The Perils of Editing

When writers sit to work, we soon discover that a great deal can happen in one day. An activated imaginations can lead into places impossible to reach through a simple shift in physical geography. We can be pulled through deeply rooted personal memories, unattainable by regular reflection; we can be placed before emotional consequence we feel entirely unprepared to negotiate.

What informs the path of writing so carefully assembled through choice of words? How can writers remain confident that one series of scenes or notions, followed through imagination, will benefit the story we endeavour to tell? We devise the opportunity to work, reducing distractions & any potential conflict to writing time, so how can we guarantee the language captured will fit into the vague, overall conception which is understood through occasional glimpses?

How we manage to edit as we create will assist in this mysterious process of intuitively recognizing the useful strands of an overall vision. The threshold of experience is critical in detecting differences.

Imagination may be of use in this grading of quality: fragments offering no merit will become easily obstructed & resist inspection from different viewpoints within the narrative. These obtuse sections are what must be sacrificed & even though beautifully constructed, if they serve no purpose to overall coherence, they must be sacrificed. Their elimination requires a type of ruthlessness that effective writers administer with a combination of regret for what-must-go & the hope that something more supportive will emerge to replace what has been deleted.

Still—this instinct to cull the superfluous or misleading might be influenced by disappointment. Judgment can be confused under the evaporating effects of guiding vision. Is it better to axe-out what we suspect is extraneous immediately or wait to see if a place emerges further into the work? If we risk loading down a story with beautiful-yet-incongruous sections, we might find ourselves unable to build the narrative we suspect.

Uncertainty prevails: if material is discarded too soon, there is a risk of whittling down potential of the initial vision which first compelled. The dilemma pits protective instincts against jurisprudence & a desire to be tacit.

Can a compromise be settled somewhere between these polarized instincts? Can we build a relationship between a firing imagination & the conscious part which needs to assemble what has been surfaced?

{Images by Jonathan Meese}

Rhapsody

To so accidentally touch upon this notion of wisdom, these streams of perfection rendered into the written word is a humbling transformation. The mind has spun; I practically weep once surrounded by the silence of true expression.

Is it possible to memorize signs for the advent of this state of engaged awareness & activated imagination? Is this once time suspends & all that can be seen are images needing to be translated by some magic into words? Is it when language flows like water through a rushing creek bed? When description & exposition & the steady drive of a coherent narrative begin to spell-out  broader intentions? Or is when I struggle for an ideal phrase, searching the vaults of vocabulary for the perfect word to articulate an event or concept?

When under this spell of love & the expansion which accompanies elevated creative states, all resistance & fear spread, I am finally free to see.

This love suspends me in a cocoon of potentiality; it is the vehicle for all future endeavour.

{Images by Willem de Kooning}

                                         

On a Good Day

Writers ask so much from imagination. We require this factory of creation to operate at will. We ask it remember where it left-off during the inter-play of unfolding narratives. We ask it to adapt to fresh direction, then match & include additional layers into what has already been established. There is a sense of accomplishment which accompanies the mastering of these basic writing techniques. We begin to feel confident in continued ability & often there is a powerful attachment towards the material we have collected. Morale activates by a well-functioning creative process & the artist feels very much alive.

Once fatigue, any anxiety & many combinations of dread begins to recede, we permit this fresh assurance, exhilarated by solid accomplishment, to emerge. Instead of those influences coming from lower vibrational frequencies,a  clean stream of inspiration jettisons. The act of writing in this state energizes, then inflates estimation of sacrifice & disciple. We realize we have been successful in creative aspiration. This rising tide lends to thoughts of promise & victory.

Still—is what feels like well-deserved celebration of ability, once inflated into the foreground of awareness, is this rush of ego a potentially unbalancing influence? Once the cup of self-satisfaction has been filled to overflowing, what then?

Love sails me around the house. I walk two steps on the ground & four steps in the air. It is love. It is consolation.                           ~ Thomas Merton

Elation triumphs: I remain euphoric because there has been an act of creating something from a deep point of engagement. For this once, I got it. The mind has spun & letters have formed in a jettison of poetic language, apt & concise. Disciplined work has managed to reflect in harmony, visions of the mind’s eye.

Some muse has permitted a sacred transference of vassal; I have been entrusted with insight. Pulse quickens, the senses feel as though they are flirting with a full range of potentiality.

I can taste the air; smell the colour blue.

{All images by Hannah Hoch}

In Preparation for Something Sacred

First things first: We find solitude in a comfortable work space; we might apply concentrative meditation techniques to calm & focus thinking into that critical point of fixity; we permit a shell of silence to descend. Yet is this enough to enhance opportunity for the creativity yearned to express? Are artists required to move outside the obvious to achieve excellence?

We sense the glow of a sacred muse. When inspiration is active & focused, what can writers eager to maximize a heightened state of awareness do? How might we better facilitate this delicate transference? The golden zones of clean, effective creative performance are not as common as we might have once believe at the advent of discovering writing's nuances. Sensible folk take advantage of opportunity yet as writers, are we capable of influencing what is so consciously vague in understanding?

