Write, Edit, Repeat

Painters often repeat the same subject again and again. If only their parents had let them ride the merry go-round. So sad. Actually, this is intentional and for a variety of reasons. While in Serial Art this process can become the artwork itself, there are also simple studies where a painter repeats creation of a painting to view their subject in a different light. The artist looks at it from different angles, or even mood – examining the object or scene much like you might a bauble on their desk. Rather than picking it up and handling it, though, they examine the object in different colors and treatments as their medium allows.

Monet's Rouen Cathedral ...29 friggin' times.

Writing allows for a similar examination. Instead of light, or substance, writing examines character and the rationale, purpose, and motivation behind it. Or writing lets us view morality, or the nature of being. Or how vampires work. (Here’s a hint: no one cares.) Thus the comparison to repeated artwork is apt. In both instances artists are using their respective medium to gain a greater understanding of a subject. 

Kandinsy's Squares with Concentric Circles

How valuable is such insight to you? Do you write in any part to gain a greater understanding of yourself, others, or life? Artists are frequently characterized by this search, and if not that, then by their suffering. Painting the same subject over and over again certainly seems like suffering – even if you have a bevy of nude models sprawled on a bed. “<Sigh> Another day, another ass.”

Likewise, writing the same story over and over sounds painfully tedious – yet we do just that when we edit. We revisit a deliberate thought, reworking it in different ways. The process is again comparable, but rather than the comparatively cumbersome act of reworking a block of marble, or creating graphics, or painting, when writing one merely imagines. Your only worry then is about the cumbersome act of remaining coherent. And interesting, unlike vampires.

If intentional repetition is to achieve a greater understanding, it makes sense that repetition exists in many art forms:

    • Painting the same subject again and again.
    • Editing or re-writing a story
    • Live dance and stage performances that run for years.
    • Learning to make deviled eggs (Stupid Romans)

When you write, do you ever “repeat” yourself without intending to? This is not referring to your plot or your setting, but themes or traits or ideas that you’ve written before? I’ve seen logics, rationales, and concepts re-appear from an entirely different character or and entirely different story without consciously intending to, without drugs, and without eating questionable Thai leftovers.

The experience is curious, like glimpsing your own care instructions, printed on the inside of your mind in a watermark of virtually invisible writing. I see these repetitions of themes and suppose my mind is not quite satisfied or sated by the conclusion it reached in one story, so the subject appears again in another. Although frustrating to deviate toward a pre-determined groove – free will, originality, blah blah blah – it is also fascinating.

I believe I could control or even stop this process, but it is the sense of discovery and recognition that makes this process of writing appealing and worthwhile. To me, this unintentional repetition of theme and reason is part of the understanding we seek to obtain; a loss of control that somehow leaves us in the drowsy comfort of the familiar. However, instead of playing “Where’s Waldo?” my mind is playing “Where’s the character searching for understanding in deliberate expressions of hostility toward the naive?”

Emo Waldo: "Where are any of us?"

Maybe I’m just losing it. Maybe you have no idea what I’m talking about. “Repeating themes or ideas by accident? I thought this was going to be about Tom Cruise or something.” If you do know what I mean and you repeat yourself, too, I’m curious to know when and in what manner this happens. Do you deliberately repeat themes and find you instead repeat other elements of writing? (Which would explain all the vampires.)

Without answers, revisiting themes without trying is a parlor trick. It is worth no more than a momentary huff of recognition before continuing on. It would be nice to think that the themes we write are not all intentional, though. I’d like to think there is a point when the signs of our effort become visible on the page, perhaps written in lemon juice, but there if we know ourselves well enough.