Whenever I attend a writers' workshop, I am reminded how slippery words really are, how easily misinterpreted by the reader, how baffling for the writer and how amazing for both that the connections between text, eye and mind are so easily injured.
What I learned long ago was that readers think it's about them, not only literally as in the case of friends, family, colleagues and enemies, but subconsciously as an audience that processes words through lenses of personal experience, levels of understanding and long-held assumptions. In the end, it's amazing writers can get any message through at all.
The thing is this: it is a long held belief that the author should not explain his/her piece in a workshop, will not have the opportunity to do so in most books and will hardly ever be there to tell a reader, "You're way off, dude." In general, works are read without context. And while it is true that a piece should be able to stand on its own, in doing so, the writing stands without any buffers. And so the "it's all about me" myth continues, as do attempts to probe into the writer's mind when the writer isn't even present to discuss what he/she had in mind at the time of the writing, leaving the writer vulnerable to the weaknesses inherent to language and thought.
I often think of J.R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy in which good/versus evil and the various characters have been interpreted as a Christian teaching or allegory. And yet, in a 1971 interview, Tolkien said he did not intend the trilogy to be anything of the sort, nor did he intend his characters to represent Christ. Of Frodo's struggles carrying the ring of power, Tolkien said, "But that seems I suppose more like an allegory of the human race. I've always been impressed that we're here surviving because of the indomitable courage of quite small people against impossible odds: jungles, volcanoes, wild beasts...they struggle on, almost blindly in a way." (See here for more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-G_v6-u3hg)
I cannot speak for most writers, but I can say that when I write and even when I read, I am constantly looking for the larger metaphor, for archetypal themes and universal context. Writing, I think, should transcend us and that looking at a piece of writing as simply a narrative of the writer's life or mind is superficial and misleading. No reader can possibly be in the mind of the writer, and to believe s/he can marks self-centeredness, hubris, ignorance or all three. Likewise, writers ought to know that readers will always take away what they will--which should leave us all humbled by our human limitations.
What I learned long ago was that readers think it's about them, not only literally as in the case of friends, family, colleagues and enemies, but subconsciously as an audience that processes words through lenses of personal experience, levels of understanding and long-held assumptions. In the end, it's amazing writers can get any message through at all.
The thing is this: it is a long held belief that the author should not explain his/her piece in a workshop, will not have the opportunity to do so in most books and will hardly ever be there to tell a reader, "You're way off, dude." In general, works are read without context. And while it is true that a piece should be able to stand on its own, in doing so, the writing stands without any buffers. And so the "it's all about me" myth continues, as do attempts to probe into the writer's mind when the writer isn't even present to discuss what he/she had in mind at the time of the writing, leaving the writer vulnerable to the weaknesses inherent to language and thought.
I often think of J.R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy in which good/versus evil and the various characters have been interpreted as a Christian teaching or allegory. And yet, in a 1971 interview, Tolkien said he did not intend the trilogy to be anything of the sort, nor did he intend his characters to represent Christ. Of Frodo's struggles carrying the ring of power, Tolkien said, "But that seems I suppose more like an allegory of the human race. I've always been impressed that we're here surviving because of the indomitable courage of quite small people against impossible odds: jungles, volcanoes, wild beasts...they struggle on, almost blindly in a way." (See here for more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-G_v6-u3hg)
I cannot speak for most writers, but I can say that when I write and even when I read, I am constantly looking for the larger metaphor, for archetypal themes and universal context. Writing, I think, should transcend us and that looking at a piece of writing as simply a narrative of the writer's life or mind is superficial and misleading. No reader can possibly be in the mind of the writer, and to believe s/he can marks self-centeredness, hubris, ignorance or all three. Likewise, writers ought to know that readers will always take away what they will--which should leave us all humbled by our human limitations.
