The World Divides: N M Browne
The World divides into people who bisect the world into categories
and those who don’t. I have always belonged to the former category because I like
the melodrama of it.
The world divides into those who love their coffee black and
strong and those who don’t. Obviously, there is an implication that the only
choice of any merit is that shared by the speaker or why else would they chose such
an excessively self-important way of presenting what is nothing more than a
mild preference for one food, book, life -style choice over another? Sometimes
the divide is more useful as in Hollingdale’s [1]division
of children’s critics into book people ( those concerned with literary quality)
and children people, ( who prioritise its effect on the child) but in general
I recognise my propensity to think this way as a failure, a reminder of the
arrogant intellectual certainties of my youth, or worse, the totalitarian
mindset of those who are not with us are against us.
Writers are the worst kind of group to divide
up in this way in any case. We can theoretically be divided into planners and
non-planners/pantsers but so many of us part plan, part make it up as we go
along/read the answer on the back of muesli packets/ get struck by inspiration
on the District Line that any explanation of a person’s working method is a
blogpost if not a substantial work of fiction in itself.
I used to think that writers
also divided into 'word people' or 'plot people' and, in those simple days, I placed
myself firmly in the plot category. My
agent, rather brutally I thought, described me as a story teller and I was
rather proud of this no-nonsense, workmanlike moniker. Not for me the angst of
balanced sentences, the agony inherent in the pursuit of style, no, I rode my
words as a workhorse, galloping through ideas for the glory of story alone. I’m
not sure if that ever really characterised what I did, but it fulfilled the
useful function of keeping the words flowing and self-doubt at bay.
Then, a few years
ago, I decided that my life and my writing would be improved by poetry. Well,
that was my first mistake: my second was trying to write it.
Change did not
happen straight away, but gradually my story workhorse developed ideas
above its station: Shrek’s mule has become a head-tossing show pony and I’m left
tugging futilely at the reins. It has been a disaster.
From this I derive two
important lessons. First, stick to a metaphor which works for you and don’t
change it. Second, if your world divides into the kind of people who like poetry
or prose – stick to the prose.
Of course, if you are a writer, you will take no notice
because there is no damn divide! There is just the empty page and the endless possibility
of the words you have to find to fill it. The world divides into those who love
that thought and those that hate it…
Comments
I reckon you underestimate the quality of your writing style - after all, if your agent described you as a storyteller (high praise!), then your words must convey naturally and gracefully the story you're telling, or the reader will bump into them as they go along. Poetry schmoetry, as my daughter would put it. Keep writing the way you do, you're obviously doing it right!