The Grasshopper #36: Purpose
Does your writing have one?
Why do we do this thing, this world building, or this sharing of the human condition from escapaism to righteousness, to imagination?
As another tumultuous year begins to close out, I will spend a little time thinking about what my work might look like next year. The political stuff and climate will only escalate, but there is a gap in the fiction side of the story. And the question of purpose is front and center.
“In reality, every reader, while he is reading, is the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument, which he offers to the reader to permit him to discern what, without the book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself. The reader’s recognition in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its truth.”
Marcel Proust, Le Temps Retrouvé
(use of pronouns in this quote is a product of the time it was written. If it makes you feel better substitute your preference)
Truth, in particular, the offering of a vision of the truth that changes the reader’s perception of the world. That’s a pretty strong definition of purpose in writing. But maybe a little daunting one.
But I think Marcel was onto something. The more you read, and write, the better your bullshit detector gets, until you know in even a few words if the writer is trying to convey something they find truthful.
When I think about purpose and writing, I’m looking at the reason I do this rather than the many other tasks there are to do in this life. I think this kind of reappraisal of our motivations is important to improving as a writer. If you tell yourself you only do this in the hope of making some extra money or getting more followers, you’re probably setting your sights a little low on a macro level.
Achieving those things is not easy. There are many easier paths to riches and a degree of fame. That’s because in a world where you can write and publish to a wide audience daily, the competition is brutal and numerous. So defining your purpose is an important part of discovering your audience and resonating with them.
As humans, and readers, we want that resonance and connection.
Touching the super natural (sic)
The day this hits your inbox is the Winter Solstice (unless it is being shared later), the shortest day of the year, but also the herald of the return of the light. Since ancient times, in all societies, there were members whose role was to observe the stars and tell their kindred that spring would once again come.
In our world, this visceral connection to the movement of the planets and the sun is too often lost, but it is the driving factor in why various celebrations take place at this time of year.
It’s also why we tend to reevaluate our lives, make resolutions, and question things like purpose and direction. We get to start over after finishing out another year on the planet.
I have a predilection for the mysterious which underlies why I am a writer. Even if much of my work these days is observing the behavior of repulsive humans in politics and the denial of the climate disaster by those who profit from it.
My interest in the beauty and weirdness of the world keeps me grounded when it seems things are falling to pieces all over. It’s too easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of current events, or those in your personal life, and lose track of the miracle of the daylight growing second by second from here on out.
This dichotomy between my extremely pragmatic writing elsewhere on events of this time needs the balance I get from sharing these thoughts here at The Grasshopper. I can’t always be that observer of mayhem. Sometimes I just need to sit on a stem of grass, poised to leap into the air under the sun.
Styling
When we write about craft we are making shop talk. That’s why, though I don’t write short stories, I read newsletters like @George Saunders’ Story Club. I don’t read it for his detailed analysis of great stories, I read it because I am curious how his strange brain works and how it translates into his writing.
Saunders is a stylist. This means you can easily recognize his voice across his wide range of work. It also means he might be a writer you either like very much or not. That is a chance we take when we develop a style. We take a risk of being too shrill or too pretentious and losing a new reader because we simply don’t mesh.
It’s a risk worth taking. Much better than imitating others, though I think all writers start out as readers and inevitably copy those they admire. I certainly did. I wrote a terrible novel in college wherein a good reader or unfortunate professor could see which famous stylist I was imitating (badly) from chapter to chapter.
Thank god the manuscript to that thing has disappeared! It was written in the days of pencils and typewriters, which I was very happy to see depart when the first word processors appeared. And when it was possible to lose an entire manuscript by leaving it somewhere.
As famously happened to Hemingway when his wife, coming to meet him in the mountains, lost a suitcase with all his writing to date in it. He had to recreate stories that almost certainly were improved by the accident, but his pain when he discovered what had happened, as recounted in A Moveable Feast, is made clear.
Style can’t be faked. It only comes with practice and self-awareness and disciplined editing. But you can see it unfold if you stick to it and that itself is one of the great rewards of a writer's life.
It’s 8am on the Winter Solstice this morning and I’ve watched the sunrise through clouds that are breaking up, giving us a rare glimpse of the sky. The actual moment of the Solstice, that time when a beam of light pierces Stonehenge precisely, is actually early this evening.
And then the weather shit hits the wall. So it goes.
Happy holidays and remember they predate most organized religious days; they are ancient. M
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