Mark
Edmundson starts off his chapter “To See What Happens Next” from Why Write? by saying that authentic
writers desire to surprise their readers, and writing while using dictated
outlines cannot please readers like authentic writing filled with surprises for
both writer and reader can. Edmundson also asserts that some of the best
writing comes from the creative unconscious, the sleeping part of the minds
that hides subliminal information from the conscious mind. When the literary
beast that dwells in the obscure depths of the mind escapes through a writer’s
medium, the resulting writing can either be achingly dull or inspiring genius.
The unconscious mind is like Russian roulette, and entertaining the unknown
produces chance fortune and failure. Edmundson uses the literary greats of John
Milton and Theodore Roethke as examples of writers who summoned an unknown
genius from within and molded that genius into spontaneous brilliance on paper
with words. Sigmund Freud’s assertions on dreams, repressed desires, and the
unconscious may explain the unexplained sparks of imagination that leak through
in writers’ works. Sometimes the carrier between the unconscious and the
conscious brain becomes more permeable than usual, and who knows what forbidden
ideas may slip through to the delight or horror of a writer’s audience.
To outline or not to outline, that
is the question. Edmundson makes his stance on people who prefer outlines to
writing with wild abandon when he says, “They are like dictators for a state
yet to come into being” (171). He goes on to assert that a genuine writer
“wants to surprise her readers” and “wants to surprise herself” (171). To
declare that all writers who decide to create outlines before writing are not
as authentic as writers who allow their writing to develop and take form as
they write is a broad and ignorant generalization. Just because a writer
decides beforehand what path they desire their writing to follow does not make
them any less genuine or great as a writer who freely lets their writing forge
a path through the wilderness of a blank screen or sheet of paper without pre-planned
guidance. When talking to an audience of fellow English majors, who spend
plenty of hours typing and writing their own thoughts on a daily basis, I
encountered a split in opinion on whether it is best to outline or to write
without set goals. For some of the English majors, they preferred to write with
fixed outlines to guide their writing in an organized manner. They dread not
having an outline before starting a writing project, for fear of going off the
road and into uncharted territory that may hinder the outcome they desired to
produce with their writing. On the opposite side of the matter, other English
majors said that outlines can cause writers’ block and can be too constrictive
to the writing process. I see both sides of the argument over outlining. I
personally think that a writer can be a great one if they outline or if they
choose not to. Why not have sprinklings of both methods in writing processes? While
Edmundson chooses to believe that outline driven authors produce unauthentic
writing, Joseph Heller, the American military veteran and author of the
satirical novel Catch-22 proves that
writing with some sort of an outline can produce inspiring and authentic
writing that lasts for generations. The
plot of Catch-22 leaps through time
and space and is difficult to attach a timeline to. One of the only ways to
keep up with the skewered timeline of Catch-22
is to keep up with the escalating number of missions that the bombardier
Yossarian and his comrades have to accomplish before they can go home. The
convoluted structure of Catch-22 has
a method to its seeming madness. Joseph Heller utilized an outline when he was
writing Catch-22, and the evolution
of his characters flourish throughout the squares that he allotted them in his
handwritten outline. Erasure marks and faded penciled in words dominate the
grid Heller created for Catch-22. Johnathan
Eller wrote in his article “Catching a Market: The Publishing History of Catch-22” that Joseph Heller, “In 1953,
he began a series of notecards outlining characters and a military scenario for
what would become Catch-22” (462). I
like to think that Heller wrote with a mix of rough outlining and brilliant spontaneity
– that he crafted Catch-22 with set
goals in mind to guide it on its way but simultaneously did not know what was
going to happen next. The end result of his creative process is an intricate
piece of unique storytelling that surprises its audience at every twist and
turn with hilarious absurdity and creative genius. I believe Heller solidified
his place as a great American writer by employing a blended methodology of
outlining and by letting his writing wander off the beaten path straight into
satiric brilliance.
