Blog 6 - Barbara - Writing: Message in a Bottle or Message in a Riddle?

Blog No. 6 – Barbara
Writing: Message in a Bottle or Message in a Riddle?

All of us have something to say. We say it with our body, with our actions, with our tone of voice, with the speed and distinctness of our speech, with the vocabulary we choose, with present or absent humor, and finally, with the message we convey in our story, which, in turn, exhibits our mindset, our attitude, our belief system, and our cultural background. Eighty percent of our communication is non-verbal, and since writing boils down to speech on paper, eighty percent of our writing is peripheral to the story itself.

I can tell you I own the cutest dog with fuzzy ears, a shiny taffy coat, and a bushy tail, that likes to chase boomerangs and that kowtows to my cat. Or I can tell you Golden Retrievers, known for their low intelligence quotient, will chase anything that moves, regardless of risk, and that mine in particular is so dumb he thinks my Siamese cat is Godzilla in disguise.

Or I can ask you, Have you ever watched a dog chase a boomerang and get clobbered by it? And have you ever watched a Siamese cat look upon the scene with all-knowing and all-patient benevolence. On the other hand, I can tell you about inter-species interaction and give you statistics on canines and felines impressing upon each other as infants, convincing each other that they’re littermates.

Conversely, I can tell you that (yawn) my dog, for the umpteenth time today, has caught the darn boomerang on its return trek and has gotten knocked out cold, to the great boredom of (yawn) my cat.

The way I tell you the incident conveys, among other things, my attitude toward stupid (and perhaps sweet) dogs and intelligent (and perhaps mean) cats, but also my attitude toward you, the reader.

If I’m dealing with human fictional characters, say Suzie and Jeff, and they embark on a serious conversation, let’s say, about their beliefs, and Suzie explains to Jeff how she went from atheist to Christian, no matter how Jeff responds, I’ve exposed my own beliefs in a nutshell, via Suzie, if I, the writer and god of this piece of fiction, happen to believe in God and Jesus Christ—which I do.

On the other hand, if I’m dealing with human historic, nonfictional characters, such as, say, Flannery O’Connor and Franz Liszt, and I let them speak according to their documented personalities and recorded quotes, then Flannery can say something like, There are too many writers on the loose because bad teachers graduate them. And then I’m letting O’Connor’s opinion come through to Liszt, and Liszt, known for his brilliance and humor, laughs. Here, the historic characters communicate in an authentic way and convey their convictions to the reader. I may not exhibit my personal opinion but I do show you (as opposed to telling you) O’Connor’s sharp mind and humor.

My point is this: I can oh-so-easily insert my message-in-a-bottle in a novel, anywhere I choose, in the dialogue between Suzie and Jeff. The words work as my servants to express myself. However, in my piece on O’Connor and Liszt, a combination of biography and fantasy (they meet through a time-warp), I convey my respect for the two artists, one a writer and the other a composer, in the clarity with which they express themselves. Here the words work as my masters to express other people and, indirectly, myself.

In the novel The White Tiger, we read Adiga’s views on the “true” New India, past, present and future. His protagonist, Halwai, states that a half-baked man is one who reads and writes without understanding (8-9). Here Adiga has placed his neck neatly on the chopping block: he fails to recognize that the understanding of the heart (integrity) counts far higher than the understanding of the mind. And so, at the very end, we’re left with a rich but nervous Halwai, who still doesn’t understand the meaning of life. Halwai misses the boat because Adiga misses the boat. And Halwai claims to be India’s “tomorrow”!(4).