Guest Post by John Vorhaus
Thursday, May 17, 2012
THE
BOTTOM ACHE
By John Vorhaus
There’s a moment in my new novel,
Lucy in the Sky, where I talk about
“the bottom ache,” a pain so deep and tangible that you can know it and feel
it, maybe even name it, but only barely describe it. For me as a writer, nailing
the bottom ache is job number one.
The first time I recognized the
bottom ache as such, and named it, I was in Cologne, Germany, teaching a
writing workshop for the staff of a popular daily soap opera. Now it’s a fact
that everything I know about soap opera could fit in this thimble-sized thimble
I keep here on my desk, but it’s a further fact that lack of knowledge has
never stopped me before. Like my character Vic Mirplo points out in The California Roll, “Stay one page
ahead in the textbook and you look like a genius.” For the purposes of this
story, there were two writers of interest in the room. One was the 21-year-old
head writer of the show, and the other was the girl writer he had a mad crush
on – who, for reasons that still defy explanation, had a mad crush on me. As a
not particularly attractive older man, I could only guess that she was
attracted to older men. But this set up an interesting, and heartbreaking,
little triangle, one that led me to one of the most important writing
discoveries I’ve ever made.
See, the young head writer looked
at that girl he had a crush on, and he yearned for something he could never
have, because she just wasn’t into guys her own age. She, in her turn, looked
at me and yearned for something she could never have, because I’m happily
married and whatnot. I, in my turn, looked at that young head writer and
yearned for something I could never have: massive writing success at a
ridiculously early age. Or, to put it more simply, I yearned for my youth. And
the pain was so deep that I gave it a name: the
bottom ache; the place where the pain lives. And the writer’s job, it seems
to me, is to capture those feelings we feel so hard and somehow translate the
tiniest sliver of that real emotion into words on the page.
Trouble is, words aren’t up to
the task. Even as I lay out the scenario for you, I know I’m failing by a
fairly wide margin to describe the tangible pain the three of us felt. I can
only give you a glimpse, a wisp, of it. I have to be satisfied with that. But it
seems to me that the difference between a good writer and a great one is not
the ability to put pretty words – or even pretty moving words – on the page,
but the willingness to go down deep, to chase the bottom ache, capture that
chimera, and put that down on the
page. When we can make the reader feel what we feel, that’s when we’re really
doing our job.
Writers often find themselves
confronted by the question, "What is emotional truth?" and the
further question, "How do I put it on the page?" In my experience of working with writers (and
being one of course) I find that writers go through predictable stages in their
struggle to convey authentic emotional meaning in their work.
At first a writer has no idea
that such a thing as emotional truth even exists. She is only interested in making the plot
work, making the jokes funny, and making the story lurch from event to event
with no thought for deeper meaning or deeper human truth. I call this the "blowing things up"
phase, for a writer has no concern beyond the big bangs of plot mechanics.
As a writer continues to develop,
she becomes aware that there's such a thing as emotional truth, but has no
effective means of exporting this information from her brain to the page. Her efforts
at doing so seem (to herself and others) to be awkward, stilted and
self-conscious. She might write, for example, the words, "I love
you," and then recoil in horror at the awful obviousness of that thought.
What's lacking in the writer at this stage is a means of connecting simple
human truths to stylish presentation on the page.
If the writer continues to grow
and develop, she becomes aware that emotional truth exists, and starts to
acquire some strategies and tactics for conveying such information in a stylistically
satisfying way. She may, for instance,
have discovered text and subtext, and brought her writing to the point where she
can have one character say to another, "Would you like some coffee?"
and have it understood that this really means, "I yearn for you to the
very core of my existence." This is
a writer who has both the awareness and the toolcraft to convey emotional
truth.
And yet, often, she does not.
Why? Because she is afraid.
In conveying emotional truth on
the page, a writer must make a certain leap of faith. A writer must confront
the knowledge that, in writing about emotional things, she will in some sense
expose herself to the very feelings she's trying to convey. She'll have to own those feelings and take responsibility
for them, with herself, with other writers and with the audience and the world
at large. This is a profound challenge to many writers… a hurdle that some
never get over. It's difficult, for
example, to write a venal and corrupt character authentically without feeling
venal and corrupt yourself. Some writers never can do that. They never get past
their fear of being honest on the page.
Those who do overcome their fear
enter a state of maturity in relation to emotional truth: They know it's out there; they desire to
express it; they have the means for doing so; and they are not afraid. This, as
far as I'm concerned, is the ultimate goal of a writer's life: To know the
truth; to speak the truth; and to be not afraid.I’ve striven to achieve that goal
in Lucy in the Sky, a coming-of-age
tale set in Milwaukee in 1969. My hero is an earnest young striver who learns
that being a hippie is not about love beads and peace signs but about the
choices you make and the chances you take. From time to time he touches the
bottom ache. I hope the sense of that comes through to you on the page. To
sample the wares, please visit www.tinyurl.com/Lucy1969.
Thanks for reading. -jv
John Vorhaus has written five novels and many books on poker. His comedy writing text, The Comic Toolbox, is considered a classic how-to book for writers, and will be making money for someone long after he’s dead, buried and gone. He tweets for no apparent reason @TrueFactBarFact and secretly controls the world from www.johnvorhaus.com.
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