I had an email recently from someone who worries that her writing isn’t meaningful. She wrote, “There are plenty of stories I want to tell, but I’m not sure that I really have anything to say. I know writing shouldn’t be preachy but shouldn’t it have some deeper meaning? Without that, isn’t it just a way of killing time?”
The best response I could come up with was what Hemingway wrote in 1952 in a letter to his friend, Bernard Berenson about “The Old Man and the Sea”:
“There isn't any symbolism. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks, no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit.”
A man about to give up on his beloved but failing new business venture may read “The Old Man and the Sea,” and think, “By God, I’m not going to give up! I’m going to hang in there like that old man. Live or die, I’m going to make this business work.” For him, the old man represents man's ability to persist beyond his apparent limits.
Is he wrong?
I’d say no, because it’s the reader that finds his or her meaning. The author may have had a totally different meaning—or no meaning at all—in mind.
One reader finds the old man inspirational; another thinks the story illustrates the folly of questing beyond your abilities.
That’s why reading is interactive even when it doesn’t involve a computer or an iPad or smartphone.
I suggested to my correspondent that she write as honestly as possible. Then leave finding its meaning to her partner, the reader.
(For guidance in writing what only you can write, consider joining my Writing Breakthrough Strategy progam. You can find out more at http://www.WritingBreakthroughStrategy.com )