Digging Deep for Symbols

On our recent trip to France, we rounded a bend in the canal, those winding curves sinuous with promise, and were confronted with          

- this!

The French waterways board were doing maintenance work, dredging up mud from the bottom and we had to doodle around a bit until they could pull over and let us pass. Without being too clunky about it, it seemed to me to be a perfect symbol of the industrial-style digging you sometimes need to do when you are working on an idea for a story: you have to dredge down deep inside yourself, and most importantly, you have to keep on doing it, until you have excavated enough material to work with.

As symbolism is my theme for this morning, perhaps I should explain that it means using an object or an image - see above! - that works as an expression of something underlying, that has an additional resonance. Using symbols (sparingly, as with all things creative) can be an excellent way of underscoring the importance of a moment, or of giving it some extra spin.  You will make your reader work  harder to glean the full significance of what you are depicting and your narrative will gain in depth. 

If you want to try this out for yourself, try writing a story or a poem that has something symbolic at its heart...