The Small Person is in bed, again, at last, and I'm reading, again, but not books, because books can't hold my attention right now when I'm restless, and tired, and vaguely guilty for the fact that my house looks like it's lived-in and there are toys in the corner and folding on the lounge and unfinished paperwork on the table and dishes in the kitchen, though all the non-dishwasher dishes are clean and really I just need to unstack and stack. There's a basket of wet laundry waiting to be hung out on the line like flags, colourful flags that symbolise everything we are and have been, because we wear our clothes every day and they make us, and we make them, the caterpillar suit that belongs to Small Person that is my favourite, the shirt I should have thrown out months ago but that I love, the sheets that my husband and I bought together, lie in together, change together.
All of this is calling to me, but I'm sitting here reading, and my soul is full. I'm reading about courage, and hope, and change; I'm reading about things that outrage me, things that try to excuse themselves saying they 'didn't mean' to be offensive, and so therefore aren't - to which I silently, furiously, blood-boilingly disagree, because when you are the powerful one, you don't get to define what offends those in less powerful positions. And I'm reading about love, and life, and wanting to uproot everything you are and have and just get out, change, do something different because what you're living is so empty, so small, so nothing.
I, too, was raised under the unconscious message that bigger is better, that more is more, and I'm not talking about the world, about acts of greed and selfishness and plastered billboards and enchanting lights and beautiful people with beautiful drinks and cars that change your life and computers that sing and dance and long slim legs and long thick hair and sparkling eyes and full breasts in bikinis and clear skin and stuff and things and more-more-more. I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about other things, unselfish things, things that help and heal and minister. Things that change the world, that can only BE big because what can small do against a world of greed, a world of pain and hurt and envy and pride, large gaps getting larger and privilege and wealth and so much poverty that I never, ever see. I'm sheltered, spoiled, I don't even KNOW anyone who qualifies as poor, and we're not rich and we have bills but we also have a car, and a motorbike, and a house and new furniture, a dishwasher for Mothers' Day and fishing rods for Christmas, thousands of dollars of books and a flat-screen TV, and how dare we think that we need stuff in a world where people die so easily at the end of a gun wielded in a bar brawl, in front of their wife, with two small children at home?
And I'm doing nothing, or so it seems, because we're told that the only things that count are BIG, that if you're not serving overseas it doesn't matter, that soup kitchens and street alleys are the only places you can make a difference, that unless you're fighting to stay alive with everything you have your perspective isn't valid, doesn't count.
And I'm thinking all this because of what I'm reading, because the woman whose blog I'm reading has felt all this and I do too, and it's guilt, and it's more guilt, and I am so. sick. of guilt. Guilt is poison, a spider bite in the vegetable garden, a snake curled in the blankets of your bed, a fire-ant sting at a lavish summer picnic, ready to flood your senses without provocation, devouring, destroying, souring the taste of the cherries because cherries are expensive, and out of season, and you shouldn't be eating them because the cost to ship them here from America ought to be prohibitive, and people in the world are dying from lack of sustenance and you're eating things that cost a year's worth of food for these people, and you're enjoying it, and you must be perverse.
Sometimes, even big things aren't enough.
But I'm reading, reading, feeling and still reading, and a sentence makes me pause. In all of this, the quiet reminder that even if we don't feel like they do, the small things count, because we're not in this world to fix it, it's broken, it's crumbled, and one day maybe we will rebuild but for now there are just as many working against as there are working for and really, ultimately, there's nothing we can do. One day it will all be gone and we'll start over with everyone, everyone, who wants to see that, regardless of race colour creed size shape gender age. We will all be there, and then it will be fixed.
But now, here, we're not fixing things, no one can do that, we just can't, we're fighting against powers and principalities not of this world, and here, on Earth, it's a losing battle, though ultimately it's won. But I'm reading, and I know: that doesn't mean that what we do doesn't count. It's like the starfish, which has been retold so often it's cliche, but it matters, it still matters even if you've heard the story a thousand times, just like what we do. We do it so often, all that small stuff, that it becomes cliche, and we're inured to it, and we forget that it still matters, that even though we've never seen a smile of ours make a difference, that doesn't mean it doesn't. That giving a few dollars here and there still helps, even if it's boring, even if it's tiny, even if it's 'done'.
