Damon Ferrell Marbut, Author AWAKE IN THE MAD WORLD |
Welcome Southern poet and novelist Damon
Ferrell Marbut. His first published novel, AWAKE IN THE MAD WORLD, is
an entrant for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. One reviewer describes it as “a coming of age novel
that showcases so many of the issues of twenty and thirty-somethings in America
today.”
In the following article, Mr. Marbut explores the significance of "write what you know." He adds the value of comprehending
“why” authors write. Why do we do what we do? And why is it relevant that we do so?
Philosophical Sources: The “Me” In Our
Work
by Damon Ferrell Marbut
Write what you know.
It’s true. In writing seminars and
workshops, or if you weren’t “trained” in this manner, it’s still a common
expression that carries with it, in my opinion, considerable importance. Even
writers of paranormal, fantasy, etc. can still apply this write what you
know standard to a significant portion of their book(s). This is what makes
it initially work, I believe: lending a work its validity by giving it your
honesty as a writer.
Rarely, though, is the notion of why
you are writing what you’re writing the curiosity that follows. Without
affording one’s self more than just a series of moments to think this through,
the risk exists of condemning the work to stand without enough of the author
him/herself. And without knowing exactly why one is writing what one is
writing, a book may succeed on some levels but will—and I do not doubt this at
all—ultimately fail the author, as it will not be his/her best. Not asking this
crucial why will limit the impact of the gift given the reader, which is
a person’s work, a creation that may or may not best explain who the person is,
as well.
As writers, we don’t ask ourselves this
question to doubt why we’re sitting in front of the computer, to doubt our
commitment as well as our sacrifices once we’ve hopefully come to term with how
we define both. Commitment is sitting there, morning after morning, or
night after night, and Sacrifice is something we all must come to terms
with. What part of life gets less attention for the work? Finances, exercise,
sleep, companionship? What are you willing to sacrifice so that this continues
to embody the core of your drive as a complete person and not just a creative
person? Or, perhaps you’re writing because it’s an exhilarating activity, or
cathartic, or a challenge. Whatever the reason, if you are spending consistent
time in front of the computer, there is a deeper meaning beneath it.
“Writers,” no matter how they define
themselves, are similarly creating something to represent who they are as a
person. Some audiences read to lightly escape the realities of their
emotionally-exhausting lives, while others look to be devastated by a beautiful
story because it feels incredible to celebrate the fleeting nature of life and
beauty and love and human nature and death, all without it being too real.
Audiences seek certain books because of how they linger, for how they charge
the brain and nerves and surface of the skin. Books should involve full-body
reactions and should never be discounted as “guilty pleasures” or
“no-brainers.” Audiences select the books they read for a reason. And so as
writers, a philosophical obligation exists in us before we commit, before we
make the sacrifices, and that obligation manifests itself in the question why.
Why am I doing this?
I stopped asking myself this years ago
because my writer friends and I moved all around the country and began our own
walks toward various creative or academic lights. I used that separation as my
excuse to stop asking, and for a long time I didn’t reflect on the reason that
conversation had disappeared from my life in general. But today, in thinking of
it, it’s simply because I know I cannot stop. I can’t. I gave up law
school for this. I lost job opportunities and more financial comfort for this.
I made my family think I was ditching them for a notepad, for years, and
I was. I became isolated and sometimes drank too much, and then I learned the
value of travel and engaging the world around me and started valuing myself
because I valued my thoughts and how I expressed them on the page. It’s a
life-saving art form, for myself and others like me. I can’t stop because I
don’t know any better anymore. I don’t like what my mind wants to do when I’m
not writing. I’m never happier than when I’m on a project, which has thankfully
been constant for almost ten years now.
And sometimes, I concede, it’s an
absolutely terrifying idea to consider who we are as individuals. I remember
the sleep-deprivation at work in graduate school after staying up all night
reading and writing poems with friends on their couches or mine. But those were
the talks we deemed so vital to the understanding of our work, we chose against
logic for immediate passion. And when the talks grew so athletic by repetition,
or one friend moved away, and then another, we realized there was still that
pervasive, churning, all-encompassing why of what we were doing that
never left us when we left ourselves. I loved every second of it. I love and
need it, still.
My old friends from that moment in our
shared lives, when we were developing as creative thinkers, are now my slightly
older colleagues. We look back at that era as necessary to where we’ve now
landed as individuals in the aftermath of all that romantic and fiery thinking.
