Friday Forays in Fiction: The Art of Transgression

Through childhood I hiked, roamed, tirelessly "explored" the country side; neighboring farms, a treasure trove of old barns abandoned houses and forbidden properties of all kinds, some of them presumably dangerous, like cisterns and wells covered with loose boards.  These activities are intimately bound up with storytelling, for always there's a ghost-self, a "fictitious" self, in such settings. For this reason I believe that any form of art is a species of exploration and transgression. (I never saw a NO TRESPASSING sign that wasn't a summons to my rebellious blood.  Such signs, dutifully posted on trees and fence railings, might as well cry COME RIGHT IN!) To write is to invade another's space, if only to memorialize it; to write is to invite angry censure from those who don't write, or who don't write in quite the way you do, for whom you may seem a threat,.  Art by its nature is a transgressive act, and artists must accept being punished for it.  the more original and unsettling their art, the more devastating the punishment.


Joyce Carol Oates
The Faith of a Writer  p33

This quote from Joyce Carol Oates, one of my favorite authors spoke to me.

I'm sure fear of transgression of both known and unknown boundaries is one of the elements holding me back, manifesting at times as writer's block and other times as hypergraphia in which words accumulate but art is still elusive.

My perfectionism and fear of making a mess is involved as well as my resistance to dealing with the messes once made aka the 100s of thousands of words in story drafts and notes.  And I'm sure my reluctance to pursue my stated goals in ROW80 related to requesting beta readers and publishing ebooks is related.