Organic?
When we say we want to write Organically, what does that really mean when nature is so patterned and ruled by math? I get that organic = shuffling meter off the mortal coil, but I suspect we may not be saying what we think we are.
A facebook site says, Keep it natural. Ok, what about fractals? (It’s a beefy math-tastic formula in which you plug a number and get an answer, then plug in that answer for another answer. The Mandlebrot set is the Mother of these dudes, and when you plot the points on a graph it looks like this:
The important thing is that when you zoom in, the image keeps repeating itself. Scientists are using the Mandlebrot set to make calculations in nature that weren’t previously calculable. Measuring shorelines and estimating oxygen production in forests. So is writing organically might be writing in a structure that repeats itself on a sliding scale. Then what?
Another site gets wispy and teary about an arboreal metaphor: “Be the soil that your writing grows from…” Ack. I’m just saying that nature is much more patterned, mathematical, and precise than we remember at times. Nature’s got its bits under control—tight control.
Amen. I think one of the biggest mistakes a writer can make is to mistake “organic” for “sloppy.” I think the trick is to make the writing seem spontaneously grown, so that the reader doesn’t see all the calculation the writer has put into it. And the more a writer has a handle on the more concrete skills involved in writing, the more controlled work will come naturally.
I would think a great deal of writing (creative and otherwise) unconsciously (to some degree) achieves the natural aspect, particularly of scale. Much of the recent work in physics towards TOEs is about scalar values along a nearly infinite continuum. Thus, it would behoove prose writers and poets to ponder where along the scales their work, and their own personal relationship with teh work, they lie. Fractals are a good way to remember this; in the meantime have some fun:
http://www.chaospro.de/
I have been blessed to have known many great writers and poets, and all of them have worked hard at their craft. There is no easy flow, like a slow moving creek, to the craft.