Readings for Creative Writing 3130

First of all, becoming a writer is mainly a matter of cultivating a writer’s temperament. (Dorothea Brande)

Writers learn their art in large part by reading the works of others; absorbing it, distilling it, rendering it down until it coalesces into a new and personal style. A writer writes, yes, but first a writer reads.

Choose three books from the list: one within the genre of your own work, one in an unfamiliar genre or subject, and one for enjoyment. In other words, choose for resonance, craft, and fun.

So, to sum up:

• Read three books.
• Read everything posted on this course site.
• Read some more.
• Keep reading.
• Don’t stop reading.
• Remember to read.

Books

Broadkey, Harold.
This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death.
Owl Books, 1997. ISBN: 0805055118.

Butala, Sharon.
Wild Stone Heart.
HarperFestival, 2000. ISBN: 000255397X.

Calvo, César.
The Three Halves of Ino Moxo.
Translated by Kenneth Symington.
Inner Traditions, 1995. ISBN: 0892815191.
(Those fluent in Spanish may prefer to read Las tres mitades de Ino Moxo, Iquitos, Peru. Proceso Editores, 1981.)

Hedges, Chris.
War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.
Anchor, 2003. ISBN: 1400034639.

Hyde, Lewis.
Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, & Art.
North Point Press, 1999. ISBN: 0865475369.

Jerome, John.
Stone Work: Reflections on Serious Play and Other Aspects of Country Life.
UP of New England. ISBN: 0874517621.
Krakauer, John.

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster.
Anchor, 1999. ISBN: 0385494785.

Kingston, Maxine Hong.
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts.
Vintage, 1989. ISBN: 0072435194.

Kwan, Michael David.
Things that Must Not be Forgotten: A Childhood in Wartime China.
Soho Press ISBN: 1569472823

Langewiesche, William.
American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center.
North Point Press, 2002. ISBN: 0865475822. (Also see Inside the Sky.)

Lopate, Phillip.
The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present.
Anchor, 1997. ISBN: 038542339X.

Macfarlane, David.
The Danger Tree: Memory, War and the Search for a Family’s Past.
Walker, 2001. ISBN: 0802776167.

Merwin, W.S.
The Mays of Ventadorn.
National Geographic Directions, 2002. ISBN: 0792265386.

Ondaatje, Michael.
Running in the Family.
Vintage, 1993. ISBN: 0679746692.

Pirsig, Robert.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
HarperTorch, 2006 (reprint). ISBN: 0060589469.

Saint-Exupéry, A.
Wind, Sand and Stars.
Harvest, 2002. ISBN: 0156027496.

Sanders, Scott Russell.
Writing from the Center.
Indiana UP, 1997. ISBN: 0253211433.

Terpstra, John.
The Boys: Or, Waiting for the Electrician’s Daughter.
Gaspereau Press, 2005. ISBN: 1554470110.

Essays

(Read as many of these as you can.)

William Langewiesche
Fear and Lodging in Baghdad

Carlos Fuentes
How I Started to Write

Wendell Berry
An Entrance to the Woods

G.K. Chesterton
A Piece of Chalk

E.B. White
Once More to the Lake

Virginia Woolf
Street Haunting

Lu Hsun
This Too is Life

Walter Benjamin
Unpacking my Library

Jorge Luis Borges
 Blindness

Roland Barthes
Leaving the Movie Theater

Natalia Ginzburg
He and I

Wole Soyinka
Why do I Fast?

Henry David Thoreau
 Walking

Robert Benchley
My Face

Adrienne Rich
Split at the Root

Joan Didion
In Bed

Annie Dillard
 Seeing

Richard Selzer
The Knife

Scott Russell Sanders
Under the Influence

Richard Rodriguez
Late Victorians

Stanton Michaels
How to Write a Personal Essay

Ralph Ellison
On Being the Target of Discrimination

Philip Lopate
The Dead Father: A Remembrance of Donald Barthelme

Vivian Gornick
At the University: Little Murders of the Soul

Jane Shapiro
This is What You Need for a Happy Life

Joy Williams
Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp

Also, feel free to look at the readings pages for the Mythological Narratives class and the Interdisciplinary Expressive Arts class, for even more ideas and directions:

• Reading list for Mythological Narratives.
• Reading list for Interdisciplinary Expressive Arts.

You may choose items from either of the above lists.

Finding and Following the Creative Process

The Creative Process is a Mythological Journey

In which first there is:

The Call…

a beginning, an initiating force (or event) behind all creative and personal development. The Call is an unexpected event, a trauma, an intrusion into the sedate and comfortable lives we craft so carefully. In creative work, the Call is the moment of vision. In turn, it is a stage requiring of us a disruption in routines, an openness, an encouragement of the mystery. In myths and stories, the Call takes the symbol of the unexpected letter, or the sudden injury, or the surprising twist away from the ordinary. The Call is the gateway, and is followed in turn by:

Refusal of the Call…

in which we assert for business as usual, for the way things were, for the re-establishment of our ordinary world. The task of the artist (and the writer) is to refuse to refuse. We must slow down, and listen, and open the eye of seeing. Universally, the opening of that eye is assisted by:

The stranger…

who we meet on the road: the wise one, the elder, the mentor. The stranger offers compassionate assistance, evokes our openness and our patience. Without the stranger, neither the work of creativity nor of healing is possible. With assistance from the stranger (who is an archetype, and may therefore also be a trusted friend), we cross the threshold, take a deep breath, and enter our own wilderness. Clarity is required here, and intent, and a willingness to open the gate. Wind lies on the other side, and the unknown. Our path lies that way, toward:

