Love at First Sight?

I wrote a story on Monday. It came from something that Nora and I saw on Saturday, which linked to things I’ve seen around here for years. I thought about it Saturday night and Sunday, and wrote it Monday. It’s only five pages long, and pretty elegant, if I do say so myself.

But I was talking with Nora at dinner last night, and she said, “I just couldn’t get involved with any of the characters.” Then she looked across the table and said, “You’re the one who says you have to love all of your characters.”

There, as they say, was a blinding glimpse of the obvious.

I can write anything. I have a decent level of craft. But if it’s really going to be MY writing, it has to be generous, and help the readers feel generous as well. That’s the mode I have for offer.

And that also helped to explain for me why short stories are less native to me than novels. Over the space of months, I can really come to know everybody in the book. I can start to learn why they do things that from the outside might look ill-advised. We all do things that are ill-advised, and if we can be careful, we can learn the underlying reasons for those actions.

Love at first sight rarely happens. Lust at first sight happens all the time, we know that. And that’s what Monday’s story was, a casual story rather than a commitment.

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This helps me think about why I was a more native teacher and researcher than an administrator, as well. In a course, I have fifteen weeks to gauge how things are going, from the points of view of people I’m coming to know better and better. I can see them as individuals, and work to embrace and enhance all of their experience. In research, I have whatever time I need to immerse myself in a community, come to see its multiplicities, develop smarter questions than the ones I walked in with.

Administrators are mostly involved with instantaneous response to instantaneous problems. I never had the luxury of time; things needed doing and there were deadlines attached. It’s long been thought that leisure is required for the development of culture, of thinking about work that goes beyond immediate survival. That’s why the classical cultures flourished through enslaving others, and why the liberal arts have that name—they’re rigorous but relaxed modes of deep thinking that are reserved for those who are free. That’s why college presidents and CEOs surround themselves with administrators as well, to free themselves up for the larger and longer-range thinking that the job requires.

The pace of the world keeps us from careful thought. There’s always another YouTube Short to watch, always another hair-on-fire editorial to enrage us again, rage being an almost perfect thought-smothering device. I need to hold my own advice, and take the time I need to love the work I do. Clever is nice, but generous is more rewarding, for all involved.