When is a book like an uneaten cake? – An Essay on Effort

[Hillsy]

I stumbled across the Greek mythological figure, Sisyphus. I was looking up Dionysus, God of Wine and Winemaking, and ended up wandering around the internet with nothing more than a vague intention to absorb information – we all know that feeling. For those of you that don’t know, Sisyphus was a rather unpleasant King who got his comeuppance (all good Mythological stories have a good comeuppance in them, deserved or otherwise) when the Gods sentenced him to roll an immense bolder up a massive hill, only to watch it roll back down. Rinse, repeat, times infinity. (Think that’s harsh? Read up on Prometheus and his punishment. Ouch!!)

Anyway, instead of giving an impressed eyebrow-raise and nod of appreciation, as I often do when appraising something clever or unique, something…(how to put it without sounding clichéd or dramatic)…derailed my thoughts, like an iPad placed across a sushi conveyor belt. I sat there for a minute, tapping my mouse button in that way that makes the clicking noise, but has no other effect. It was a moment of vague epiphany, just without the euphoria often accompanying it – more akin to peering into the darkness and suddenly seeing the pendulum blade swooping silently towards your forehead. What, exactly, it was an epiphany of came a few hours later.

I was building a wiki for a D&D game I’m running. Worldbuilding for most fantasy/sci-fi writers is our party-trick (Need a global civilisation of seven races, fifteen different cultures, five religions, four magic systems, eight centuries of history, and all spawning from a schism over how best to worship the Baked Potato? Gimme some graph paper, a litre of coffee and one hour). So I wanted to catalogue it all for my players so they could better grasp the world they were playing in. Anyways, right in the middle of fabricating the historical events that would explain the cultural geography I’d fabricated moments before, I stopped dead. I’d highlighted a whole paragraph with the intention of deleting it. Why? Not because I didn’t like the ideas I’d come up with, but because I didn’t like the words. I’d have to retype the whole thing – Sisyphus’ boulder had just rolled back down hill with Sisyphus trudging behind, despondent.

So big deal, you say. And I kind of agree – what’s a paragraph in the grand scheme of things. Not a lot of effort, right? Well, no, but this isn’t why the two thoughts, hours apart, suddenly locked together like oxygen and iron atoms, rusting my mind solid (I’ve got, like, hundreds of chemical reaction similes, you know...). I suddenly felt like I was engaged in useless effort, working and crafting at pages and pages of background information that either wouldn’t be read, or didn’t require the level of professionalism I was putting into it. Like Sisyphus, I was pushing a boulder up a hill knowing either the boulder would roll back down, or that I was using an immense boulder where a pebble would suffice.

This was exactly the reason I gave up writing last year. No, that’s not true – I’ve never given up writing, I gave up…solidifying words. Oh yeah, that’s right, I just described the act of typing out a novel as “solidifying words” – that’s pompous enough to make even me dry-retch. But it’s true I guess, I still write novels I just keep them in my head. In fact, by divorcing the creativity from the processes, the art from the craft if you will, an ugly word falls out. Utility.

I read somewhere, paraphrasing, that “The difference between the artist and the artisan is: the artist creates something beautiful, and uses it to be evocative. The artisan creates something useful, then applies beauty”. In both scenarios the utility is vital – so what if something never gets used? What then? If the usefulness of something is removed, what remains? If you take away the words of a story, or whatever mechanism you use to deliver it, what’s left? Plot. Character. Theme; all these things are still there, just not verbalised, not – transmitted – between writer and reader.

And it’s at this hurdle where I’ve fallen. I cannot separate the ‘intention’ from ‘reality’ – what do I mean? Cakes – yes cakes. One can argue that bakery is a form of art: a cake is edible but its purpose is not to sate hunger, it’s decorated when something uglier would taste the same, its intention is to bring pleasure through the sense of taste. A cake is intended to be eaten – but are all cakes eaten? No. And so you have to ask yourself this: what is the point of baking a cake that no one will eat?

OK, that’s descending into solipsism. The point I’m trying to draw from this is: where is the enjoyment for the artist/artisan derived from. Does the baker enjoy the designing, cooking, decorating of the cake, or its effect on people who eat it? If you asked someone in isolation, do you “enjoy” whipping egg whites into a meringue (I’m not giving you my full meringue recipe – I’m taking that to the graves) the answer is usually no. In the same way a writer would much prefer to plug in his brain and fzz-zzapp the words into a spreadsheet rather than going through the months of using fingers to try and emulate what the mouth does so much better. It’s all effort, effort that could well end up being useless.