The labyrinth…

in which we become confused and disoriented. We seek but do not find shelter. We become lost, and fall into ourselves. Trusting the process is the task here: dealing with the dark, the cliff, the shadow. Discomfort, fear, and inertia become companions. We hear the monster which haunts all labyrinths, and which is our own inner life projected outward. But the labyrinth has one path only: toward a confrontation with the monster. We must keep going. All tales confirm this. And if we do keep going — simply, with trust, with purpose — we:

Face the monster…

and find the beast to be our own wisdom in disguise. The monster is a teacher, a guide, an enemy who becomes an ally. From the monster we learn:

 Clarity…

and we move onward to discover the still point at the center of the labyrinth. Healing and spirituality and creativity reside at this center. Peace is made with the past there. We gather up the scattered threads of our inner knowing. We recognize the illumination to be found at the centre, and in so doing we begin to shape the tale of our journey. Above all other junctures in creative work, the still center is of the core and essence. It is here that all parts of ourselves align, and for a moment we glimpse ourselves all the way down into the Soul. When the still point arrives, creative work is almost done; healing is almost done. But first we must make our way back into the world, by way of:

The shallows…

and the bridge, which will deliver us back to the world we departed so long ago. That land now seems foreign, and strange, and we find ourselves uncertain about how to find our place within it. Creativity, after all, is a journey of the inner life, and is only peripherally about what we craft. Creativity is the personal path inward, toward our own discoveries. The shallows and the bridge are ways forward, and outward, to:

 Return…

to the world, to the bright day of sharing our discoveries with the community. And yet, because the inner journey is so rich, and intense, and powerful, often we:

Refuse to return…

and instead we become addicts of the creative process. We want to move to a mountain hut, we wish to leave the world by way of the imagination. Creative work becomes its own hurdle on the path. We dream of becoming the eternal traveler on that wondrous path. But, as the old stories tell, there appears again:

The stranger…

who calls us back (and who need not be the same stranger); the one who invites and demands that we share our work with the world — so that they too might see, and know, and be healed. They set watch fires for us, and they wait, and we embark upon a mysterious journey back. We cross:

The return threshold…

and enter the world again. We bear gifts of wisdom and of healing. We have been burned by the light of illumination and are healed. We share our gifts with the community; and in this celebration there is a pausing, a:

Conscious integration…

of what we have undertaken and learned, a recognition of wholeness and completion and healing. We become the stranger for others. We have crossed the wide sea and know its ways. We rest, for a moment. And in this space of quiet, while we are not paying attention:

The cycle begins again.

Literary Traditions and the Modern Writer

Moby Dick was published in 1851. Arguably the first modern novel, Moby Dick is a work of astonishing psychological depth and diversity. It is perhaps the foundational work of the literature of North America. And yet, most of the creative writing students I have worked with in the past few years have not read Moby Dick.

Such students have, however, read far wider than I in contemporary literature. They know all the hot new writers, and I am frequently chagrined to be such a traditionalist when there is clearly a great deal of excellent writing underfoot. On the other hand, I typically find a kind of sameness (that’s not exactly a literary word, but it’s the right word) to much modern — or, as I should say, postmodern — writing. Much of it is too sharp for me, too witty, too strung together with various narrative devices. I’m too philosophical for that kind of thing, too slow. This is probably a personal as well as a creative shortcoming.

But I have difficulty finding anything revelatory in most (post)modern writing. I find that I’m drawn consistently back to Borges and Blake and Conrad, to all those odd and old characters who have been deconstructed and demythologized and debunked. It seems to me that their work still feels fresh, though their writing has been imitated endlessly and built upon by generations of enterprising writers (including me). Those crusty characters (and earlier ones, such as Shakespeare and Milton) have provided the foundation of the English literary world today, and I believe that contemporary writers need to know about such work in order to know the craft of writing.

So here’s my shortest possible list of what every writer struggling to master the craft (which one can never do, of course) should read, in the order given, as a way of understanding how we have arrived at the literary tradition we have today:

• The Odyssey (Homer)
• The Book of Job (in the Bible)
• The Tempest (Shakespeare)
• Paradise Lost (John Milton)
• The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (William Blake)
• Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
• Moby Dick (Herman Melville)
• Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
• Wind, Sand, and Stars (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
• Labyrinths (Jorge Luis Borges)
• One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
• Midnight’s Children (Salman Rushdie)

Technically, Don Quixote should also be on this list (after Shakespeare), since that book seems to be the worldwide favorite of literature professors. But I haven’t read it (it’s on my list).

If you read the works in the above list in order, you will see the slow development of the modern psyche and of the modern artistic temperament. (I wrote about this development in A Stone’s Throw). You will also get a sense of how nothing new has been devised since the earliest mythopoetic sagas. And finally, if you are a writer, you might see how your own work fits into the crazy tapestry that is the literary tradition.

Blinking Cursor, Blank Page

Late in Heart of Darkness, after Marlow has meandered deep into the jungle but before he meets Kurtz, who utters his now-famous judgement upon human nature, The horror! The horror! -- before this, the most famous scene in twentieth century literature, Marlow finds himself making necessary repairs to the ship. He ruminates on these activities as distractions from the shadows around him, from the haunting underbelly of his own nature that he sees in the wilderness around him, in the passionate abandon of the local tribes-people. Here's the full passage:

The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there-- there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were--No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it--this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity-- like yours--the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you--you so remote from the night of first ages--could comprehend. And why not? The mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage--who can tell?-- but truth--truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder--the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet that truth with his own true stuff-- with his own inborn strength. Principles won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags--rags that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief. An appeal to me in this fiendish row--is there? Very well; I hear; I admit, but I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced. Of course, a fool, what with sheer fright and fine sentiments, is always safe. Who's that grunting? You wonder I didn't go ashore for a howl and a dance? Well, no--I didn't. Fine sentiments, you say? Fine sentiments, be hanged! I had no time. I had to mess about with white-lead and strips of woolen blanket helping to put bandages on those leaky steam-pipes--I tell you. I had to watch the steering, and circumvent those snags, and get the tin-pot along by hook or by crook. There was surface-truth enough in these things to save a wiser man.