But we still retain a collective sense of curiosity concerning why we do what
we do. The truth is that you, I, we, they are all bound by this
obligation as writers to explain ourselves in one way or another, willfully or
with a fight. We inject ourselves into our characters and have far more voices
speaking on our behalf than we sometimes recognize. Every person, fictitious or
real, is seeking to resolve something in their existences. And so, whether we
see it or not, our characters tell our story as their creator. I think
about that often. I don’t think of my legacy or being respectful to the
audience’s desire for my story’s outcome, or how many books I’ll sell or what
awards I’ll win.
I consider what truth I’m learning about
myself as I write.
Book Blurb
“I
hadn’t thought of it, in real truth. I hadn’t thought about love because when I
was at work, I didn’t think, I am at work. I hadn’t thought, when I was at
the grocery store, I am at the store. We just are where we are. We’re in
what we’re in.”
Pete
Rattigan is a frustrated young newspaper journalist caught up in uncertainty of
the post-graduate “real world”. One night, one seemingly minor encounter sparks
a philosophical journey which leads him to discover that in the most beautiful
or even cruel moments of life, the power of friendship explains the power of
the universe. And that perhaps there is no such thing as chance. With force,
humor and sensitivity Damon Ferrell Marbut presents his debut, AWAKE IN THE MAD WORLD, which frees its audience to believe again in the wildness
of the young American heart, how it beats just to prove that it will always
survive and succeed on its own terms.
Excerpt
After a steady diet of threshold
thoughts and staggered steps in and out of the surf, I realized my pants were
wetting at the tailored lines, and I decided to make way to my car and drive
through Orange Beach just east and visit Perdido Pass briefly so I could let
the pants dry and drop off something I’d carried with me a very long time. And
due to the most recent move from Midtown to Knox’s, I still had it in the car,
the large rock I’d acquired during a
skim-boarding-excursion-turned-drinking-bout in high school, a near-decade
prior, where I’d fully had that first good fleeting love in a moment with a
girl named Tate Bonifay, a memory that was so sweet for such an extended time I
couldn’t enforce even the rules of my own heart, to let the past be past, but
it was time to forget the patience and allure of that young flash in time, to
put the sign of such memory to bed back across the jetties where it had lain
for a long time before a heavy youthful heart like mine had come along and told
my hands to take it and keep it and maybe later sublimate my resolve.
I drove over the Key bridge against
the tumid sun and crept into the narrow parking strip alongside the sand’s
reach down toward the rocks’ stretch into the Gulf. The dunes, I could see from
the bridge, had blown down from worsening storm systems and beach erosion, and
had turned into something only recognizable to locals who had been around
enough to see its demise for what it was. I jumped them when they were once
twenty feet tall, as Bonifay sprawled up top with Billy and Patrick. She had
sat like a football player, confident in her wear, sipping a beer like a mother
emancipated from child watch, staring into the sun, curly long hair, a
boarder’s attitude. Where had I, that kid, gone, too? The dunes were leveled
like tables after a decade and were still beautiful, but lacked the luster of
young people sweating in nascent love onto the sand that soon might forget
them. I took off again alone on the beach and made it through the seemingly
horizontal wind tunnels which tugged my lone body toward the result of what was
cresting and crashing down at the shore. If I remembered correctly, the rock
had been about ten yards down the rock row in the water, and so without
self-doubt and a cigarette stub in my pocket, I negotiated the moist rock
pilings down to a fair estimate, and sat on a heavier, dryer monolithic entity
in the shade of a generous cloud between me and the sun. I was freezing at that
point, but not confused, not in any mood to deliver a eulogy for that which was
defecting from my custody, a memory of a beautiful girl I had carried around
too long.
Author Bio
Damon Ferrell Marbut is a Southern
poet and novelist. Originally from Mobile, Alabama, he now lives and writes in
New Orleans, Louisiana, where he is working on a new novel. AWAKE IN THE MAD WORLD, his first published novel, is an entrant
for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He is a featured reader at the 10th Annual Saints
and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans, May 2013.
Links
Purchase links:
Amazon
Twitter: @dfmnola
Wow Joyce,
ReplyDeleteI always love learning about a new author and their work and I was really impressed by Damon Ferrell MArbut and his amazing book " Awake In The Mad World", sounds so intriguing and I can not wait to read it ! I loved the excerpt! Good luck on your novel being a Pulitzer Prize for fiction entrant! Kudos Joyce Strand!
Syl Stein
What an interesting question, and fascinating musings. I guess it's true that we sacrifice something for our writing--you've certainly got me thinking.
ReplyDelete