Editorial: Shopping Malls, Honey, and Crossbows: the Distinction Between Writerly Perception and Expression

By Christopher Stokum

Yesterday morning, the sunlight spread like honey between the clouds. I heard the city move more distinctly than I have before. Voices from the street separated from and rejoined the freeway noise and exhaust rumblings in a loose, hectic harmony. This is a day for writing, I thought. This is a day for a story, a poem or a song, for something sublime and artistic to flow from me without effort or preparation. I stared at the clock at work – even the motion of its hands seemed profound – furiously anticipating the moment I could take advantage of this rare mood.
           I got home, emptied my pockets, sat leaning forward in my chair and turned on my roommate’s electric typewriter, a birthday present from his parents that he has yet to use. It whirred, waiting. My fingers hovered above the keys.
           Two hours later, I held a half-finished draft of a rambling, ill-conceived story. It kicked around in the shallows for the first ten pages, covering far too much too quickly, only to get caught in a sinkhole by the twelfth page. I’d spent the last six pages explaining the origins of my protagonist’s fiery hatred of shopping plazas.
           What happened? What kind of fissure had formed between my brain and my fingers? I set the table for dinner with unnecessary force. I berated my roommate for not keeping his typewriter properly oiled. I sulked and grumbled. Had I somehow wasted my inspired mood, squandered it on fast women and booze and worthless short stories?
           No, I hadn’t. On the above counts, I was innocent. I was guilty, however, of confusing a perceptive mood for an expressive mood, or an influx of data for an outward rush. In terms of writing, my days normally take on one of three temperaments. First, and most opposed to a writer’s work, is overwhelming neutrality. On these days, my writing is forced and dull, but not awful. I have a fair idea of where the groove is, but I can’t quite get into it. There’s not much one can do besides feel remotely apathetic. People who dig these kinds of days are generally drawn to heavy opiates. On the second kind of days, I perceive. I find new vantage points, new ways of looking at the same things. Call it perspectival mobility. These days allow for those third breed of days, the elusive expressive days.
           These second two kinds look dangerously similar at first, hence my confusion. Both are needed to write anything worthwhile, and both seem to be in some sense “inspired,” though I hate to give any of this a romantic air. But perceptive days, days on which I’m concerned mostly with how I relate to the world and how the world relates to itself, don’t lend themselves well to expressive, and vice versa. Days of the former sort provide me with something to say, the latter an opportunity to say it. Imagine the life of a writer as a crossbow. On perceptive days, the string is drawn back. Tension mounts, the bolt shakes with barely-constrained energy, but letting off a shot now would be premature. You’d never hit the target. No – no, to strike as close to the bulls-eye as possible, to make the best use of the bolt you’ve got loaded, you have to wait for a expressive day, for when the string is fully drawn.
            This is not to say that a writer should wander about until inspiration hits. The neutral and perceptive days are for practice. They’re when one runs drills, self-criticizes and undergoes literary enemas that clear fragments  of stories like my meditation on shopping plazas from one’s head. The neutral days are when the author can see the world as close to objectively as possible, the perceptive days when he can interpret the hell out of that objectivity. If a writer chooses to take these days off, he’ll come at the writing days without the slightest notion of how to make use of them. Only constant use ensures that the bolt won’t stick when the string is drawn.
            The sunlight spreads like honey between the clouds. By noon, I’ll have typed a few hundred words of fumbling prose that hopefully will be better than yesterday’s, though it’s hard to say what will come out. My hopes aren’t higher because, despite the tension I feel, I know that there’s still room to pull the string back. Today is not a day for writing. When that day comes, I’ll hardly notice the sunlight. I’ll care only about the target – the stack of paper on my desk – and releasing the bolt as soon as I can.