Marlow employs seamanship as a kind of shield against the chaos, against the frightening shapes of his inner life. After all, he is a civilized man, an Englishman, for whom the shadow must be contained. Marlow is a sailor, one who traverses the waters but remains above them. Writers, conversely, are involved in plumbing those depths, in encountering their lights and shadows, in struggling with the full breadth of human propensity. But we distract ourselves too, and the most common method of doing this is to allow the electronic world to continually divert us from the blank page and blinking cursor. Email alerts, news feeds, blogs: there is enough distraction in these things to doom the wisest writer. We must go into the darkness, into the bardo, to discover our treasures. That we often have difficulty doing so is, in part, due to the persistent emphasis of our environment upon the facile and the transient and the ephemeral. Always an update, a flashing notice, a clamoring icon which seems to confirm our importance  -- but in fact belies our addiction to the inconsequential.

Writers have not been well-served by technology since about 1990, when the last console versions of WordPerfect showed us a black screen upon which a small, blinking cursor waited patiently for us to dive into the waters. Since the advent of graphical user interfaces, the blackness has been hidden, has been replaced by smilies and floral wallpaper and pastel icons. I'm not against the GUI; but for writing, it's a serious impediment, the modern equivalent of Marlow's leaky steam pipes.

The confrontation with what lies behind, or beneath, or hidden, is the essence of all good writing. And whether one perceives that hidden-ness as darkness, as Conrad did, or as a terrifying whiteness, as did Melville, the mystery is the same. Here's Melville describing the peculiar terror evoked by the whiteness of the whale:

Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as the visible absence of colour; and at the same time the concrete of all colours; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows--a colourless, all-colour of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues--every stately or lovely emblazoning--the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colourless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge--pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear coloured and colouring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?

The writer approaches mystery by way of the white page or the black screen. That is our task, nothing more. Not to explain the mystery, or to resolve it, or to erase it; but to encounter it, struggle with it, allow it to enter and change us. This will not happen, cannot happen, if we are checking our emails and news feeds all day long. We must sit in silence, waiting for the mystery to descend.

Now, from the mystic to the concrete:

1. Turn off all email notification.
2. Turn off all news notification.
3. Turn off software update notification.
4. Configure all desktop panels to "auto-hide."
5. Remove all icons from the desktop (organize yourself!).
6. Choose a wallpaper that will not scream at you (I use this).
7. Close all browsers.
8. Do not use Microsoft Word (of which, much discourse elsewhere on this site).
9. Use a text-based editor such as cream, vim, or  emacs.
10. Learn to use the editor with keystrokes only (this takes time).
11. Choose a color scheme for the editor that has high contrast and, ideally, a dark background (I use Zenburn for Vim).

Write from the blinking cursor, with no other distractions. Just you and the waiting blackness (or whiteness, which amounts to the same thing). Reclaim the mystery.

An argument for minimalist writing tools

In a recent workshop on the materials and tools of writing, I asked the group to indicate which method they used to input text on a computer. Almost everyone used Microsoft Word — with the exception of a sole advocate for the OpenOffice word processor (an excellent word processor, in fact).

This homogenization of word processing, whether on the Mac or PC, inevitably delivers a consistent — and therefore conformist — experience to the act of typing on screen. The method of input unquestionably influences the output. By way of subtle cues and imagery (icons, menus, procedures), word processors inculcate a particular type of consciousness. Works of writing from different authors but produced on the same word processor will be more similar than those produced using separate tools. The differences will be subtle but not inconsequential.

Moreover, all word processors introduce a level of aesthetic abstraction that is perhaps not useful to the writing process. Word processors encourage us to fiddle with fonts and spacing, with countless page layout options, with the visual aspect of work that in its initial stages should be primarily visceral.

And word processors are ergonomically inefficient. The mouse, which requires the full use of one arm, is a primary tool in word processors, as are menus and keystrokes assigned for mnemonic rather than ergonomic functions (control-S to save, for example, requires the removal of the left hand from the home row of the keyboard). As I begin to understand that my persistent arthritic aches are essentially caused by mouse and keyboard use, ergonomics becomes a core consideration.

Now, to alternatives and solutions. Take a look at Bram Moolenaar’s seven habits of effective text editing. Learn to reduce the number and increase the efficiency of the keystrokes you make. Wean yourself from the mouse. And notice that Bram uses vim, unquestionably a most robust and efficient text editor (Bram is Vim’s main creator). Vim was originally designed for the Unix operating system, but its current version is used mostly by Linux users (like me; I use Ubuntu Linux). However, cream is a vim equivalent for Windows. Vim is cryptic, it has a steep learning curve, and some of its functions are improbably arcane. In this sense it mirrors the writing process — unlike word processors, which blanket that process, covering it with neat type.

Although Vim and other minimalist tools such as BBEdit (for the Mac) are used mostly by programmers, writers are increasingly recognizing the advantages of such tools: less is more (see Charlie Dickinson’s essay on Vi).

Neal Stephenson (author of Cryptonomicon) puts it nicely:

I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor. It was created by Richard Stallman; enough said. It is written in Lisp, which is the only computer language that is beautiful. It is colossal, and yet it only edits straight ASCII text files, which is to say, no fonts, no boldface, no underlining. In other words, the engineer-hours that, in the case of Microsoft Word, were devoted to features like mail merge, and the ability to embed feature-length motion pictures in corporate memoranda, were, in the case of emacs, focused with maniacal intensity on the deceptively simple-seeming problem of editing text. If you are a professional writer—i.e., if someone else is getting paid to worry about how your words are formatted and printed—emacs outshines all other editing software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars. It is not just bigger and brighter; it simply makes everything else vanish. For page layout and printing you can use TeX: a vast corpus of typesetting lore written in C and also available on the Net for free.

