From poet David Kirby, who will be participating in a cross-disciplinary conference on creativity around these parts later this week:
I tell my own students that art is the deliberate transformed by the accidental, that you pursue your plan doggedly while staying open to the startling revelations that can kick your work up to a new level.
“The deliberate transformed by the accidental”: I like it.
____________________
* Post title shamelessly cribbed from Froog. For simplicity and directness, it just can’t be improved upon (although I don’t plan to steal it for good!).
The Querulous Squirrel says
And the accidental in turn transformed by the new deliberate in a creative, spiraling cycle, so that the end product often has little relation to what began.
John says
Squirrel: spiraling upward, if we’re lucky!
Because I’m so familiar with the story and characters of the WIP, after so many years, and numerous drafts, and of course just plain thinking about it, one of my ongoing problems is remaining open to new developments — opportunities, let’s call them. I’ve been coming at it from all kinds of weird angles in an effort to keep the surprises coming for me as well as (I hope) the reader. But it’s a tricky balance, because the accidental-transformed-by-the-deliberate can (with me!) turn so easily into a sort of dead re-institutionalization.
(No idea if that made sense to anyone but me!)
Ashleigh Burroughs says
Methinks perhaps you thinks too much ;)
So often my posts begin in one direction and surprise me by ending up someplace else. A paragraph turns into a theme without any conscious decision on my part. All of a sudden, there it is.
I love the way you make me think about the writing itself.
a/b
Froog says
Always glad to be an occasional “inspiration”, JES.
Somehow, I don’t think you’ll be borrowing any others of my regular series!
John says
a/b: Oh nononono, I don’t think it’s possible to think too much. Trust me, I’ve thought about it! (Ha.)
Froog: The inspiration goes deeper than you might think. I’ve given up all hope of matching your posting frequency, and no way could I ever even think of juggling two separate blogs. But Froogville and The Barstool do present a nice model of how to maintain a blog about nothing in particular, or for that matter about everything (while retaining the right to favorite recurring themes).
Froog says
Aw, shucks.
marta says
This reminds me of what my mother always said, “You don’t make mistakes. You change your plan.”
fg says
@ Marta. I like your mothers plan. Will remember. ha
@ JES I know what he is saying with his Bon Mot. Nice beacuse if you have had a strict academic education it is a liberation and allows (maybe ) for more invention. However,
@ Squirrel I think there is some serious benefit to not letting ‘the spiral’ seduce you away from your point of investigation. You have to purse your idea till you have speared it, thrown it over your your shoulder home and are dicing it for the pot.
Afterall what is the opposite of an intense investigation…?
John says
marta: That’s very nice. Especially coming (as it did) from an artist, passing a point of view to an artist(/writer)-to-be.
fg: If you stand back and look at the relationship between an artist(/writer) and the spiral, in some cases you almost see that the spiral is itself a work of art in the making. It can take years, decades to “complete” — at which point the artist (who’d convinced him- or herself that the painting/sculpture/novel was the “real” work) sort of gives up and accepts the spiral as what (s)he was put on the earth to do. A strange sort of one-hit wonder.