Notes for the Beginning Writer
Posted on 2004-06-08 at 08:03
The concrete world around us predates us and inspires us. The world of sense---of streams and streets and stars---speaks to us in a way that our dry, a priori logic cannot match. This is the language of poetry and parable, of fable, legend and myth, of anecdote and allegory. This is the language we naturally speak, and yet many beginning writers choose the language of the prosaic and barren world of logic over that of this fertile and variegated world of the senses.
If it is good say that that a man loves, how much better to say that his "luve is like a red red rose," as Burns did? If it is necessary to compare two virtues, how better than to say that they are "as moonlight unto sunlight or as water unto wine," as Tennyson proclaimed? Through these literary devices we begin to understand in a penetrating way that logic plainly cannot convey. The objects of our imagery cannot be preempted with the constructs of our logic. People from Kierkegaard to Jesus saw this dilemma and avoided it through their use of the parable form. This is because the parable is at heart a mythic form that energizes and brings to life its themes.
Belief arises out of experience. Our lives are ripe with a narrative quality through which we interpret our world. It is not through dry text but through the image of Jesus hanging broken from the cross that Christians understand salvation, through images of burning bushes and vast deserts that Jews find identity as a community of believers, and through images of the Gautama Buddha sitting peacefully beneath the Bodhi Tree that Buddhists come to understand the maya. This strong literary tradition ought not to be dismissed too quickly by the beginning writer. Ralph Waldo Emerson said in The Natural History of Intellect, that "a war, a crusade, a gold mine, a new country, speak to the imagination and offer swing and play to the confined powers." The legend of King Arthur and Sir Lancelot tells more about our understanding of love and loyalty than a library of psychological treatise'.
Imagery is about specificity. To speak of "fruit" is to be stingy. What image does that conjure? What shape? What color? What kind? These are the questions to answer. To speak of "apples" or "pears" is to be generous---more so if you speak of the smooth rigidity of the apple's surface, the acidic sweetness of its taste, or the blood-red hue interrupted only by a single small-toothed bite from its otherwise inviolate side. To say, "I walked," is mere disappointment when it could be said that, "I wandered lonely as a cloud," as William Wordsworth did in his famous poem of that same name. Had Romeo merely said that Juliet was his most beloved person, we would be left wanting more. Instead Shakespeare, in his intense Romeo and Juliet, told us of Romeo's love for Juliet through this language of imagery when he said, "It is the east, and Juliet is the sun."
The beginning writer must seek the right image for the context. It's like making a good stew---ground cumin may seem the best spice, but until the cook tastes it, he will never realize the need for paprika. This is perhaps the most difficult task of writing. For this, there are no rules. There exists no tome of ancient, codified wisdom ready to yield answers to the inquisitive student. To be understood, it must be done. Just as in cooking, writing---the act itself---is the best teacher of its methodology, its idiosyncrasy, and its wonder. A well placed onomatopoeia, a fitting metaphor, and a specific time in a specific place are the tools of the good writer. Jessamyn West said it well: "There is no royal path to good writing; and such paths as exist ... lead through ... the jungles of the self, the world, and of craft." Literature is not mere words. Literature is not mere logic. Literature is not mere communication. It is all these things rolled into a bundle we call art. It speaks to us of ourselves and our world.