Abstract Escape

I think I answered my own question while wandering about a street fair today: am I doing this wrong? This question arose after a rather helpful rejection indicated that my style of writing was not what their readers were looking for.

This is not surprising. At times it feels my writing is to Reader’s Digest what Psychological Nihilism is to Reader’s Digest. “Barbara, have you seen this story on the unfathomable nature of life? Quite the page turner!” Honestly, I don’t what people are looking for. But I don’t think they do either. If they did, dating sites and cheeseburger pizza would cease being profitable.

This line of thought isn't intended to delve into people’s preferences. Instead, my thoughts have focused on the difference between abstract writing and specific writing and why I write as I do.

In general, my writing tends to be more specific and less abstract. It didn’t occur to me how specific, though, until seeing other current writers and how they create a narrative. This isn’t to say they suck. I assure you, the suckiness is all mine. To me, however, abstract writing tends to feel like flipping through photographs rather than seeing a story. It is something I am not wired to do:

We languished after dusk on rotting porches, or paced the vacant boardwalks trying not to break stride as we stepped over ice cream stains and molten gum. We waded through fading heat but the sun – once blinding, now set – emanated up through the earth to extract sweat from our sock lines while chlorine rose from the hot pools and drifted into the hotel, a chemical perfume. 

                                                                                            - Excerpt from "Deidre Who Died"

The above isn’t me. Well, it is me, but it sure isn’t comfortable – like trying to jump off the wrong foot. I can write in that manner, but the result feels like one of those overquiet poetry recitations where the speaker sounds like they are trying to talk without punctuation. For whatever reason, my preference is for more descriptive writing, long-winded material that sounds like 19th century erotica:

Margaret had long-intended and in fact burnished her urges in order to maintain her chastity. Yet, there was another Margaret here now, hastily helping this francophone visitor to untie the rather rope-like string that bound the top of her dress above her shoulders. She smiled to herself at the foolishness of such a heavy fastener on her calico dress as she worked, continuing to move quickly as if to lower her top before the other Margaret returned.

                                                                                            - Excerpt from Alleghany

As alluded to earlier, this seems to reflect my distaste for snapshots and my affinity for movies …and apparently pornography. My urge when writing is to create a nest for words, to establish them in space to one another and detail all aspects of their being. Words standing by themselves, undefined, feel plain and lack dynamism. And although including attractive, interesting words while writing happens, to have nothing except those is like decorating with paint swatches.

But is this what people want? While wandering around, I noticed that not only is the subject of our lives mundane, but the presentation is, too. We attend the street fair in full: the travel to it, the gleaming white tents laid out like pyramids, the anticipation of being able to buy underwear in the street. We experience every step of the way and the realization that this magical tent city of bargains and italian sausage takes place somewhere very real: behind the pharmacy and down a street full of blistering hot manhole covers where weeds grow behind generators and telephone poles are slick with melting tar. 

Then, after the magic has happened, we travel back the same path, contemplating what to make for dinner, realizing that it is either cereal or visiting the grocery store, trying to remember how heavy the milk felt as you put it back, recognizing that you left it on the counter to spoil, and then bracing your psyche for the inevitable mix of uncurated music from the last thirty years playing over the supermarket speakers.

Abstraction eliminates that. It removes the mundane except that which is noteworthy in how mundane it is. Those elements of your day that are quickly forgotten are gone, or at most summarized as a mechanical routine a series of individually important tasks which are repeated until meaningless. In its place is a series of images, phrases, concepts that make up your environment.

Abstraction likewise takes the outstanding and reassigns it, generalizes it into a set of activities or behaviors or philosophies or viewpoints until it is no more than its component parts; a vexillogical re-composition of an event.

Despite enjoying fantasy and sci-fi, I’d oddly rather not escape. Give me the details and let me know the path through town, the seventeen streetlights to the seaside past the empty lots bordered by split rail fences and tall dunegrass. Let me see the dwindle of lights fighting against the night as slowly, slowly, I hear the sounds of voices over my own sandals scraping sand against the pavement along the side of the road. 

I may be wrong, but it feels right. Writing specifically feels real and embraceable and rejectable and I think that’s what I’m trying to create.