Writers and Readers...
Nov. 11th, 2007 03:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatWas asked two questions this week by a friend I'd met online, which are oddly related to what I've been thinking about regarding my own writing lately and whether or not to keep focusing on it.
1. What I was planning on doing with my lj. Would I continue writing in it? Was I leaving it completely? (In case you missed it, I wrote a brief entry (since deleted) that I was considering discontinuing my lj.)
2. Do I really think there is a hidden subtext in Supernatural?
In regards to the first question? Whether or not I planned on continuing my lj? I found myself blabbering incoherently about feeling over-exposed and vulnerable. Truth is I really don't know. I've never really known what to do with this blog to be honest. I resisted doing it to begin with - when I was prodded way back in 2003 by yet another person I'd met online. I remember asking her what it entailed. And later discussing it at length with another much closer friend, who remarked - doesn't that lead to a sense of over-exposure? Do you really want to tell a bunch of people you don't see in person and aren't in personal contact with - your thoughts or feelings? The second friend felt, and I don't disagree, that face-to-face contact was needed to really understand what someone else was saying. He didn't like phones or letters for that - he felt that there was a superficial quality to them. Without body language and eye contact, he told me, you don't know what someone is telling you, you can't read their intent, their tone, their feelings. All you have are the words. Phone is a bit better - since you have a voice and its tonal qualities. But it can still be misread.
The people I see daily don't understand why I blog online (they'd never do it themselves), and the one's I interact with online - don't really know me outside of what they read in my blogs, which I've realized can be as wildly interpreted as well just about anything else that ends up in print. The fact that I still make spelling errors, errors in syntax, and well have a tendency to think I wrote one word when in reality I wrote another - does not help matters.
But there's another problem, the feeling that as I write, someone out there is bringing to my words their own subtext. Their own list of concerns, prejudices, judgements and criticisms. I can almost hear them as I type my words, carefully editing and pulling out that which may or may not offend. People are walking landmines - filled to the brim with buttons and levers that you can push or pull with little more than a word or a letter. Not knowing the person on the other end of the correspondence - makes it all the more difficult to avoid pushing or pulling those buttons and levers.
This brings me to the second question...is there a hidden subtext? Not just in Supernatural but in anything for that matter? I remember stating that I didn't know in regards to Supernatural. But, that to some extent, we always bring a subtext to whatever it is we read, see, listen to, or interact with. When I first started to actively interact online in 2002, I and others like me, were unearthing all sorts of interesting things in the cult tv hits Buffy and Angel. Having read and listened to the writer's commentary on the subject, I'm convinced most of what we found we brought to the shows ourselves, from our own shared or unshared experiences. To the extent we agreed, the experiences had been shared, to the extend we didn't - they weren't.
Most disagreements, I've learned, are due to the fact that we have different experiences. Example: Years ago, I wrote a short story about my grandfather who had three cancerous brain tumors, which they were able to eradicate with radiation, leaving my grandfather feeble-minded as a result. One of my readers was offended by my story. Informed me that I was wrong to write this. That my clear exaggeration of the character's illness was an insult to anyone who had *really* experienced a loved one dying of this disease. How could I? Apparently one of her close relatives had died of a brain tumor which was also cancerous. My experience was contradictory to hers. The teacher told me that since the experience I related contradicted the *universal* one, that I had to change my story. Otherwise my readers would not believe me. If it does not resonate for them or fit with their experiences, they will dismiss it. The memory sticks in my mind, because of how angry it made me at the time. I remember thinking - what is the point of writing a story when the only way someone else can read or understand it is if it relates to their own experience?
Of course that isn't entirely true. The rest of the class bought my story. It just did not ring true to that one person who had the contradictory experience and due to the emotional depth of that experience was unable to conceive or understand or appreciate one that was similar yet at the same time very different, almost contradictory to her own. She did not see past the three brain tumors - to realize that my grandfather had not been healed. It was not a miracle cure. He had no mind left. He was feeble. A fate worse than death, in my mind at least. He was a little more than a baby left in the care of his wife, who was using a walker and in the story, fell, breaking her ribs, unable to get up, and he, being feeble-minded, was unable to help her. But all the woman saw was the three brain tumors.
