RELEASE WEEK POST TWO






WANT VS NEED

In my second year of university I took a creative writing class. You had to submit samples and be accepted, so getting in made me feel very elite and accomplished. The class was hard. And because I’m a keener, I tended to be the only person who actually completed assignments and then brought in the requisite number of copies for everyone to read…and critique. You know what it means when no one else brings in their copies? That the whole class is devoted you…and critiquing you.

They were mostly pretty nice. We were all young and new and everyone thought I was brave (or dumb) for always bringing in my stuff. I mean, bringing in your stuff was the rule and I’m not sure that any of those people passed the class, but it was a pretty soft introduction to learning how to take criticism. Until one day I wrote a poem. I’m not a poet but it was the assignment, and one freezing winter day I was walking home and I passed a tree with a handful of birds sitting on bare branches, their silhouettes still and pretty against the horizon. I wrote a poem about that. I spaced out the lines and used only one comma as punctuation. I thought it was pretty great. After everyone sat silently and read it (and I chewed off nine of my fingernails) the instructor looked at me. “Why did you do that?” she asked. I stared at her blankly. “Do what?” “Write it like this. The spacing. Only one comma, no periods?” I didn’t know what to say. I just…did it. Because I wanted to.

I’d like to tell you I came up with a brilliant answer to her question, but I just sat there helplessly until some kind soul changed the subject. But that moment stuck with me. “Because I wanted to” is not a good enough answer. Did I need to? The truth is, I spaced it like that because that’s how the birds looked. Why the no periods? I don’t know. I thought that was poetry. But I learned a valuable lesson: have a reason. Wanting is not enough. Why does my poem/story/song need to be written this way?

I tend to write single POV stories because I don’t think they need two POVs. Do people want two POVs? Sure, I see that comment often, sometimes for my books, sometimes for others. But so much of the time I read dual POV that feels unnecessary, it’s just an opportunity to tell the reader what they want to hear, and I don’t think that does anybody—the author, the reader, the characters—any favours. Don’t tell me that you want it. Tell me why you need it. The challenge I enjoy about single POV is that it forces me to get creative when writing the other characters’ actions and dialogue. I have to think of new ways to convey that information without simply feeding it to you through an internal monologue. I like that challenge as an author, and I respect it as a reader.

Now let’s take a moment to sing the chorus of the Rolling Stones song we’re all suddenly dying to hear: You can’t always get what you want/But if you try sometime/You just might find/You get what you need.