In the process of writing I’m hopping from one thought to another, now this way, now that, until I have a section that can be considered as a whole in itself. Then I go back to it and look at the form of the whole section, which I didn’t intend, and it informs the next thought that starts the process all over again until I have multiple sections comprising a complete work.
When a work is complete I’m ready to throw it away. It is old and obsolete. Writing was an experience, the work that remains just a memento, and I’m not a sentimental guy. I don’t keep mementoes. Or to put it simply, the process of writing is transformative and the product of writing is, at best, merely informative.
But that can’t be. Reading the products of other people’s writing has been an incredibly transformative process in my life. Why then can’t I stand reading my own introspections put into words on paper?
All the other arts produce objects that can be considered more or less separate from their authors. Shapes and colours, the building blocks used in the other arts, are found everywhere in nature. A prose work is inherently more tied up to its author because language is exclusive to humans.
The language used in building prose is the same speech that we use in everyday life, unlike the language used in poetry, which makes poetry (atleast good poetry) more objective in some sense than prose. A prose piece stays subjective to the author by virtue of it being prose, a snapshot into her psychological makeup at the moment of writing. A poem, being constrained to a different ruleset and distinct from our usual mode of using language, becomes more objective even to the original author as time goes on.
A prose composition is meant to communicate an idea clearly to others, unlike a poem which is meant merely to delight by illusion, music and mystery. I have no audience, no listener or reader, to communicate to. Thus I have no need for the products of my own writing. I can tap into my own subjectivity and get the latest updates about how I perceive the world, delivered to me in an instant. A prose piece is post hoc, and to delight myself I can surely think of better pastimes than to scribble and soliloquy.
Nay, perhaps I feel uncomfortable reading my own prose because I’m a fledgling writer and this is all just an elaborate cope. When does prose cross the line and purple becomes poetry?
All prose is suspect.
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