I’ve been asked if my work with visual art and graphic design affects how I write or edit. My answer: undoubtedly. It isn’t just my work with art; it’s my work as a poet. Both result in a preponderance with white space and details.
Some of that feeds onto actual pieces of paper. For instance, I turn to paper when sketching ideas for an e-book, a presentation, or other large concept. My poems, too, start on a physical piece of paper, but I usually play with their appearance once they have been moved to the screen. I can use tabs and ponder whether I want a space before and after a colon or if I want to mesh two words together with a colon or a dash. Obsessive? Perhaps, but I’m striving for a certain effect, and the smallest of details works for or against that.
The visual arts even impact the way I write. I worked with a professor who drilled “concrete” into our heads and made us to abhor abstractions and cliches. When I write – especially when I write poetry – I work with the visual elements. It’s the picture I create that tells the narrative. It isn’t just a bird; it’s a heron or a flamingo or a dove. It isn’t a plain elephant. It’s a white one or an Indian one or a miniature glass one pressed into a palm.
It’s not completely visual cues or white space, though. The words themselves have weight to them. They press against each other and against the page. They can fight with each other; they can fight with the white space; or they can rest easy with each other and with the page. They can flow or be jagged. They can feel ponderous and heavy or light and carefree depending on how they appear on the page and how they build momentum or undercut that movement at every turn.
All those thoughts about visual cues and space feed into my work as an editor. It’s why one of my writers notes my “attention to detail.” It’s why other writers return. They know I’ll obsess about the details and think about their closing lines and the flow of language and how the parts relate to the whole and how the whole relates to the parts.
What about you? Do you focus on the white space? Do you obsess about the details?
Image: Niklas Freidwall (CC BY NC 2.0)