Another Kind of Day by Day

I'm in one of those small streaks of writing that makes me a writer. I mean simply that I actually am writing: for each of the past several days I've worked on the script that is my main project, a play called "Ghost." I'm once again thinking about time scales. There's the question of how many minutes of theatre I've so far orchestrated; the question of how much time has passed in the world of the play; there are the days of my composition ("several"), but there are also the minutes and hours I've spent sitting in front of my computer, adding word after word to the document; then, too, there is the time I've devoted to thinking about the play and its characters when I'm not actually writing.

Is there an insight here? Is there something to say about the time scales that fold over themselves as we live? Do writers grapple with these multiple scales more than other artists? more than non-artists? And is sensitivity to time something one should – or can – value?

I suspect I'd rather have a clear sense of timing than a clear sense of time, or of time's complexities. In chess, which I've been playing a lot of in between my bouts with words, the clock often matters, but one can improve one's game much more by thinking clearly through the order of moves in one's plan of attack than by trying, somehow, to think faster. "Think fast," says someone who teases you and then either does or does not throw you something. But the person who says "Think fast" usually tests your reflexes or catches you thinking too much. An alternative imperative, "Think hard!" does not invoke time so explicitly, but if one says it seriously, one usually means, "Slow down; take stock; consider before you act." I find it a little bit frustrating that neither of these injunctions applies to my writing, to my being a writer. To think fast, I'd have to rely on something like a writing reflex – and wouldn't it be nice if I had one; and to think hard I'd have to postpone the work itself. "Write!" I tell myself, "Think!" – compact imperatives that leave the time scales up in the air.

One Day at a Time

It occurred to me only in reading the post of 8.13.09 that "journalism," etymologically, is a daily practice. Stephanie writes, "I wonder whether it is possible to practice journalism that is not so much about hunting down stories as about knowing a place and community and cultural reality deeply, so that one can speak intelligently and even wisely about it even if nothing ‘news-worthy’ is happening there." I am inclined to reply, "Yes! Journalism can be precisely itself by knowing and noting the daily life of a people or a place. Journalism isn’t the same as news, and it can go on productively (fruitfully? more on that another time) when there is no news at all.”

But this reply is too simple, or maybe just wrong. It seems to me that “journalism,” used colloquially, includes all of the following: the news, what we call features, human interest, exposé, and opinion. There are probably other subgenres I’m not thinking of. If this is right, then my idea that journalism can be “precisely itself” looks misleading and absurd. At the same time, I think I’ve stumbled on one of the valuable features of the journal, which of course has the same etymology.

For all the difficulty I have defining journalism, it still seems opposed to the journal in one clear way. While the news elements of journalism can operate on the very limited time scale of the day, as in “day after day” – while they should consist primarily of reportage – the other kinds of journalism I’ve mentioned all strive to build coherent and compelling narratives from events that follow one after another without, in fact, being part of a story. It is the news that resembles the journal, while the other forms of journalism represent the powerful human impulse to impose a story pattern (beginning, middle, and end, say) on unpatterned, unauthored occurences. Journals can be compelling because when we reread them, they force us out of the narratives we’ve constructed. They drop us back into what I’ll call the diurnal mode. They call our attention to the facts of a day, and simultaneously they remind us of the fact that we’ve incorporated those facts, fictionally, into a story of a life.

To return to Stephanie's question: we can practice journalism both by hunting down stories that other people have already shaped or rough-hewn, or we can rely on our own immersion in a place, community, or cultural-reality – and write stories that are therefore more totally our own. They may be wiser, but they also may be no more true.