Answering Questions

As I read, be it a published well-known novel or a draft of a play by a friend, I tend to ask questions. The one thing I've always loved about reading (and writing) is the questioning that can happen. I love how you can question a character, a scene, a description, an author. I love how the questions change as you read. I love how you can close a book and still have so many unanswered questions that you continue to think about the story days after you finish it. I love how a piece of writing can make you question yourself.

My high school emphasized asking questions. It was how English classes were run and in those English classes, I was in my element. I had very little fear of asking questions or giving my idea of an answer. (The lecture type of English classes in college were...not my cup of tea...which may explain why I dropped most of them.)

Alas, this is my reaction when I am faced with others' work. When it comes to my own, it is more complicated.

I can ask myself questions, but I rarely know the answers. I used to believe that this was reason number one as to why I should give up writing and become something, anything, else. I thought all good writers knew an answer, even if it wasn't the 100% correct answer. (Okay, so it wasn't reason number one. More like reason number 10. Reason number one was, is, that I have no talent and should give up before I give people the opportunity to laugh at me...but that is for another post.)

With each draft, my play becomes stronger and stronger, but with that strength comes questioning. A writing buddy asked me some tough questions in her last set of edits and I found myself sitting, reading them, shaking my head, saying "yeah, that is an awesome question...wish I knew the answer". They are questions about the playworld, about the characters, about what I chose to include, what I chose to show, and what I didn't.

Some questions I can intellectualize. For example, because of my background in women's studies and social work, I have a tendency of trying to highlight issues which concern women and are often avoided. I may include a scene or write a scene a certain way to draw attention to the issue--at least that is what I think I am doing.

The other questions are harder because I often feel like my gut, or these voices in my head told me to write something a certain way. And now I am asking my brain to understand my gut or that little writing fairy/voice that speaks to me. My brain can barely understand how to keep me from tripping and walking into doorways 100 times a day. How the hell can it manage this?

But I get how it is this process, the gut to the brain, that makes what I write a choice. I may not know why I chose to include a certain something, but I should figure out why the hell it needs to stay or why the hell it needs to go. For my sake, my play's sake, and my future readers' sakes.

So that is where I am at right now. I am staring at some parts of my play, saying that part needs to stay, while also playing devil's advocate and saying it needs to go. If there were a microphone in my head, you would be entertained.

No answers yet, but that is what time is for. Hopefully.