besides writing (and besides watching tv, surfing the net or reading, but i can't do mental writing during any of those activities))). yet i'm never able to exceed a combined 8hrs of computer and mental writing in any given day, and even when i approach such a quantity, i usually convalesce for a couple days afterward. and so setting a pace is very important for me. and yet pacing myself usually breaks, completely halts the state of inspired writing, which frustrates me to no end, wanting to take a goddamn hammer to the computer screen and say fuck off body mind motherfucker i'm gonna do this shit, but i can't do that. that's the general gist of it. all of which (even this sentence) was composed mentally, during my evening respite of lying down to keep the chronic pain at manageable levels. hahaha. although i hardly write this much in an email or in response to things, but it was an interesting question and there's plenty more to say. enough.
i really liked your post '
sham mirrors.' i share very similar sentiments and ideas as those expressed. just about everything you said, yeah. also, regarding the question of the next step, that's probably something very personal, but when i found the online scene last year i thought something interesting was going on, and was introduced to ben marcus (maybe a year prior) and derek white, both of whom i list as the epitome of an emerging trend (or at least i think a trend is emerging, i don't know) i call network subrealism: rearranging the elements of ordinary reality to give rise to new configurations of reality, or subrealities, and thinking about that stuff has definitely helped me shape and direct my own writing into new territories. i feel like this last year of checking out the online scene has been a mini-boot camp of getting me up to date with the current state of literature.
Me: Lately I've spent a lot of time thinking about what happens to words in my brain when I don't allow myself to write them. Like, I'll formulate something (a sentence or a string of words, get some semblance of their sounds) and then not write it down. The next day I will try to recreate the same semblance of sounds. Oftentimes I've discovered that my initial idea of the sentence seems incomplete or inconsequential, and that after a whole day of thinking I'll be able to look at the words in a new way and find some different, hopefully better way to say them. Sometimes I'll realize I want to say something completely different. Other times I forget the words entirely and I get frustrated. It's hard for me to appreciate that frustration, and it kills me to hear that you have limited amounts of time each day that you can dedicate to writing and reading, just kills me.
You say that you compose things mentally. Does that get easier with time? I was wondering if you could tell me a little about that.
I also really want to learn more about your concept of "network subrealism." It sounds interesting. I read Derek's book Marsupial earlier this year and really liked it. I fully understand where you're coming from with regards to the online writing thing. To me it was like someone leaning over and whispering permission into my ear, permitting me to write the way I'd always wanted to write.
Keith: mental vs. computer writing might be compared to sleeping with someone (actually sleeping) vs having sex with someone. when you're having sex there's a lot of bumping and climaxing and movement, and half the time you're not aware of what you're doing, just that you're busy doing it. when you're sleeping with someone there doesn't appear to be much going on at the surface, but underneath there is a quiet entanglement of presences, which allows you to connect in a different manner, in a way that is not determined by the goal-oriented imperative of sex.
primarily, mental writing has evolved over the years as a way to keep writing despite the limitations imposed by my health. but also i'm sort of just hard-wired that way. whenever i'm engaged in an intense mental activity, there's a part of my mind that continues that activity even when i'm no longer doing it (the momentum remains even if there's no one driving (actually momentum is an alternative way to reframe my loose definitions of inspired and uninspired)), which has actually led to a few nervous breakdowns when i was an undergrad.
when i first started writing ten years ago i would carry a pen with me everywhere i went, to jot down phrases/lines that popped in my head. but i couldn't do that while driving (for the most part), so i would just repeat the phrase over and over and over until it was temporarily seared in my brain (or use some makeshift mnemonic device to help remember it) until i could write it down. so that was the beginning of familiarizing myself with holding words in my mind. repeating something over and over in my mind is still my main tool, which can be a source of anxiety and fugue-tension. these days, most of my mental writing occurs while lying down, during my morning of evening respite.
there are two types of mental writing that occur (and they vary depending on whether i'm working on fiction or poetry (most of my writing is poetry). the two types are micro and macro. in terms of micro, because i tend toward the obsessive side when working on a poem (an average poem goes through about 40 drafts or more and develops on and off in intense bursts and fits over a year or two), i generally have significant chunks of it memorized when i'm working on it, as well as an overall feel for the whole. so if i'm mentally writing i will mentally comb the poem and look for any weak spots or hang-ups (or sometimes there'll be a phrase already nagging at me that i feel uncomfortable with, and that will naturally occupy my thoughts), and then i'll reconstitute the phrase or block of text in my mind and dwell/meditate on it. i'll try to find what it is that bothers me, but more importantly i'll try to sink into the phrase and try to find the idea dwelling within, which the words are inadequately expressing. i'll try to get behind the words or sometimes push the words toward more energized equivalents. it's a much different experience for me, working with a phrase in the isolation, there's a whole different approach/feel in terms of expectations. there are no expectations to produce significant output while mentally writing, but rather to sink more deeply into the words themselves and the ideas which inhabit them like ghosts, trying to invoke them forth. and the changes i make are mentally repeated over and over to remember them, but in repeating them i find other nuances or potentials that lead further into more changes.
the macro level has to do with the overall structure of the poem, or the conceptual framework of the poem, the latter of which is crucial to each poem for me; i can't get past a certain point in the development of a poem until i have made clear to myself what the framework is. i'll leave it at that.
your process of letting words and sonicity of phrases marinate in your mind is more or less equivalent to what i was saying above about micro-revising, just on a different timescale and with a slightly different approach. time plays a huge part in my writing. time for something to germinate in one's mind leads to significantly different results than when trying to force it into a particular configuration on the page.
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Read more about Keith's idea of network subrealism
here.
