My plan was to write a sort of structured mini-essay, carefully laid out. But I chanced upon a few matter-full paragraphs written by Flannery O’Connor:
“It is a good deal easier for most people to state an abstract idea than to describe and thus re-create some object that they actually see. But the world of the fiction writer is full of matter, and this is what the beginning fiction writers are very loath to create. They are concerned primarily with unfleshed ideas and emotions. They are apt to be reformers and to want to write because they are possessed not by a story but by the bare bones of some abstract notion. They are conscious of problems, not of people, of questions and issues, not of the texture of existence, of case histories and of everything that has a sociological smack, instead of with all those concrete details of life that make actual the mystery of our position on earth” (Mystery and Manners, The Nature and Aim of Fiction, 67).
“The fact is that the materials of the fiction writer are the humblest. Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn’t write fiction” (Mystery and Manners, The Nature and Aim of Fiction, 68).
“In this case, the definition of magic is the imposition of a person’s desire on the physical world, or reality. It is a definition provided not by me, but my husband, a little late at night. . . I admire it because it clarifies the role of desire in everyday life, and helps us understand how rare, phenomenal, and magical it is when our aspirations (or desires) become real, palpable, if they ever do. I wonder what the real definition of magic is.”
I love how Pieroni’s description so perfectly, magically, connects O’Connor’s split components of fiction. Fiction texturizes the intangible. We watch as “our aspirations (or desires) become real, palpable” through the writing of fiction. To reach for that magical balance of the physical and the non-physical when we write, and to recognize and admire its realization when we read—yes, I think that would be nice. But remember to begin with flesh, with dust, with matter. It’s late, I can’t make a sentence, but please, someone with pretty handwriting, draft Flannery O’Connor, Jennifer Pieroni, and their attention to tangibility into a single, post-it note reminder. I know I need one.