Some Mechanics

The discovery that I write for a deeper way of relating to the world around me should come as no surprise to those who follow the same pursuit. We experience something and we find ourselves working that experience through the mechanics of imagination, in the hope of finding it converted into some usable material for our portfolio. This is the process.

I am loathe to wallow in what often feels like narcissistic navel-gazing, but I also do not wish to proceed without making at least a preliminary effort at defining at what it means to be a writer.

To write something fictitious does not feel like I am trafficking in frivolous lies but am instead trying to render something back from the word of illusion. This created world relates.

Writing is an action which occurs in flux. It is rarely satisfied and appears to sustain itself upon the understanding that it must be accomplishing itself. It exists within this relationship, the place between imagination and page. I am never more concerned than when I think in terms of total satisfaction. The striving creates the engine for another attempt -- another pass through the gears of my mind in the bright hope that what is captured will be even more lucid than what existed before.

The most fertile distinction imaginable is writer as creator. Why should we not mirror the practises of Nature and create as our world dictates? The rules exists but should be ignored.

Being a writer implies that one has a sense of how to integrate. How else could we create a compelling narrative without this function? How is it possible to edit without some authority on what to include and possibly more pertinent, what to reserve?

As a musician works within the rules of harmony, tonal calculations which are specific and exact, so must a writer have some sense of what fits and what will prove to be discordant to the attentive reader.

An effective storyteller is someone who has learned to control potentialities in a dimension of creative freedom. The task of mastering how to direct one’s imagination, leaving it unsupervised, as it were, is to my understanding something that would come easily to a writer who has the potential of holding the readers attention. This is what separates passable fiction from distracted whimsy.

{Artwork by Zeng Fanzhi}