And I'm reading, and I find the thing I didn't realise I was looking for, the sentence that gives me hope. We're not here to fix things, we can't, it's too much. Instead, all we need to do it tip the scales. We're striving for justice, for mercy, at least I am, it's what I burn to do with everything that I am, every time I read something that makes my blood boil it's because I hate, I hate injustice and I hate unfairness and I hate that there are people in this world that think that privilege is okay, that power over others is God-given, that discrimination is alright. I long for justice; I ache for mercy. And in the end, that is what we are to do, all we are to do, everything we are to do: to tip the scales in their favour.
And I read this, and I remember: it only takes a grain of rice to tip the scales in the end. We don't need 'big', or loud, or bright or shiny or dazzley; we just need. Everything tips the balance, one way or the other.
Showing posts with label less is more. Show all posts
Showing posts with label less is more. Show all posts
21 July 2012
14 February 2012
When Less is More
Less is more. I’ve heard some people twist this maxim to ‘more is more’. Granted, that works in some situations, and the whole ‘less is more’ idea obviously has its limits: some food is better than no food! And some words on a page definitely give the reader the idea of the story better than no words. You can definitely have too little.
But you can also have too much. I’m referring, here, to the idea of overwriting – something which I was guilty of as an inexperienced writer for far too many years, partially because no one could tell me what they actually meant when they said I had overwritten something (not even my university creative writing lecturer!). It took a few years of practice, lots of critiquing, and the revisiting of some of my old university notes to figure out what they really meant.
Here’s the thing: when I sit down to write, I often have a pretty specific idea in my head of what everything looks like – where things are in relation to each other, colours, general interaction of characters and setting, and so forth. Obviously, the entire point of writing is to try to convey that mental image to the people who will read my story, and that’s what learning to write is about – learning how best to perform telepathy and transfer the image from my head to yours. Writing really is magical :)
Like all good magic, though, there’s a catch: your head isn’t a blank slate waiting for me to throw stuff at. Readers come to everything they read with their own perceptions, backgrounds, and associations – both for concepts and individual words. I do this activity in my creative writing class at school where I read out the description of a room and ask all the students to draw it. Of course, every drawing I get is different; some drew it from different perspectives, some interpreted my words in different ways – and of course, they all fill in the gaps differently.
Because here’s the other thing: no matter how detailed I am in my description, I will always leave gaps. Something about the quality of the light, or the exact proportions of the objects, or the precise shade or tone, or the temperature, or smell, or the feel of the carpet on my feet – something will always slip through my description, and the students will always have to fill in some gaps.
The students, of course, are like readers. Reader Response Theory posits that readers derive their own meaning from texts using multiple layers as clues – the phonetic layer, where we figure out the meaning of each sound, the orthographic layer, where we figure out what sounds the squiggles on the page represent, the semantic layer where we figure out what words as a whole mean, and so on and so forth. There is always going to be some fundamental similarity of meaning that all readers will have in common – Hamlet is after all not a muffin, as my university lecturer would say – but there will also be differences (sometimes slight, sometimes significant) in the way that readers perceive a story that will mean that they have different interpretations of it.
This is a good thing! I don’t know about you, but I find the most boring stories are the ones where everything is served up to me, where I don’t have to exercise my imagination or engage on any meaningful level in order to get through it. Gaps are good – gaps engage the reader and give them some work to do. Of course, as I said at the beginning, some food is better than none, and you don’t want to lapse into obscurity so that the reader has no clue what you’re talking about – that will generally make me throw down a book just as quickly as if the writer had swamped me with every single detail. It’s all about the balance: not overwriting (too few gaps) and not underwriting (too many gaps).
For me, writing is most of all about being conscious of the words you use. Maybe not in draft-mode, but at least at the final-edit stage, I have to go through and check my word usage, and make sure that every word is the best one for that moment, that it all means what I intend it to. But being a conscious writer means more than that – it also means being conscious of the gaps you leave in your work. There will always be gaps – and there should be – but they should be gaps that you have chosen.
