Explosions of Ink on Paper

Some of my favorite art is the kind that looks like the artist literally threw paint balls at a blank canvass. Even if at first it looks like a complete mess, it isn't. It's what the artist intended (maybe) and someday that piece of art that looks like an explosion of paint happened will be famous. Abstract art is getting more and more popular. Mess up on a painting? It's okay, just splatter colorful paint all over it and call it abstract.

Unfortunately, writers can't exactly do that. There is abstract writing, but it's mainly the concepts. If you threw words on a piece of paper and tried to justify it as abstract, you won't get far. Maybe with poetry you will, because poetry breaks all the rules. But not a novel. Perhaps a short story can be counted as abstract and will someday get famous (look at Edgar Allen Poe). But there's a lot of rules to follow in a novel. If it's prose, you have to have paragraphs, sentence structure that is strict, grammar rules to follow, and chapter breaks. There is a plot, there are subplots, there is an outline, there are many, many characters that need developed. And when we mess up on it, there's no throwing a bunch of words on the paper and claiming it's abstract. It will never fly with society. And it will probably never fly at all. You have to fix it. You have to make it better...

"A writer is simply a photographer of thoughts." ~Brandon A. Trean.

Thoughts...
That's all we got. Thoughts and our fingers to help us put them down on paper. We -- as writers -- have the ability to capture thoughts and imagination in a trap and be able to show it to the world. Every artist has the ability to trap creativity and show it to the world, but in a different way then writers. Music, paintings, dance, etc. is shown differently than writing. As writers, we show it to them through a way where the readers can actually see what we saw. Maybe not exactly, but close. We have the ability to paint them mental pictures with only a few words. "Description begins in the writer's mind, but should finish in the reader's." ~Stephen King. We paint them this picture with words, something no other kind of artist gets to do.

A musician plays a song and the crowd hears a sad, haunting tune. We will never know what the musician wanted us to see unless s/he tells us. We will have an idea, though. Perhaps we see rain drops falling slowly down a window pane, but what the musician intended was the image of  a little girl crying softly in a dark corner after losing both her parents in a car crash. Musicians paint us a mental picture with music. They never tell us how to view it, we get to decide what we want to see.

A painter shows us a painting of what looks like an abstract paint splatter. Perhaps we see that there are dark colors and light colors and that each color follows a hidden pattern. We can't tell what it means. Maybe it has something to do with the spectrum or something else entirely. We can't tell because we were never meant to know. Maybe what the artist really intended us to see was that the dark colored splatters mean sadness and the light colored splatters mean happiness. They all intermingle into the weave of life, all doing their part to create a beautiful picture... The painted provides us with a platform, and lets our own imaginations do the rest.

When I was younger, I went to a zoo in San Diego. There was this man talking about pandas, putting on a little show. He has a blank canvass and a palate with different colors of paint on it. He doesn't say what he is doing as he starts splattering paint on the canvass while he talks about pandas. By the time he is done giving us all the boring details about these animals he is also done splattering paint. He asks the crowd what we see. It just looks like a bunch of black, white and green paint thrown on a canvass. Then he flips the canvass upside down. The picture reveals a panda bear eating bamboo. My childhood wonder thought that was the coolest thing ever. And I wanted to be an artist, however, painting was never my thing; I found art in a different way. I paint my thoughts on stark white paper with these annoying black letters. I describe what I want the reader to see.

As the observers we never really know what the artist is intending. It could be a simple picture of rain depicted through music. Or maybe paint splatters that don't have a real meaning on the outside, but dig deeper and there is something beautiful.

Writer's have a way with words, a way of "photographing" their thoughts for others to peer into  and read. They have this burning desire to put words on paper. Creativity isn't meant to boil inside one's soul for eternity. We all have our own ways of getting it out. And that's what makes you an artist. Perhaps it really is just explosions of ink on paper. And that's okay.

All you have to do is write. All you have to do is paint. All you have to do is play the song, or sing. You can fix terrible, but you can't fix nonexistent.