Interiority
Questions about creative work
Hello, this is Priya Iyer. Welcome to Ten Thousand Journeys where I explore the themes and stages of archetypal journeys through personal essays, poems, and books. If you’re reading this in an email, I hope you’ll also visit the website to take part in the community conversation and to dip into the archives. If you are not already subscribed, you can subscribe here.
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Dear Reader,
I have some questions that I hope you can help answer.
Let’s start with the word interiority. For a writer, interiority means to show (rather than tell) a character’s interior world, their thoughts, feelings, and emotions. When I first heard this word a few years into my writing journey, I fell in love with it. Isn’t all art about interiority, the artist expressing theirs in what they create? This, then, is why creative work, while incredibly nourishing to the artist, thrives even more with an audience. I share my soul, and my interiority when I write, and by reading (which is a kind of witnessing), you see me. And, wanting to be seen, and acknowledged, is such an important part of being human. But is only acknowledged work, work? What advice would you give anyone whose work, creative or noncreative, is largely unacknowledged?
It appears that, for many of us, the creative work we practice- writing, painting, pottery, music, etc.- is mainly carried out in liminal times: very early, before the day can intrude, in between different external responsibilities, or later, after taking care of all that needs to be done as part of living in the world. I wonder what that kind of compression does to the art. Does it make the art richer? Does it imbue it with a scarcity mindset? Or, is that how art is made, taking what we learn from living other experiences and bringing it to the crucible of threshold/liminal times? Do we always benefit from having more time to do creative work?
Dear Reader I can’t wait to hear what you have to say.
Best,
Priya
Perfectlight, thank you! I agree that more time doesn’t always mean better work. And 1b! 😂
I love this post and this conversation Priya, thanks for starting it. My understanding of Creative NonFiction is that you need to Show and to Tell. (Phillip Lopate's book discusses this at length: To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction)
1. And perhaps showing and telling is needed for a narrator's interiority as well.
I also LOVE the word interiority, and the writing that most appeals to me is the writing that reveals both the character's interiority in addition to the external circumstances, including plot, narrative arc, character development, lyrical sentences, conflict in story, scene, setting a reader in time and place, beginnings and desire, structure and scaffolding, description and details, juxtaposition, rhythm, etc. etc. All the aspects of craft we get to play with here on Substack😁
And 2. "Does it make the art richer? Does it imbue it with a scarcity mindset? Or, is that how art is made, taking what we learn from living other experiences and bringing it to the crucible of threshold/liminal times? Do we always benefit from having more time to do creative work?"
Who knows? and maybe it's a case by case basis😁 hard to generalize, but I'd love to read a post of yours where you discuss this with a specific example 😁