Inspiration Strikes

Over the past few months, I have mentally explored the proposition of writing something careful and focused. I will not go so far as to say that I have given genesis to the idea of a "book", or "story", or anything particular, in fact. But, I believe the writing process would be good for me.

I suppose there is a preconception with writing that the person writing does it to fulfill external desires (communication, sharing, etc...). I cannot speak for others, but in this case, I would say that is not true. I believe that I need the writing process to give myself an understanding of what has happened to me in the last ten years. How did I come to this conclusion? I think it was Joanna Newsom who first planted the idea in my head that writing can be an intensely introspective activity; she described a song she wrote as an attempt to make sense of certain events.

Although I do not think it is adequate to invoke the saying, "art imitates life", it may be a start. If art is expected to retain truth, than I believe art approximates life. They are a continuum, but it should not be forgotten that life is the primary and must necessarily be the anchor to art, just as the sun is primary to the moon and anchors it interminably.

This means that although the process of writing may be difficult, the concept of good writing is exceedingly simple. You must simply write reality. All formalism is but the hope of some shortcut that must necessarily be a compromise, or a beautiful distraction.

I could itemize the times in my life that I have come across grand statements that I thought needed to be made, but these statements would make for terrible reading because they were all cast under a common illusion - that the order of the universe allows us to remove or change one thing and expect all else to remain unharmed. That is a lazy way of writing. Good writing does not tolerate shortcuts. Words cannot - in essence - say more than the content of the words, and a story likewise cannot say more than the content of the story.

As I undertake the process of writing, my hope is not to complete some certain thing, but rather to understand the material I will write. Perhaps it seems counterintuitive, but I believe that I will be more likely to complete whatever is required by the content if I rather pursue the goal of understanding. But I digress. All is conjecture, and it is a destructive enterprise to try to outguess the future. Time will tell all in the clearest voice.