The magic of writing particularly fictional writing is so much of it is unconscious. The story comes from dreams and nightmares spun in that part of our brain that disseminates and analyzes our experiences to come up with some sort of way of handling them, learning from them, and communicating them. The process is not completely conscious, since our mind protects us from things we have not yet figured out how to emotionally handle. Things may come out in our stories that we are not consciously aware of. Those things are then processed and judged by people who have had experiences similar and dissimilar to our own.
A really good writer - who has something to say - and isn't just writing a formula story guaranteed to bring in viewers or readers - will more than likely have an emotional impact on his or her audience. And yes, there's a subtext to that type of story-telling. Even if the writer does not know what it is or is completely unaware of it. And part of that subtext may be intentional, may even sprout from the writer, the other half probably sprouts from the reader. The reader, like it or not, must take a little responsibility here for what they see or do not see in the work. They are not a passive entity. What they choose to focus on tells us more about the reader than it often does the writer.
James Joyce once wrote in an interview that he preferred not to explain the meaning behind his words. The reader's interpretation was often he felt more interesting. The writer of The Kite Runner, echoed this view, when he stated in another interview that he found that when writers told readers what they meant by a metaphor - they often disappointed the reader. Speaking for himself, he didn't remember what he meant. More often than not the word just sounded right or that sentence just worked for him.
I've been struggling with my writing lately. This always happenes when someone is reading my work or when I'm attempting to write something new. I worry about the interpretation. And I worry that they'll attempt to make me follow some pattern.
The story I'm currently working on is strange. It's a tale about a woman who is to a degree trapped inside her own fantasy, but not as an active participant, she is watching it. Her own life is lost to her. All she remembers is the fantasy - to the extent that she believes the fantasy is her real life and she has been whisked away from it. If she can only find her way back to this world where she is the hero and has a lover. It's a story within a story. Told via blogs or posts to an unknown audience. I'm struggling with it - because I'm not sure anyone would want to read it. And I'm telling it because it's the story I can't find elsewhere. See that's why I write - because the story I'm craving isn't on the bookshelves or it is but not the way I want it to be told. I write to tell the stories I can't find. It's why I tell stories. It's not to be "popular" or to get rich or to be a best-seller. It's because I need to tell this story even if no one else wants to read it.
I think it's why I write on my lj as well. Sure I want to connect with folks, but I'm not niave. I know that the connection is limited by distance. Distance that can only be circumfrenced by my ability to travel and visit people - which I don't have at this point in time. I write because I need to say this, to communicate it both to my conscious self on some level and to others. I need to read it. And I need someone else to read it too. I hope that they will interpret it to some small degree the same way I have, because it makes me feel less alone somehow. But I know from experience, that it is more likely they will bring their own subtext and see things in and behind my words that I never intended and may not even be there. That's the risk we all take when we blog or post our words online. That the words will be interpreted in ways we really wish they weren't. But - as is true with any risk worth taking - the opposite can happen as well - someone may find something in what we said or didn't intend to say that makes it meaningful in ways we never imagined. They may inform us of something about ourselves and the world we've written about that we did not know, that was kept hidden from us by our own mind. In that respect a reader can often act as a funhouse mirror to the writer.
1. What I was planning on doing with my lj. Would I continue writing in it? Was I leaving it completely? (In case you missed it, I wrote a brief entry (since deleted) that I was considering discontinuing my lj.)
2. Do I really think there is a hidden subtext in Supernatural?
In regards to the first question? Whether or not I planned on continuing my lj? I found myself blabbering incoherently about feeling over-exposed and vulnerable. Truth is I really don't know. I've never really known what to do with this blog to be honest. I resisted doing it to begin with - when I was prodded way back in 2003 by yet another person I'd met online. I remember asking her what it entailed. And later discussing it at length with another much closer friend, who remarked - doesn't that lead to a sense of over-exposure? Do you really want to tell a bunch of people you don't see in person and aren't in personal contact with - your thoughts or feelings? The second friend felt, and I don't disagree, that face-to-face contact was needed to really understand what someone else was saying. He didn't like phones or letters for that - he felt that there was a superficial quality to them. Without body language and eye contact, he told me, you don't know what someone is telling you, you can't read their intent, their tone, their feelings. All you have are the words. Phone is a bit better - since you have a voice and its tonal qualities. But it can still be misread.
