This is an IDEA (though it resembles a butterfly)
I’m a guy whose wishes are words. And whose wishes are FOR words. By the clock, the wished-for words are straight-spined and modest, assembling in tight, orderly rows. But when work gives way to whimsy, that’s when words can stretch, flop, and peep around corners to see who’s looking.
The division is due to the fact that I’m both a business writer and a fiction writer, and not only do the twain not meet, but the twains don’t even arrive at the same station. And that pun is not nearly as painful as trying to reconcile the two worlds of words.
Sometimes, there is a truce of sorts: a brochure on streaming video might have a little stream of consciousness, or a character sketch might call for a pencil tipped with the driest of logic. But most of the time, when I have to travel between the word-worlds, it’s a difficult, deliberate journey—an enterprise that requires even more than Thoreau’s dreaded change of clothes.
However, I want to avoid the sense that being a painter or writer or sculptor confers any elite status or implies some exalted perspective. I’ve been a staff copywriter, freelance essayist and fiction writer for years, and it’s often more a matter of managing deadlines than swooning in inspiration. Keeping the queries fresh. Being thick-skinned about the seemingly inevitable “no” that you get from most publishers. I’ve learned to just shrug and go to the next query or project.
Words for the Plucking
However, there are some moments in the writing process, where words seem to be bright objects that can be plucked out of the air and strung together in serried ranks of complement and charm. Out of nothing, a paragraph that prances—or one that cries and bleeds. In those moments, it’s less the affected pose of practiced art, but rather a kind of verbal husbandry, a farmer grateful for an unexpected crop.
This isn’t precious wordsmanship, it’s grace—and I’m grateful when it occurs.
What I’m getting at, is that at some times in the creative process, it’s less a “me” than a “Wow!” (Conversely, it’s more often, “That’s shit!”—but that’s realistic, not wallowing.)
But perspective is king: there can be beauty in the way a bus driver weaves her route, how a seventh-grader whistles a made-up tune, where the making of a good sandwich is an artful act. Those moments of grace can be fleeting, but a good sandwich is forever. Well, until lunch.
Consider this:
“It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by.
How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the
moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone;
life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his
fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.”
— Vita Sackville-West
Keep hopping, and snap a net on that nervous mind.
“The division is due to the fact that I’m both a business writer and a fiction writer, and not only do the twain not meet, but the twains don’t even arrive at the same station. And that pun is not nearly as painful as trying to reconcile the two worlds of words.”
Speaking painfully, I empathize and hope your train of thoughts (I mean non-thoughts) derails and takes flight. Having attempted the impossible (I mean reconciliation) myself, the idea of channeling the Wow while sustaining the linear process required for business writing ought to be tarred, feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail.
I believe, now, that the nonlinear creative process, whether it’s paint on canvas or words on (e)paper, will be subverted and confounded if asked to wear a suit and tie. Irreconcilable differences justify the divorce; there can be no truce; damn the torpedoes.
Jeff, you gave me some wonderful images with the “paint on canvas or words” in a suit and tie. I did see Mona Lisa trussed up in that strangled way, as well as a sharp Armani not looking so good on my Webster’s.
It is weird and uncomfortable to try to bridge both worlds—I wrote a brochure on hip arthroscopy recently on the same day I was trying to update my novel. And that ain’t hip.
Thanks for stopping by.
Tom, when I write about technical medico-dental stuff or challenges in the intersection of society and medicine, I let the words peek and prance and pretty much have a party with a pinata and Dancing Beaglettes.
Am I gonna get into trouble for this? People seem to like it, but are there stern and implacable Writing Police out there, waiting to pounce on me?
More pressingly, Max Headroom wonders, ”If security guards threw a party- would they let each other in?”
Tricky Ricky, indeed there are the Writing Police, but their guns are made of licorice and their proclamations just gassy ephemeralities. Fug ’em, I say.
I am going to send Mr. Headroom’s query to George Carlin in Hipster’s Heaven, and I’ll get back to you when he answers.
And if wishes were sandwiches, beggars might bite… or something like that. I do make a mean BBQ sauce tofu sandwich with homemade slaw and red onions, though I never realized ’til this moment that it was an act of artfulness. Cool.
Snapping a net on the nervous mind? Sounds like good advice (I might even heed it), and the name of an interesting podcast.
Hey, that sandwich sounds sound, Chef Dennison. Many are those that gag at the mention of tofu, but I like many of its myriad manifestations. It’s rather the Chauncey Gardiner (if you ever saw Being There) of food products.
I will be a guest on your Snapping the Net on the Nervous Mind podcast when you set it up.