This fact is the dark abyss into which every writer must one day stare, assuming they wish to be able to lay claims to their sanity with a straight face. To put it into context, this….thing…I’ve just written is at this point 960 words long. It’s not going to change the world - in fact few people will get as far as this word here ( #waves# - hello to all you have persevered, I probably would have given up by now). In truth its purely an exercise in enjoying the simple act of putting thoughts in type, with whatever, if any, skill or flair that I possess. And to be honest I’ve been nagged constantly by the notion I’m pushing an unnecessarily large boulder up a hill that might prove to be a kind of pyramid type thing upon which balancing a large, irregular shaped rock is patently impossibly.

Or baking a cake no one will eat.

[polymath]

The Sisyphean Ordeal is a tragically beautiful metaphor for writing. Hubris as a cause: an eternal, pointless punishment for presuimg to one-up the gods. I've read and evaluated several Sisyphean Ordeal themed narratives set in contemporary times and places. One common shortcoming in each has been causation. First Cause. Why is the protagonist condemned to a pointless and worthless and meaningless existence? In each case, the writer was afraid to explore that question. I offered suggestions that were refused.

The suggestions each had the same basis or premise. The protagonist earns the punishment from an anoymous, mundane agency for leading too comfortable a pointless, meaningless, worthless life. Government, church, acquaintance, vocation, etc. A pitiful life either way, comfortable or uncomfortable. And a potentially universally appealing premise evoking a primal human fear. More so, the protagonist is given a fresh, causal imperus to thrive, to create, to live a meaningful life. Not that one must pay one's dues to justify a comfortable and creative life, not anymore, but that a comfortable life can stagnate. Stagnation isn't helpful for writing or in writing. Hunger for publication and audience acclaim and ready, willing readers eagerly attentive to a creative personal expression drive the will to write, to create. Change compelled by personal desire is a number one feature of artful narratives. C'est la vie d'escritur.

I'm revisting the writing principle espoused by Donald Maass that narrative and a central character must have private and public motivations or desires, and private and public complications and stakes and outcomes. Private I can do as easily as a cakewalk. Public? What does that mean? Why does it matter? How is it developed?

Public motivations, complications, stakes, and outcomes matter because without public appeal there is no public to care: re readers. I can't count the number of narratives I've read where I didn't care what happens to whoever. Publication equals public appeal. Speaking of uneaten cake.

[dios4vida]

One can argue that bakery is a form of art: a cake is edible but its purpose is not to sate hunger, it’s decorated when something uglier would taste the same, its intention is to bring pleasure through the sense of taste. A cake is intended to be eaten – but are all cakes eaten? No. And so you have to ask yourself this: what is the point of baking a cake that no one will eat?

Mmm...cake...

I heard once that if you like to cook, don't become a chef. People who love the act of creating and preparing dishes soon get burned out as chefs, and their passion curdles. A good chef is a person who loves to have people enjoy their food, whether or not they enjoy the actual process of making said food.

So what's the point of baking a cake no one will eat? Because you love to bake cakes. The passionate baker - or writer, or anything - doesn't need to have others enjoy their products to enjoy, crave, desire, and love the process of making their cakes, or books, or whatever. The commercial baker - or writer - doesn't enjoy the creating as much as the enjoyment of others, therefore an uneaten cake - or unread book - is indeed a waste to them.

Is either path right? Or is either wrong? No. Passion and commercial, it doesn't matter, as long as you know and accept which one you are.

There are those who don't like to write, but love having written. Commercial writers. They wouldn't do it if they couldn't share it with others. That's great.

There are those who get twitchy and grumpy if they don't write. Passionate writers. They would do this even if none of their words ever see the light of day. That's great, too.

Note that I didn't say "real writers" or "true writers". Anyone who writes, for whatever motivation, is a real writer in my book.

So it sounds to me like you, Hillsy, have discovered which type of writer you are. You're a commercial writer, who doesn't want to labor over the words as much as he want to create and share stories. I think it's great that you learned this, because now you can enjoy your gift without the horrible craft issues that aren't your cup of tea. That makes for a happy writer, just like I, a passionate writer, will continue to labor over my paragraphs. Because that's what I do, and it's what I love. We're both right, because we're doing what's best for us.