Of Autism and Audience
When Characters Annoy
The Problem of Character Arc
Where I'm At
This post is about autism and how it affects our ability to narrate. Points made may not apply to other individuals on the spectrum and are NOT meant to imply that narration is problematic for all autistics.
Narration or the Lack of it
A fear of death drives us to become narrators, to transform the disconnected chaos of our sensorium into representative mental texts whose distinct scenes contain recognisable characters that act in coherent plots. -Matthew Belmonte, More Than Human
Familiar narrative structures include the three acts structure (beginning, middle and end), primary literary categories (poem, novel, play), and specific fiction and nonfiction genres. Meaning is found in the overarching message these narratives convey.
Even everyday stories are usually told in three acts and, while some people are better at storytelling than others, most can construct a narrative without giving it a whole lot of thought. The neurobiology of narration, however, isn't as straightforward as we might expect.
According to Belmonte, our ability to narrate depends on the "coordination of activity amongst widely separated brain regions." In autism, Belmonte writes, brain regions that are "more or less intact" may not be "coordinated or modulated in response to cognitive demands."
This is essentially a networking issue where "a disrupted neural organisation implies disrupted narrative organisation." (Belmonte)
This is not to say that the narratives of neurotypical people are necessarily better or more authentic than that of autistics. Only that, as a group, neurotypicals find the stories themselves easier to organize and construct.
Writers on the Spectrum
It is simple, to ache in the bone, or the rind — But gimlets — among the nerve — Mangle daintier — terribler — Like a panther in the glove -Emily Dickinson
Brown explains that autistic writers may have trouble with various aspects of writing including writing for an audience, adhering to a genre, building a narrative structure, and developing characters. She then analyzes the work of the writers featured for these specific issues.
According to Brown, all eight writers showed "a marked resistance against the writing of novels" because of the difficulty they experienced in creating a "sustained, organically whole fictional narrative."
Dead Dreams and Do Overs
Irish poets learn your trade. Sing whatever is well made... -W.B. Yeats, Under Ben Bulben
Writing a well plotted novel has always been challenging for me. And when I say challenging, I mean that I have tried to do it dozens, if not hundreds of times—without success. I abandoned most of those unsuccessful manuscripts without finishing them. Those I completed had serious structural defects.
The point of this blog post isn't that autistics can't write novels because some obviously can. The point is that long-form fiction is a difficult proposition for many—including me. I have proved this to myself over and over again. But I couldn't accept it as a possible limitation until I understood why it was happening.
Writing a novel has been a dream of mine for a very long time and it's hard to just walk away from it. But change can serve a purpose, and I think the writers featured in Writers on the Spectrum prove that point.
Hans Christian Anderson switched from long-form fiction to fairy tales. Thoreau gave up on society and inspired a nation. Yeats left the Theosophical Society and embraced the mythology of Ireland. Sherwood Anderson stopped writing books and created a brand new genre.
The genre Sherwood Anderson launched with the publication of his book Winesburg, Ohio is called the 'short story cycle.' I am going to try my own short story cycle at some point. But I'm going to publish the vampire story, which has just become a novella (or maybe even a novelette), first.
It is a little sad to think that I might not write a traditional novel. But it's exciting to imagine myself writing (and finishing) short stories and novellas and the occasional poem—and I am not just saying that.
My track record for finishing things isn't the best, but I have always been able to pull a new creative project out of the ashes. In the wake of my ASD diagnosis, I understand this ability to be one among the constellation of traits we call autism.
According to psychologist Michael Fitzgerald autistics have "the ability to focus intensely on a topic...for very long periods..." as well as "a remarkable capacity for persistence...an enormous capacity for curiosity and a compulsion to understand and make sense of the world."
Fitzgerald goes on to say, "they do not give up when obstacles to their creativity are encountered," and I think that this is something we should remember.