The people I see daily don't understand why I blog online (they'd never do it themselves), and the one's I interact with online - don't really know me outside of what they read in my blogs, which I've realized can be as wildly interpreted as well just about anything else that ends up in print. The fact that I still make spelling errors, errors in syntax, and well have a tendency to think I wrote one word when in reality I wrote another - does not help matters.
But there's another problem, the feeling that as I write, someone out there is bringing to my words their own subtext. Their own list of concerns, prejudices, judgements and criticisms. I can almost hear them as I type my words, carefully editing and pulling out that which may or may not offend. People are walking landmines - filled to the brim with buttons and levers that you can push or pull with little more than a word or a letter. Not knowing the person on the other end of the correspondence - makes it all the more difficult to avoid pushing or pulling those buttons and levers.
This brings me to the second question...is there a hidden subtext? Not just in Supernatural but in anything for that matter? I remember stating that I didn't know in regards to Supernatural. But, that to some extent, we always bring a subtext to whatever it is we read, see, listen to, or interact with. When I first started to actively interact online in 2002, I and others like me, were unearthing all sorts of interesting things in the cult tv hits Buffy and Angel. Having read and listened to the writer's commentary on the subject, I'm convinced most of what we found we brought to the shows ourselves, from our own shared or unshared experiences. To the extent we agreed, the experiences had been shared, to the extend we didn't - they weren't.
Most disagreements, I've learned, are due to the fact that we have different experiences. Example: Years ago, I wrote a short story about my grandfather who had three cancerous brain tumors, which they were able to eradicate with radiation, leaving my grandfather feeble-minded as a result. One of my readers was offended by my story. Informed me that I was wrong to write this. That my clear exaggeration of the character's illness was an insult to anyone who had *really* experienced a loved one dying of this disease. How could I? Apparently one of her close relatives had died of a brain tumor which was also cancerous. My experience was contradictory to hers. The teacher told me that since the experience I related contradicted the *universal* one, that I had to change my story. Otherwise my readers would not believe me. If it does not resonate for them or fit with their experiences, they will dismiss it. The memory sticks in my mind, because of how angry it made me at the time. I remember thinking - what is the point of writing a story when the only way someone else can read or understand it is if it relates to their own experience?
Of course that isn't entirely true. The rest of the class bought my story. It just did not ring true to that one person who had the contradictory experience and due to the emotional depth of that experience was unable to conceive or understand or appreciate one that was similar yet at the same time very different, almost contradictory to her own. She did not see past the three brain tumors - to realize that my grandfather had not been healed. It was not a miracle cure. He had no mind left. He was feeble. A fate worse than death, in my mind at least. He was a little more than a baby left in the care of his wife, who was using a walker and in the story, fell, breaking her ribs, unable to get up, and he, being feeble-minded, was unable to help her. But all the woman saw was the three brain tumors.
The magic of writing particularly fictional writing is so much of it is unconscious. The story comes from dreams and nightmares spun in that part of our brain that disseminates and analyzes our experiences to come up with some sort of way of handling them, learning from them, and communicating them. The process is not completely conscious, since our mind protects us from things we have not yet figured out how to emotionally handle. Things may come out in our stories that we are not consciously aware of. Those things are then processed and judged by people who have had experiences similar and dissimilar to our own.
A really good writer - who has something to say - and isn't just writing a formula story guaranteed to bring in viewers or readers - will more than likely have an emotional impact on his or her audience. And yes, there's a subtext to that type of story-telling. Even if the writer does not know what it is or is completely unaware of it. And part of that subtext may be intentional, may even sprout from the writer, the other half probably sprouts from the reader. The reader, like it or not, must take a little responsibility here for what they see or do not see in the work. They are not a passive entity. What they choose to focus on tells us more about the reader than it often does the writer.
