Owen's Writing Week 4

Many times a writer is asked ‘what do you write about?’ It’s a trick question that, in my experience, can’t be answered. Rather, the best answer to this question is ‘I write about what I write about’. This isn’t meant to be some sort of cheeky response (although it certainly can become one if needed). Instead it is a simple means of saying that the best way to understand what a writer writes about is to read their work. They’ve spent countless hours creating revision after revision of the same manuscript to make sure that what they say is exactly what they mean. In this sense, a two sentence explanation means next to nothing.

Although I stated that there were two reasons why I had decided to discontinue The Six I only covered one (the poor writing). I abstained from mentioning the second explanation due to the need to introduce you to the above question. That is to say, I need to explore what I write about, in a general sense, in order to fully realize what it is about The Six that merited discontinuation besides the poor writing.

I will begin this exploration by further clarifying my stance on the ‘what do you write about?’ question. It is impossible to read everyone’s work, there is simply too much out there. Additionally, a writer’s style or the content they choose to write about may not agree with any given reader’s tastes. Sometimes it’s simply an easy question to ask a writer as an ice breaker. In that vein, while I dislike the question, that doesn’t mean I refuse to try and answer it when asked. To do this I rely on a variety of categorical descriptions, like the common themes found in my writing and the kinds of genre I lean towards.

When I first began writing I never once concerned myself with what to write about and, in all honesty, I didn’t really know that writing necessarily needed to be about anything at all. So I ended up with The Six and 200 pages of absolutely nothing: no real plot, no real progression, and no real point. When I started workshop classes and wrote Claustrophobic Spelunker and One Man’s Death (a short story that I will hold onto for a while longer) my exploration of themes and genre began, but I had no real rhyme or reason behind my decisions. It wasn’t until I got to my third story, A Regression of Thought, that I began to ‘connect the dots’ as it were.

The start of Claustrophobic Spelunker was, quite literally, the contradiction found in the piece’s title. One Man’s Death began with a ‘what if…?’ question that involved the death of one of my characters. A Regression of Thought began when my Developmental Psychology class spent time on Jean Piaget’s theory of development and the cognitive steps a child takes as they grow older. These works, along with the poems I wrote in my Beginning Poetry Workshop, directed me to the conclusion that I write about the unknown or, more broadly (or specifically, I can’t tell which), the concept of fear. In some of my works this theme has a secondary presence; however, I would argue that it is still there nonetheless. The Six in no way embodies this pattern and so it is not a strong representative of my writing, which means that I would be submitting something of very little quality and providing minimal overall gain. I will return to this unknown/fear theme later when I begin posting poems as they tend to represent this theme in a stronger, more upfront way.

As for A Regression of Thought specifically, it was one of those stories where a writer bites off more than they can chew. The Piaget concept, and the way I decided to pursue that concept, was more than I could handle at the time. Even now I’m not really sure I could justify using his theory in any of my works. The theory is no longer considered accurate among most developmental physiologists and the way I approached the subject is sort of obtuse and confusing (so much so that my professor had no idea what I had written about). Even now, with a couple of years of separation between me and the theory, I’m not sure I could accurately describe it, let alone write about it. So, enjoy it as best as you can, but don’t be surprised if nothing makes sense.