Passionate Originality
A Literary Article
As writers, you might want to believe that most original thinking involves artistic creativity, but you'd be wrong. One can be innovative in almost any endeavor. Let me give a simple illustration, a farmer living in Mesopotamia more than 10,000 years ago. What are the concerns of such a man? Obviously weather is important, like wind and storms, but even more so, the predictability of the flooding rivers that irrigate his crops. On one unanticipated occasion, this man observes a fluke of nature. His fields have already been well-irrigated when a second flood threatens to drown them. Miraculously, just before the
threatening waters do permanent damage, a great boulder falls down from the mountain and blocks the torrent.
Ergo, he conceives the first dam. Subsequently, another ingenious fellow invents a way to release water from the dam when needed with a gate. Thousands of years later, the principle is expanded to include the valve and finally the switch, the precursor to modern electronics. It all came about because of keen observation and deduction about a rock accidentally preventing a flood.
Today's world is highly technical with new concepts constantly built on those of yesterday, all of which is readily understandable. There is a factor that resists imaginative expressions and it too has been around a long time. This is interpretation, one's ability to define the environment. Until we learn to be independent interpreters, most of our early knowledge is explained to us by family, friends and teachers. These preliminary influences can affect thinking our whole lives and bear tremendous weight on how we view the world. For example, grandfather believes that all green people are bad; aunt teaches that all non-Kluptists will burn in Hell; mother says, never trust a fermigan; older sister thinks Aunt Jemima pancakes are the only kind edible; teacher compels us to think that all male students must wear a white shirt to school and girls an ankle length dress, etc.
Interpretation is learned as behavior first, repudiated or adopted with the advent of education and preferences, then interfaced with observation and knowledge to become wisdom or inference. It seems like a simple process but is actually very complex. Have you ever tried to explain to someone why you love a particular brand of something and cannot tolerate another? Or a person? More often than not, you wind up saying, "I've felt that way forever."
Everyone, no matter the profession if it is loved, seeks creative expression to better the way things are done by them. Later, perhaps after experimentation and success, that better way is suggested to others. You can also say, if gifted by this I mean recognized by many others as possessing talent we should share our vision for the benefit of others in a benevolent way, else life is a narrow, insignificant playground and probably a waste I'm not saying you can't profit by your ingenuity. I am saying you shouldn't keep it to yourself.
In the early days of television, some very gifted writers, like Paddy Chayefsky and Rod Serling wrote brilliant screenplays for Playhouse 90, a short, golden era when sponsors were not allowed to dictate what was written nor interrupt a performance with commercial advertisements. Everyone who owned a set was glued to that broadcast and thrilled with its honest and original messages, some of the most laudable entertainment ever witnessed. That condition changed when sponsors boycotted and threatened to walk out unless given dominant control over programming. Television has never been the same since and quality became nonexistent. This horrific negativity was caused by ruinous
interpretation. In this case, it was this: Why should the public be given anything for free when they can easily be exploited? The station managers sacrificed quality for mere money and have never looked back.
In early 20th century, Albert Einstein was drawn to several passages in Genesis that seemed to suggest a plausible explanation of universal law. After years of verification and further deduction, he developed the theory of relativity. That positive result was caused by exceptional observation and inference. He reasoned: I have discovered the most useful tool ever, one science has needed. I must give it to the world. Our contemporary societies could not exist as we do without his contribution despite the fact that so many have perverted E = MCý to much less glorious applications than the benefit of others.
There are thousands of such examples to be seen in every facet of life. As writers,it is our obligation to overcome early interpretive insights if illogical and increase our ability to observe and infer meaning. If we train ourselves to do this, we do not necessarily have to experience everything personally in order to write about it. We can intuit. The great authors who write of the past were not there, yet their stories are so convincing, we believe they were. Ray Bradbury never visited Mars, but his Martian Chronicles did more than entertain. The book suggested he had insight about living on Mars.
Let's go back to the statement: Everyone, no matter the profession if it is loved, seeks creative expression to better the way things are done. What exactly does it mean to love writing? Does it mean you should work your 40-70 hour week in a job you don't care about, then come home and write for fifteen minutes? Obviously, no. You cannot be good at anything unless you devote time to it, study the craft, experiment and develop style, and earn a unique writing signature. Does it mean employ words and phrases you have heard thousands of times every day? Of course not. There is no you until vocabulary, grammar and punctuation are mastered, until you learn to be dissatisfied with
common phrases and replace them with wholly original combinations of terms. Does it mean plagiarize, guess without researching, let others edit, or keep your work aside for Sunday afternoons between 1:00 and 2:00? Never.
All of these things contribute to your passion about being original, learning to
interpret the world well, sharp observation and inference, and devoting time to the craft in order to master its techniques.
You may have heard these before. Perhaps they bore you as trivial matters. It is possible you could get lucky and have an extremely poor manuscript, essay, screenplay, or poem get published by a press with low or absent standards. One thing is certain, in spite of the poor state of the publishing industry today. You cannot long sustain your reputation as a writer until you consistently prove your works to be of high quality. When your hard-earned passion equates energy and output with a first acceptance, the recognition of your talent has a chance to succeed. Such vitality is the earmark of excellence that legitimate editors and publishers constantly seek, especially today when such a plethora of incredibly bad writing gets printed or placed on the Internet.
One more thing. To truly love writing, you must read it constantly, to learn what others did, make comparisons to your own, discover trends, and learn why things are and are not done to be considered good and successful. I am often astonished by wannabe authors who have no knowledge of the great writers of the past, yet expect miracles from their submissions. These people cannot move to the second step of competence because they never witnessed the first. If you have not encountered Shakespeare, Milton, Melville, Steinbeck, Hemingway and hundreds of other such luminaries, your chance to be a good
writer is extremely minimal and great is out of the equation. If a specific genre interests you, be sure you read its giants before you attempt being a dwarf.
There you have it, the requirements of passion.
W. A. Rieser
