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YOUNGBEAR ROTH
Tao, Zen, and Writer's-MInd (part 2)
Now, at the risk of using a few well-worn words like 'Zen' and 'Tao', I want to put this writing we do in a philosophical perspective, and this is important because the world is not only as it is, but also, it is as we perceive it to be, or, a mountain is not only a mountain, then again, it is a mountain. So, listen.
Writing with clarity and courage, we become as children witnessing the spectacle of a three-ring circus for the first time. Without preconceptions, the hues, textures, tastes, odors, actions, sounds, and silences perform magic, and we take no detail for granted because we have no notion of what to expect; the professional writer is perpetually beginning - this is writer's-mind. With the mind of a beginner on the journey of life, the world reveals itself as wonder opening into wonder. Sensing the universe through writer's-mind, no such animal as writer's block can shake its woolly mane. Only expert's block exists - been there, done that block. A writing expert suffocates between the pages of a closed book.
Ordering our fiction through writer's-mind means participating in a universe of potential, an open volume of stories yet to unfold. Experienced writers are actually beginners in a world of drama, comedy, and mystery. We create legends tied to an artistic pact with our readers: "I will spin an absurd yarn, and you, dear reader, will trust my every word."
The story of Grandpa Wiley Vaslexi is the hybrid tale of my great-grandfather, a Polish chicken rancher, my wife's grandfather, who called his automobile 'The Machine', and both gentlemen who never mastered driving. For the audience, these elements of reality coexist as absolute truth and perceived truth simultaneously. Writers are aware that we straddle the abyss between two universal qualities - truth and perception. Well, there's not a damn thing a writer can do about the truth, but as artists, we can alter perception.
Perception fools us into mistaking the forms of our everyday life as fixed reality, as unchanging truth. Of course, the only reality in life is change. Understanding reality in this way, writer's-mind discovers a fresh universe everywhere, each moment - all is fodder for the muse. While I speak to you today, science is developing a theory of multiple universes. However, if the universe is an infinite whole, if its completion is in its never being complete, well, then no matter how many universes they find, there is only a single universe of mystery opening into mystery. But, I want to talk about an interesting observation author Kurt Vonnegut made in Publishers Weekly. He said, "There is this prejudice on the part of critics, who customarily are English majors, that anybody who understands how a refrigerator works couldn't possibly be an artist…."
Mr. Vonnegut summed up my folk tale in a single sentence. Writers are fascinating people because they are easily inspired by a life appearing mundane to the uninitiated eye. My fictional characters often reflect my past as a shoe shine, stoop laborer, door to door salesman, department store clerk, ranch hand, loading dock laborer, and later, my life as a frightened, starving revolutionary jerk-off, a mystic pilgrim, and finally a literary professional and ego-maniacal academic: thank you, and yes, I have gone from bad to worse.
A writer is introspective, attentive, and aware, because ultimately we write about ourselves and our common condition, the human condition.
Writer's-mind creates characters through awareness that the human condition is a transcendent process. Understanding this process demands that we construct protagonists that are pro-active, that create experiences and are changed by their experiences; this transcendent character evolution is called 'character arc', and it is patterned after our own living arc.
Writer's-mind is an inspired sojourn. A trip to the doctor's office is an uproarious comedy worth at least three thousand words, if not more. Arguing with my wife, Ann, is miraculous, especially if I win, which I haven't - but after twenty-eight years, I know it is only a matter of time! Planting a rose bush in the garden and laying a footpath screams out an essay. The other day, a young lady asked my opinion on the modern miracle of Teflon, to which I responded with a letter the length of a novella. And, lastly, foods - particularly eggs - are excellent for folk tales
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Storytelling is not a thing we do, it is a deeply felt passion given form. Like all form, our pages yellow or our memory fades: but, not to worry - the potential for another story is omnipresent. Writing is a process we become!
Still, writers own a reputation for being moody. It is because we often introspect, digging through the muck and mire of our struggles and performing a post-mortem on dead issues from every angle, living at the bottom of the pond. We intuitively feel this process leads to triumph, and we must shout our discovery of the common thread that binds us, allowing us to relate to each other's irony, angst, humor, and joy. We write to save humankind, to save ourselves. We feel compelled to get it down in a story, a novel, a screenplay, and a poem, to tell others. It is more than something we do, it is what we are - writers, of course!
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