The Weirding of the Writing Process: Channeling Society's Metanarratives (Part 3: Conclusion)

The last couple of days I’ve been harping on this idea that creative writers don’t “come up” with their ideas. I want to calibrate that notion. Sure. In an intuitive sort of “pop-wisdom” way, creative writers are the source of their ideas. But we need to be very clear about how they are the source of their story ideas.

There is an old argument—I want to call it the biographical argument—that story scenarios (characters, settings, plots, etc..) derive from the biographical experiences of the storyteller. Thus, the argument goes, if I was born in an oil boom town filled with a bunch of rough folks who drank, got in fights, cussed, and spit, then my stories would be filled with characters who drank, got in fights, cussed and spit. I’m not sure I’m ready to disagree with this argument completely. I do, however, think it has some risks to it. Let me explain.

This “biographical argument” is one form of explanation for how writers are the source of their story ideas. What’s useful about the biographical argument is that it takes away agency from the writer. It alleviates the crisis that is making the demand on ourselves as artists that we create something out of nothing, out of thin air.

And yet, in spite of this boon, the “biographical argument” obfuscates the creative situation to a degree. It’s not as if the writer sets out to write his or her life (unless, course, they’re writing straight autobiography). No. The writer writes, spins yarns, and, lo!, elements from their life creep in. You write what you know.

Furthermore, the risk in this argument is that it doesn’t go “all the way” down. There are other sources of stories that aren’t just what we, as individuals, experience. And we “channel” those stories.

How do we “channel” those stories? I haven’t the slightest idea. But I’m sure we do.

I feel like a dose of the social-psychologist Carl Jung would give this revelry a little more credibility and structure (and yet—Carl Jung is a thinker and writer who has become, like Freud, a kind of jokester metaphyisician). Let me just say Carl Jung’s idea of the “collective unconscious mind,” the part of the mind that interfaces with the collective memories of the race, is an elegant metaphor for the process I’m conceptualizing here.

These stories that we channel, like spirits, are what I want to call “metanarratives”. Narrative theorists use this term in more precise way elsewhere. We’re creative writers who are interested in writing interesting stories. And so, I choose to use the term in an interesting way.

What are “metanarratives”? They are the stories that linger on, right outside of consciousness and memory, that are the source of our unstated beliefs about the most important things: honor, glory, evil, lust, justice, fear, ambition, and so forth.

Another way of putting it is this: “metanarratives” are the “deep code” of the stories we use to come to terms with being human.

I’d like to carry this “deep code” metaphor even further. In computer programming you always work with an analogue language and never binary. Why? You can’t understand binary. There is no way for a human being to understand strings of binary code. And so you manipulate that language with a more simplistic one.

Such is our situation as creative writers. In order to write the most intense stories, the stories that truly intensify, clarify, domesticate, and stir up the many emotions and crises of human existence, we need to access the “deep code” that is “metanarrativity.” But, if we follow my metaphor, “metanarratives” would be nonsensical to us. And so here is our crisis: we need an analogue language.

I conclude this three-part series with railroady syllogism and an unanswerable question. Be careful that you don't trip on the mixed metaphors:

IF we accept that creative writers don’t “come up” with their ideas like an inventor, i.e. out of thing air…
IF we accept that they channel “metanarratives”…
IF we accept that “metanarratives” are nonsensical to us in the manner of a “deep code” or a “collective unconscious” and that, thus, we need an analogue language to access them…

THEN, the question of the hour becomes,

What is the analogue language creative writers use to access and utilize the metanarratives upon which the most intense and stirring stories told are based?

How, oh how! do we glimpse beyond this passing moment to reveal those "god-stories" that weave together  paleolithic incantations by fire with the yarns printed on pulp paper?