You Can’t Eat the Menu
Posted on | May 7, 2010 | No Comments
You can’t eat the menu. That’s not original. I heard it years ago, but I couldn’t begin to tell you where. Another version of it is, “The map is not the road”. That which symbolizes something is not the thing itself. When stated like this, it seems obvious, but we often mistake the symbol for the thing.
Words are symbols. Plain, pure and simple. That’s all they are, really. The symbol can evoke the experience, but it is not the experience. The letters R, E and D, when put together, can make us see something very specific and distinct, but you don’t see the color in the word.*
“Yes, Geoff,” you say, “this is true. But so what?”
I am a sucker for beautiful language. I love a well put together word image. The words “butterscotch-bright sunlight” evoke an experience for me of a particular type of bright summer day. However, when we create, if we are stuck simply on the beauty of the language, we miss the power of the experience. Like a menu or a map, the words point the way to the experience, but they are not in themselves the experience.
*(Yes, I know, you can if the font color is red. Don’t be a pill.)
~Geoff Hoff
Co-author of the how-to guide On Writing a Short Story.
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