Here’s the third and final installment of David Pendery’s guest blog contribution. He further shares his significant realizations about his book and his craft.
About His Memoir
Simply put it is a personal memoir about my life in Taiwan since I moved here in 2000. The life of an expatriate in an Asian culture, with other personal experiences such as getting married here, studying here, etc. I wrote the book in whirlwind fashion in about one month in September 2012, producing about 160 pages rapidly, which I reduced to about 110 when I cut one chapter I decided to delete. I focused on the positive in my book, and this chapter had some negative revelations about life here. Indeed, the reviewer at the Taipei Times noted that I had an unbounded optimism in the book—which I was a little surprised to see, as I did not feel it was quite that way—but I suspect he is right, and I sort of missed that in my own writing. I had thought about writing a memoir like this for a few years. Indeed, memoirs by foreigners living in Taiwan is something of a cottage industry, and I had seen many that had been published in the past. However, for the most part, I did not like what I saw, and I felt that most of these books were silly exercises in selfish self-aggrandizement by the authors, with licentious stories of endless boozing at the notorious “foreigner pubs” here, partying night after night, and dissolute ogling and skirt-chasing of Taiwanese women by the foreigners—that is a reality of how many foreigners live in Taiwan, and I wanted nothing to do with that. I had it in my mind to write a serious book about serious life lived by a sober family and working man. So I set out to do that—and I think I was successful, as others have noted these qualities in my book, including the Taipei Times reviewer.
In some ways even deeper than this reflection in personal memoir–as important as that is–my book is a personal chronicle that I needed to put out into the public in order to relieve a personal hurt that has visited me in the last ten years or so. This stems from the fact that I essentially lost all of my old friends in the US after I moved to Taiwan. Indeed, “out of sight, out of mind” is a reality I have learned in a hard way, and the distance between us was just too great, and one after another my old friends dropped away. I even found this was partially true with my family. Thus, I was faced with something of a crisis in my life, and I needed to shout out “I will not be, and I have not been, abandoned!” One reason this reality is true is that I do have friends in Taiwan, and I wanted people to know this, and see that I had this value in my life, in spite of the fact that much of the former value in my life had diminished. So I really did write the book for this reason—a chronicle, to myself as much as an announcement to others. This is deeply personal reasoning, I know—but it’s true to me.
On His Craft
A final reflection I might like to share is about the value of writing itself. I have found myself wondering about this. To be sure writing has always been important and valuable to me, if at times it seems like mostly a lot of hard work, and I don’t quite find a lot of “joy” the way some writers do. I have produced a variety of different work, from stories to poetry to journalism to corporate writing to memoir (the book I published) to reflective essays. Much of this work I feel that I put some real creative heart and soul into. And yet when I step back and look at writing, sometimes I wonder about just exactly what the creative spark is. In a word, there are times that writing does not feel truly creative to me—essentially it’s just words on the page, strung together into sentences, possibly in skilled ways, but not creative in the way a visual artist is creative. I suppose that poetry does have something of this creative spark, and does appear to be more than just words on the page. Still and all, when I see words spread out on the page, I can’t quite see a link or similarity as when I see a great work or visual art, a painting, sculpture, etc. And of course music has it’s own creative wonder, and is veritably a cloud of creativity with a certain dynamism and aesthetic appeal that writing can hardly match. I don’t really feel the same way when reading a novel as when I am listening to a concerto, or gazing at a work by Picasso. It still just becomes words strung into sentences, expressing meaning as it were, but not really leaping into my consciousness and swimming into creative catalysts and vitality. If a great artist painted a picture of an African landscape, suffused with brightness and color, we would no doubt call that “art.” But when Hemingway writes, “The sun was now baking the plain and we left and started up into the steep, small, broken hills, covered with lava boulders with the new grass thick and wet from the rain,” while you certainly get a compelling feeling, is it the same kind of art? (This is from Hemingway’s “True at First Light”).
I am sure many writers would differ with this view, and I guess I am asking other writers how I might be able to achieve this feeling more completely in my recognition of my own work. I come close in a way (especially with poetry), and I do feel a given excitement when I produce a good piece of writing—but nevertheless it seems to be a sort of clinical or logical excitement of putting words together and good sentences, ideas that are clear, but not quite the appealing imaginative potency of the other arts.
Kudos to you, David Pendery for a fascinating memoir. The Xlibris Blog is grateful that you have shared with us your inspirational writing and self-publishing journey. Xlibris believes your determination and exceptional flair for writing will make you go a long way.
For you aspiring authors, visit the Xlibris Writer’s Workshop to get ahead with your writing, editing, and book marketing knowledge.