In my own experience as a writer,
outlines usually do not work out for me. I prefer to let my writing evolve and
wander as I write on a project or story, and then I will go back and rein in my
words if they travel too far into the wilderness of uncertain meaning. My
unconscious likes to stay silent, and it only helped me one time that I can
honestly remember. My senior year of high school, I took a dual credit English
class where I received credit for my senior year English credit and Composition
I and II. I had to write a narrative description paper about my hometown, and I
remember being so nervous about writing it. The blank desktop computer screen
stared back at me in defiance. Whatever pathway my writing needed to take to
make a good paper remained obscure. I sat at the computer for a long while up
into the night. Of course the paper was due by second block the next morning to
Mr. Mulcahy. I suddenly felt the desire to write what was true and mattered to
me. The words and stories started to ebb from my mind, or maybe it was the
unconscious helping me out. I wrote straight from my soul for that paper. In
depth descriptions about the nuanced people in my community, the swimming hole
where my cousins and I frequented every summer, the skittish guineas and cows
at my grandparents’ home, and the deep wood where my dad took me for walks and
taught me the difference between a white oak and a hickory tree all leapt onto
the computer screen in a flurry of typing. I had no idea where it all came
from, the inspiration struck me in an instant. When I had my conference with
Mr. Mulcahy about the paper, he was dazzled by it. He insisted that I needed to
pursue a career in writing and be an English major in college. I was shocked,
and I did not see that coming. In that instant, my future plans shifted from
pursuing a Dental Hygienist licensure after high school to deciding to be an
English major to see where it would take me. Things happen in an instant, a
rearranging in the universe comes in a flash. But the divine guidance I
received the night I wrote that paper for Mr. Mulcahy changed my life forever.
And I cannot wait to see what happens next.
Edmundson also discusses the might
of the creative unconscious and its influence on writers and their work. He
states, “There is, we think during our good runs, something like a creative
unconscious” (171). The unconscious sits back and secretly collects
intelligence while we live, and it hums along day-by-day waiting to be of use
in one of our life endeavors. In their article “The Unconscious Mind” John A.
Bargh and Ezequiel Morsella state that “the conscious mind is not the source or
origin of our behavior” and “that impulses to act are unconsciously activated
and that the role of consciousness is as gatekeeper and sense maker after the
fact” (77). If the unconscious is what drives each and every one of our actions
on a daily basis, it may make what Joseph Heller claims about his inspiration
to write Catch-22 make more sense. In
“Reeling in Catch-22” Heller said of Catch-22 that, “The concept of the novel
came to me as a seizure, a single inspiration” and “I don’t know where it came
from. I know that it was a conscious assembling of factors, but the unconscious
element was very strong, too” (50). Not only does Heller acknowledge that the
unconscious assisted his development of Catch-22,
he says he spontaneously received the inspiration for his novel from the
unknown. The unconscious mind helped Joseph Heller and his writing, and it can
help all writers if they wait long enough for the unconscious to lead their
writing.
When I first started reading Catch-22, I had no idea how much I would
enjoy Heller’s writing style. His absurd twists in logic, dark humor, and
exposing of the corruption of the upper echelon and lower ranking men as well,
surprised me at every flip of a page. I did not know where Heller was taking me
on the ride that is Catch-22, and the
novel consistently entertained me at every chapter. Heller stitched together a
novel with incredible depth of meaning while simultaneously creating situations
designed to elicit a laugh out of his audience. But you have to work to keep
with Catch-22 and remember the quirks
of all of the characters. Heller succeeded in placing his novel in the canon of
great American novels by using a written outline to keep track of the dozens of
characters in Catch-22 and by utilizing
pearls of eloquence originating from his unconscious.
Works Cited
Bargh,
John A. and Ezequiel Morsella, “The Unconscious Mind.” Perspectives on Psychological Science, vol. 3, no. 1, 2008, p. 77.
Edmundson, Mark. Why Write? Bloomsbury, 2016.
Eller, Jonathan
R. “Catching a Market: The Publishing History of Catch-22.” Prospects, vol.
17, 1992, p. 462.
Heller, Joseph.
“Reeling in Catch-22.” The Sixties, edited by Lynda Rosen Obst,
Random House/Rolling Stone Press, p. 50.
Appendix
Catch-22
Figure
1. Joseph Heller’s handwritten
outline/timeline/character map for Catch-22. Taken
from the back of the 50th Anniversary Edition of Catch-22
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