Design

The ending of the second season of Mad Men happened with all the characters being written in places so that there can be drama, suspense, mystery, love, lack. Stories, I'm becoming aware, are designed by the writers, or by the writers of writers, that is, those that influence writers, to have particular effects, to pass on messages. It's not accidental that while Don was away, Duck tried to take over Sterling Cooper. And this move tells the audience about Duck's values, his allegiance.

To design, etymologically, means to mark out, to outmark. Some mind saw a particular animal in the sky and drew lines to form a constellation, a connected story. One event with many repercussions.

Mad Men also carves a river of thought into the world of advertising, and how designed wants are, how created they are, so products are purchased, so happiness is attained, even if fleeting. 

I think of my writing, and what I am to do as a writer is design a world and circumstances within it to point to particular things I decide on. That isn't hard, because that's what essays are for, and other writings I have done. I wonder though what it takes to write something, to say something through a write.

These writes here that I have written, they sometimes were whims, sometimes designed whims trying to be writes. I wrote because I wanted to say something, though I didn't always have something to say. I fear that, in imagining a writing future. What if I don't have anything to really say, anything substantial that I genuinely want said. I have ideas that migrate through the sky of my mind quite often - points of interest, observations - but there aren't that many things that I wanted to sit down to write something long about. Shorts, yes - I have kept a blog. I suppose if I kept thinking, I could've written more. But I also notion that thinking about what to say comes from not having anything to say, and I'd rather be silent.

Can there be a writer that doesn't write? A designer who doesn't outmark, except once maybe when he does, when he feels the push to write, or something akin to that force of inspiration, that drive. I venture that the desire to design, to say something, has to come from somewhere. Why did the creators and writers of Mad Men desire to create and write it, to design it for the audience? There must have been an impetus, a story that they wanted told. One that they really felt ought be told.

That's the story I've yet to know. The writer is listening for it.