(I also use Emacs.)

In its beginnings and its evolution, the act of writing is about the bare bones, the essential, the elemental. Use a tool that delivers, rather than distracts, from that wonderful trajectory.

First on Four Legs... Creativity and the Human Animal

The oldest artifacts of human endeavor – cave paintings at Lascaux and Altamira, tools in the Blombos caves, Venus figurines so fantastically old we hardly recognize ourselves – are works of art. Creativity is the imprint of humanity, from the outline of a hand painted with ochre on a cave wall, to the mandalas and sacred paintings of the medieval traditions, to the films and music and poetry of today. Throughout all of human history, creativity has been the means by which we understand the inner and the outer worlds, the crucible in which we store our collected wisdom and our fears. The function of all creative traditions – the arts and the sciences, religion and philosophy, politics and war – is to explore the extent to which we can know ourselves.

In that exploration, which is fraught with conflicts and dead-ends and transformations, we’re always coming back to one question: it’s an old one, old even to the Greeks from whom Freud borrowed it, already old when the Egyptians fashioned a great monument to symbolize it. It is perhaps the oldest riddle of humanity, certainly the favorite riddle of psychology, and it is this: "What goes first on four legs, then on two legs, then on three?" The simple answer,which is widely known, is human beings (first we crawl on four legs, then we walk on two, then we use a cane –three legs – in old age). But this riddle, asked by a magical animal that is part hunting lion, part thinking woman, is actually about the contradictions of human experience. The sphinx asks about the essence hidden within our diversities; its question is about the soul. In the clinical counselling and psychology programs of today we’re not taught to use such terms as "soul"; but that’s what the word psychology means, the study of the soul.

These days, we have new ways of asking the riddle of the sphinx, and in the drive of the psychological professions to be more scientific and medical, our responses to the riddle have become more complex; but they are no more precise. The answer, after all, is unfathomable.We’re still putting our hands up to the cave wall and inscribing around them with ochre. Only now, our tools are slightly different:computers, research modalities, clinical skills. Our approaches to the riddle are possibly more robust than those of our ancestors, but they are probably more fragile as well. What has not changed, in a hundred thousand years of human psychology, is the fundamental creative impulse to understand ourselves and our world.

This is why we possess myths and stories, why we cherish works of art, why counsellors return (often grudgingly, as though creative approaches diminish us) to the holistic and creative modalities that have proved reliable for millennia. We like the new, we like to demonstrate that we’re making progress, that we’ve discovered fresh and important truths. And possibly we have. But one of the truths we continue to rediscover is that human psychology is consistent, for good and for ill, and that it sometimes requires the simple symbols and stories embedded within its history. The creativity of those stories connects us to something inside ourselves that is strong and strange and elemental; a kind of empowerment, to use a term from modern psychology. This empowerment, which extends beyond the individual, is the reason for the Taliban banning music. It’s the reason that the cellist Vedran Smilovic played in the street during the war in Sarajevo, while snipers fired upon him. It’s the reason that clients return, again and again, to the stories and images that comprise their identity. When nothing else is left, when the world’s ruthlessness has stripped us of our carefully constructed modernism or intellectualism or rationalism, it’s often to creativity that we turn for our deepest solace.

Perhaps the ancients were right: the arts and sciences beckon the gods,beseech them to intervene in the struggle between humanity and its own nature. Now, as always, that struggle preoccupies us: in Iraq, in Liberia, in Israel; and in our jobs, along the streets of our neighborhoods, in our minds as we lie awake late into the night. We used to tell stories in the night, around fires and under the stars that travelers at sea looked to for direction. We used to find order there, and constancy, and a sense of harmony beyond the world’s duress. We no longer tell those kinds of stories, and we can’t return to a belief in them. Now we find order in the genome, constancy in biochemistry, harmony in the vast array of clinical skills available to the psychological practitioner.

But sometimes the stories we know are insufficient to the task of making sense of a world that is routinely nonsensical. Our genome and our biochemistry do not explain why we continue to war against each other, or why we struggle with poverty and environmental degradation.It’s easy, as a citizen of such a world, to become cynical, or to feel helpless, or desperate. Most of us can no longer believe in the old gods, and the new ones seem indifferent.

Creativity is perhaps the only means of resolving this conundrum. It creates a path where none exists. Right now, because people sense this, we’re seeing a tremendous resurgence in the creative spirit. This is the natural response to trauma and insecurity. We make new stories, we challenge the way things are, by means of visions of the way things could be. This is neither denial nor wishful thinking. It is the soul’s affirmation that our world is what we make it; that even as we limp along on three legs, tired and haggard and threadbare, something or someone comes to our aid. All the old tales speak of this.

There are many stories of the crossroads. Monsters and unexpected guides tend to show up there, as do talismans and visions and magic. The gates of the city where Oedipus faced the sphinx are at the crossroads. And the challenge of the crossroads is ever the same: to answer the sphinx’s riddle who are we? This is our territory, those of us in the psychological professions. As we find our work increasingly subsumed into medicine and genetics, as we struggle to preserve the integrity of our approaches in an environment of shrinking budgets and quick fixes, we tend to forget that the sphinx’s riddle is the essence of what we’re about. We stand at the crossroads – with our clients and our families and our communities – looking the beast in the eye, trying not to be the first one to blink.