Can self-imposed expectation limit the depth of communication between imagination, flourishing in fascinating content & the more mechanical, conscious part of the mind? Tasked with recording glorious mental activity, is this expectation, plus the frustration which arises from having notions confounded, is this rational part of the writing process creating obstacles to the functional joy we might experience in a purer stream of craft? Would it help if we approached this exchange in a more complete state of surrender?

The infinity of imaginative possibility requires a state of trust, perfected harmony, warmth & deep gratitude.

When we consciously employ techniques which factor the sacred, we enter a new form of common sense. By interacting with a logic different from the mode of thinking demanded to master daily affairs, the bondage of time & peculiarities of place become plastic. If capable of the required concentration, we might arrange the details of these conditions.

We ask imagination what could never be expressed to those we love in friendship or family. Writers demand instant change, a spontaneous adaption to conceptions formulated through former disclose; we make imagination explain itself. Creativity can only operate in what is understood. To interpret this back in clear, lucid writing, we ask for worlds.

{Artwork by Antonio Mora}

The Luxury of Silence

Silence is not necessarily the absence of noise. It is something more expansive, an awareness; a breadth. Writers peer within busy, over-stimulated minds & require this stillness so must call for it at will, when time presents that blessed window of opportunity to quiet down the insistences of an outside world.

In silence we become alert; we become watchful & ready.

In a world built by walls of controlled quietude, there rests a freedom to explore. In the silence of imagination, we forget ourselves. We are no longer forced to imagine the multiplicities of our own lives. We permit our minds to expand & watch—intent on learning what might manifest once an opportunity has been accorded. We breathe deeper; we prepare to be transported.

In the space accorded by silence, we still distraction & finally permit imaginative thought to find it’s own rhythm. Like the waves of a sea, the writing focus arrives & we experience the power of recording imagination. These waves of transposed thought deliver images; they bring considerations, vignettes, expressions & an occasional treasure in the form of perfect phrasing—material dredged from the higher recesses of mind. In silence we again marvel at how effective the mind functions, once lent the necessary conditions.

All creativity requires is trust & surrender.

{Images by Cecil Beaton}

Crossing the Threshold

Once we begin to move out of this private inner peace and the excitement generated from an illuminated imagination, we must then go through the many various trials which will allow us to sit down and access these stored memories. We must make arrangements with our time, all manner of commerce and behind any available concentration to clear the space to get down to the chore of actually writing.

This can be a laborious period, with more than a chance we will lose the thread of what it is we desire to share through carefully chosen words. Yet if we persist, and with luck and the consequence of circumstance which will afford the luxury of time and space to get to writing, we stand at a threshold ready to undergo a momentous transformation.

In the opening hours, we work to finely tune our minds so that we are able to manage the depth of concentration which will be required for the task which lies ahead. We isolate ourselves away from all distraction and begin to listen and recall; ahead lies silence and solitude. We understand we shall need hours alone to mine the raw material of an activated imagination. Then more quiet and toil as we endeavour to translate glorious, sometimes exhilarating scenes played out in the expanse of memory, into lucid language which will communicate to a reader.

As writers, we are required to invest energy to ensure us a space of both solitude and productivity. We require a deeper and more subtle form of communication with our thoughts. Distraction is an occupational hazard for those who require a workplace where the contents existing in the interior regions of the mind can be coaxed forward in order to bring them to the page.

It is in silence where our intuition finds the opportunity to finally operate. It reaches inside the imagination to pull up the barest of awareness or the nearly understood, then spins this notional gossamer back and towards through the conscious mind, escaping on the hint of a whisper.

It is the voice that suspects; it is wisdom which anticipates.

{Paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir}

Amplification

By releasing latent contents from the creative imagination, can we expect to arrive at a more clear understanding of what we are capable of as separate individuals? Can this evolve into a path to revealing our authentic selves? Is there a germ of truth in the phasmagorical?

Within the recesses of a mind lurk dark lessons. All of us possess the residue of our own suffering and that of which we have empathized with. Pain and fear is absorbed and whether consciously or below the level of actual awareness, our imagination re-invents these potent feelings. What fear is not amplified by imagining the worst of any given situation? Is it possible to fall into dread or anxiety without the encouragement of an unchecked imagination?

Knowing just a little can make us fear a great deal more as our imagination spins hypothetical scenarios of shame, loss and cruelty. Is the remedy for this imaginary terror to be found in resolving dark fantasy in the same potential of the mind’s theatre or can we expect to overcome absorbed worries and pain by releasing them through the channel of writing?

Feelings, and feelings and feelings. Let me try thinking instead.
                       
                            - C.S Lewis

 When the power of our imagination is running it’s dark scripts, can we expect to be prepared for the hardships which life occasionally sends us? Is the imaginary merely notional, at best?

Inside the incubation period which is required to bring forth our creative ideas, the expanse of imagination serves promise with an endless viewing of it’s fantastic contents. We catch glimpses of what could be and the conscious part of our writer’s mind records what they might of those moments, to store them for when we are sitting down to actually work. But in this place of witnessing, the expansions we experience are part of what compels; we are driven to share the beauty of what we have been shown.

{Paintings by William Blake}