Writing from the Inside Out (6 page)

It was a wise king who granted all that was necessary to Chuang-tzu. I like how Italo Calvino introduces his essay on “quickness” in works of literature, because his example highlights the wisdom that everything along the path to attainment can be understood as necessary. Chuang-tzu
needed
another five years, just as he needed the servants and the country house. Even if a writing session doesn't produce any material you'll
use
, you may find that you needed to do it.

Yet, one might ask: What did they do, these required elements? They may not have been directly functional, yet they are far from being extraneous, and instead factor into the totality of the artist's lived experience. Whether my work is representational, I work from life —from lived sensual experience. Honoring the energy of what is immediately before us is the most sustainable fuel for our ability to imagine.

I am reminded of an anecdote about Pablo Picasso: Picasso was having a few drinks with friends in a bar, let's say, and an art collector approached and asked Picasso to make him a painting. The art collector was so happy to have crossed paths with Picasso, now late in his career and exceedingly popular. He was desperate to have something from the master, so the collector offered a lot of money for an original piece. Agreeing to the offer, Picasso took out a pencil, scribbled on his napkin, and handed it to the collector. The collector was disappointed and told Picasso that it wasn't fair, that he had spent no time deliberating over this scribble. Picasso promptly responded that it had taken him fifty years to draw that piece. And it had. It took fifty years of experience to arrive at a place where he was able to render it and to recognize that what he had done was, indeed, a piece.

Whether intentional or not, whether a mistake or a success, each step is an expression that blooms into the eventual result. How I respond to each creative step forms the character of my work. It makes for a better result now, and it builds toward better results in the future. This process is true despite the doubt that arises in the moment, which wants to limit the results to those fitting into a preunderstood category. Vying for conscious control, I may gain the ability to explain and defend my actions, but I shortcut creativity. Authentic creative confidence acknowledges the blessing of being drenched in a spacious mystery.

When we honor the moments in our creative flow that have the most charge and intensity, the resulting work can be said to move with quickness, because the reader senses that the work is alive and growing. Quickness rewards the reader's trust in the written experience as an imaginative one.

In other words, each nuance and detail, each turn and departure, can be trusted as necessary, even when the details are nonfunctional in a structural sense. Isn't life the same? Isn't it a matter of perspective whether a detail becomes significant? Because not everything can be decided properly in advance, I find it fruitful to focus on how I can add onto the pieces rather than remove them when they don't seem to add up.

Let's say that in writing a story, I discover that I have landed on the image of a certain Colonel Sanders on the side of a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken with more energy than I would want to understand. Then the energy departs. Follow the writing elsewhere, and what will likely come up is the transition from a single image (Colonel Sanders) into repeated images or figures that show contrast without necessarily structuring the story. There may be a similarly registering passage with an imprint of a bespectacled, goateed cartoon devil, thus making clear what you had been getting at with the image of Colonel Sanders. Even without textually linking the two, my reader will likely feel the possibility of the two existing as metaphors of something parallel and uninvoked.

Although a departure into unknown territory is confusing or uncomfortable for me as a writer, the return reassures my reader. When I follow an author through an elaboration or departure, I am often better able to enjoy it when I know that the author is true to the way things arise and is being “quick,” as Calvino uses the term. It ends up building trust.

Wildness in creative practice honors the moments in life that feel the most full. Sometimes when these imagined bits don't connect to anything essential within the story, they encourage the reader to feel the most alive, whether the departures are haunting, wonderful, or both.

 

 

The artist, the poet, and the yogi are aligned in their aims; only the outward form of the practice is different. A phrase turns, and it turns us, turning a wheel in the afterimage of creation. In the moment of turning, we glimpse the one. Through action based in the wisdom of devotion, I come to see the self in all things; and, through seeing the self in all things, I am compelled through compassion to act spontaneously, with nothing to prove.

We should never be too certain of our legacy — if J. R. R. Tolkien had been overly emphatic that he was a linguist and nothing besides, he'd never have let himself spend so much time writing
The Lord of the Rings
— and it surely must have taken a lot of time.

As artists, we want to make our lives into the real dreamwithin-the-dream of functional existence — the reverie of the flow of everything. Life's story ends at death — and life's stories get told by those of us who have no other perspective. The best we have is a story in a story. Because the story can never be complete, we should strive for sufficiency.

I have a strong reaction to my associations with the word “sufficiency.” It has a lot to do with my experience with the Zen tradition of Japan and with being in nature. Lately, going through old photographs to use in a book project, I've been remembering a time many years ago when I was studying at Cape Breton University in Nova Scotia, where the campus itself was out in the woods between two towns. It was winter, it was cold, and it snowed a fair amount. The campus at night, especially just after a snow, was an astoundingly quiet and peaceful place. To go for a walk through the deep, dark woods, all I had to do was head south for two minutes. I would go for a walk every night as it snowed — often not until two in the morning. I dressed in several layers and headed into the trees. Where there was a recognizable path, I would head elsewhere. When there was no wind, there were only the sounds of snow. A dead tree would moan as it leaned. Cloudy overhead, no moon, it was nearly impossible to see. There was almost nothing — but the overwhelming sense of being alive. The silence and dark and cold, the familiarity of trees, the feeling of being isolated and even lost — these feelings starkly contrasted with the stimulus of daily life. The present moment felt wholly sufficient.