'It was a curious dream, dear, certainly: but now run in to your tea; it’s getting late.' So Alice got up and ran off... But her sister sat still just as she left her, leaning her head on her hand, watching the setting sun, and thinking of little Alice and all her wonderful Adventures, till she too began dreaming after a fashion, and... the whole place around her became alive with the strange creatures of her little sister’s dream. -Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
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Resources:
Writers on the Spectrum (affiliate link) by Julie Brown
Human But More So by Matthew Belmonte
Autism and Creativity (affiliate link) by Michael Fitzgerald
Please note: If you click on one of the Amazon affiliate links (above), I may receive a small commission at no cost to you.
Telling Stories
Getting Along
Landing
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together... - Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 NRSV-CE
I grew up in a family of artists and writers. My grandfather sculpted, my father did pen and ink, my uncle painted, my mom worked as a journalist until she got married and my great uncle Howard was a feature writer and editor at a magazine called The Living Wilderness.
In light of all that, my parents were fine with the many hours I spent drawing and designing and writing short stories or poetry. But the bar was set high at home and I didn't get a lot of positive feedback on anything I created. Which might have been why the nice things my teachers, and the occasional classmate, said about my writing and artwork had such an effect.
By the end of elementary school I'd decided that my teachers were right and that when it came time for me to go away to college I would study English or Art or both.
My parents didn't agree. Probably because, with the exception of my great uncle Howard, everybody in my family, no matter how talented, worked a regular nine to five and did creative stuff on the side. According to my father, art was a hobby - not a career. As part of that conversation, I was told that being the best artist or poet in the entire sixth grade didn't mean anything because by the time I got to college I would see that other people were better.
At twelve the idea of choosing a career that didn't pay the bills seemed almost irrelevant but, because being the best was a big deal in our family, I took the prediction about college to heart. My teachers and classmates still said nice things. But by my sophomore year in high school I had stopped drawing and, aside from the occasional dark poem, there was no more writing for a very long time.
When it came time to choose a career, I chose nursing. But as an adult, just like many of my relatives, I dabbled.
I took art and craft classes. And when I was forced to take time off from my job because of a family tragedy I began to write fiction. I wrote a couple of manuscripts and hated them. But I learned about writing through doing it.
I missed the freedom of working at the paper but there were some things I liked about nursing - like the people I got to know as a visiting nurse. Some told me stories about coal mines and the depression and growing up in other countries. Others patiently corrected my garbled attempts to learn Polish or Gaelic. A few were instrumental in my decision to convert to the Catholic faith.
But the wisdom that is most relevant here came from a retired nurse I used to visit. In her retirement she had taken up painting. Her work featured big blown out Georgia O'Keeffe style flowers and impressionist landscapes that dripped with color. One day after showing me her newest project, she made a prediction. And, unlike the prediction made when I was planning my college career in seventh grade, this one came true.
I remember it word for word. "You are going to love retirement, Barbara, because it will give you a chance to do all the things you've always wanted to do."
I guess that a lot of people probably think that's what will happen to them when they retire and then don't have the money or good health to actually do it. But I am, I think, one of the lucky ones - because the things I want to do are neither expensive or strenuous.
It is not necessarily easy, however.
Winter in Miami
She will never see Florida
but she has the world
in her windows.
In the morning the river is fog
and the trees are lost.
Sunrise happens way up high.
It spills down the slopes,
and shines brighter than itself
in the imperfections of old glass.
There is shade all day until
the sun gets lost in the hills again
and the light come on.
Forever is train noises and headlights
in the dark and every star in the universe
shining out across the fields.
I have been to Florida over and over
until I lost count.
Black seaweed, white sand,
the ocean is always itself.
The whole of humanity sits on towels
to watch it
stretch out of sight.
I wasn't ever there for that.
I was there for the dark days
and the rain.
Days when the wild things
cry out across the everglades
and the black-winged birds
come pouring in from the North
to wage war
over back lot scraps.
