What's Most Important

Over the last six months or so, I have been writing a story that is an aesthetic reaction to my first trip to Europe, where I made a close group of friends while going to another school. It was an abrupt - and in that way potent - departure from a life I had long lived in one place by a long-comfortable set of terms.

Writing this story has, more than any previous one, put the tenet of economy front-and-center for me. I feel fortunate to have written enough to appreciate - if not nearly master - why economy is important. I have so many memories from my trip to Europe, so varied and yet all precious to me, and my first inclination was, of course, to throw it all into the pot, optimizing only, perhaps, through reorganization to form a more deliberate narrative.

What's most important in a story is the aesthetic effect, and each thing that is added has the potential to act in a dilutive manner, rather than a constructive one. Most aesthetic effects are most optimally expressed quite simply. The kitchen sink approach, frankly, rarely works at the story level. And so, I had to find the shared aesthetic core of my memories, and build a story that expressed just those most important things.

It took a lot of time. I say I wrote this story over the last six months, but I had been searching (er, more like waiting patiently) for the story for at least a year prior to that. I knew this one was important, and I didn't want to rush it. I feared that if I failed to capture and do justice to the aesthetic core of my memories, that they would likely become so revised by my misaligned focus, that there would be no going back, and something I consider to be of great importance might be lost forever. The next story which I've begun working on is the same - maybe even more potent, maybe even constructed upon more fragile memories. And, I've taken even longer to find my way into it. Yes, it would seem that the higher the stakes, the longer it takes.

Despite patience, experience, and all attempts at discipline, it's still been so, so hard to keep the story set in Europe as short as it should be. I feel a constant compulsion to embellish upon what is there. Indeed, reacting to my own writing is a surprisingly reflexive process wherein just by reading my own words I often come to see not only the story, but sometimes the source material (my memories) in a totally new light. And, what's been said so often about characters is true - good characters take on a life of their own, because by knowing human behavior, the patterns we first give to our characters come to dictate their subsequent thoughts and actions.

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Something remarkable happened to me a couple days ago: I had a dream about a character from my story. Upon reflection the next day, I was reminded of the cornerstone Jungian inquiry in dream analysis: for what is the dream compensating? Remarkably, the dream told me that I was ignoring one side of that character's personality, which must certainly be there. Just as dreams regarding my waking reality often prove to be, it was indisputable that this dream about a character I had only imagined was, nevertheless, correct. I revised the story to expose this other side of the character's personality, and when I later reread it, there was no question that a problem had been solved that I had not consciously realized even existed.

There was a period of time, too, when I was writing the end of the story, when I found myself wishing I could call my character on the phone. This, I believe, was also a subconscious, compensatory function. See, there is a point in the story when the narrator should have called this character - though upon writing it, I did not even consciously conceive of the possibility - the omission was implicit. It was only when I reflected upon my wish to call them that I saw what was right there on the page - that I had, essentially, written him with that blind spot because I, myself, possessed that blind spot.

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There are few things in my life that give me the amount and variety of joys that writing gives me. I am so grateful to have found it - that I had the crazy sense to try, and that I now have the memories I do of all that it has given me.