Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Actualization

Actualization

Last Christmas somebody gave me a computer game….“Call to Duty” It’s what they call a shooter game. I went through a period where I amused myself with them and I particularly liked the “Half Life” series. So I was up late last night and today I have a full schedule. My Cousin is coming over to help me split some wood.

I received an update from a student this morning on Lesson 3 and it was encouraging. She seems to have had the light come on as to what the want need or desire of her central character is. Now you might think that is an easy thing to figure out but if you read literature that seems to head in no particular direction, this rudderless meandering can sometimes be attributed to this shortcoming. It isn’t just this student that has this problem right now, it’s several.

My Dad used to tell me that you have to say something three times before it really sinks into most people’s heads. Getting the students to follow the model instead of their own lights is hard for some reason. I know I must sound self righteous but I don’t mean to be. I am as guilty as anyone else but these days I have learned to use it…even if it is coming through the back door and asking myself… Is it clear who the Central Character is from the get go… That this is that someone the reader or audience needs to attach themselves to… That they have a real want, need or desire that is not abstract but something a reader besides Sigmund Freud can relate to….. Do they reach the point where they are fed up with going with the flow, with the status quo and decide to do something to change the direction of their miserable lives, and once resolved do they create or encounter a series of crisis, each greater than the last. Do these build each wave bigger than the last until the biggie rears up in the climax and washes over, leaving them changed forever?

Sometimes though I still get an idea and write a short story simply following my muse and giving no thought to the science of literature and when I’m finished, at least now, ask myself if I remembered all the ingredients and arranged them in the right order. Now this doesn’t mean the story or drama will be necessarily good. How good it is involves the other dimension of the craft….the art. I remember in my water color class, struggling for the whole period to produce something half decent… one good leaf on the plant we were modeling… frustrated, and having the instructor walk by and with a deft flick of her brush paint two or three in the space of a heartbeat with a beauty and wonder I could never achieve in a million years. That is what the art is and nobody is totally without any. It is the spark of God that illuminates all living things. It is the light in the light bulb and while dim in many and blinding in others we all have it and it shines in a vast array of different hues.

Anyway the art in us limit’s the threshold to which our creativity can rise but for most it doesn’t really matter because we are too lazy to rise to the level of our potential to start with and need not worry too much about being constrained. But here’s the whole point! Without the science there is nothing for the art to latch onto…the science provides the structure upon which the vine can express itself… How’s this for a word Freud would like? “Actualization!” It’s the wow! When you write something and reflect… “This isn’t half bad.” Did I write this…did it bubble up from inside my mind or did I steal a thread from the skirt of a muse as she floated into my dimension?