Tan says that the questions that bedevil the creative writer as he or she is writing, is how do things happen; how does one thing lead to another. As she is writing, Tan is constantly trying to figure the story out. She is constantly asking:
Why do things happen?
How do things happen?
How do I as the narrator influence what happens?
In writing, says Tan, there is a lot of "dark matter"; there are a lot of unknowns. Those unknowns, she says, help to generate the creative process.
You are constantly searching for what experiences mean. Tan cautions against focusing on what the story is "about" while you writing it, otherwise you will not write the story and you will not make discoveries -- you will only write about what it is about, not about the characters in a situation of moral ambiguity. You will no longer surprise yourself as you write.
Tan describes the situation that her characters typically find themselves in: they go through life and they see a situation; they have a response and they have an intention associated with that response, but there is some ambiguity between what they think they should do, as a matter of principle, and what they think they should do as a matter of practicality. When they respond things do not turn out as they expect and things go wrong. When things go wrong, what do they do? Do they now own the problem or do they let the problem go saying, "that's not what I intended"? When things go wrong to we stay with the problem and take further action to try to justify the initial action? Do they let it go and say, "I cannot be held responsible for all of this?"
Tan says that once you identify your question you will get hints and clues everywhere you go. Identifying the question will give you a focus, she says. Once we have a question, a focus, we become aware of things that we weren't previously aware of. We may also be faced with moral ambiguity about whether we should take action, and perhaps be sucked into the problem ourselves -- perhaps making the problem worse -- or do we stand aside and say "it is not my problem"?
Tan believes that moral ambiguity is essential in order to be a good writer, even though we find this disturbing. The reason it is essential, according to Tan, is because it gives the writer something to explore.
Moral ambiguity: what should I do? Should I get involved or should I stand apart? These questions lead to an identity crisis: Who am I? Why am I here? What am I here to do? What is the meaning of life? What is my place in the universe?
Tan says that how the writer creates something out of nothing and how the writer creates something out of his or her own life is through the process of questioning and starting from the premise that is no such thing as "absolute truth".
In this vein, Tan, as a writer has to believe that there are no absolute truths -- there are only specifics of time and place. This is what the writer must write about.
The writer writes in terms of particles of truth, not of absolute truths. So long as there is absurdity and partial answers there is always something new for the writer to discover in the process of writer.
For Tan, when the writer enters the strange world of his or her characters the author must suspend his or her own beliefs and take on the beliefs the characters. This, again, brings one back to the theme of ambiguity. It become ambiguous whose beliefs are operative in the world, determining what is happening. When the writer sees events through the cosmology of the writer's characters the explanation of why and how things happen as they do changes. This, again, gives the writer something to explore and opens the possibility for empathy.
Writing, for Tan, is a path toward empathy. To put oneself in the story and to feel the story is, for Tan, the path to compassion.
This video is found on my YouTube playlist "Being Wrong and Other Insights"
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