(I thought a deeper, harsher word than “hell” for who the hell is Lisa Cron?)
But digging deeper into the question and thinking about it and my own writing, I understand her perspective. I make it a point to aim to understand rather than blanket agree or disagree. Try it: “I understand you.”
However (but) I think that she’s perceiving/evaluating writing, the art of creative writing for fiction or non-fiction from a Western ontology and epistemology.
What is epistemology vs ontology?
Ontology refers to what sort of things exist in the social world and assumptions about the form and nature of that social reality. Epistemology is concerned with the nature of knowledge and ways of knowing and learning about social reality.
I point this out because I think we’re all sort of chugging towards a human crux point due to technology/the internet and globalization. By that, I mean that the diverse cultures of the world are suddenly “all at the table” or the Tower of Babel, depending on how you look at it.
For example, I live in NYC. Manhattan specifically. I leave the borough maybe a few times month—-to Brooklyn or New Jersey——but through just the borough, I encounter dozens of visible and I’m sure more cultures/languages and perceptions of reality. Sometimes when I see car drivers or subway riders or people walking and it is contrary or ignoring or different than my own. I generally think they are a tourist or a resident from somewhere else. I then have thought about drivers of cars being from different lands and learning the rules of our American roads, different from theirs, but sometimes, meshing the two together. Staying within the legal boundaries of our rules but still infusing the different mentalities of their own lands.
That’s how I think of writing.
I am by culture origin Irish, Scottish, African and Narragansett Native American. There’s also the narrowing of White and African American and West Indian cultures to my lineage within the past 150 years. While I don’t directly study anthropology, I am interested in the historical psychology of people influencing behavior—-into social class, gender, sexuality, etc.. And yes, to my own writing.
I have never written in such a linear fashion. I generally write something, a chapter or two, maybe decide on a name and now, in writing maturity I add in bold letters (when I transfer it to Word—-I handwrite about 80% of all of my work, fiction/non-fiction.) Then I go make love or get some jellybeans or play with children or cook a steak or live out the month of January. Then I come back to the work.
Other times I keep my mental antenna up while watching stuff—-I don’t watch TV but I do have Netflix and Amazon Prime and reality—-so I watch and listen to the things I choose to observe. I’m watching this Spanish—-telenovela-lite is the best description Toy Boy—-it’s a combination of Magic Mike meets well, a Spanish novella. There’s lots of men doing over the top strip routines that are more dance numbers than sexy, but laced in there are several plots of murder, child rape, corporate espionage, misogyny, feminism, drug dealing, police corruption—-I’m on the THIRD episode. I kid you not. I thought I was like 6 episodes in, then I looked down—-I was halfway through Episode 3. I watch far more foreign fare on Netflix than Western/American—-I’m really big into Chinese, Korean, Japanese, African fare
But back to Toy Boy, I have noticed very different ideas of friendship, fluidic sexuality, overlapping plotlines, inverted plotlines and a truth telling by characters. By that I mean that something has happened A and B know. When B and C are together—-B just TELLS C. lol As people do in real life.
It is such a different cultural take on reality that I’m not even quite sure who did what, why and then just when I think ok, I understand, a plot twist occurs that truncates or kills off a character……and that's episode 3! It’s marvelous in its labyrinth of writing and plotting.)
To Ontology
When I write, I’m often playing directly with Time. How it is different to different people, to different cultures.
Once, in my Senior year at university, I was renting a small apartment ($300, I would personally eat a puppy for that apartment in NYC now! lol) —-sort of a Jr.. 1 bedroom—-the junior space was like an attic corner where my king sized bed fit exactly—-think bed cave. Small table for candles and clock and that was it.
I wake up and it’s 11:12 AM.
I lay back down and go to sleep. I sit back up it’s 11:12 AM.
I go back to sleep again, different positions, tumbling rolling, dreaming and when I sit back up it was 11:12 AM again.
I was stuck in such a profound time loop that I remember it yeas later. I writer about it because we ARE the multiverse looking at one universe at a time.
What I have done with all of this cross meandering is I have created an image, a character, a glimpse into me, my thoughts, my pasts, my hobbies, my interests. That’s what the initial work of writing is—-meandering, searching, looking for the most useful thread to explore, exploit, enhance.
Writing is not linear——it might express itself that way sometimes, it might not. In fact of it’s really good, it won’t. I can now look at my work, one’s that have lasted and not been completed for decades, and those that are months in process—-and I can see a maturity to my own skill. A better way of phrasing a sentence, a better word, I now know.
Ipseity (“Minimal” self, also referred to as “basic” or “core” self or as “ipseity.” This is a pre reflective, tacit level of selfhood. It refers to the implicit first-person quality of consciousness, ie, the implicit awareness that all experience articulates itself in first person perspective as “my” experience.)
Oh, I’m using that mofo right there. I don’t know where, I don’t know when but by my own ipseity I will be using it!
Writing to the goal of publishing is instead a combinatoric—-yeah, another word discovery (Combinatorics can help us count the number of orders in which something can happen. Consider the following example: In a classroom there are 3 pupils and 3 chairs standing in a row. In how many different orders can the pupils sit on these chairs?)——of pieces that exist in different time signatures. By that, I mean I can see chapters, paragraphs, character arcs now, that are part of a whole, yes, but were created differently, by different Kyle’s, different ability levels. That’s what writing is.
I would find the whole Mark Up function in MS Word delightful if it would neatly show me how one thing altered, a word, an idea and why. it doesn’t—-it shows the change and sometimes—-before I shut it off—-to makes sense why I changed a sentence, an idea from one tense to another, from one action to another, how something deepened or got cut entirely.
Writing is messy and out of time and when you really, really, really keep working at it….the skill one builds make it, the final product, all worth it.
#KylePhoenix
#TheKylePhoenixShow
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