A Writer's Notebook, Day Four-Hundred-And-Twenty-Two
One of the areas that interests me as a writer, which I may well have touched upon briefly in previous entries, is an idea that I think of as "technical minimalism." The concept, as I think of it, is about the question of what technical aspects of a piece of writing, what things that are normally taken for granted within a work as technical necessities, can be reduced or eliminated in some sense. That is, instead of traditional notions about minimalism, in which the work uses as little as possible within the content of the work, perhaps in the language or in description, or within narrative choices, here the constraint is not on those aspects, but instead on the mechanical elements.
To offer a more concrete concept of what I mean, one technique I've been exploring for some time now is the elimination of traditional narrative persons. The work is constructed to avoid the use of various tags that would ground the narrative as coming from a first, second, or third person perspective. Instead, it floats, without the reader being given certainty of what that point of view might be. By removing a technical tool, that of narrative person, the work is liberated from a certain constraint.
In other works, I have been exploring related notions, having to do with removing the specifics of a narrative and only supplying a framework. In a sense, it is the structure of a metaphor, but without the metaphor being concrete. I've attempted to explain this before, but it is still difficult for me to really offer clarity about it, at this point. I am still very much exploring these ideas, and they are not fully formed enough to be explicated coherently. It is clear to me, though, that much of that work is about letting the contextual, structural elements of a story become more pronounced by minimizing some of the other specifics that are usually at the forefront. It may be that this explanation is not sensible to anyone but me right now, but it is still as close as I can come to really offering anything meaningful on the subject, though I am sure that will change.
These are, of course, only examples of the general idea. One of the issues I often find most frustrating in conversation with other writers is the limiting thoughts that often dominate. A writer will comment that a story "must" be this or that, or that you should "never" do this or that. In many cases, I don't disagree with the general advice they are offering, in a sense. For example, the idea that a character should have agency in their world is not a bad thing to consider as a writer, and it is true, in most cases, that a character should have agency. But, their are characters who have no agency at the center of literary works that have gained classic status. I think specifically of Billy Pilgrim, who is "unstuck in time," and has no ability to alter the events around him. Indeed, he is aware that he cannot alter them and is only along for the ride. Almost any such rule, any statement that a writer needs to do things one way or another is a limitation, if it is stated as an absolute.
To me, the challenge of being a writer, and of being a poet in particular, is to resist the easy path of those absolutes. It is important, I believe, to do more with language than has been done before, and the only way to find what can be done is by pressing past what has been done. Often, that means losing something that seemed essential before. Non-Euclidean geometry began when a mathematician attempted to prove Euclid's conjectures by showing that a system without them would be inconsistent. Instead, he showed a whole other world of mathematical potentials that no one had yet explored. It is impossible to be certain what will lead to a discover, but it is certain that doing what has been done before is an unlikely route. For me, the idea I think of as technical minimalism is a way to move past what has been assumed to be true, to find a way of communicating that requires something new and different. That may not always result in anything worthwhile, but I cannot think of a better way to explore the potential of what I haven't considered before.
To offer a more concrete concept of what I mean, one technique I've been exploring for some time now is the elimination of traditional narrative persons. The work is constructed to avoid the use of various tags that would ground the narrative as coming from a first, second, or third person perspective. Instead, it floats, without the reader being given certainty of what that point of view might be. By removing a technical tool, that of narrative person, the work is liberated from a certain constraint.
In other works, I have been exploring related notions, having to do with removing the specifics of a narrative and only supplying a framework. In a sense, it is the structure of a metaphor, but without the metaphor being concrete. I've attempted to explain this before, but it is still difficult for me to really offer clarity about it, at this point. I am still very much exploring these ideas, and they are not fully formed enough to be explicated coherently. It is clear to me, though, that much of that work is about letting the contextual, structural elements of a story become more pronounced by minimizing some of the other specifics that are usually at the forefront. It may be that this explanation is not sensible to anyone but me right now, but it is still as close as I can come to really offering anything meaningful on the subject, though I am sure that will change.
These are, of course, only examples of the general idea. One of the issues I often find most frustrating in conversation with other writers is the limiting thoughts that often dominate. A writer will comment that a story "must" be this or that, or that you should "never" do this or that. In many cases, I don't disagree with the general advice they are offering, in a sense. For example, the idea that a character should have agency in their world is not a bad thing to consider as a writer, and it is true, in most cases, that a character should have agency. But, their are characters who have no agency at the center of literary works that have gained classic status. I think specifically of Billy Pilgrim, who is "unstuck in time," and has no ability to alter the events around him. Indeed, he is aware that he cannot alter them and is only along for the ride. Almost any such rule, any statement that a writer needs to do things one way or another is a limitation, if it is stated as an absolute.
To me, the challenge of being a writer, and of being a poet in particular, is to resist the easy path of those absolutes. It is important, I believe, to do more with language than has been done before, and the only way to find what can be done is by pressing past what has been done. Often, that means losing something that seemed essential before. Non-Euclidean geometry began when a mathematician attempted to prove Euclid's conjectures by showing that a system without them would be inconsistent. Instead, he showed a whole other world of mathematical potentials that no one had yet explored. It is impossible to be certain what will lead to a discover, but it is certain that doing what has been done before is an unlikely route. For me, the idea I think of as technical minimalism is a way to move past what has been assumed to be true, to find a way of communicating that requires something new and different. That may not always result in anything worthwhile, but I cannot think of a better way to explore the potential of what I haven't considered before.
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