A great many people are at the crossroads these days, looking out at the horizon to see which way the road goes. We’re at the crossroads,too: one of our paths, the one we’re now on, leads away from the philosophy of our origins and toward psychology as simply a branch of medicine. On this road, we study the mind, but not the soul. The other road, which is indistinct, hazy, which seems not to run straight but instead wanders across the plain, is the soul’s road. It embodies our heritage, as storytellers and witnesses, and the promise of our continuance. It’s the road that our clients increasingly wish to be upon. They want to sit around the fire of their stories, and ours, to speak and listen and dream, so that the night sounds from the forest don’t seem so baleful and lonely. It’s an archaic, simple,creative urge, easy to dismiss amid the complexities of today. But it’s how we answer the riddle.

Meditative Walking

Meditation takes many forms. Writing, in fact, can be a form of meditation. So is walking, if we pay attention to the process. Many writers (including me) walk. You may be familiar with Stephen King’s habit of daily walking (which was rudely interrupted, one day a few years ago, when he was run down by a van; later, King used a version of his experience in the final book of the Gunslinger series).

During the course I will ask that each of us do a small bit of meditative walking. Take as little as ten minutes for this. Walk slowly. Turn down your thoughts. Be aware of your body, your movements, the images in your mind, the emotions in your body. Walk without a destination. Just walk.

When you are finished walking, write something. Anything. Post it to the forum. Do not write in Word, then copy the text to the forum! Either write in the forum directly, or write in your text editor (then copy). Get out of the lazy habit of using a word processor.

You may be interested, as part of this process, in taking a look at a few meditative walking resources on the web:

• Mindfulness and Walking
• Feldenkrais Walking
• Buddhist walking
• More Buddhist walking
• Even more Buddhist walking (No, your instructor is not a Buddhist; but Buddhism does have great walking meditations.)
• A huge page of walking resources.

Tightening: The Key to Good Writing

For most of its history literature has taken the form of epic poetry. This history is long: five thousand years, perhaps much longer. And within the genre of epic poetry — from the Egyptian Pyramid Texts to Homer to the Kalevala — every word counts. The rhythm counts. Resonance and fluidity count. No slack exists in these texts, no lazy meanderings of phrase or structure. These ancients texts are spare, clean, and tight. We could learn a great deal from these archaic authors. There are reasons for the enduring quality of their texts.

So, to be an epic poet:

1. Write one sentence at a time.
2. Review the sentence before moving on. Make it as perfect as you can. Spend all day on one sentence if required (but don’t spend too long…)
3. Make sure your sentence contains the best words for what you are trying to say.
4. Examine the phrase order. Look for a tighter order, more spare or visceral or elegant.
5. Speak the sentence aloud. Find its rhythm and sonority. Tweak as required. Don’t rush.
6. Take out all extra words and lazy phrasings, especially those that are habitual. Excise adverbs, gerunds, and verb phrases (“there is…”, “I’ve done…”, “We’re going…”) whenever possible.
7. Shorten the sentence if you can (without diminishing its meaning).
8. Take a short break, gaze out the window, return to the sentence, and review it once more.
9. Leave it alone. Build your next sentence.

Good writing, in my view, builds sentence upon sentence. Each new contribution adds to the structure and the framework of clarity. Why go farther (Quick Tip: “farther” refers to distance or extent; “further” denotes an action in service of) — why go farther down your creative track when the foundation is not yet established? I know, you have probably been told to just write, to get words on the page, to come back to them later and try to make sense of your scratchings. No, I am not a fan of this approach. I prefer to approach writing as a Zen-like activity, an action of the razor-sharp mind and open heart working together. Writing, for me, is not catharsis but clarity.

Let’s take a practical example. Here’s a possible sentence:

Down on Granville Street, where my grandfather's jewelry store used to be, there are now a bunch of old, boarded-up buildings waiting quietly to be renovated.

Alright, this is a start. I’m trying to say something in this sentence: about change, nostalgia, perhaps about renewal. It’s not yet clear. So, let’s start with the beginning:

Down on Granville Street

Down and on are both prepositions, only one of which is required. Therefore we can make this first phrase more succinct:

On Granville Street

Next up, the second phrase:

where my grandfather's jewelry store used to be

This phrase is the heart of the sentence; it needs to be clear and strong. Used to be is an awkward verb phrase. It tries to articulate, in three words, the nostalgia and ambivalence of the sentence. And yet, used to be is almost devoid of meaning here. It is a marker and nothing more. Let’s try something more robust and imaginal:

where my grandfather's jewelry store once stood

By using once stood in this way, we’re indicating the past in more resonant terms. We are also implying a fall — what once stood, then fell. Also, we’re implying a steadfastness of the old place, a sense of presence that was previously lacking. So far so good. Now, onto the tricky part:

there are now a bunch of old, boarded-up buildings waiting quietly to be renovated

Well, this is a tidy mess. Too many things going on, too many overt indications when subtlety is called for. Not to mention the awkward phrase a bunch of. Yikes. Where to begin? How about with some editing:

there are now a bunch of old, boarded-up buildings waiting quietly to be renovated

OK, this makes things a bit easier. Now we have the rudiments of a decent clause, something about old buildings:

boarded-up buildings waiting quietly to be renovated

We know that the gerunds and adverbs are typically (except right here!) to be avoided, so we can clean up the phrase:

boarded-up buildings wait to be renovated

Now, tumbledown is a better word than boarded-up (ramshackle would be good here, too). And wait to be renovated is awkward and anthropomorphic in a way that doesn’t seem to suit the imagery of the sentence. And we might spruce up the language a bit with some alliteration (use sparingly!):

tumbledown buildings lie in lethargy

Better. But I keep thinking about ramshackle and tumbledown. Could I use both? Let’s see:

ramshackle buildings lie in lethargy upon the tumbledown street.

