No explanation needed

                                                                   Muse

                                                 January 2015 column for the 
                                                Greater Canton Writers' Guild


     I guess I'm just going to "go on" about some thoughts I've been having lately.  My dad wasn't artistic in the least - and he had no clue as to what was "good art".  And I've a whole rant on the nail on chalkboard shudder I experience when I hear people say "I don't know anything about art but I know what I like". 

    All that said, there was one thing that he always said that made sense.  It was "if a painting needs a whole book written about it in order to explain it, it's not art".  I get that.  Paintings, sculpture, and any other piece of artwork should be able to stand alone without explanation.  Nothing needs said or explained for the viewer to appreciate the beauty before them.  And the same can be said for our writing.  I understand the need to explain ourselves, but shouldn't our writing stand on its' own?  We deal in words – and that’s all any writer needs.  And if there's something ambiguous about what we've written, we either need to be more concise or we just need to let the reader use their imagination over what we could possibly have meant.  Some writers have actually killed their story with over explanation.  The readers’ imaginations are a tool we often forget about when we write.  Your writing should end climatically with a BOOM, not anticlimactically with an overabundance of explanation.  I hate that.