A final alchemy

Jhumpa Lahiri, while recently previewing a section of her in-progress novel, said that writing is a selfish enterprise.

“[Writing is] inspired by questions I have, it’s a self-reflexive process for a really long time,” she said. “It’s only when I’m done that I begin to think about the work leaving me and being read. All I care about is that there’s clarity.”

Clarity. How best to make sure that your words are clear? You can use proper grammar and proper punctuation and you can avoid swear words and words with more than three syllables. You can aim for a fifth-grade reading level (as I was taught to do in journalism school) and you can avoid passive voice (which I did not do in the previous parenthetical) and you can make sure that the words you pick are the only words you could have picked. In other words, if you can sub in another word, then you haven’t picked the right word to use.

I write to make sense of my world and I write to remember things that I don’t want to forget and I write to remember things that I want to forget and I write to instill order on events that are out of my control and I write because I don’t know what else to do but write. The words come, of course the words come, and sometimes the words suck and sometimes the words don’t suck and sometimes I think that I’ve written words unlike words written by anyone before. A bit conceited, thinking the words I write best any words written before, but writers, by nature, must be a bit conceited, or why else would we write and then expect our words to be read.

I edit as I write, paragraph by paragraph, sometimes by reading aloud (a practice Susan Orlean recommended a couple of weeks ago during a Twitter chat about writing, but I’ve been doing it for years, time permitting) and sometimes by letting the words sit in my head for as long as the words need to sit in my head before I let them out. This practicing of letting words out, I like to think of the words as somehow coming from my fingers, but thinking that these words – my words – are somehow coming from my fingers is ridiculous. Words no more come from my fingers as words can come from my toes (though what talent, typing with your toes).

When I reach the end of where my words take me, I re-read once, then again, and a final time, correcting typos and sloppy work, making sure that the words are clear and say what I want the words to clearly say. Sometimes I have to cut sentences I particularly admire, because these sentences I particularly admire do not aid in the words overall purpose. If words can have a purpose. Of course words can have a purpose, or must have a purpose; otherwise, what point in writing anything.

I think I care about more than clarity in my work. I think I care about an understanding, maybe just by me and maybe just by me and you and maybe just by me, and you, and everyone else who reads these words. And maybe clarity is not nearly enough of a reason to write, because anything can be made clear with enough perspective.

Making your words available for public consumption must be a final alchemy, a fusion, if you will, of intent with perception. Whether an audience will draw from your words your intent is out of your control. All you can do is make the words available and step back and let these words land where they land, on minds open or shut.

And you cannot control whether these minds are open and shut and you cannot control the effect your words will have – if your words have any effect – and you cannot control what comes once the words have left your fingers (still, I like the image of words leaving my fingers) and are presented and prepared and made available, a bottled message, a Sunday morning advert, smoke signals, an attempt at being seen. And heard. And, for a while, loved.