How do you choose where to leave the gaps? Significance. Does it really matter that your protagonist is wearing a red shirt? Sometimes, yes. If, for example, he’s about to be sacrificially shot so the rest of the team can get away, sure, the fact that he has a red shirt might be symbolic. Ditto if you’re wanting to subtly foreshadow his part in an upcoming murder, or that he will die soon, or whatever. Or even if it’s just because he’s going to spill some tomato sauce on himself and it will be pretty critical to the plot that it doesn’t show up. If it’s just red because, then maybe not so much.
The key point is critical to the plot. Significant detail. Does it really matter if the reader misses this particular detail? If not, leave it out. The words that remain will be that much stronger, that much tighter, and the core of your meaning that much clearer if you do.
But you can also have too much. I’m referring, here, to the idea of overwriting – something which I was guilty of as an inexperienced writer for far too many years, partially because no one could tell me what they actually meant when they said I had overwritten something (not even my university creative writing lecturer!). It took a few years of practice, lots of critiquing, and the revisiting of some of my old university notes to figure out what they really meant.
Here’s the thing: when I sit down to write, I often have a pretty specific idea in my head of what everything looks like – where things are in relation to each other, colours, general interaction of characters and setting, and so forth. Obviously, the entire point of writing is to try to convey that mental image to the people who will read my story, and that’s what learning to write is about – learning how best to perform telepathy and transfer the image from my head to yours. Writing really is magical :)
Like all good magic, though, there’s a catch: your head isn’t a blank slate waiting for me to throw stuff at. Readers come to everything they read with their own perceptions, backgrounds, and associations – both for concepts and individual words. I do this activity in my creative writing class at school where I read out the description of a room and ask all the students to draw it. Of course, every drawing I get is different; some drew it from different perspectives, some interpreted my words in different ways – and of course, they all fill in the gaps differently.
Because here’s the other thing: no matter how detailed I am in my description, I will always leave gaps. Something about the quality of the light, or the exact proportions of the objects, or the precise shade or tone, or the temperature, or smell, or the feel of the carpet on my feet – something will always slip through my description, and the students will always have to fill in some gaps.
The students, of course, are like readers. Reader Response Theory posits that readers derive their own meaning from texts using multiple layers as clues – the phonetic layer, where we figure out the meaning of each sound, the orthographic layer, where we figure out what sounds the squiggles on the page represent, the semantic layer where we figure out what words as a whole mean, and so on and so forth. There is always going to be some fundamental similarity of meaning that all readers will have in common – Hamlet is after all not a muffin, as my university lecturer would say – but there will also be differences (sometimes slight, sometimes significant) in the way that readers perceive a story that will mean that they have different interpretations of it.
This is a good thing! I don’t know about you, but I find the most boring stories are the ones where everything is served up to me, where I don’t have to exercise my imagination or engage on any meaningful level in order to get through it. Gaps are good – gaps engage the reader and give them some work to do. Of course, as I said at the beginning, some food is better than none, and you don’t want to lapse into obscurity so that the reader has no clue what you’re talking about – that will generally make me throw down a book just as quickly as if the writer had swamped me with every single detail. It’s all about the balance: not overwriting (too few gaps) and not underwriting (too many gaps).
For me, writing is most of all about being conscious of the words you use. Maybe not in draft-mode, but at least at the final-edit stage, I have to go through and check my word usage, and make sure that every word is the best one for that moment, that it all means what I intend it to. But being a conscious writer means more than that – it also means being conscious of the gaps you leave in your work. There will always be gaps – and there should be – but they should be gaps that you have chosen.
How do you choose where to leave the gaps? Significance. Does it really matter that your protagonist is wearing a red shirt? Sometimes, yes. If, for example, he’s about to be sacrificially shot so the rest of the team can get away, sure, the fact that he has a red shirt might be symbolic. Ditto if you’re wanting to subtly foreshadow his part in an upcoming murder, or that he will die soon, or whatever. Or even if it’s just because he’s going to spill some tomato sauce on himself and it will be pretty critical to the plot that it doesn’t show up. If it’s just red because, then maybe not so much.
The key point is critical to the plot. Significant detail. Does it really matter if the reader misses this particular detail? If not, leave it out. The words that remain will be that much stronger, that much tighter, and the core of your meaning that much clearer if you do.
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