integrity and adequacy

I find myself engaged in a major rethinking of my project--the reason that I have had it up on blocks, so to speak, for a couple of months now.

When I say "rethink", I don't mean I intend to junk major portions or completely alter what I'm doing. Maybe the word think would be better than rethink. It's a process of learning more, of going deeper, asking why, and forging connections.

In order for a work of art to have integrity, to have unity, everything in it must relate with everything else. Everything in it needs to belong, and needs to be felt to belong. I suppose that the larger and more complex the work, the more difficult it is to meet this requirement.

It's hard to be more specific about this without going into details about the work itself, which I don't really want to do (the spoiler factor). But there is sometimes the feeling that an idea for one part of the story can be applied to others parts, thus knitting them together thematically. My current investigation into ancient credit and finance, for example: I am working with it as a means of creating tension and interest in my current chapter, but I'm also asking how this might be applied to other sections of the story. If it's meaningful and relevant here, it should be meaningful and relevant elsewhere.

Credit could thus become a thematic strand: a kind of thread running through the work, tugging the pieces into closer union with each other. It becomes part of the meaning of the work.

An exciting but scary aspect of this process is that such meanings cannot really be forced onto the work; they are discovered. There is something organic about it. I think of the image of neurons forging connections among each other in the brain: they branch out, their fibers fastening on to each other and fusing, the junctions growing stronger with each impulse that passes through them. The brain, composed of countless complex parts and subunits, becomes a functioning whole.

I continue to worry about my work in progress. When I wake at night and lie thinking, it is still one of my main concerns. Or while watching TV in the evening: something I see will trigger a thought about my work, and I will actually gasp as though an electric shock had been applied, startling my wife. It's fear that I've missed something important, or that my work is deficient in some deep but specific--and irreparable--way.

Life. A story must capture the flavor of life. There are endless ways of doing so, but it's not easy. A story represents both your understanding of life and your ability to express it. When you're offering up a story, you're saying, "I think life is like this." Even supposed escapist and fantasy works say this. As Joseph Campbell observes, stories of magic and monsters are really about the psychological world--our inner life. The story is a test and an expression of the writer's personal adequacy to the world.

In this view, the greatest works are by writers who are highly adequate. They see into life and are able to paint what they see--to express it. As with any endeavor, excellence is only for the few.

Could it be that a truly unified work can come only from a unified personality? Someone who has attained personal integrity in the deepest and widest sense?

I don't know. The question marks here express the truth of my own situation.

the first reader

On into the wet, mild vacation. Kimmie was off to day 2 of a seminar in Richmond on corporate purchasing and contract management, right smack in the middle of her vacation. I drove her through the dark and meager rain to the SeaBus so she could take transit to the hotel.

Morning notes: back to A History of Technology--smelting and casting of copper and bronze, and the tools made with them.

I was delighted to receive an e-mail from Warren in Chicago after some weeks' silence. He'd read chapter 17 and had some comments and questions. He's enthusiastic, as am I, about exploring the meaning of fiction, of a story. Meaning is the highest level of story creation, and the level at which most writers fail (even assuming they haven't failed at other levels). Some stories which are otherwise excellent fail at the level of meaning, or theme, and thereby disappoint even more than other, lesser works that fail on more levels.

An example of this, for me, was the same Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson that I pointed to in a previous post as an example of excellence in the author's knowledge of his world (as well as strong first sentence). The novel began as a murder mystery--an exceptionally well-told one--but did not end as one. The hero's climactic dilemma, about whether to come forward with evidence that will clear an innocent man of a murder charge and save him from execution, or to sit on it so he can get together with the accused's about-to-be widow, is not one that I could even remotely identify with. What are the issues involved? It's not even about justice, the usual thematic value for a murder mystery; it's about the conflict between saving someone's life and satisfying one's mating urge. The hero does the right thing, but it was sort of the minimum expectation I had of him. How often will any of us be presented with the dilemma of saving someone's life, and happy mating?

The hero's choice could be the beginning of a story: a man lets a friend die in order to make it with the widow. If he's a human being, guilt will set in, and now an interesting story begins. The theme here--the level of meaning in the story--will have to do with guilt and atonement. That is a very relevant theme for all of us: a universal meaning. How will the hero resolve his conflict? How will the writer? That's what we read for.

Every story is about something: every story has some assertion to make about life, reality, the human condition. The writer must be in command of this, not at the outset of a work, but by the end of writing. The writer may be as surprised as anyone by what he's really saying, what he truly believes. He may be shocked--indeed, it's probably best if he is.

I'm not there yet with my own work. I do not know what its final assertion will be. I don't expect to know until I actually draft the climax, and that is some time away. I know what the outline says about the climax, what's going to happen. But I'm learning a lot about my characters, my world, as I go, so it's too soon to say. I'm the first reader of my own story, wondering how the characters--and the writer--will resolve the conflicts.