What Are You Saying?

One of my endeavors is writing; this is the 50th blog entry I am writing and they are all 1000 words and about 1.5 pages of manuscript. So I’ve written the equivalent of 75 pages of a book or whatever. The entries are discrete and when I re-read them, from time to time, the meaning may even shift a little for me. It is difficult to say what meaning a reader would get out of these entries.

Writing requires a discipline that I don’t have, or have not fully developed at this time. Readers preferences are different because each reader is an individual and tastes vary from Jack Webb (just the facts) to those who found “Life is a Jigsaw Puzzle” to be a work of great fiction.  This particular book dealt with a cast of characters each involved in a different sort of total waste of time, just as is a jigsaw puzzle in the mind of the author.

 My writing may leave too many conclusions open to the reader. This is justified because I am the only intended reader and my ideas and the development thereof are personal and aren’t intended to convince anyone else although I don’t discourage or disparage others from reading them.

I keep reminding myself that my ideas about and understanding of life and living are still evolving and sometimes even go in directions that turn out to be erroneous. I look back over some of my writing on the subject which was written more than 10 years ago and compare that to where I am today and see how much development has taken place.

 This is my main objection to organized religion, which I have voiced more than once in previous entries. Once a religion puts something down as dogma, it cannot be easily changed and/or abandoned. For example, when the “Eucharist” was finally admitted to be what it is and not something else, it caused the faithful great angst; to the extent that a whole generation continued/s to hold “perpetual adoration” of a piece of bread because they are/ have been convinced that it is the precious body of Jesus Christ.

Back to writing and the discipline; I suppose one has to pick his audience and then write for it. I read the clinical report of the Elephant Man and then I read the novel about the same subject, both agreed in fact so the movie was based on both. I enjoyed the clinical much more than the novel because I was interested in just the story. Some authors take away that privilege by supplying the fiction and telling the story completely. The art of this kind of writing is in the subtext, the hidden meanings, the symbols, the nuances that later on give students of literature such a challenge.

So, there is the text book (non-fiction) where the author is striving for the greatest/ most complete exchange of meaning and fact, and at the other extreme is the poem, where the author is putting it out there for the reader to interpret in his own way. Most fiction of more than a few hundred pages is of the second type except that it isn’t recognized as poetry. Some historical novels take the path in between and do a great service to the understanding of the times/events upon which the novel is based. Agatha Christy strings the reader along with great obfuscation and the reveals the truth at the end while the reader has spent his imagination trying to figure it out before he gets there.

Is there something else at work here? Are the muses Calliope, Erato, Thalia, and Clio taking an active role in inspiring the mind of the writer? Are other entities influencing the writer to take on this or that subject, or is it the imagination, skill, and discipline of the writer, who understand his craft so well that he does the research, that develops the story.

When I read the more clinical treatment of the story of the Elephant Man, I admit that I wanted more development, more explanation, more insight into his feelings and those of the people around him. I came away wanting more and made up for it by imagining how I thought it may have been. The good writer will give enough facts, details, elaboration, and explanation to allow the reader to get a complete story. Then if the reader disagrees or wants to imagine a different set of scenarios, that’s OK; he at least has a fully detailed story from which to launch.

This type of reader is like unto a screen writer/script writer who takes another’s book /story and adapts it to the screen or stage. Often the story is changed significantly from that of the original. One glaring example of this is the contrast between the movie and the book, “In a Lonely Place.” The book was a good story of a delusional killer whereas the movie was the story of a wrongfully accused person. The book led one to believe that the killer was innocent while all of those around him understood that he wasn’t. For my money a much better treatment than that of the movie; it was an Igotcha.

All of this is leading up to a conclusion for me and my writing, I am finding out that skill in any endeavor is not easily assimilated; success comes only after much work and practice, much criticism and collaboration. At the rate I am going I am not going to make it to the altar of literary fame and fortune. There is work to be done on the second and third lines that is not. I’m on a team in pool, a conversation club in French but not associated with writers, not working as a writer, not developing beyond what I can do by myself; I am working along the first line but not the second or third lines. It is important to be working along all three lines at the same time; this leads to effective development.