Detritus

Okay. This isn’t a dictionary word. I didn’t poke my finger into the dictionary and come up with detritus. I’m not sure why I chose it for a title rather than similar words like rubbish or debris, words that better fit the category of plain language.

So.

What spawned this is that I was looking at some of my draft blog entries, entries where I’ve written down a paragraph or two, or perhaps even a single phrase so that I wouldn’t lose the thoughts and the build of the thought, as it were, to the Cosmos. Generally speaking, once that creative flash is gone, its gone baby gone. I’ve been lucky sometimes, and managed to recapture the magic, but it’s those exceptions that help prove the rule.

Anyway, back to those blog entries that haven’t made it to the light of day. You know what? Some of them are simply dreadful. Dread-ful. They don’t deserve to see the light of day. Ever. To be sure, this shouldn’t be such a surprise. In an odd way, it’s reassuring to look back on stuff that doesn't make the cut. Sometimes the odd bit of necromancy and such can take a half formed idea farther. But usually those half formed ideas are half formed for a reason. It is more likely to salvage a phrase or two.

There where times when I thought it woeful that I had not written for so many years. Thankfully, and after getting back to the business of writing, I’m less and less convinced of the woefulness of it all. Those years have afforded me something called perspective, which I am learning to appreciate more and more.

While I did write, I spent more time writing of and about facts as I understood them. I spent even more time editing others’ work. So, in a way, in a very literal way, the skill of writing has been maintained. But the writing I'm talking about here is more than that, it’s more than technical skill. It’s choices.

I know you’re probably reacting with something along the lines of, “No shit, Sherlock.”

Can I finish?

I’m not talking about the choices that the writer makes about plot, characters, themes and such. I’m talking about the choices the writer forces upon the reader.

It’s about forcing the reader, fundamentally, to choose between finishing reading what I’ve written or moving on to something else, something like making pop tarts. It’s a sequence of choices, dependent upon each other in order to complete the chain and to keep someone from making pop tarts instead of seeing where I go, of seeing where we end up. It’s the choice between belief and disbelief and I need to make the reader choose to be a believer and to stay a believer for the journey. Because all along, the reader, consciously or not, actively or not, is going through a list of questions something along the lines of these: How does this jibe with how I know the world? Is the story unbelievable? Is the dialogue genuine? Would someone behave like that? Would I behave like that? Do I really care what happens next?

I think this is the most fundamental element in writing. I know I’m not breaking any new ground here. More so that I’m thinking out loud and reflecting upon something I haven’t had to face in a while.

Recycling – maybe that’s what I’m doing, but even it it’s not, I think that’s what I’ll choose to call it.