I’d like to explore a bit further the background processes that govern what we write.

First, I was thinking about how the selection of a particular genre to express a story through might at least in some cases be a substitution exercise. I believe that for a story to carry real power, the author has to make a connection to truth of one kind or another. Which, unless he spends all his time trying to figure out the truth behind people and things, is not easy to do to order. But he knows he has to have something powering the story; so he reaches for a truth substitution that’s already in place and guaranteed to produce at least the simulation of power, magic, connection.

So, for example, he selects the literary genre where he can find ready-made power-simulations, like gloomy allusions to the meaningless of life expressed through the minutiae of dreary characters’ every day lives.

Second, somebody sent me a link to series of paintings by George Bush. Most of them were, not surprisingly, of world leaders he knows. To me, they lacked any kind of truth, emotion, power or connection, and showed an amateur level of skill at best.

So, I thought perhaps it goes something like this, where creative arts are concerned:

1.    NO SKILL – TALENT MAYBE, MAYBE NOT

2.    AMATEUR, then either progresses to

2a.  AMATEUR WITH A LITTLE SKILL, WILL PROGRESS NO FURTHER or

3.    PROFESSIONAL, then either progresses to

3a.  PROFESSIONAL WITH TALENT AND COMPETENCY TO MAKE MONEY/FANS/FAME, and/or

4.    TRUE CREATIVE CONNECTION, EMPLOYING GREAT SKILL, EMOTIONAL CONTENT, TRANSCENDENT QUALITIES (very rare, needless to say, and may or may not make money, etc)

The very nature of the life Bush has led would preclude him from 3 to 4, and to get to 3 he’d have to re-learn to paint properly, start again, etc, and it’s not likely he’d do that or could even if he wanted to.

Getting to 4 may be about total immersion. Like Sibelius was reported to have said: when he went walking in the mountains and forests he heard the music of the mountains and forests. Bush spent decades immersed in his need to survive politically, win ground for the US, decide whether or not to go to war, etc. Which means he can’t turn on creative/connected immersion at his age.

Truth substitutions and simulations expressed through genres or styles can of course make a lot of money, far more than a real truth connection. Jeffrey Archer is a good example, producing work that isn’t ever intended to do more than badger a genre into producing a derivative framework on which he can hang stock plots and coat-hanger characters.

Perhaps the problem with aiming for 4 is a) it’s hard to get to so you may waste years of earning time trying and even if you get there, b) you may find that hardly anybody wants it anyway.

The other problem with 4 is that it doesn’t inhabit a community. It’s an individual response, and requires leadership not collaboration to bring it home in a story or poem or piece of music. Yet today everybody is socially networked; there is no division between writers and fans; everyone owns all parts of the creative process.

There isn’t an answer here, obviously. But I believe it’s important to consider why we write in the first place, even if the result may not always hit the target.