AIL Day 92: gedankenexperiment

Today's strange, strange adventure in logophilia is

gedankexperiment.

That's a thing?  Yes, indeed it is!  A gedankexperiment (literally "thought experiment") is an experiment only able to carried out in thought.  This was a term invented by Albert Einstein as he conceptualized the theory of relativity... which is only a theory and essentially can't be proven or disproven.  

This has shown me another sciencey metaphor for writing.  Here goes.  Stop me if you've heard this one before.  Ahem.  When I'm beginning the first draft of a new project - no matter what it is - I tend to create the story in my head.  Because I am a visual person, I like seeing my characters in situations, solving new problems, jumping over hurdles, battling demons, falling in love, etc.  This is particularly true when I am at the YMCA on the elliptical or walking around downtown on my breaks from work.  The images flood me, and I'm swept away. 

But as a writer, the images are really only experiments, ideas thrown together in a sort of tantalizing display.  Each possible story thread follows me, tugging me and trying to convince me that it is the thread I should choose.  It is like the quote I posted recently from Umberto Eco: "All the stories I would like to write persecute me... it seems as if they are around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful.'" Because I can't make up my mind, I'll choose several different ideas and fly with them... wondering which idea is THE idea that will grow into the novel.  Meanwhile, as the "book" becomes the winter's next great blockbuster-in-my-head, the novel itself is nothing but a blank sheet.  Or an unsaved MS Word document.

In other words, a novel or story isn't exactly the unprovable theory, only truly tangible in the mind, but it is tempting, for me at least, to let it remain unprovable by continuing these pre-writing experiments.  The only way I will truly know where the novel is going, what is happening the characters, what they want out of life, etc is to write the story, and pull them out of the clouds and onto the paper and form them in words.  Trial and error.  Letting the images achieve tangibility on the page. 

So, note to self: your story is not the theory of relativity, but the only way to prove it to yourself is to remove it from your head and put it on the page.  Remember that gedankexperiments do not need very much work at all, but they're hard to explain and read aloud to people.  Yes, it's scary to write that naked, awful draft of that tentative story, but it will be worth it!