What Do You Stand For?

This being an election year, there’s a great deal of talk about platforms. We all want to know what the candidates stand for. Platforms, however, need not be limited to Presidential candidates or politics.

Have you ever thought about what you stand for as a writer? As a human being? I’m not talking issues or ideology. I’m talking about the intersection of passion and talent, the place where your particular point of view gives your work energy and direction. As artists, we can’t be all things to all people and expect to have any kind of impact. We must carefully choose what is most important to us and make that the focus of our work.

For example, I love to cook. Several years ago I decided that even though I wasn’t cut out for a career in the culinary arts, I would make it part of my personal platform to feed people. That means I cook for friends, family, and any neighbors who might be going through a rough patch. I’ve cooked for a homeless shelter and donate regularly to the local food bank. Basically, if someone needs help and it happens to be food-related, I’m on it. It’s not just because I enjoy feeding others—there have been plenty of occasions when finding the time to cook for others has been a sacrifice—but because it’s something that’s important to me.

As a writer, I’m still discovering my platform. One thing that is important to me, however, is the concept of compassion. I once saw an interview with Meryl Streep on Inside the Actors Studio where she said that acting gives voice to people who may otherwise go unheard. The same is true, of course, for fiction. We live in age where people are so hyper-critical of each other, that to give readers an opportunity to step into the shoes of someone different from themselves and view them with a tender eye seems to me like a worthy pursuit. To that end, I keep compassion in mind when I develop my characters, trying to make them at least sympathetic even when they are unlovable.

Analyze This

I’m not a big fan of dissecting literature. I love hearing writers talk about their process or read their work aloud, but the second they start talking about the motivations of their characters I get a little squirmy. It just seems odd to psychoanalyze fictional people. And there’s almost no way to do it without sounding like you take yourself oh-so-seriously.

During my promotional tour for THE GREATEST MAN IN CEDAR HOLE, I had the opportunity to call in to a number of book clubs. Talking with readers is a joy, because they always bring a fresh perspective and enthusiasm to the work. They also dissect like no one’s business, finding connections and symbols that had never even dawned on me. It becomes a sort of detective game to see if they can figure out what I was thinking when I was writing the story. Often these revelations are presented with such eagerness and a need for validation that I feel as though I’m letting them down when I admit that their findings are more of an accident than any sort of brilliance on my part.

I’m sure there are a many writers out there who purposely load their work with a rich undercurrent of genius for the reader mine. However, I suspect that for most of us, we simply want to write a good story that is as real and true as we can make it. That’s not to say that we aren’t inclined to sprinkle our work with a few symbols here in there or weave a theme or two throughout, but in general I think subtext is more often subconscious than intentional. That’s why overanalyzing strikes me as a fruitless pursuit.

Whether subtext is intended or not is beside the point. When a reader asks me if they’re right about a symbol or the motivation of a character, I have only one response—yes. I sometimes tell them what my intention was, but that's irrelevant. A story is a collaboration between writer and reader and my point of view is but one side of it. I am not the final authority on the story. Whatever a reader finds through her microscopic lens is not necessarily my truth, but a reflection of her own.