Shapes, spaces, structures. I write because words possess amazing structural potential. Arranging them seems to me partially like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, partially like constructing a sculpture. To a certain extent, some arrangements of words are just superior to others. But after attaining a certain level of competence, the arrangements do not rank as “better” or “worse,” but instead create very different effects. The labyrinthine sentences of Charlotte Bronte unfold with a beautiful lilt; the muscular terseness of Ernest Hemingway ring with a music of its own.
Of course, this line-level significance of each word extends to the overall structures of stories. And that is what appeals to me about journalistic writing: for the most part, the puzzle pieces have been presented to the writer. She works with a set of givens, unlike in poetry and fiction. The challenge, then, is not inventing elements, but inventing the best arrangement. Not to say this challenge is less rigorous than the challenge of creative work; it is creativity within constraints.
My choice to write for The Odyssey stemmed from a desire to exercise the requisite journalistic muscles in small, frequent bursts rather than in a few lengthy feature articles a year. This way, every experience offers itself to be crystallized into a story, into a shape. Facing an experience as a journalist gives me a confidence I do not have in my “civilian” life. I occupy a role. I am there to observe as events unfold how they will. The outcome is often irrelevant. Gaining a negative experience will make as good a story as a positive experience; in fact, it will often be more interesting.
Now that I am expected to produce an article per week, I attempt to cultivate the mindset of treating everyday experiences as journalistic endeavors. Getting lost in Portland. Attending a heated yoga class. Visiting a novelty taxidermy shop. Watching an episode of my favorite show on Netflix. These do not have to be challenges, inconveniences, routine actions, or things I would never consider doing. These are all fodder for stories, for making new shapes with my life, for making 26 particular shapes into various aggregations that will result in completely unique shapes. After assembling the raw sediment of experience and applying the pressures of narrativizing, contextualizing, and editing, I can present bits of my life as compressed, pure, and shapely -- little crystals to add a touch of beauty or insight to other people’s lives.
That is, after all, the final phase of the story process, one structured into The Odyssey platform through its mandatory social media sharing policy: sharing. I have often thought of language, that collective archive of what I lovingly termed “amazing structural potential,” is: a net woven tight against entropy, an aggregate of shared human experience and cognition that flows and expands through a communal effort. Hence peer-reviewing and citing in academia: to build off, rather than echo or erase. Perhaps I digress; I merely mean to say this process of streamlining and structuring that occurs in every article I write epitomizes in sharing. That is why I write for various platforms like The Odyssey. I hope this article will serve as a crystal for one or two of you.
