This morning I found myself poring over issues of the Cariboo Sentinel from the late 19th Century. For a lot of people that may not seem a very inspired lead-in to a post about the love or writing. Who in his right mind wants to spend a day reading parchments about events that transpired more than a hundred years ago - before the invention of the the caffeinated human?
A writer! That's who. At least this peculiar manifestation of the species.
One of the things I love about writing is the weird dimensions it takes me into. Too often we're in a big rush to get words onto paper to prove we're actually WRITING. But as I mature - strange thing for a 58 year-old to be saying, but perpetual maturation is another facet of writing I should perhaps write about... as I mature, I find I want to get off the linear track and explore wider and wider circles of discursive meaning.
I just looked up discursive, by the way, and discovered it signifies what I intended in one sense, as in: dis·cur·sive adj - lengthy and including extra material that is not essential to what is being written or spoken about. There's another nuance to the word I don't mean, namely - using logic rather than intuition to reach a conclusion. Logic is like Werther's caramel candies to me, a bad habit I have trouble avoiding.
What Mr. Encarta refers to as 'not essential', however, is the very essence of writing. The not-essential stuff is what you stumble on when you are researching character, place and meaning. It may never actually make it into print, but it's fascinating just the same. And fun. For example, I came across a tidbit in the Cariboo Sentinel about a witness to the signing of a will, who was being questioned in court and was asked how he knew the 'testatrix' was of sound mind. His reply: "I base my opinion on the fact that she knew brandy from beef tea."
Not essential. But surely delightful, and somehow revealing about the sentiments of the era.
Those kinds of intriguing digressions, whether or not they actually make it into the story do help make the story - and shape the writer.
Showing posts with label why write. Show all posts
Showing posts with label why write. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Monday, November 2, 2009
Joy and Wonder
I will add to the Joy and Wonder of my World.
That's my mission. It's taken a long time to identify and formulate into a declarative sentence, but the urge has been with me since I was a child. It's never been the kind of motive you could put forward as a raison d'etre in a world governed by pay cheques and time stamps, but thank God it hasn't been snuffed out during 50 plus years of practical living.
Now when I am asked, why are you here, I have an answer. In a pinch, I can even cut the phrase down to three quick words: Joy and Wonder.
That's my mission. It's taken a long time to identify and formulate into a declarative sentence, but the urge has been with me since I was a child. It's never been the kind of motive you could put forward as a raison d'etre in a world governed by pay cheques and time stamps, but thank God it hasn't been snuffed out during 50 plus years of practical living.
Now when I am asked, why are you here, I have an answer. In a pinch, I can even cut the phrase down to three quick words: Joy and Wonder.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Why Bother Writing?
That's a question every writer needs to ask. For some - not very many, I suspect - writing is simply a way to make a living. For most it is an inexplicable urge that keeps them going against all odds. For me it's a vocation. There are several aspects to this question I am going to look into, beginning with two: writing as self exploration; writing as an essential and unique artistic form.
Writing as Self-Exploration - Varied as my subjects and settings are, it seems to me at times that I'm writing or revising the same story over and over. I can't let readers feel that way of course. But what I'm getting at is me, the novelist, as the locus of all my creative activity. As much as my stories are written with an audience in mind, each and every one of them is a self exploration too. A recurring theme for me is Love: how it flows like an electric current through the living universe; and hate, how it is a force that is ultimately nihilistic and utterly self limiting. That theme runs through all my stories. In fact, the stories are explorations of that theme, uncovering deeper and more powerful expressions of Love as the nurturing force of life.
Writing as an Essential and Unique Artistic Form - We are occasionally asked to contemplate the doomsday scenario for literature. It goes something like this: In a world of big screen movies, video games, the internet and so on, a bunch of chicken scratch on a page just can't keep up. Why would people - especially young people, who have never been committed to words in print - bother plodding through a book when they can have it delivered to them as an interactive, wrap-around, thunderous sensory experience?
Response (the most important of many): It is precisely because they must be read that books are such a wonderful artistic medium. The reader creates his or her own story from the pages of a book - it's a creative process. That shared creativity makes books very special. No other medium allows so much scope for its audience members to feel they have created something.
It's an infinitely flexible space, too. Anything the human mind can imagine can be written about. The shared, overlapping universes of literature offer degrees of subtlety and complexity no other medium can dupicate.
Is literature immune from its changing social and technological contexts? Of course not. My guess is literature will become more of a niche among many other forms of artistic expression. But it will always be an important niche... and the one I choose to work in.
Writing as Self-Exploration - Varied as my subjects and settings are, it seems to me at times that I'm writing or revising the same story over and over. I can't let readers feel that way of course. But what I'm getting at is me, the novelist, as the locus of all my creative activity. As much as my stories are written with an audience in mind, each and every one of them is a self exploration too. A recurring theme for me is Love: how it flows like an electric current through the living universe; and hate, how it is a force that is ultimately nihilistic and utterly self limiting. That theme runs through all my stories. In fact, the stories are explorations of that theme, uncovering deeper and more powerful expressions of Love as the nurturing force of life.
Writing as an Essential and Unique Artistic Form - We are occasionally asked to contemplate the doomsday scenario for literature. It goes something like this: In a world of big screen movies, video games, the internet and so on, a bunch of chicken scratch on a page just can't keep up. Why would people - especially young people, who have never been committed to words in print - bother plodding through a book when they can have it delivered to them as an interactive, wrap-around, thunderous sensory experience?
Response (the most important of many): It is precisely because they must be read that books are such a wonderful artistic medium. The reader creates his or her own story from the pages of a book - it's a creative process. That shared creativity makes books very special. No other medium allows so much scope for its audience members to feel they have created something.
It's an infinitely flexible space, too. Anything the human mind can imagine can be written about. The shared, overlapping universes of literature offer degrees of subtlety and complexity no other medium can dupicate.
Is literature immune from its changing social and technological contexts? Of course not. My guess is literature will become more of a niche among many other forms of artistic expression. But it will always be an important niche... and the one I choose to work in.
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