James Joyce once wrote in an interview that he preferred not to explain the meaning behind his words. The reader's interpretation was often he felt more interesting. The writer of The Kite Runner, echoed this view, when he stated in another interview that he found that when writers told readers what they meant by a metaphor - they often disappointed the reader. Speaking for himself, he didn't remember what he meant. More often than not the word just sounded right or that sentence just worked for him.
I've been struggling with my writing lately. This always happenes when someone is reading my work or when I'm attempting to write something new. I worry about the interpretation. And I worry that they'll attempt to make me follow some pattern.
The story I'm currently working on is strange. It's a tale about a woman who is to a degree trapped inside her own fantasy, but not as an active participant, she is watching it. Her own life is lost to her. All she remembers is the fantasy - to the extent that she believes the fantasy is her real life and she has been whisked away from it. If she can only find her way back to this world where she is the hero and has a lover. It's a story within a story. Told via blogs or posts to an unknown audience. I'm struggling with it - because I'm not sure anyone would want to read it. And I'm telling it because it's the story I can't find elsewhere. See that's why I write - because the story I'm craving isn't on the bookshelves or it is but not the way I want it to be told. I write to tell the stories I can't find. It's why I tell stories. It's not to be "popular" or to get rich or to be a best-seller. It's because I need to tell this story even if no one else wants to read it.
I think it's why I write on my lj as well. Sure I want to connect with folks, but I'm not niave. I know that the connection is limited by distance. Distance that can only be circumfrenced by my ability to travel and visit people - which I don't have at this point in time. I write because I need to say this, to communicate it both to my conscious self on some level and to others. I need to read it. And I need someone else to read it too. I hope that they will interpret it to some small degree the same way I have, because it makes me feel less alone somehow. But I know from experience, that it is more likely they will bring their own subtext and see things in and behind my words that I never intended and may not even be there. That's the risk we all take when we blog or post our words online. That the words will be interpreted in ways we really wish they weren't. But - as is true with any risk worth taking - the opposite can happen as well - someone may find something in what we said or didn't intend to say that makes it meaningful in ways we never imagined. They may inform us of something about ourselves and the world we've written about that we did not know, that was kept hidden from us by our own mind. In that respect a reader can often act as a funhouse mirror to the writer.
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no subject
Date: 2007-11-11 09:56 pm (UTC)There's been some recent research (can't remember by whom) that indicates that people make nearly all their decisions based on prior ideas and prejudices. For example, lets say you have developed a strong position about a political issue about which you have limited data. Even if someone presents you with compelling data which should, logically, compell you to change your mind, you will most likely A) deny the truth of the info, B) ignore the info, etc, just so you can continue to believe what you already think.
I'm sure there's an evolutionary basis to this behavior...it was likely advantageous back when we had to make split-second survival decisions, but it's a pain in the butt now.
This was a very long way of saying: I hope you don't stop writing in your LJ. But obviously, you shouldn't do it unless it is pleasureable for you.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-11 10:46 pm (UTC)Anyhow thanks.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-11 10:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-12 02:03 am (UTC)You know, I think it is rare for human beings to really communicate and understand one another. That is part of the reason why literature (and all art) is so important: because it can bridge the isolation between individuals and give us a truly universal experience. It is rare, but it would be far more rare if no one was creating the means for it!
I confess that my own lj is not an attempt to communicate: I want to pontificate, show off, rant, or simply record and remember. But I always appreciate it when someone acknowledges my existence. Yours is more personal, but it is also more profound and meaningful. You can't always be sure you are understood, but I do think you can be confident that you frequently touch and inspire (even in your blackest moods you bring a level of universal humanity which is inspirational...).
I'm not expressing myself well, but I hope you know what I mean.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-12 07:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-12 06:57 am (UTC)Whatever you do with your LJ, it's your's to do. I just want to tell you that when you do pop up on my F-list, I make it a point to see what you are up to.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-12 07:09 pm (UTC)My voice seems to change a lot...but a lot of the time it's also "smart-ass" or "sarcastic", which doesn't always come off.
Anyhow thanks for the response.