Mark Laporta
I find the phrase “being a writer” a curious expression, because I don’t believe writing is a state of being. The relevant question is, “What is it like to be a person who happens to write?”
By the same token, writing itself isn’t an independent object, any more than a birthday present is the wrapper or the box. Writing is the surface manifestation of an internal process that’s no easier to define than the person whose name appears on a book cover.
Sure, you can take a writing class. You can learn plot gambits, along the lines of those mastered by studying chess openings. You can be pointed in the direction of great writing. But ultimately, that gets you no closer to “being a writer” than ogling flowers in a botanical garden facilitates “being a biologist.”
At the same time, as someone who happens to write, I enjoy certain advantages. My internal process is, after all, a marvelous release valve. It enables me to assimilate the torrent of sensory, intellectual and emotional data I absorb every day. REM sleep, I’m told, is meant to do that, but I have to say my sleep centers don’t know the first thing about narrative. I wake up each morning more discombobulated than before and spend the next eighteen hours sorting out the plot lines of my sleep-tormented mind.
And there, in the sorting, lies the aspect of the process that satisfies me most. When the story is finished, to the extent that anything is ever finished, the tangled threads of observation lie in calm, coherent rows and columns, waiting to be parsed.
While the many squares on that grid contain contradictory moments — of passion, anxiety, love, philosophy or humor — they now coexist harmoniously and, within the realm of the novel, make a rare kind of sense.
The more stories I complete, the more life’s raging chaos shrinks to its proper proportion. It becomes a manageable lump of raw data to be examined under a clarifying lens. An aperture, that is, through which to observe and, finally, feel at peace with the whirling terrors of the external world.
By the same token, writing itself isn’t an independent object, any more than a birthday present is the wrapper or the box. Writing is the surface manifestation of an internal process that’s no easier to define than the person whose name appears on a book cover.
Sure, you can take a writing class. You can learn plot gambits, along the lines of those mastered by studying chess openings. You can be pointed in the direction of great writing. But ultimately, that gets you no closer to “being a writer” than ogling flowers in a botanical garden facilitates “being a biologist.”
At the same time, as someone who happens to write, I enjoy certain advantages. My internal process is, after all, a marvelous release valve. It enables me to assimilate the torrent of sensory, intellectual and emotional data I absorb every day. REM sleep, I’m told, is meant to do that, but I have to say my sleep centers don’t know the first thing about narrative. I wake up each morning more discombobulated than before and spend the next eighteen hours sorting out the plot lines of my sleep-tormented mind.
And there, in the sorting, lies the aspect of the process that satisfies me most. When the story is finished, to the extent that anything is ever finished, the tangled threads of observation lie in calm, coherent rows and columns, waiting to be parsed.
While the many squares on that grid contain contradictory moments — of passion, anxiety, love, philosophy or humor — they now coexist harmoniously and, within the realm of the novel, make a rare kind of sense.
The more stories I complete, the more life’s raging chaos shrinks to its proper proportion. It becomes a manageable lump of raw data to be examined under a clarifying lens. An aperture, that is, through which to observe and, finally, feel at peace with the whirling terrors of the external world.
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