Writing and Myself (a rant)

As I sit here procrastinating Shakespeare (among other things), I figured I might as well allow myself to *feel* productive, even if I don’t get anything incredibly useful done. And on my list of things to do while on break (it was on my list for Friday, actually) was to type up this post. No really, it was. So, post I shall.

Sometimes I wonder if I should major in writing. I wonder if I’m up to it. I mean, I haven’t written anything of my own accord since National Novel Writing Month – there’s no time. And yet a small voice inside me whispers: you think there’s going to be more after you graduate? This is as good as it gets … if you don’t have the dedication to write now, you think you’re going to make it?

More discouraging, however, is writing class. I’ve learned some brilliant things from that course, and the one I took last semester. It’s a fun class, and I love Dr. O’Connor, despite (and because of) all his quirks. But I sit there at that desk, and look at myself as a writer, and think: oh wyrd … I can’t do this. And … I don’t know if I even want to.

I have to keep reminding myself: this is not WHY I do it. This is not MY art. Because, really, that’s what a lot of my discouragement comes down to. I write in search of beauty, not to achieve some vague and often depressing artistic ideal. In search of beauty – and therefore Truth. In search of Truth – and therefore God. Creating, because I am made in the image of a Creator. This is art.

But not in Dr. O’Connor’s writing class.

Lyn (Or, the introduction of Common Sense to the Writer-Reader-Text Triangle)

This is why I am so blessed to have writing friends – people who understand. One of these friends is Lyn, who I got to see last Monday. We hadn’t seen each other since … August? So it was wonderful. :) And we talked in loud and happy voices about writing, and literature, and how the literati are all screwed up and have everything backwards.

Last semester I took a course that focused on different forms of literary criticism – reader-response, psychological, biographical, historical, feminist, etc. Apparently Lyn had some of the same. And we were talking about the author-reader-text triangle … and how all professors flip it upside down. In other words, sometimes the reader is at the top – how the individual reads and responds to a narrative is the most important thing in making a work what it is. And sometimes the “text” is at the top – the novel, or poem, or work is the most important thing, basically its own, self-contained little world, no matter who does or doesn’t read it.

But the author is invariably at the bottom. We need to figure out what the TEXT says – not what the author was trying to tell us! So let’s pick it apart – use the feminist approach, or Marxist, or maybe a little Queer Theory – we’ll make it say what WE want it to. What we think is what it is; who cares if the author wasn’t Marxist? Who cares if they lived during a time when gayness wasn’t even an issue?

The author has nothing to say whatsoever.

One has to wonder … if this is the case, why did the person even bother writing? It is, after all an act of communication.

In Lyn's case, the prof put the author at the top of the triangle in one instance - the Bible. But this, she said, would be the only case you could do that - because God is perfect.

Wha ...?

When we create, we are imitating God. I don't understand how human authors' imperfection takes that away. Without the author, the text would not EXIST; and therefore, there would be no reader. As writers, perhaps, we are rather more upset by this than other people. But still ... isn't it obvious?

Anyhow, it was quite a refreshing conversation. :-) Lyn, should you read this ... you rock. *hugs*

The Triangle (some purposeful ponderings)

So the other night I was wondering ... If the author is at the top of the triangle, which is next in importance? The reader, or the work itself?

I believe Lyn would say the text; but my first instinct was to answer the reader. Because if writing is an act of communication, there must be someone on the receiving end to complete it. And without a reader, a book is nothing more than paper with a bunch of meaningless black marks dancing across the page. Ink cannot become letters, and letters can not form words, unless a human mind brings them together.

And yet one could argue that's already been done by the author. And one could argue that, without the text, no communication would be possible.

Reading is subjective - but not entirely so. An author could write a message in his novel; and the work could sit untouched for years and years, unread until long after the writer's death. And then someone could pick it up and read it for the first time - and while they will have their own personal reaction, give it their own shades of meaning and interpret it through their experience, if the author was good enough, they will get it. They will read the exact same words that were meant to be read, in the *way* they were meant to be read. And that message will have existed all those years in the text. Was the meaning not there in the time in between?

Perhaps ... perhaps the work - the novel, the painting, the composition - has an existence outside of itself. I don't mean that the paint itself, the ink on the paper or the notes of music have souls ... but only that they themselves are not the Thing, but only the container for it - a means of perceiving beauty. When we create, we feel we are touching something real ... something beyond the page.

Tangents?

Think about words themselves for a moment. Think about speaking. The words are not the meaning. When you say "blue", you mean the color - but the word blue is NOT the color. There is blue out there, but we cannot actually speak it. The meaning and the word are not the same thing.

And yet words themselves generate meaning. How many concepts are we aware of only because they have a word to them? How many different shades of the same basic meaning?

I'm not sure where I'm going with this anymore. I haven't made my point, but I forgot how I was going to bring this together. :whatevah: I was trying to figure out whether the work or the reader had more importance on the triangle. Now I've gotten off into something completely different ... :-P Perhaps the question is unanswerable anyway. There would be no reader without a text to be read; but what's the purpose of a text without a reader?

Anyhow. If you have finished reading this, I congratulate you. Not only is it a long, nearly incoherent ramble - it pretends, in some way, to be wise and philosophical; and rambling that pretends wisdom is almost always unbearable to read. :-D I shall go back through and put in headings in the hope it helps.