I like this. But it will require that I abandon my theme of renewal. The sentence will be more sad without it, yet probably more authentic too. And less self-conscious. Let’s try the whole thing out:

On Granville Street, where my grandfather's jewelry store once stood, ramshackle buildings lie in lethargy upon the tumbledown street.

Not bad. The sentence embodies nostalgia, sadness, personal and social loss, and something else — but we don’t know what yet. It’s something about what happens next, or later, the contrast between the past and the present. The sentence itself leads me on, as its writer, to the next stage. It provokes me to think about contrasts, about words such as glittering and forlorn, and about what we preserve and discard. I cannot write the next sentence without first the polished catalyst of the first.

The Art and Craft of the Personal Essay

A personal essay is a non-fiction creative writing essay in which the author utilizes the perspective of personal experience to articulate larger themes (in traditional literary criticism, such themes were once termed “universal”). A personal essay focuses on the perceptions and feelings of the author and uses these to reflect upon subjects such as nature, politics, history, culture, and literature. The personal essay derives its impact from the integration of individual and universal considerations. This integration allows the reader to explore the unity of human experience.

A few exceptional personal essays have been sufficiently powerful as to change the literary and cultural landscape. For example, Jacob Bronowski’s series of personal essays based on his visit to the ruins of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945 (essays such as The Face of Violence and The Abacus and the Rose) helped initiate the now long-standing debate about the place and limits of science. Similarly, Wendell Berry’s An Entrance to the Woods was instrumental in articulating the philosophy of the current environmental movement. And, within the last couple of years, William Langewiesche’s personal essays about his experiences in Iraq have significantly shaped views of the Iraq war.

As creative non-fiction, personal essays blend together the composition techniques of various genres including narrative fiction, journalism, natural history, and historiography. Multiple points of view may be used, as well as ruminative passages, personal vignettes and philosophical reflections. This flexibility gives personal essays a tremendous range, and is one reason they have been a favorite mode of expression for many writers.

As in every genre, some examples are foundational. Below are a few personal essays that have earned wide circulation. You may recognize some of these authors from their longer works. The first two of the essays listed below are in your reader; the last two are posted in this week’s reading section.

E..B. White, Once More to the Lake

Wendell Berry, An Entrance to the Woods

Stanton Michaels, How to Write a Personal Essay

William Langewiesche, Hotel Baghdad: Fear and Lodging in Iraq

Let’s take these essays one at a time, starting with Once More to the Lake. E.B. White lived and wrote during a time in which people still thought of literature as a classical art with specific forms. His writing sounds more formal than much of what we read today. And yet, “No one can write a sentence like White,” as James Thurber once said. Indeed, E.B. White is the “White” of the much-beloved style guide called The Elements of Style. More than any other single compositional text, The Elements of Style is responsible for the tone and style of much twentieth century writing.

The Elements of Style lists eight elementary rules and ten elementary principles of good writing. I’ve reproduced this list below.

Elementary rules of usage

• Form the possessive singular of nouns with ’s.
• In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last.
• Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas.
• Place a comma before ‘and’ or ‘but’ introducing an independent clause.
• Do not join independent clauses by a comma.
• Do not break sentences in two.
• A participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject.
• Divide words at line-ends, in accordance with their formation and pronunciation.

Elementary principles of composition

• Make the paragraph the unit of composition: one paragraph to each topic.
• As a rule, begin each paragraph with a topic sentence; end it in conformity with the beginning.
• Use the active voice.
• Put statements in positive form.
• Omit needless words.
• Avoid a succession of loose sentences.
• Express co-ordinate ideas in similar form.
• Keep related words together.
• In summaries, keep to one tense.
• Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end.

The guide also offers various tips and suggestions regarding style. (Here are most of them, sourced, along with the lists above, from Wikipedia: 1. Place yourself in the background. 2. Write in a way that comes naturally. 3. Work from a suitable design. 4. Write with nouns and verbs. 5. Revise and rewrite. 6. Do not overwrite. 7. Do not overstate. 8. Avoid the use of qualifiers. 9. Do not affect a breezy manner. 10. Use orthodox spelling. 11. Do not explain too much. 12. Do not construct awkward adverbs. 13. Make sure the reader knows who is speaking. 14. Avoid fancy words. 15. Do not use dialect unless your ear is good. 16. Be clear. 17. Do not inject opinion. 18. Use figures of speech sparingly. 19. Do not take shortcuts at the cost of clarity. 20. Avoid foreign languages. 21. Prefer the standard to the offbeat.)

Beginning writers typically struggle most with the “omit needless words” guideline as well as the suggestions not to “explain too much” and to “be clear.” But as you read Once More to the Lake, notice that White is a consummate walker of his talk. You may easily find examples of his adherence to all of the above principles and practices. But can you also find where he has strayed from those guidelines?

What do you think is going on with White’s attitude toward technology in the essay? Read carefully when you get to the passage about the outboard motor. Does White seem to be anti-technological here, or is he simply trying to work out the place of technology? Remember, he’s writing during the 1950’s, a time when many people thought that global nuclear war was inevitable.

Is this an essay about aging? About nostalgia? About childhood? About family? Or is it all of those things strung together? And if they are strung together, how—precisely—does White accomplish this?

Spend some time on the passage near the end, when the son puts on the wet swim trunks. Literary folks have been talking about this passage for years. There’s something compelling about it. What do you think is going on? What are we supposed to take from this passage, and from the essay in general?

In another essay called Here is New York, published a few years before Once More to the Lake, White spoke about the vulnerability of New York in the nuclear age:

The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York in the sound of the jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition.

This passage was widely quoted after September 11. Its enduring quality makes the case that well-written prose can persist, beyond the lifetime of its author, beyond the norms and currents of a given historical period. We will see this same type of enduring quality in the work of Wendell Berry.

