A Writer's Notebook, Day Eight-Hundred-And--Ninety-Seven
I often considered various literary forms as organizational mechanics. For example, I think of stories in this way. Consider that a series of events are not a story in the world, but become a story through how they are collected into a framework. A set of events over a span of years might seem disparate and unconnected when seen as just the reality of things that happened, but when some of those events are pulled out and ordered, it can create a specific narrative thread. The story is not the events that occur, but a method for ordering them, with certain qualities. To me, this is the essential function of language, to be honest: to organize and process information about the world. This facilitates communication, of course, but the truth is, it is an internal tool first. The mind of a child must learn to associate words and ideas with what exists in the world before being able to put that language to use with another. Various studies show ...