Reader,
Next Thursday, I'm teaching a class for The Porch on "Recovering a Sense of Play in Your Writing."
But that begs an important question: why should you want a sense of play in your writing?
Annie Dillard is not exactly the poster child for playful writing. "Write as if you were dying," she declares in the middle of The Writing Life. "At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case."
Cheery, eh?
While that sentiment isn't necessarily opposed to playful writing, the general tone of The Writing Life—like much, if not all, of Dillard's work—is one of earnest severity. "What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?" she demands at the end of that same paragraph.
That said, a mere page later, she admits there's something sporty about the act of writing:
The writer knows his field—what has been done, what could be done, the limits—the way a tennis player knows the court. And like that expert, he, too, plays the edges. That is where exhilaration is.
If you've ever played or watched tennis, you'll know exactly what Dillard is describing. You don't win a point, let alone a set or a match, by trying to power the ball through the middle of the court. You win by skirting the lines. You win by placing your serve just inside the bounds of what's fair. You win when your stroke looks like it's going out and your opponent eases up, only to watch the ball bounce just before the back line.
As writers, we pursue that same element of surprise in our work. We're not trying to defeat the reader, but we sure want to keep them on their toes. We want to deliver something beautifully apt and yet wholly unexpected. And that's true whether we're writing stand-up comedy, an epithalamium, or a song.
To achieve any of that, we must begin by practicing what we preach. We cannot dourly invoke our readers to be amused or astounded. As a general rule, we can only evoke emotions in them that we at first have. Which is why we must embrace the play and strive to dance around the limits. To do otherwise is to keep slamming the ball right down the middle.
A prompt, for those who want it: What edges do you like to play along?
Keep your stick on the ice. (He says, recognizing that's he mixing sports metaphors here.)
Frank.