Fresh Fish for Sale Today

I spend a lot of time with words. In addition to this weekly blog, I am working on a novel, stage play, and two projects for a streaming platform like Hulu or Amazon. I don’t know where the streaming stuff will end up, if anywhere. But I have learned to use words and phrasing the way a joiner uses wood, which is to say cutting, shaving, and molding the wood, working toward the final product he has in mind. There’s something very platonic about being guided by an ideal image that way.

I am picky about the words I use, which is why I used to think that the key to writing is control. I wanted to say the right thing in the right way in the right context for the right understanding on the part of the reader. That’s when I discovered something. When you make all those rights, you end up right where you started, because you just went in a circle. If you followed that line of thinking in the forest, they’d have to send out a rescue team.

So, I tried it the other way. I created characters and turned control over to them. I figured they knew who they were better than I did and could enrich the story I had laid out for them by expressing their inner desires and conflicts. That, in turn, would engage readers to the end of the novel, play, or Hulu episode. It was a more sophisticated theory of writing. Or so I thought.

I quickly found out that my characters could get out of control and take over the story. They got greedy for page time. The trick, I learned, was finding a balance between giving them space and not letting them wander off in streams of consciousness or, more likely, unconsciousness. I remembered Bobby Bronco’s advice about the need to balance “dabble and dwell” (see Stand Up, Now Sit Down!). You don’t want to be wordy, but neither do you want to be so sparing of words as to leave the reader wondering what in God’s name is going on. Find a place, he says, in the middle. Bobby is a true Aristotelian.

I thought about my father’s joke about the fishmonger with a roadside stand and a sign that read, “Fresh Fish for Sale Today.” One day a man approached and asked the fishmonger why the sign said “fish,” since anybody with a nose could tell. The word was unnecessary, so the fishmonger removed it. Then the man asked why he had “fresh.” “You don’t sell stale fish, do you?” Off went the word. The man then asked if the fishmonger was giving away the fish. Off went “for sale.” Finally, the man said, “You’re not selling them yesterday or tomorrow, are you?” So, off came “today.” When the fishmonger was left with no sign at all, the man departed.

This man, rude and annoying, exists. He lives in my head and can assume the voice of a former teacher, friend, or colleague in publishing. As an internal critic, he often shows up, tears my sign apart, and moves on. Spending all those years in academia, where the stock-in-trade was deconstruction and criticism (not to mention ego), have not helped, either. In fact, it has encouraged the man to come out every morning before dawn and second guess everything I have done as I do my pushups. But I have learned to keep him in check.

Deconstruction actually helps me. By whittling down concepts, words, and phrases like a piece of wood, I see the fine grain and texture of the wood. I see its features and what makes it unique. I get to the wood’s essence. Deconstruction can take a writer to the essence of the story or character. Once there, the writer can experience not just the rhythm of the words and the way their appear on the page, but their profound silence. That silence resonates in the soul. It is the beginning of creativity, the building up that occurs after the tearing down. And if creativity is anything at all, it is resilient.

This is a crucial process for a writer. Without it, the story gets chopped up into splinters of anxiety and self-doubt. Once followed through, however, the writer will see that words are more than letters and those people passing by really do need the sign, whether they can smell the fish or not.

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Image credits: feature by Gunnar Ridderström. Collage by Naja Bertolt Jensen; Marc Serota; Getty Images; Manas Manikoth. For more, click on Amazon top right, or go to Robert Brancatelli. Visit other blog readers under “Who You Are.” Comment by clicking on “Leave a Reply” below or the Contact tab above.