Days when the ocean churns its garbage out
onto cold beaches
and the tourists leave Miami
looking for other
better places
where the weather is constant
and the sea
stands still.
_________
Picture above is of my grandparent's farm in NE Appalachia.
On Sunday I stopped at a convenience store so my son could use the ATM. After he got his cash he stood looking down at something on the sidewalk while the other shoppers rushed around him, some obviously annoyed.
When the coast was clear he came back to the car and said that there was a butterfly on the ground that seemed unable to fly.
Thinking that the butterfly was probably injured and that a convenience store sidewalk was a really awful place to die, I got out of the car to see what I could do.
The butterfly was big and beautiful and bright. He didn't seem to be injured or at least if he was we couldn't see how. But he there was no doubt that he was not about to fly. I watched him crawl around in circles for a moment, while the Sunday shoppers streamed back and forth, and then I put down my hand and let him crawl onto my palm. His little feet were gentle and soft.
Walking around to the side of the store we were surprised to see that someone had made a small landscaped garden in the area between the shop and the lot. So I put the butterfly down on a bush, even though he seemed as if he wanted to stay right there on my hand.
We drove the next couple of blocks to our destination wondering if the butterfly might have not been injured at all but simply new to life as a butterfly and not quite ready to take flight. I told my son about a cocoon I had kept as a child and how the moth emerged and sat for a long time on the edge of the open jar as if he didn't quite know what to do.
I had thought the moth was sick so I gave him bits of broken leaves to eat and a soda cap of water and laid down on the grass and waited. After what seemed like forever, he finally spread his wings and flew away, small and brown and sturdy against the bright blue summer sky.
Now, almost half a century later, my son and I couldn't help wondering if the big orange butterfly might just have needed a bit of time to get his bearings. It was a breezy day and probably not the best time for a first attempt at flying. Or maybe he had been flying and got tossed about in the storm the night before.
Either way, we speculated, he might have remembered his old safe caterpillar life and decided to take a time out on the ground.
We arrived at our destination and got out of the car. At that very moment, a bright orange butterfly came dipping and weaving across the windy parking lot. As he passed almost directly in front of us, I had the distinct impression that he was saying, "Look at me, I've got it."
My son and I exchanged a look. "I'd like to think that's our butterfly," he said.
"So would I," I said feeling surprisingly certain that it was. And I felt happy for the butterfly and happy for us.
I don't read cards anymore. But in retrospect I see that this poem isn't really about that. So I included it.
Reflections on Winter
For awhile I switched from tarot
to playing cards.
Just regular old cards.
No pretty pictures.
No Colman-Smith.
No abstract art.
No rainbow colors.
Just numbers and suit,
black and red,
light and dark,
energy and associations.
And the associations are easy
with ordinary cards.
Spades are winter,
spades are dark.
The Queen, the twelfth card
of her suit,
a winter queen,
a winter month.
This is how you time a reading.
And I timed every reading out
to December,
to myself,
to that sharp and solitary queen.
Today is a turning point in time.
The air is cold and the wind is strong.
And wind is winter.
Air is spirit
and, if you're lucky, inspiration,
ideas, intellect and looking inward.
And I have been luckier in this regard
than in others.
Today, I stand outside
and it's a new month and a new year.
The yard is a monochrome of snow
and dormant garden.
There are crows calling from the trees -
loud and free and wild.
And the sky beyond the branches
isn't gray or silver
but really surprisingly blue.
Blue enough to get my attention.
Blue enough to anchor me
to this scene, this spot, this lonely season.
So I stand outside until my feet are cold
and I think that this is probably
where all the symbols point.
Not where you've been,
not where you're going
but the absolute magnitude
of where you are.
Today I know exactly
where that is.
Today is Sunday,
early January.
Today is number one of seven.
Today is number one of twelve.
And one is creation and renewal.
One is power under pressure.
One is starting over,
moving forward,
and letting go.
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