The Grasshopper #62: Sharp Turns Ahead
Throwing caution to the wind
Cliches are cliches for a reason but sometimes when you look at them from a different angle they turn out to have a bit of poetry to them, which may be why they endure.
There’s one in my subtitle above, throwing caution to the wind. It paints a beautiful image of a person who has decided to go all in, to let the winds blow away their hesitations and fears, and then march out to face whatever the world throws at them.
It is increasingly my state of mind this summer (and today is summer, the solstice, though the weather guy on TV explained that the longest daylight of the year might come a few days from now because days actually vary in length, or something like that). Throwing caution to the wind and trying a new direction.
Don’t worry, I’m not veering into the ditches of self-help and motivation, at least not more than usual. Which circles me back to that cliche. Self-help and motivation are all well and good but they imply that life comes from what you do and make. Sometimes we need to drop those ideas and simply see what comes to us.
This is not what I planned to write today and that’s ok. I can write that another time if it demands that I do so. Today’s theme is that getting lost might be an interesting form of entertainment because when you’re lost, you’re not in control. There is something called automatic writing that was briefly a thing when I was starting out.
The idea was you start writing and follow it wherever it goes, not imposing your will on it. I’m guessing it was created as a teaching tool for breaking blockages or writing dead ends. Then some ‘experimental’ novelists adopted it and began writing things that were, to be honest, virtually impossible to follow or even read.
Some became quite famous for this stuff. I think it was because decoding their writing became an intellectual game that offered many academic opportunities to write obtuse papers, obtuse enough to further a writing professor’s career.
But maybe those writers were just trying to get unblocked. Either that or their minds follow a different logic. I hope it was the latter.
But I digress, which reinforces my theme of throwing caution to the wind.
About those sharp turns
Yesterday I wrote a piece for Medium wondering if Trump was capable of any self-control in the face of being indicted on serious charges. Well, I had barely hit Publish when he went on Fox and basically admitted he kept the classified docs. Sheesh.
And we wonder why his attorneys keep quitting.
Then this morning (Tuesday) we read that Hunter Biden took a plea deal on tax evasion charges, ending a Trump-appointed Special Prosecutor investigation that will not send him to jail if he sticks to the deal and stays clean.
During most of my adult life stories like these would have turned the political world upside-down. They would have been ‘scandalous’, a once potent word that has become meaningless when scandals have been normalized and even rewarded with more political and financial support.
It’s like we’re racing down a switchback mountain road, cliff on one side and wall on the other while checking our phones. To me this disconnectedness has become a major problem, the type of problem that precurses the end of empires.
Yesterday a kid with his face glued to his phone walked into me on the sidewalk, glanced up, stepped around me and continued with nary a word, oblivious. I wish I could say that was a rare occurrence but it has happened before, though they usually apologize at least.
On a different topic, last night I made a delicious stir fry with pork at the girl’s house, just grabbing whatever I could find in the fridge. In cooking I’m an improviser, just as I was when I played bass years ago and as I continue to do in my writing, especially here at The Grasshopper.
Any creative writer or artist must learn to follow those unseen patterns that emerge when you throw caution to the wind (last reference, thank you). That’s why I’m not much of a plotter in my fiction, preferring to start with a premise and see where the subconscious mind takes it.
It’s a favorite topic of mine, this serendipitous place where we go when we let the words build the trail and we follow it, often in the dark. My favorite writers are those who throw logic out and take sharp turns into the unknown.
This is where that first edit becomes such a critical aspect of the writing process. It’s the point where your conscious, day to day mind confronts the world you have made and starts the process of making it believable with good pacing, character development (often by removing details and letting the reader build their own impressions), and a pruning out any wayward branches, no matter how precious they are.
Just remember, they can trip up the reader.
There will be a new Witness Chronicles later this week. It will include some of my political op-ed stuff as usual, but you may see a piece chronicling a personal change process I am trying to initiate, a detour from the topical things.Â
I guess the theme in this issue you’re reading is about embracing change as a person and a creative. It may mean spitting out some lousy work but in my experience that always eventually gets you back on track.
This stage it might just be you tripping over those branches. Get out the pruners and you’ll be fine.
Did you write today?
Martin
961 words
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