The Goodness of Unfinished Stories

Reposted from here, because I think it still matters.

Well, here I am back at work and ready to finish up the collage journal I’ve been working on since last Summer. Alas, the scanner refuses to play nice with the computer and I can’t get the last two pages ready for print! Stymied from bringing even just one project to completion, I am a frozen by the possibilities of tinkering with dozens of unfinished or yet-to-be-started projects. It’s been two weeks without creating anything more solid than Christmas cookie dough. I’m not stuck exactly, just sort of stiff in the artistic joints. “So,” I say to myself, “Let’s warm up with a nice little blog.”

Let’s talk a bit about the creative process shall we? It’s a long and bumpy one, by most accounts. Paintings do not spring forth from your brush fully executed, nor do novel pour out of your fingers without numerous backstrokes long periods of chewing on the ends of your hair. There are canvases to stretch and preliminary sketches, not to mention the first four attempts that end up being kindly referred to as ‘studies’. There are, in the words of Anne Lamott, “shitty first drafts” and barely tolerable second drafts, and eventually, if you are very very persistent, a nearly readable third draft. All of this lends itself to stacks of first attempts and computer files saved over one another to preserve revisions. The process makes deadlines nearly unreachable, yet motivationally essential. It makes the hours, days, even months go by before one has time to turn the pages of the calendar
Yes, if there is anything I’ve learned over the past few years of mucking about in the world of the creative, it is this:

Art Takes Time.

Lots and lots of time. There is the scavenging for supplies, and the testing of techniques. There is trial and error – lots and lots of error – and the sort of failures which are really bitter-tasting successes because eventually, they show you how not to achieve the effect you were looking for. And through all that time, things emerge half formed and still forming. Encaustic paintings that need one more layer. A short story that comes to an abrupt ‘the end.’ Lyrics with metaphors that are almost-but-not-quite. So often these created things are buried, only to come to light posthumously, when someone’s finished works gain recognition and we scramble for more of a lost light. Or, they are submitted too soon as ‘completed’ and members of the longsuffering publishing world must endure drafts that are ready for the weekend writing workshop, but not the printing press.

Oh for a place for works progressing!

Last night, I watched a movie that was a work progressing–M Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water. Shyamalan writes in the vein of Alfred Hitchcock and is known for suspenseful stories, surprise endings, and a cocky swagger that sets the screen writing world on edge. He’s clever, that’s for sure, though whether he’s as clever as he thinks he is only time will tell. (Will his silhouette ever be an immediately recognizable symbol of suspense and irony? Who knows?) While Lady in the Water is in turns frightening, suspenseful, and clever, those features are not what make it recommendable. Rather, it is the unfinished nature of Lady that leaves me intrigued.

Lady is a myth – that is, a truth bearing story, in which an unlikely hero is given a quest, one which can only be carried out by a community that’s rather watery around the periphery. No one in the tale is sure who can, or should, or is playing which role. The characters know only where they ought to be going; that there are dangers along the way; and that they must travel together. It seemed to me that this was very much where the writer was as well – on a journey with a cast of characters, a noble end in mind, and an unfinished trail to follow.

Lady in the Water is neither a great story nor a terrible one. It has moments which fit together perfectly – for instance, any scene in which which Paul Giamatti takes the stage, or the perfect casting of Bryce Dallas Howard as Story, the watery narf and uncertain heroine (or is she?) But there are also pieces that make a clever point but haven’t quiet been sanded and polished enough to fit together well. There are questions that were meant to be left unanswered and stray ends that needed to be rounded up. When we turned off the TV I said to Paul, “I liked that story very much. But it’s not finished. It wasn’t ready yet.” I want to know, if Shyamalan lets it cook longer, lets it stew in his head and his heart, what wonderful thing would come to life?

I think its okay to let things come to an audience before they are done. I am, after all, a blogger, and if blogging isn’t the medium for half-baked art what is? There is a kind of hopefulness in offering the world (or some small part of it) a thing that is half formed and promising — in saying, “This isn’t done, but it’s real, and I think it might be true and maybe even beautiful, so I’ll turn the light towards it.”

I am glad for unfinished stories, collages that await another layer, and essays that end to abruptly. I like the way they let me play, putting my own beads on the end of the strand, writing my own mental fan fiction, and wondering what would happen if a character suddenly turned and said……

Posted in Soulstories
Tags: movies, on art, on writing, reviews, Soulstories |