While watching Gettysburg on the 4th of July, my husband wondered aloud why no one developed a smoke canister to disorient the foe in those years . Smoke screens were used for tactical advantage, but I haven’t been able to find anything about a smoke canister for 19th century cannons. If indeed it was never invented, perhaps the reason was in part because no one asked the question. Battlefield smoke was as often a hazard as an advantage, so why put more out there?
As writers, we have to ask ourselves hundreds of questions: who are my characters, what is the plot, when shall I set the story, where will I find readers for this, why is this story important, how am I going to get another 500 words written today? After a while, not asking questions is something of a survival skill. Nevertheless, the more questions we ask the more likely it is we’ll find that one project that only we can write, one that will only sing in our voice.
It might be a useful exercise in creativity to spend a day trying to drill down to our basic assumptions about life, the universe and everything in order to catch a glimpse of the questions we don’t ask. For example, we are spiritual and artistic descendants of the Greeks, who had definite notions about symmetry, beauty, and the way the universe ought to work. Somewhere along the line, someone asked a question about that, and jazz was born. It isn’t symmetric, there is a lot that isn’t beautiful, and it doesn’t do to whisper the word “ought” around a jazz musician. All the same, I can’t imagine a world without jazz.
Perhaps that can be our summer project. After all, who will know if we kick back at a family picnic and ponder unasked questions while everyone else scrambles for the last of the potato salad?