I don't think, after this long article, I have to show you, here, the relationship between archery and the writer's art. I have already warned against thinking on targets.
Instinctively, years ago, I knew the part that Work must play in my life. More than twelve years ago I wrote in ink on my typing board at my right hand the words: DON'T THINK! Can you blame me if, at this late date, I am delighted when I stumble upon verification of my instinct in Herrigel's book on Zen?
The time will come when your characters will write your stories for you, when your emotions, free of literary cant and commercial bias, will blast the page and tell the truth.
Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations. Plot is observed after the fact rather than before. It cannot precede action. It is the chart that remains when an action is through. That is all Plot ever should be. It is human desire let run, running, and reaching a goal. It cannot be mechanical. It can only be dynamic.
So, stand aside, forget targets, let the characters, your fingers, body, blood, and heart do.
Contemplate not your navel then, but your subconscious with what Wordsworth called "a wise passiveness." You need to go to Zen for the answer to your problems. Zen, like all philosophies, followed but in the tracks of men who learned from instinct what was good for them. Every wood-turner, every sculptor worth his marble, every ballerina, practices what Zen preaches without having heard the word in all their lives.
"It is a wise father that knows his own child," should be paraphrased to "It is a wise writer who knows his own subconscious." And not only knows it but lets it speak of the world as it and it alone has sensed it and shaped it to its own truth.
Schiller advised those who would compose to "Remove the watchers from the gates of intelligence."
Coleridge put it thus: "The streamy nature of association, which thinking curbs and rudders."
Lastly, for additional reading to supplement what I have said, Aldous Huxley's "The Education of an Amphibian" in his book, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.
And, a really fine book, Dorothea Brande's Becoming A Writer, published many years ago, but detailing many of the ways a writer can find out who he is and how to get the stuff of himself out on paper, often through word-association.
Now, have I sounded like a cultist of some sort? A yogi feeding on kumquats, grapenuts and almonds here beneath the banyan tree? Let me assure you I speak of all these things only because they have worked for me for fifty years. And I think they might work for you. The true test is in the doing.
Be pragmatic, then. If you're not happy with the way your writing has gone, you might give my method a try.
If you do, I think you might easily find a new definition for Work.
And the word is LOVE.
1973
GO PANTHER-PAWED WHERE ALL THE MINED TRUTHS SLEEP
Not smash and grab, but rather find and keep;Go panther-pawed where all the mined truths sleepTo detonate the hidden seeds with stealthSo in your wake a weltering of wealthSprings up unseen, ignored, and left behindAs you sneak on, pretending to be blind.On your return along the jungle path you've madeFind all the littered stuffs where you have strayed;The small truths and the large have surfaced thereWhere you stealth-blundered wildly unawareOr seeming so. And so these mines were minedIn easy game of pace and pounce and find;But mostly fluid pace, not too much pounce.Attention must be paid, but by the ounce.Mock caring, seem aloof, ignore each mileAnd metaphors like cats behind your smileEach one wound up to purr, each one a pride,Each one a fine gold beast you've hid inside,Now summoned forth in harvests from the brakeTurned anteloping elephants that shakeAnd drum and crack the mind to awe,To behold beauty yet perceive its flaw.Then, flaw discovered, like fair beauty's mole,Haste back to reckon all entire, the Whole.This done, pretend these wits you do not keep,Go panther-pawed where all the mined truths sleep.
WHAT I DO IS ME – FOR THAT I CAME
for Gerard Manley Hopkins
What I do is me – for that I came.What I do is me!For that I came into the world!So said Gerard;So said that gentle Manley Hopkins.In his poetry and prose he saw the Fates that choseHim in genetics, then set him free to find his wayAmong the sly electric printings in his blood.God thumbprints thee! he said.Within your hour of birthHe touches hand to brow, He whorls and softly stampsThe ridges and the symbols of His soul above your eyes!But in that selfsame hour, full born and shoutingShocked pronouncements of one's birth,In mirrored gaze of midwife, mother, doctorSee that Thumbprint fade and fall away in fleshSo, lost, erased, you seek a lifetime's days for itAnd dig deep to find the sweet instructions therePut by when God first circuited and printed thee to life:"Go hence! do this! do that! do yet another thing!This self is yours! Be it!"And what is that?! you cry at hearthing breast,Is there no rest? No, only journeying to be yourself.And even as the Birthmark vanishes, in seashell earNow fading to a sigh, His last words send you in the world:"Not mother, father, grandfather are you.Be not another. Be the self I signed you in your blood.I swarm your flesh with you. Seek that.And, finding, be what no one else can be.I leave you gifts of Fate most secret; find no other's Fate,For if you do, no grave is deep enough for your despairNo country far enough to hide your loss.I circumnavigate each cell in youYour merest molecule is right and true.Look there for destinies indelible and fine And rare.Ten thousand futures share your blood each instant;Each drop of blood a cloned electric twin of you.In merest wound on hand read replicas of what I planned and knewBefore your birth, then hid it in your heart.No part of you that does not snug and hold and hideThe self that you will be if faith abide.What you do is thee. For that I gave you birth.Be that. So be the only you that's truly you on Earth."