Drive your ship to new lands: the importance of discovery

I enjoy puzzles, and that in part defines my love for the practice of medicine – the intellectual challenge of solving medical puzzles (the other part defined by the satisfaction of patient care…but that’s another story).  Fiction writing also provides an intellectual and creative test but goes one step further: it requires not only that you solve the puzzle but that you create it as well. That challenge involves characters that don’t exist and their stories that don’t exist until you sit down and develop them.

Keep in mind that straight lines are boring, and the stick figures they create are equally without the complexity that intrigues us. We no more want to read about a “straight-line character” than we would want to marry one. We may want full disclosure on food labels, but in truth we don’t want that in the people with whom we live. Let me be clear: I am not speaking of honesty or fidelity here. I am speaking of depth of character. Someone who knows himself fully at any point in his life can by definition only possess a shallow depth of character and existence. The state of complete knowledge precludes growth and development, prohibits discovery, and eliminates epiphany, inspiration, and the mystery of life. The act of discovery dies when all places, parts and thoughts have been previously explored, mined, and laid bare.

To know everything obviates the need to adapt to new circumstances and, more importantly, makes one impervious to experience. And experience, growth and change are the marrow of life. They sustain us as real, so when we look behind the face we see more than the façade of a movie set. No one wants to live with a two dimensional person, and no one wants to read about one either. We want puzzles. We want mystery. We want maze-like characters whose inner workings and outer appearances are not fully discovered, whose paths forward are not set in stone because they are not set in stone. We are all clay figures being molded by the hands of Fate and Circumstance, never fired in the kiln, continuously being made and remade, tweaked and altered in ways both subtle and great. And even upon death, we are not fired into a permanent, unalterable state because those who live on will take up the remaking of our images. So too must our characters be always malleable, to us the writer and to the readers. We should always relish the possibility of discovery even once the character is defined, his words and deeds set on the page, his story told, and his Fate set. Therein lies the wonder and beauty of a great piece of art and the characters that inhabit it – the eternal prospect of discovery.

Cheers,

JGN

Our Personal Big Bang

Where are you from? Where were you born? These are questions routinely asked of us and that we ask of others when we first meet. Origins inform our lives from birth to death, often in ways of which we are unaware––subtly, below the conspicuous currents of our daily lives. Well then, what about the origins of our creative lives? Of course, the obvious “parents” come to mind immediately––the literary fathers and mothers who birthed our fascination with writing. For me, they include Joseph Conrad, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Poe, Tolkien and Andre Norton. But we shouldn’t stop there. Go back farther. Explore possibilities for the origins of our creative engine that lie deeper, that precede our introduction to great writers­­––that predate our ability to read. Consider genetics as part of our creative heritage. We hear of musicians spawning musicians, of painters birthing writers, of writer parents of painter children and so on. Dig and one may find that some ancestor possessed a creative streak. My grandfather was a writer: I remember as a teenager my father giving me a treatise on women’s suffrage written by his father years before women achieved the right to vote in the U.S. My grandmother, a Shakespearean scholar, taught English literature in her home state of Kerala, India. They both died before I was born so I was not influenced directly by their creative talents. Nevertheless, connections exist that we cannot see. Our present location in time and space––our personal coordinate in life––is inextricably linked to where we began. Discovering our creative origins––our Big Bang––and following the trajectory of our journey to the present may help us understand where we are going in the future. And if not, well, so be it, but it’s still interesting to consider that we are part of a larger creative arc.

Cheers,

JGN

Feb 16, 2012