Changing the Trajectory of Prose

The two-fold moment I changed trajectory as both a writer and (I didn’t know then) ministry worker. I had been, from many various sources, pushed and even demanded to simultaneously make all my work far darker, far more emotional, less intellectual, and dumbed-down in its language in order to accommodate a “modern readership.”

The first moment was finishing writing fifty pages in one sitting, discovering my save corrupted, and all the work was lost … and being relived. I had come to hate my own book. I thought it was that editing was hard, that I’d simply read it too many times and “knew it already,” but the reality sank in that I didn’t enjoy reading what I myself had written anymore. I had allowed it to be contorted into something made in another’s image, an image I didn’t admire in the slightest.

The second moment was shortly thereafter, watching my favourite documentary, Into the Deep: America, Whaling, & the World, for the umpteenth time. There came a point near the end where Melville was quoted. Moby Dick was the first true novel I ever read, and it changed my life. I’m pasting the quote below for your interest, but the point it, I was moved by the prose, and realized that so much modern work would never be remembered like that, impactful in that prosaic way when we continually strive to water down language instead of reinvigorating it. And no, it’s not “evolution” of language.

I’m no Melville and never will be, but I couldn’t contribute to the degradation, either. Moby Dick was written for adults, and my work isn’t, I understand, but reading any great children’s work from the Golden Age of Children’s Literature (1876–1914) will show you how far we’ve fallen.

So my creative life turned around. I jettisoned a huge percentage of the advice I’d been told, aimed my work toward something that I love to read, something lighthearted, intellectually deep, fun, exciting, and hopefully with some glimmer of transcendent meaning instead of trending appeal. Whether or not I succeed is unlikely and not for me to say, but that’s the hope.

I’ll leave you with Melville now. Go read Moby Dick. I’m gonna watch Into the Deep again…

“The moot point is, whether Leviathan can long endure so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc; whether he must not at last be exterminated from the waters, and the last whale, like the last man, smoke his last pipe, and then himself evaporate in the final puff.”

—Herman Melville: The Whale, or Moby Dick