But before jumping into Wendell Berry, let me ask you a question: do you know who Wallace Stegner was? If you have heard of him, I will be impressed with your literary knowledge. But most Canadians would draw a blank on the name. Which is unfortunate, because Stegner has been a strong influence on current Canadian writers such as Sharon Butala. He grew up in Saskatchewan (where today there is Stegner House, a creative writing centre). But Stegner lived much of his live in the United States (where he founded the Creative Writing program at Stanford University), and this is likely the main reason he is not more familiar to Canadians. Much of Stegner’s writing might broadly be called ecological, or environmental, and the strain of environmental writing that we now see coming out of central Canada owes much to him.

Wendell Berry was a student of Wallace Stegner’s, at Stanford—as were Ken Kesey, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Larry McMurtry. (McMurtry wrote the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain.) And like the other luminaries of that program, Berry has had a long and well-respected career. He is, in many ways, the defining archetype of the phrase “a sense of place.” In An Entrance to the Woods, we can see the strong environmental ethic in his work, the sense of earthiness and embodiment. It’s as though Berry takes the struggle of E.B. White—how to balance nature with human ambition?—and shows another path, an integrative path where we can once again find our connection to the natural world.

While you read An Entrance to the Woods, try to focus on the rhythm of the piece: the slowing down of Berry’s thoughts and impressions, the way in which he asks us to slow down with him, the careful way in which he structures the beginning of the essay so that we follow him into the woods—which are a metaphor for what? Or are they a metaphor at all? What do “the woods” mean?

And later, as we’re reaching the centre of the piece, what’s going on with those inscriptions that Berry finds? What’s he trying to tell us?

Again, as with E.B. White’s essay, we need to ask ourselves what exactly Berry is doing to create the mood and the momentum of his narrative. Is he using some (or all) of the principles in The Elements of Style, or is he developing his own methods? And how similar are Berry’s methods to those of other contemporary writers?

As a review, and as a diversion to refresh your attention, take a moment now to scoot over to A List Apart’s Writing Guide and compare their guidelines to what you are seeing in An Entrance to the Woods. Notice that Dennis Mahoney’s guide advocates a specific relationship to the so-called rules of writing:

The best rules can’t be stated, but you can learn them by reading excellent writing. Develop an ear. If you know what works, you’ll start to emulate it. Conversely, it’s good to study truly horrendous language, stuff that makes you embarrassed for those responsible. You’ll find yourself mortally afraid of—and automatically avoiding—the same mistakes in your own writing. Hemingway said, “The most essential gift for a good writer is a built–in shock–proof shit-detector.” (They’re cheap if you haven’t already got one.) This is especially important for web writers, most of whom are publishing without the benefit of editors.

Pay attention to that last sentence about publishing without an editor. That’s you, right? And sometimes me, and often anyone who wants to place words on a page (or a screen). Read well. Develop an ear. Find what works, and why. Stop using adverbs (my favorite tip). And, just for good measure, pay attention to the various brief writing guides that come out now and then on the web. Here’s a good one.

Back to Berry. An Entrance to the Woods is an essay about stewardship (among other things), which is the essence of Berry’s writing. And this stewardship has a long reach: into politics, culture, economics, and government policy. Recently, at a commencement speech at Lindsey Wilson College, Berry said:

The line that connects the bombing of civilian populations to the mountain removed by strip mining … to the tortured prisoner seems to run pretty straight. We’re living, it seems, in the culmination of a long warfare—warfare against human beings, other creatures and the Earth itself.

So: how is it that Berry is able to make statements such as those above—which are direct and highly charged politically—and to write about nature with such gentleness? And, if you read An Entrance to the Woods carefully, how is it that Berry is able to imply statements such as the one above but without coming right out with them? How has he hidden the directness of his message so skilfully?

Think about it. It’s an important question.

Next we move on to Stanton Michaels’ How to Write a Personal Essay (Intro. Three main points. Summary. Sex). This essay is the only work by Stanton Michaels of which I am aware. He is not a well-known writer, has not won any awards, is not schmoozing with literati at Pulitzer galas. He has written one great piece. It was originally published in The Georgia Review, in which Wendell Berry has published numerous pieces.

Let’s start with the beginning:

The easiest way to write a personal essay is to use the standard form taught in Composition 101: an introductory paragraph followed by three paragraphs outlining three main points and a final summary paragraph. But instead of just blathering about yourself, describe vivid scenes and what they mean to you, such as when your 2-year-old son, Jordan, solemnly declares from the bathtub “I can’t swim—my penis is hard” and you tell him it’s OK, it’s normal, knowing it’ll subside and he’ll be able to swim soon, but you don’t tell him that teeny little weenie he’s holding will be the source of the most intense worries, sorrows, and pleasures he’ll ever experience, and you wonder if you’ll ever be able to tell him the truth. You could follow this thought with the trials and tribulations of your own penis, unless you’re a woman—but of course females are involved with love, sex, and life built around their own body parts, which can provide many interesting topics. The key to maintaining reader interest is to be open and honest, displaying your concerns and fears through specific, true-life examples rather than abstract concepts about how you think sex education is important because you learned the hard way on your own and you doubt you’ll explain things any better than your own father did. Follow this format and, while you may not become a world-renowned author, you will be able to complete a personal essay.

How many compositional rules did Michaels just break? I count at least six. And what’s with the interminable sentences? And the loose language? And the meandering narrative? But wait—take a few minutes now and read it all the way through…

And you discover, despite your reservations, that this is one fine piece of writing: personal, evocative, expressive. And it’s five paragraphs, as promised, comprising precisely 2500 words (go ahead and count ‘em; I did).

