A friend was staying with me this weekend. She’s a writer, with 16 fiction and non-fiction books to her credit, plus hundreds of articles and short stories, some of which have been anthologized. She teaches writing workshops to school children as well as to adults.
She was telling me that, over the years, she’s had 38 jobs. Some lasted only one day. Her last job lasted for 12 years. Once, she up and quit her job, called up her travel agent, and said she wanted an adventure. She got one: on his advice, she, her husband, and their two daughters left Canada for a year to live in Australia.
She has what I call a “spirit of adventure.” Not only does she do many different things, she mines each experience for the most it can give her. She meets people, talks to them, takes a genuine interest in what they do and in their lives, and then composts all those experiences into fertile soil for her writing.
She’s a great story-teller. Story after story, one leading right to another, the words rush out of her mouth, putting the listener in the middle of the scene. With all her adventures as foundation, she has many tales. Yarns they might have been called in another era. But they’re something more than that. They’re art.
Art? Yes, art. Life happens. Life is messy. It’s the unexpected, the unexplainable, the unpredictable. Life is definitely not art.
Art, on the other hand, is Life Arranged. The medium doesn’t matter. We compose a photograph, moving over slightly to avoid the appearance of a tree branch sticking out of someone’s head. A painter arranges and interprets a scene, adding something here, removing something there to make a harmonious whole. Even a portrait that looks the very likeness of its subject is the result of an artist’s mind and hand working in concert to interpret the face, the posture, the body language, the light, the shadow. A writer, also, arranges: time, events, moods, accidents, coincidences, and a cast of characters to tell the story.
I’ve been inspired! I want to rev up my spirit of adventure. This doesn’t mean I’ll be taking off for Australia any time soon, but I want to soak up all I can from the experiences I have. I want to gather raw material and put it into the composter. I want to remember the details—colours, smells, sounds, faces, postures—so when I tell a story, it’s true.
Even if it’s not exactly the way it happened, it will still be true.
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1 comment:
I am humbled by your blog, Pamela describing the effect my overnight visit had to inspire you to "life live to the fullest." My former writing teacher, WO Mitchell,said exactly what you have noted. In his words, "Life ain't art." That, I suppose, is where the genre "creative non fiction" comes in. Check out the website for the Creative Non Fiction Collective".
Best,
SM
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