What's In A Story?

Photo by J.R. Korpa on Unsplash.

So this guy Zarathustra went up the mountain and after ten years of finding wisdom he comes back down and tells the people, but he found out that nobody really wants to know. Well, a few of his pals and that's about it.

It's a story. Not much of one and if you've dipped into Nietzsche, you'll know why. Hey, we can't all be comedians.

Here's what I know about writing. Less than zilch. What I do know is everyone's different and there are no rules. It's about likes and dislikes and opinions and trends and what's happening now and what the markets want and what the platforms are creating.

It's about choice.

I'm in a point in my life where I choose as little as possible. Choice has to do with brain and I'm switching mine off all the time. It still chunters along now and then and tries to play dead and then fool me with a new phoney smile and tagline, but most of the time I kill it.

How do I write?

I have to say that I'm so new to the playground I really don't know how to play. The swings and the slides look wonderful and the sandpit is full of guys having a whale, but I like the pond with the ducks and the wooden bench and the open spaces.

There you go. Metaphor. If you look up the etymology and I love the root of things it comes from the Greek, '... from meta "over, across" (see meta-) + pherein "to carry, bear," from PIE root *bher- (1) "to carry," also "to bear children." Online Etymology Dictionary.

How about that? I'm in the playground giving birth. Weird.

I don't consider myself erudite enough, intellectual enough, proven enough to speak of how I write.

Here goes.

There are two ways, so far, and I've long ago ditched one of them. The old way was writing with an agenda. I wanted to say something. I wanted to preach, to proselytise. (Proselytise. Comes from the Latin for alien resident. Yeah, me to a T.).

I found that way of writing anal, boring, maudlin, self-indulgent. I realised this in my early twenties and am still extricating the seeds, (you know the bits that get stuck in your teeth and you can't get to?). So that's out the window, although it has insidious tentacles that slither and slide and pretend to be so cute and homey. No! Get back!

The other way is what I'm playing with and enjoying and find fascinating. I don't know if it works and what does that mean anyway and I'm not a scientist. I really love science, the purity, the patterns, the amazing symmetry, harmony that it entails and discovers in nature. I just don't trust scientists. That's it. Apart from the ones who alleviate human suffering.

Whoops. Deviation.

Simplicity. I love simplicity. I love clarity. I love rhythm and harmony and beautiful words and something that comes from nowhere.

That's what I try to do. I listen. I go still. I wait and allow whatever wants to come up from the psyche to come. Okay, I'm a conduit but I'm not a medium, not an interpreter. It comes from me, in me, it's still me, but not the surface, not the everyday. Not that there isn't a place for that. I love the everyday, the ordinary, but I know it's not just what I see. It has many layers and depths and meanings and I love that because it's mysterious. I love mystery.

I sit at the table with the laptop and I wait. There's a sort of wave that I ride when it flows and it's easy to destroy, to start trying to make it.

So my BIG RULE... never try.

I'm learning to listen to what I sense to be untouched by my frontal brain and what isn't. Of course, in all this, I may be absolutely deluded, insane and way off beam. I listen to my tutors and if they say something that sounds interesting I give it a go.

I am not a writer. I have not published anything. How dare I consider I know anything about the art of writing? I don't.

The thing I love about creativity is that I'm finding it's the same whatever you do. Caveat... only my experience. (Caveat. Latin. Let a person beware.).

Okay, so I write stuff and then I come back to it and edit and rewrite and leave it and all the usual stuff I'm sure (Really? No, I'm not sure at all.), a lot of writers do. (I hate... no, I don't hate anything, anyone... a figure of speech... I consider, yeah, that's better, I consider dogma unhelpful.). Jeez, you've got to be so careful with words and meanings, they are so slippery, the darling little eels.

Here's a bit from one of my favourite poets in this regard:

'Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still.'

T.S. Eliot.