What makes this work? After all, it does break most of the rules. But ask yourself: how could Michaels have articulated any better the joy and pain of the phases of his life that he describes? It works, I suggest, because the entire essay is in Michael’s own distincitve voice, which is quirky and eccentric and disarmingly honest. It’s as though he’s not simply writing but inviting us to witness the inner workings of his mind and heart. How to Write a Personal Essay starts out with humour and thereby disarms us, so that later, when the more difficult and intense material comes, we are not quite ready for it, we are still open and undefended. The material goes right in.

It’s often said that an artist first must learn to use the rules and then learn to break them. It seems an accurate statement with regard to Stanton Michaels. What I’d like for you to take from this piece, to remember after reading it, is that the rules are always subservient to the writer’s own authentic voice. And that voice, as Joseph Conrad said, “cannot be silenced.”

Speaking of Joseph Conrad, who is a great source of inspiring literary ditties: he once stated his artistic aim as follows:

By the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel… before all, to make you see. That—and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm—all you demand—and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.

Finally, let’s consider William Langewiesche’s Hotel Baghdad: Fear and Lodging in Iraq. Langewiesche is considered to to be a pioneer of the so-called new new journalism, which is another way of saying creative non-fiction. Langewiesche is the son of a pilot and writer who composed a fine book of personal essays, entitled Rudder and Stick, that would be very much at home on our list of outstanding works. In Hotel Baghdad, Langewiesche describes his experience of trying to survive the Iraq war. Notice his stark prose style, the way in which he utilizes both personal and impersonal perspectives, the manner of his interdisciplinary discussion of various related topics. In many ways, Langewiesche is a writer of tremendous rigour, in the spirit of E.B. White. His writing is spare and formal, though utterly engaging.

What do you think he is trying to say when he talks about sweeping bullet casings from the balcony? And, in his discussion of the Green Zone, how does he articulate (or hide) his own political views?

Choose a paragraph—any paragraph—and notice how Langewiesche adheres strongly to the principle omit needless words. And yet, Langewiesche’s essays on the rebuilding of the World Trade Center (later published in book form as American Ground) were the longest articles ever published by The Atlantic Monthly, perhaps the finest literary magazine in the United States. Tight prose facilitates, rather than precludes, thorough expression.

Finally, consider the three essays as a whole. Which is your favorite? Why? What is the one scene or vignette that resonates with you the most? What technique does the author use to create that resonant mood? And how can you create that mood yourself?

Twenty Themes

Review the list below. Choose a topic or question from the list. Write about it. Post your writing to the forum. If you have previously attended a Creative Writing class with me, you may recognize this list and you may have previously written a theme-based composition based on this list. If so, choose another theme or another permutation on the same theme for your composition. You will not be repeating material or duplicating your effort. The list, after all, contains essentially the complete archetypal themes of human psychology — and therefore of literature — so everything you will ever write can be encapsualted by a theme or set of themes from this list.

• Write something about yourself that no one else yet knows.
• Describe a childhood memory in which you felt particularly empowered, or loved.
• Write about one of your dreams.
• Describe an experience you have had that you would define as spiritual.
• Describe an experience in which you faced and overcame suffering.
• Describe a humorous event in your life.
• Write about something with which you are currently struggling.
• Write about your own nature and talents, what are you good at? Where do you shine?
• Write about one of your fears.
• Write about the smell, or touch, or taste, or sound, that you love the most.
• Write about something you know deeply.
• If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be?
• If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
• What does your shadow look like, or sound like? What does it say? How does it write?
• Write about something you believe.
• When you are feeling weak and vulnerable, what must you remember?
• What is your favorite book, or story, or film, or poem, or painting? Why?
• Describe one thing you feel is necessary for you to do before you die.
• Who do you love? Why? Write about this.
• Write about something else.

Parables

Here are two parables. The first is from Tibetan Buddhism, the second from the Brothers Grimm. Read each of them. Finish the stories they tell. Make your narratives as long or as short as you like. Post your results in the forum.

Parable of the Warrior Princess (Adapted from Tibetan Buddhism)

A young warrior princess completed her training under a renowned teacher and was accorded the title Princess of Five Weapons. Armed appropriately, and embodying her forty-two virtues, she set out on the road leading to the eternal city.

The road led the princess west, across the wide desert and into a forest. At twilight she reached the first trees, where she found other travelers who warned her to turn back. They spoke in fearful tones about an ogre, an eater of hearts, who lurked along the most shadowed paths, killing all those who happened by. But the princess was confident of her training. Fearless, she pressed on.

At a dark place, where branches overhung a stagnant stream, the ogre emerged from the underbrush. It was a phantom, a wraith, a brute with crushing hands. The princess deployed her five weapons, but the ogre was strong (and crafty) — one by one, the weapons of the princess were defeated. But she did not relent. After each weapon was spent and lay broken on the ground, the princess resumed the battle, challenging the ogre again and again.

Finally, the ogre paused, and asked her, “Youth, why are you not afraid?”
“Ogre,” replied the princess. “Why should I be afraid? For in life, death is absolutely certain. What’s more,”…

The Golden Key (Last Tale of the Brothers Grimm)

Once in the wintertime when the snow was very deep, a poor boy had to go out and fetch wood on a sled. After he had gathered it together and loaded it, he did not want to go straight home, because he was so frozen, but instead decided to make a fire and warm himself a little first. So he scraped the snow away, and while he was clearing the ground he found a small golden key. Now he believed that where there was a key, there must also be a lock, so he dug in the ground and found a little iron chest. “If only the key fits!” he thought. “Certainly there are valuable things in the chest.” He looked, but there was no keyhole. Finally he found one, but so small that it could scarcely be seen. He tried the key, and fortunately it fitted. Then he turned the lock once, the lid popped open, and in the chest the boy saw…