Life is not a problem to be solved. It is not a linear, fixed thing with a single definitive path through from one end to the other, though we all have start and end points in common. Life is to be lived, and that means whatever you think it means. What is at stake is not what we make, the results of our labours - but our approach to ourselves, to our lives; and by accident almost, as an effect of that approach, our labours will give up their own results without our having to worry too much about what they are. Of course they will concern us, and we can more specifically direct our efforts contextually as we go - but I suspect those of us who are writers are writers not because it is a career that suggested itself based on promises of financial security, or of opportunities to progress through tiers of command. It is just something we do, and we don't stop, which is what makes us writers. Within that, we can make choices about what to write, more or less - but deciding to be a writer is not something we really do.
Do we even choose what to write? It is a commonplace that subjects choose the writer, not the other way around (1) - thought any writer would perhaps say they select their material from what is available to them at any given time - whether that is a theme for a novel, the name of a character in a short story, or a stylistic device in a poem - we sift our minds for possibilities every step of the way. Less clear is whether we are able to affect what constitutes that raw material. We live our lives, and that is what we contain - first or second hand. The question then would be how much of our lives we have control over in any direct fashion, and yet another commonplace arises in response - that we are all products of our environments.
Perhaps. I doubt many of us think on that as we write. The job of a writer, in writing, is to invent as well as to describe, and we do that in innumerable small ways, and it may be that commonalities are what binds the writing to the minds of its readers. Gaps in knowledge can be patched, deficiencies in skill can be practised away - but fundamentally our writing will exhibit us, its writer, in every quirk and nuance. To smooth those vibrations would render our work lifeless. No artist should aim for that.
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This week I have been reading John Kay's book Obliquity (2). Its gist is that objectives are best approached askew - Kay referes much to the business world, but several ideas can be adapted more generally. He suggests that the most successful decisions are those that are based on adaptive responses to changing expectations and unforseen circumstances - something that creative minds will intuitively recognise in their experiences of creative processes - and that directness, by which he means an unwavering notion of control over predicted outcomes, is more likely to result in spectacular failure. How does this apply to writing?
Raymond Chandler (3) once wrote "When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand". This strikes me as small-scale direct: problem, meet solution. The trouble is that it's a problem in itself - how does one explain or deal with this sudden event, and maintain context? Improvisation of this sort can lead to artistic doom rather quickly.
Borges' forking paths (4) may prove a better metaphorical approach - our work is a garden of the mind, and there are paths through its making - we do not construct an object a priori, but adapt an evolving path based on a number of fixed points. The joy is in the mutability of that path, while knowing that those fixed points - entrance, centre, multiple exits - remain. By which, I mean cause, theme, and interpretability, among other things.
Our best writing will come as a shifting response to a fixed but complex problem. Anything less oblique would read like a shopping list of plot points, thinly linked by distraction. Our best writing is evolutionary and re-readable in as many ways.
Our best writing cannot be fully planned. Sit down and say "I shall write my masterpiece" and expect only failure. Sit down and write, on the other hand...
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1. Ye gods. http://www.wikihow.com/Choose-a-Topic-for-Your-Novel
2. John Kay http://www.johnkay.com/books
3. Chandler's Law http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChandlersLaw
4. I am not beneath a link to Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Forking_Paths
(DISCLAIMER: I am not affiliated with any of these links and have nothing to gain from their inclusion. I use them only to illustrate my point.)
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