writing, catharsis, critique

Greetings and salutations! It’s been quite a while, partially owing to holidays and other sorts of drama, but in no small part owing to the fact that I am writing. What I am writing, if it is good, what the everloving hell to do with this piece when it’s ready for consumption (God help us all), and so blogging feels like cheating.

Plates! Like at a Greek wedding? You’ve never been to a Greek wedding? SHUT UP.

There is also the niggling concern of Having Nothing to Say, which very often feels like the case. But a platform is a platform, and I have ideas percolating. When I blog, like this, or more often, throw up themes and concerns via Twitter or in emails, I’m very often trying to consciously articulate the mucky stuff that’s been macerating below the surface. Like fruit salad, it’s always there: when I’m in yoga, on my commute, while I cook dinner.

(I just saw A Dangerous Method, so my brain is full of parapsychology. Also questions about the death drive being a creative force, but I’ve got a cat on me and Freud is in another room, so that may have to wait for another night. I’m sure you’re all deeply disappointed.)

So much so that by the time I actually manage to put the words down on paper in the best case scenario whatever I’m trying to resolve — interpersonal relationships, or the subjective experience of physical pain, or the imperceptible moments in our lives when attachments are formed and broken — there’s enough preconscious thought stored for me to sit down and write like a mad person. Not standing up for hours and having a huge chunk of story appear somehow and when I come out of this trance-like state, I’m like, legit SOBBING.

I’ve experienced this sensation only a few times, and even now I wonder — how did that happen? how did I write so much? whose words are those?  — but because it was often transformative for me (and for me channeling a character) I’m often severely blinded to whether or not it’s actually any good. One of the pieces I’m most proud of was written in precisely this manner, and so even now, when it gets critiqued or questioned, it’s shockingly hard not to take personally. Like, it made me feel all those things, how could it possibly be bad?

When I can let the problems resolve themselves on the page and inhabit, fully, the characters — it is a great moment, and it’s a deeply cathartic one. Without turning this into a discussion of theatrical aesthetics and manifestos, it seems to me that the experience of audience catharsis is both expected and desired by many. The same, one could probably say, is true for a certain sort of readership in literary fiction.

But does it make for good writing? Does it have the effect of blinding you to critique, to obvious shortcomings in the work? I’ve been thinking that so much happens later, in the edit, but with pieces that feel this raw, even the edit is like picking at scabs.

So, yeah, that’s what I’m thinking about.

4 months ago  /  1 note