Stanley Anderson, Engraver: Head Study (1908)
From: Samuel Putnam Avery Collection

"…I retain a few unanswered questions."

As I announced in Recovery, the episode of this FollowingChapters Series I posted just before yesterday's Weekly Writing Summary, my Cluelessness manuscript has returned from its final copyediting pass. I had both dreaded and warmly anticipated its return. I secretly feared that the copyeditor would uncover the depth of my long-secreted impostor syndrome and expose me for my presumptions. I also imagined that her efforts might somehow validate my talents, however modest, and justify my continuing this little vanity on into infinity. I received a bit of both, and also neither of what I'd so fervently hoped and feared. As I reported in Recovery, she’d employed a light hand, preserving what I'd imagined represented my voice while drawing a firm line between what might prove acceptable and what could never pass muster.

I characterize myself as more of a feral writer than a trained one. I've skimmed a few ‘How To’ books concerning the fine art of writing, but I never managed to assimilate any body of wisdom or knowledge, such as the rules for comma usage or the avoidance of dangling participles. Truth be told, I do not know my parts of speech and couldn't identify a participle if one were satisfyingly dangling in front of my face. I write by ear, the way feral musicians perform, not by any underlying understanding of key signatures. My ear hears what it hears, and my mind remembers whatever it might remember; neither seems to have any correlation to what was performed out there. I never aspired to become a scribe.

I hold some curious habits, the most unusual being those I never suspected were wrong. The most embarrassing learnings always come from recognizing some long-standing misunderstanding, some essentially tacit rule everyone else always knew but which never occurred to you. I've noticed a few in my returned manuscript. I use ellipses, those series of dots that designate a deliberate omission. I often use these in my "buried lede," the partial sentence I pull from the end of a piece to grace the beginning. I have always set these off with spaces, one on each side of the…, as if they were words, but my copy editor insists that ellipses are not set off with spaces, so each instance received a note to delete the unnecessary spaces. I figure that my adherence to my imagined convention clearly demonstrates my depth of understanding of my craft. It strongly suggests that I'm still a hack.

But had I ever aspired to acquire any finer skills? I have repeatedly reveled in my primitive approach. I've always refused to outline before creating, insisting that life doesn't depend upon prescience to ultimately make sense, so why should writing, especially writing that's trying to make sense of living? Plot and story, meaning and significance might best be considered emergent elements, rather than something to be deliberately injected. I'd long speculated this while secretly feeling somewhat remiss for failing to discipline myself into outlining. In re-re-reading this manuscript, though, I do experience a definite sense of emergence. The story doesn't insist upon any particular interpretation. It doesn't have an intended meaning, but meaning nonetheless appears. I believe this must be the reader's purpose, to prize out the meaning where none was originally injected. In this way, the reader has something to do besides peruse a transcription. The reader becomes an implicate part of the creation.

And that's the sense I'm experiencing as I crawl through this first-ever re-re-reading of this once familiar manuscript. I fully acknowledge that only I could have written it. It reeks of my perspective. At the same time, it doesn’t feel too awfully exclusive. I feel welcomed into the little world I created. It seems filled with foibles and curious disclosures. It describes how I interact with the world from my point of view. It appears honest and unembarrassed, authentic. I do not attempt to persuade anybody to change the way they interact with their world. I disclose the otherwise super secret world I know while acknowledging my abiding Cluelessness. Ultimately, I hope I will not have convinced anyone to change the way they live. I might, by example rather than through instruction, perhaps encourage the reader to more fully acknowledge and to even revel in their own inescapable Cluelessnesses.

I left yesterday's reading feeling dazed, as if I had spent more than part of my day immersed in that manuscript's world. I felt as though I had been pulled along, intrigued, sometimes mystified, and also entertained. I wasn't sure I could even sit down to supper. I woke feeling a little dizzy this morning, knowing for sure that today would see me work my way through to the ending of this story. I still have a few questions. I sent a note to the copyeditor asking how I can remove the yellow highlighted words that designate echoes, the same words used in close proximity. Even when I choose another word, the highlight remains. I haven't found the off switch yet. StudyingMyself, I retain a few unanswered questions.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #FollowingChapters, #PureSchmaltz