Blog on the Lillypad
Thursday, February 05, 2004
 | The Pen, The Sword, and The Mind
In martial arts, people with good technique who focus on themselves during a fight, how good their technique is, whether or not they are winning, how they plan to win the fight, always get hammered. Self consciousness in a fight produces inefficiency. The time to be self conscious is during drill work. Perfect the techniques in training, but in a fight, let the trained body take over and focus the mind on the other person. A fighter trains himself or herself to be aware and receptive, even in the act of delivering attacks or counter attacks. |
Good writing is like good fighting. The writer must dismiss himself or herself and rely instead on the communication itself. The needs or demands of the reader set the parameters of the writer’s fight, and the communication itself must deliver to those needs. This doesn’t exclude writing fun stuff or fiction. In writing Doctor Who, I understood that readers expected a page turner---one unexpected twist after another. I also recognized that the format of a printed text required greater depth of development than the television series required. The Doctor and the other characters had to take on a new depth. They had to be consistent with what the series depicted and yet more complex.
It’s at this point that I noticed other fanfiction writers got into sentimentality. So did I, of course. There’s no mistake in writing that I haven’t made, and I have made them far more frequently than most people. (This is how I have learned to identify common mistakes.)
Fan fiction writers like to create needs and wounds and hurts inherent in our heroes, but it never works. In fact, it hinders a story. After a lot of debate on the newsgroup devoted to Doctor Who, I realized that many fan fiction writers object to the Third Doctor because he is so arrogant. So in writing him up they either punish him, or they put him into some sort of therapy in which he recognizes his arrogance and changes. But that’s not the draw in Doctor Who. The draw in Doctor Who is that the Doctor is the hero, and he’s got a few flaws.
The real issue to write a Doctor Who story is not what I think he ought to be or what I think would improve him, but what is he and how does a story embellish that?
To create a more realistic view of him, I had to withdraw my presence further from the story.
I began to realize that all writing requires this withdraw of the presence of the writer. In 1998 or 99, I read that the actress, Lynn Redgrave, was going through a very bitter separation from her husband, John Clark. His behavior was so bizarre that I believed that she was in danger from him.
I decided that I ought to try to write to her to explain how men think when they decide to hurt a woman. But how does a nobody like me, coming out of no where, gain the attention and the agreement of a cosmopolitan, stunningly beautiful, upper class woman of vast fortune and fame and hold that attention long enough to make a few vital points? There was always a chance that she would never see the letter at all. But to get it to her and get her to read it, I had to write a letter that perfectly met her needs at that time: her grief, her fear, her shame, her uncertainty.
That first letter to her took hours, as I wrote it up, then weeded out references to myself and my background, then rewrote, then weeded again as I thought through her grief, her embarrassment, and her state of mind.
I realized that I had to give myself some credibility, so I told her I was a third degree black belt. Then I launched straight into the fact that I could see she had made a lot of smart moves, praising her for her strength and courage, which she needed to hear. But, I told her, I didn’t think she was familiar enough with the nature of conflict to fully comprehend what was going on in her battle. And then I explained the concept of martial spirit to her and the different ways that men and women perceive conflict. I closed by letting her know I had another letter to send her to finish up what I wanted to say.
I was surprised but not really shocked when I got a reply from her thanking me. I could see that she had read the letter quickly and had probably skipped the closing paragraph. She had focused on the encouragement I had given her, and the plain facts of how men fight.
So I sent the second letter to her. And like the first, writing it was an exercise in stripping down the writing to what was strictly essential for her to hear. She again replied with thanks.
A few days went by and I followed the case. I felt sure that I could help her further, so I wrote again and asked permission to send her an essay a week, which she gave me.
Over the next six or seven months, I learned (all over again) how to write. I was impressed very much with the fact that a world famous actress was reading my letters. But this is not the Lord’s way, and I knew I had to overcome being that impressed. It would hinder my service to her and it would hinder my writing. But it took a long, long time for me to be able to look past the image of Lynn Redgrave and begin to see to the real person with care and concern. In fact, it took almost two years before I thought I had really gotten over this world’s illusions. And by that time, there was nothing left to tell her!
In the meantime, I had an audience who really needed to hear what I had to say. I had a constant temptation to make myself look good to her, which always hinders effective communication, and I had a whole new learning curve to experience.
I had read Musashi’s Book of Five Rings for myself, to be a better martial artist. But now I was reading it for another person who needed the information more than I ever had. I relearned all his principles and made great new discoveries in his text. From Musashi, I graduated to Sun Tzu’s Art of War (translated as "Art of Strategy" by modern translator RL Wing), which took over the first place position in my admiration.
But as I worked to curb myself, comprehend the real person with whom I was communicating, and reach the truth about struggle and conflict, my views on writing also changed. What the Lord gives us is all that we can give back to the Lord. There is no gain if we amass fortune and praise but fail to write that material that truly serves after the model of Christ our Savior. I never ruled out writing adventure stories, or comedies, or journal entries. All of those can serve the Lord because all of those can help others. But I saw that the end goal of why a writer writes must change for the Christian writer.
I realized that I was impressed by writing to a famous actress, but God was not more impressed by service to her than by service to anybody else. All this effort, I thought, all this work, I had dedicated to a person because I was impressed by her. But God values what He is doing in every life. So, of course, I edited out any personal information in the essays and then made them public on the web (Letters to a Great Lady so that they could serve other people.
But this learning experience of how I hinder myself both from effective writing and effective service to God by the intrusion of my self formed a new outlook about effective Christian writing. And I would like to write more about this, but I have to go to work.
