Writing How

Probing now the dimming rock face for hand and footholds or gaps, anything that might support my weight, enable progress, however minuscule, up this dark crag. They seem to appear only when I am most prepared for them, or most desperate.

When do we become who we are now? And now? Michael Ondaatje, in his latest book, Cat's Table, writes: "There is a story always ahead of you. Barely Existing. Only gradually do you attach yourself to it and feed it. You discover the carapace that will contain and test your character. You find in this way the path of your life." This is a the gripping, witty tale of a boy's journey from his native Sri Lanka to England on the passenger vessel, The Oronsay, loosely based on the Conrad story, "Youth." Ondaatje's reflective comment, a rare insertion, calibrates the reader's focus to the development "ahead." In full service of the story, the idea interprets the character we see changing and growing through the sea voyage into a more emotionally informed, capable person. It is, in this view, a coming of age story, with the narrator discovering himself in the margins of society (title reference) and growing not in spite of this fact, but because of it.

The quote from Cat's Table came to me after writing my three-line introduction this morning. If my 'dark crag' is the metaphor I choose to illustrate the "story ahead," then I might also consider the idea of Ondaatje's "carapace," that hard shell challenging and edifying the character, that actor whose path is the same as my own. In Drum, the reader needs to identify this challenge, specifically I think, in order understand how my own protagonist, Jade must find the way up her own cliff of despair.

So, perhaps the story is not "why" but "how" a character finds the way. This may be getting to the heart of my own struggle. Too often I find myself trying to explain the reasons for a character's action, as if they lived in some vacuum of rationality, escaping somehow the messy, everyday irrationality of life. This results in my becoming ensnared by my own ignorance. While developing at least some inkling of motive for a character's actions is essential, detailing the precise reasons for his choices smacks of artifice, effectively keeping the reader at arm's length. Exposing a character's reasoning as a simple matter of math detracts from his or her humanity and merely frustrates the reader, whose experience informs him of a much broader set of emotional and physical variables than the author can supply. I am not aware of just how much of an idiot I am, or may yet be; but if I release myself from having to explain why things happen and simply focus on describing the story as it unfolds, I might better accept my role as storyteller.

Perhaps in the same way that I haven't been able to accept myself as a writer, I've had difficulty assuming the role of teacher. After 20 years of teaching, it has only been in the past year, really in only the last few months, that I have found that if I simply focus on the task of teaching, all of the rest will fall into place. For years, against my better judgement, I have allowed myself to fall prey to a certain egoism in my teaching, a condescension not only toward my students but also toward the teachers around me. I do not know exactly what occurred--can't name a date or circumstance--but at some point I began regarding my students as I would regard myself, see them  inside themselves, struggling with demons just as I do. I think I am realizing, finally, that we share the struggle, my students and I, and we are all stepping forward into our own forthcoming stories, "barely existing" and nonetheless forming in our very next steps.

Perhaps now I can begin realizing this in myself as a writer: we all (teacher/student, writer/reader) toil within margins, struggle to be recognized for our work, even though we know paradoxically that recognition comes from the struggle and not from the comfort zone. We need desperately to be understood, grasped deeply, without judgement or contest. Of the voyage ahead, it's in the development of these depths that uncovers how a character will survive or not. This undertone may well be what makes Cat's Table sing so brightly; what we find within ourselves we bring into the story about to manifest itself.