On Writing as Art

I have long thought that I would like to write. That's write, not write. The italics are important here. They signify that what I would like to write would be art, not merely the practical and purpose driven prose that I have written as an academic and blogger. I want to write beautiful and brilliant stories and novels. I want the words to flow out of me. I want to be inspired, so inspired that it is all very easy. Unsurprisingly, with these expectations, I have managed to produce nothing more than a handful of notes that might, with years of work, turn into a few stories and novellas.

As I drink in the unseasonly sunlight that is currently bathing California, I am uplifted and inspired. My creative desires are higher than they have been in more than a year, and I seek to give them an outlet. Rather than pursuing my established creative outlets of visual art and brewing, I want right now to write. I, however, have no idea where to go, where to begin, what to do... Yes, I have some notes written, but they are old, and they don't appeal to me right now. If I was to paint right now, and feeling similarly frustrated, I might draw some sketches to get some ideas out. Or I might just grab the paint and let my frustrations flow. I know what to do in visual art - I am intimately familiar with it, and have been my entire life. I know what to do there. However, I don't know of an analog for those activities within the art of writing.

Searching for my muse, I became increasingly frustrated with writing as a medium. I simply want to express. I want that flow. That simple and satisfying flow that is so easy for me to achieve with visual art. I felt like there was no way to achieve that same flow with writing. It is very intimidating to stare at the blank page of a word processor, knowing that the next step is to conjure forth a prose narrative, complete with characters and interactions and imagery and all those things that are intrinsic to any and all fiction prose that is sufficiently coherent to be enjoyed by anyone other than the author. Thinking on this, I realized how inherently limited fiction prose is...

Most all successful fiction prose does present a narrative. Than narrative, no matter how clouded by style and surreality, is there. Events are happening. And those events almost always involve people or highly anthropomorphized figures. There are human interactions - whether they are between characters, or between a narrator and the reader. All of this weighed upon me. With anything I attempt to write, with whatever I attempt to express, these characters must be conjured and cultivated in order for a narrative to be created. And without said narrative, my prose would fall apart, a pretentious heap of verbal vomit. I find the creation of characters and narrative to be intimidating - far more intimidating than the creation of brushstrokes and compositions.

Yes, the convention in visual art is to create visual representations of real-world elements. A portrait, a landscape, even a portrayal of a god all draw from established visual language. However, visual art has demonstrated an appeal beyond the representation of the familiar - abstract representations, design elements, and full-on avant-garde abstract painting are all well received and understood. While prose and poetry have experienced similar deviations from their norm, I would argue that the furthest extremes of visual art’s deviation from pure representation are far greater than that of writing's fringes. And I believe this is because writing is an art of language.

As interesting and wonderful as language is, it is frustratingly limiting at times. To a certain degree, I feel writing is frustrating because the language is necessarily limiting. There is a set vocabulary, and there are set grammatical rules that must be followed if anyone is to understand the work. Oh certainly the rules can be bent within reason, and occasionally new words can be introduced, but overall the medium that the artist has to work with is fairly stagnant. And it's the same one all other writers are using - all a writer has to distinguish their work is the style with which they use the language. It's as if all painters were to use the same brush, and their only decision was to be what strokes to make. There would no option to select a paint knife, an improvised device, even a hand, much less to strap a rotting road kill carcass to the canvas and say "done."

The last bit touches on what I think is another limiting element of writing as art. While visual art uses visual language to do its communication, there is little in the way of well-established, acculturated visual language to violate and direct the flow from the artist. Aside from an impulse to scan visuals from top-left to bottom-right or from top-right to bottom-left based on your primary written language, the only solidly established elements of our visual vocabulary are deeply primal. Curves relate to female fertility, angles to masculine strength. Bared teeth are aggressive. Green and blue are serene, while red is stimulating. The resulting language is most abstract, and puts little pressure on the artist. This lack of baggage on visual art allows the artist greater freedom in deciding what to do with the language. There are fewer preconceptions to be violated...

To contrast, writing uses verbal language - the language of interpersonal communication. Words and phrases are laden with baggage. One could even say that verbal language is, by its very definition, a collection of preconceptions. Words trigger thoughts and constructs - highly specific thoughts and constructs. Though the artist may bend these, they may not regularly break them without losing contact with their audience. And verbal language is used entirely for the purpose of communication between people. The very use of verbal language triggers the frames of interpersonal communication, and if the author isn't telling the reader something, then the reader soon expects to see characters within the text telling each-other something. This, to a certain degree, explains the prevalence of narrative in writing - without narrative, writing doesn't make sense. Without narrative, verbal language is separated from the context that gives it meaning and value.

So what am I saying in all of this? I am saying that writing, due to the nature of linguistics, is inherently capable of far less abstraction than either visual or auditory art, and that this limitation is intimidating for me. There is no analog for a mixed-media abstract or sound-collage in writing. There is narrative. If I am to be successful in this medium, I am going to have to apply myself more than I ever have before. And pray that my muse visits me.