Some writing experts with courses seem to harp on about linearness. You start something, you finish something. Process is negated without reaching for the brass ring of product. Big emphasis on closure. It makes sense. It’s an economic model of you pay for classes, you get your money back in sales therefore offset courses.
For some writing is all about organization, discipline, regularity of habit, mapping. Of course, that’s planner vs. panster in the novel-writing world. And I am both. I love both planning and improv. I am good with open-ended prompts, structured constraints and lack of either.
I start my brain in the morning with random articles from Wikipedia (the downloaded Kiwix) and was struck by Monet’s process for his haystacks.
“Certain effects of light only last for a few minutes, thus the canvases documenting such ephemera received attention for no more than a few minutes a day.”
“[H\is willing helper was quickly bringing as many canvases as her wheelbarrow could hold.[17] Monet’s daily routine therefore came to involve carting paints, easels and many unfinished canvases back and forth, working on whichever canvas most closely resembled the scene of the moment as the conditions and light fluctuated. “
I am not Monet but I do live in changing atmosphere and light.
I typically am writing whatever I write, not to project. When I have a research-based project, I steer thataway but otherwise any manuscript is a cobbling together later-problem.
When I have a few comparable, I have a theory of cluster and can tag things to go to that pile as they appear but I’m generally got at least half a dozen to a dozen active manuscripts. And that which fits nothing. That makes sending to magazines hard because the new edge of not fitting is most exciting but magazines want a congruent set of compatible 3-5 poems.
Some do, but I won’t refuse to write/think/feel/try to parse because I didn’t anticipate that direction and don’t know “what use” it will be.
Perhaps that’s a father-legacy, though none he’d want as a mantle. His snort of dismissal or disgust that something or some subject is “useless”, “what good is it”. (That was, admittedly his depression speaking, his defeated moments rising, not his central self.) Still the internalized echo and my inner no then reminds me that the marginalia and the stuff that doesn’t fit is as much of value. As rob mclennan likes to say, “it all counts”.
There’s not a lot of pattern to what paintings or poetry I like. I tend not to like high emotive lyric or chaotic visual poetry but then, sometimes it resonates.
I’m comfortable with things not fitting patterns, with ideologies in conflict held in parallel.
I don’t have to apply a matrix of meaning, shove things into significance, binary or otherwise. If I were to have a guiding principle it would be the buddhist parable of the farmer who received the wild horse on his property. Neighbours telling him, What good luck! And him non-committal. Much is contest and context changes. All things are all things.
This “wishy-washy” attitude of mine annoyed all the right people growing up who accused me of being so open minded as to be mistaken for someone with no mind at all. (Oh, bully uncles, I saw you as such then too. So afraid of so much, they wanted to be categorically superior. Who ground them down so hard?)
I get higher energy not just have tolerance for chaos as basic reflection of universe. Even Lauren Harris sort of excluding all but the primitive shapes, overly constrained, sits comfortably. I’ve thought of inserting into my novels in progress someone high on butting in chronically with IDIB (infinite diversity, infinite beauty) to riff off Gene Roddenberry. Perhaps it will make the cut.
The process though at its core is being alert, figuring out, curiosity, not the finite dimensions of book, as perishable as a conversation. Staying in the game. With people who also want to play the game. Books are sweet discrete outcomes, sure. Being present for each moment is valuable. Says she, having forgotten to stand, or walk the dog. 🙂
Work in progress. Always.