I was thinking (never a good sign) and realized that I have strange preferences when it comes to writing mentors. It would be natural, for instance, to follow the masters of your craft, yes? As such you'd think that maybe I've brushed up on Shakespeare or skipped a few hundred years and pored over Mark Twain or Jack London. Barring that you'd assume that I have a more intimate knowledge of some more contemporary authors and writers. Yet for all the authors to choose from I know only a handful. Instead I find that I've learned the most from artists.
Modern artists are increasingly public, especially about their creation process. It's very easy to trace an interesting picture back to the creator and, in the the process, discover a blog or website that details their process. Which is precisely what I've done time and again. The creative process for visual arts is surprisingly applicable to writing. Many artists detail the step-by-step production of their art and discuss the various styles and preferences that they have developed over time. You can follow their process and see, in each of their works, how that process affects their art. Just as important, perhaps more important, you can also look back at their earliest works and see an immediate difference. For me at least this is proof, easily identifiable proof, that practice and method results in improvements. Although I know that writing can grow and progress in the same manner it is reassuring to see such distinct results. As such I steal from from artists all the time. I steal the way they plan and filch their rules for creating artwork. I nick their ideas and inspirations and translate them into words. Purely out of respect I assure you, and envy.
Why envy? Reading is overwhelmingly a solitary pursuit and, moreover, one that takes much more time to process. Drawings, on the other hand, can be taken in at a glance; they are incredibly easy to engage with. Though more time might be required to plumb the depths of a particular work there is an immediate resonance and, frequently, an almost-as-immediate mental impact. Drawings and photos are also much easier to share for the same reasons, it's why pictures dominate so much of the internet now. Happening upon a block of text, however, does not illicit the same sort of engagement. In fact a long post or article can often have the opposite effect because your first thought is, "that's a lot of text", which might as well translate to "that's a lot of time". You have to make a snap decision on whether or not you want to invest that time. That's why so much effort is put into crafting ludicrous article titles and opening lines with hooks so large you could land an eldritch horror. That's often the only thing standing between someone at least reading a paragraph and an immediate snub. Admittedly even I've been guilty of it.
Between my natural love of graphic art and the engagement issues I mentioned I've had a disproportionate amount of exposure to modern and up-and-coming artists as opposed to authors. I can name a dozen modern practicing artists off the top of my head (or at least their user-names) and while I'm not overly familiar with classic artists themselves I've viewed more of their works. Once again visual mediums have an advantage when it comes to engagement, they age much better. Aside from easy engagement visual mediums are fairly timeless. While styles may come and go their subject matter is largely immune to irrelevance unlike the constantly shifting landscape of language. No one looks at one of Georgia O'Keefe's flowers and says "What is it? Oh well it must be something archaic that isn't around anymore." Unless it's an abstract painting you can find an abundance of recognizable elements. Not so for older texts which often remain obscured behind aged etymology and abandoned lexicon. Timelessness is pretty much guaranteed for artists unless you're a political cartoonist, in which case you were quickly becoming irrelevant the moment your pen touched paper (but you should have known that going in). Arguably newer art based around popular media will become irrelevant at an accelerated rate too, but even their subjects; people, places, things will still remain recognizable long after their significance has faded, but I digress.
The number one reason why I consider so many artists as mentors is because I live vicariously through their sense of progress. I thrive on it. It’s so easy to track progress with visual arts, especially for an outside observer. Identifying areas that need improvement is pretty straightforward, with the exception of some potential snags in the no man’s land between amateur and professional. Even a lay-person can point out that a picture looks plain, or the colors are odd, or that the legs look too big, the hands too small, the perspective off, or that the shadows are on the wrong side. Much like drawing it CAN be very easy to identify when writing is good or bad, but the improvements required to make writing better aren't usually as immediately apparent. When writing is just plain bad it’s easy to make suggestions. Writing has a huge middle-ground though where it’s hard to place just what needs to be improved. Unless the person reading is a fellow writer then making suggestions can be difficult at best. The easiest improvements to identify are usually content issues such as character actions or pacing. As you’ve maybe surmised I find the process of improving my writing ambiguous even in the best of times. That’s why I find it so vital to have some sort of physical corollary in which to project my word-smithing frustrations. Looking back on my writing from the past year I can scarcely tell if I’ve improved at all. Comparing some of my earliest writings there is a noticeable difference but I was also incredibly rusty at that point too. Beyond the span of my first two months it’s hard for me to say if my writing has really matured at all in the past year. I am admittedly my harshest critic but even my best attempts at objectivity leave me staring forlornly past my words, unsure of how to judge any potential progress. Unfortunately writing is stubbornly resistant to the elegant simplicity of side-by-side comparisons that visual art lends itself so well to.
Despite my fascination with graphic artists (obsession?) there are still some writers that I look up to. There are certain things that artists can’t teach, or at least can’t teach as efficiently. Chief among those things being how to take the long view and construct a world and a character one piece at a time. Artists get to put 1,000 unspoken words into every picture. Writers shrug and with each 1000 words paint one tantalizing piece at a time of an ever larger mural. As such certain authors in particular have taught me how to take the long view in a story. Their stories weave complex moving webs of plot and they develop characters like ripening fruit on a branch. Whilst others have taught me a lot about tone, how to give your writing some edge, and how effective or even comedic a good observation can be. Due to the time involved in reading I’m not nearly as well read as I wish I was. Eventually, though, maybe I’ll be able to list authors off the top of my head like I do artists. And maybe eventually I can say that my writing has grown and is, unarguably better. Until then I will continue to feed off the underbelly of the arts community; the remora of the literary world, feeding upon the scraps of artists, reviewers, bloggers, and assorted authors.
