The Ends of Writing: Reflection

Today's blog talks about reflection as a purpose of creative writing.

Writing for Reflection

Have you ever tried writing in order to reflect or meditate?  I find that this can be extremely cathartic, especially if it's a personal topic upon which I compose. 

Below is an excerpt from a short piece I wrote not too long ago, entitled I Am it's Builder. 

Look.  Just look at it.  Impossibility becomes its shape and form.  What hope exists for this convoluted snake?

            It is a road.  By its very existence, a road must lead somewhere, therefore this road is also compelled to follow a direction.  But its body twists, broken and scarred in its decrepit dermis of gray.  Suggestion of straightness is only implied by looking at the whole.  Viewing the monstrosity, the impulse comes to blur the eyes from focus, seeing with relief only the generality of its average.  In this visage the gray creature points east, toward the veiled rising Sun.  But soon the eyes must come back into focus—for one cannot truly impel his own blindness for long ere natural sight breaks free. 

            There is therefore no escape from the shameful stare.  Once gazed upon, now it is as impossible to look away as its disrepair is utterly inexorable.  You cannot divert your sight from its dying cracks, from languishing rips and tears at the corners where clear direction veered by forcible grip.  At every few feet the road buckles upward as if geysers of acid had erupted from the abyss.  Other places are indented and bruised like the imprints of flailed hammer-falls.  The road is stained with blood and rot. 

            What heavy degradation!  What tragic dissolution!  Who?  Who is responsible for this manic abomination?  

This is basically an example of poetic, allegorical, stream-of-consciousness writing.  Let's look at these three descriptors as methods of reflection.
  
Poetry

Poetry is likely one of the most (if not the most) pure forms of creative writing.  Poetry seems to have few rules save one: be creative!  You can write in rhyme, meter, free verse--the possibilities are expansive, and you can even change the way the poetry is visually composed on the page.  Poetry, in my opinion, is a really powerful method for reflective, subjective writing.  

Writing in rhyme and meter can definitely be a challenge, but I feel it's a good challenge to pursue.  Poetry is a means of employing the full potential of the English language.  Read Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Longfellow, Grey, Frost (some of my favorite poets of all time!) and you'll soon realize how wonderfully these men played with their English, stretching its limits and turning it on its head in order to paint vivid thoughts.  

Allegory

Dictionary.com defines 'allegory' as 1.) a representation of an abstract or spiritual meaning through concrete or material forms; figurative treatment of one subject under the guise of another.  2.) a symbolic narrative.

My excerpt above is an example of allegory in that it symbolizes something in my life through the concrete image of a road.  I am really not speaking of an actual road at all, but of some life issue.  Rather than actually refer to the real subject, I speak only in terms of symbols: the broken road, a snake, the Sun, the shameful stare, the blood, the rot.  All these terms are placeholders for either real-world scenarios, entities, thoughts, or feelings.  Through symbols, I am reflecting, thinking, meditating upon the meaning of the objects behind them.  It takes understanding in order to pick appropriate symbols and words.  Reflection can be both the culmination of that understanding and/or the process of gaining it.

Metaphor as a topic of discussion is deep enough that I think I'll write a separate blog about it later.  

Stream-of-consciousness
This style of writing is essentially making up your material as you think of it.   A good example that comes to mind of this kind of writing can be found in the prologue section of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, which goes into a protracted, italicized passage that seems to flow without any cessation or cadence.

This kinda describes stream-of-consciousness.  Key word: flowing.  The cool thing about it is its resemblance to poetic free verse.  No rules need apply.  Write without punctuation, without quotation marks, without line breaks, without full sentences...  I didn't err to this extreme in my above excerpt, but my writing approach in general was streaming in that I had no plan before I wrote.  I just picked a topic that I knew well, one that was deeply personal, and started writing.  The material was all in my head, but without form.  It fell together upon the page as I went.  There was little editing as I wrote.  

Reflection can take many forms in your writing, but give it a try.  Pick something in your experience that you are deeply familiar with and just start writing.  Don't plan it out--just write it down.  Capture your muse in the nuances of the English language (or even other languages if you so desire!), or let your muse capture the language itself, carrying it wherever it will.  

May your pen always flow at the hand of a ready mind,
- J Cole