I feel a huge relief and a sense of wonder when something clicks into place as “enough.” For example, Issa's haiku:

the way things are —

through my worthless window

days grow longer

The simple declaration registers as much bigger than the space it's given on the page. Time seems to have slowed. I can't be sure it hasn't.

looking at me

the pheasant on tiptoe

on tiptoe

This second poem is a lovely example of pausing for a moment with an image, and working that image so that it stretches larger in time. The pheasant on tiptoe isn't enough. It needs to be

     … on tiptoe

on tiptoe

 

 

A common example of symmetry in a short story is beginning and ending with the same (or very similar) movements. A fairytale might begin with “A long time ago, in the clouds, at a time when things were grand,” and end “happily — oh, so happily ever after,” the hero surrounded with admirers departing back into the story's mist.

This same symmetry happens in a typical five-paragraph essay, where the information in the introductory paragraph is revisited when it's time to conclude the essay. To some extent, we enjoy symmetry, because it affirms our sense of things, provides a model for reducing complex issues, and guides us through the cerebral “in” and “out” doors. Yet we aren't poetically satisfied because the work itself isn't satisfied, because life is not truly symmetrical. No writer is more skilled in this regard than Kevin McIlvoy, whose prose resounds with waves of energetic asymmetry that invites the reader into the spacious and disorienting moment-of-telling. We want writing to share the asymmetry of life. If, instead, the writer asserts that everything turns back to normal at the end, we feel haunted by the suppressed subconscious, knowing that something has changed.

The asymmetrical presents an opportunity to expand the parts that stick out. As an exercise for a piece you have already written, draw out these asymmetrical moments so that they highlight a significant image or action. Introduce something dissonant to interact simultaneously, and then be playful as you figure out what happens when the two scenes affect each other.

Here is an example in summary form, with inserted dissonant scenes shown in
italics
:

A couple is showing their new house to their friends. They have just explored the basement. One of the friends, twirling her own house key on her finger, lingers behind to check out their collection of whisky.

A cat has entered the basement and starts playing on top of a piece of paper with a rubber band.

The friend, holding an extremely rare bottle of Scotch whisky, gets distracted. Her attention is captured by the cat's excited pawing.

The rubber band gets lodged underneath the white sheet of paper, and the cat feels on top of the paper, knowing that the rubber band is there, but can't see or smell it.

The host, now upstairs, says the phrase “water of life,” which is what whisky means in Gaelic, and the friend hurriedly returns the bottle to its place, and all is well, except that she has also left behind her own house key…

This exercise works to create new, layered, dynamic scenes, because it gets us to focus playfully on how things in life are always out of balance. Through the interplay of parallel scenes, even if one thing is resolved, another more significant thing becomes unresolved.

We are charmed by the attention given to unraveling, and we want to be given more than the prescribed constraints of storytelling. We want to feel the imagined world acting on this world not as something that could exist as a summary. We don't want the “right” story. We want the living story that is fresh and original. The living story adjusts to the listener, to the telling, and is based on the circumstances that brought about the story being told. We want this moment to express something beyond belief, to surprise us with the interplay between structure and asymmetry.

 

 

Beyond simply putting in the time, having the kind of internal disposition where your relationship to your imagination feels intimate and sustainable is necessary to finding success in a creative practice. The most successful and prolific creative people put their creative practice first in life, because they see it as a practice, rather than a series of obstacles leading to a result, whether that result is a book, a career, or some kind of recognition.

When I see my writing as a practice first, irrespective of the result(s), I am able to tap into an inexhaustible supply of creative resources, techniques, and tools. The desire to have my efforts validated by external means can actually be the greatest barrier to growing as an artist. It's hard, because I want an audience, and I don't always get that. I try to maintain balance between having an integral practice and knowing when and what to share. The imaginative reward is first and foremost within my being. I have learned that the time is always right to become more honest with myself and to reconnect with what strongly motivates me.

Creative domains are always changing outward form. As time moves forward, each innovative project reveals more of the scope of what is possible with words. Internally, the answer to what form your writing should take is in the pursuit of your project's emotional truth.

Sometimes when writing, I feel stuck. I don't know where to go. Well, I'm not exactly stuck, though that's how it feels. Not stuck, but sticking. Often it's just that I'd rather do something else. And then something unsticks — maybe I go for a run or have a conversation or find something to drink that changes my state of mind — and I'm in the flow again, and it feels good.

It's nice when a change of setting or headspace gets me unstuck, but it's best to unstick myself without needing to phone my friend or play bocce or bass guitar. The way to practice is by doing a writing marathon; it raises my personal investment in the project by devoting a large chunk of time and working continually without looking back.