I've taken a good number of creative writing classes. Quite more than necessary some might say. Often, writing is compared to children - and, like children, one should be comfortable with allowing their writing to be bloodied up once in awhile. I speak of the red pen in the hand of an editor.
Now, I'll grant you, it's been a number of years since I pursued the written form - I delved into the photographic as well as other media for a time. Writing has always been, and remains, my first love for no other form of expression can be so easily grasped at. With a bit of paper and some sort of writing implement one can express whatever thought or feeling inhabits their mind at a given moment. And this is good. This is very good. However, often as expresser's of emotion we feel not quite full without the approval or understanding of others. To this end we publish, or blog, or find some way to share our work with others.
If we share that work with close friends, friends who do not write themselves, or perhaps with our mother's or significant others we may hear of our wondrous and magical use of words. We may, from them, receive praise and applause and feel that we are somehow special and unique. But submit those same words to a larger audience and we may find our words are trite, overused and cliche.
I abhor the cliche. At least in my own writing. I strive to cut it out like a bad lung. To that end, and to reconnect with a lost love, I enrolled in yet another creative writing class. You see writing, for me, is a social activity. True, much of the early production takes place alone but the editing, the revising, the cutting out, adding to and making better is social. I had high hopes for the class. I would submit my work to a wider audience than myself and seek their disapproval - for it is only in finding out what doesn't work that I am forced to expand my command of the language by seeking out what does work, which words create the intended effect. But, alas, this particular creative writing class is structured more toward being fed a strict diet of what the instructor feels is important rather than in each writer being shepherded through a process leading to them finding out what it is in themselves that is important.
Which is why I am happy that as I began this class I also began a separate project involving reading. The best writer's are usually the best readers as well. Or should be at any rate.
As you may recall from my last post my book for this week was "The Sheltering Sky" by Paul Bowles. Now I've read much of Bowles' work previously. I even went so far as to purchase Bowles' music, just to see what it was like (much different than his writing!) But I digress. The book is a work of fiction and one which I had put off reading for quite some time (over fifteen years.) I am, however, quite happy that I finally got around to it. The person who gave it to me suggested that he wrote as I write. I find this an immense compliment and entirely untrue. His writing has a psychological depth to it that is severly lacking in my own work and even in the work of Camus (whom I adore, though he falls short of perfection in many instances.) At any rate, though I could compare and contrast these two fine authors I will refrain. I digress much too often as it is.
Some quotes which stirred me:
"If I watch the end of a day - any day - I always feel it's the end of a whole epoch. And the Autumn! It might as well be the end of everything," he said. "That's why I hate cold countries, and love the warm ones, where there's no winter, and when night comes you feel an opening up of the life there, instead of a closing down. Don't you feel that?"
Yes, yes I do...
"And it occurred to him that a walk through the countryside was a sort of epitome of the passage through life itself. One never took the time to savor the details; one said: another day, but always with the hidden knowledge that each day was unique and final, that there never would be a return, another time."
How often do we leave things undone? Trips to wherever our heart may lead us. Words left unspoken? Things put off to another time? Too often, perhaps. That Bowles points this out through the character of Port I find quite nice actually. Perhaps it connects to some deeper human understanding as I see it. Nevertheless...
At any rate I found the book to be a quite fulfilling read and even managed to get a few ideas for the improvement of a story that I've had collecting dust for several years - a story which takes place in Greece and involves prodigious use of the elements of heat and locusts, something Bowles mentioned briefly in this novel (perhaps that, along with my love of Bowles, is why my friend suggested I read the book those many years ago.)
Book 3, nonfiction. I have chosen Scipio Africanus: Greater than Napoleon by B.H Liddel Hart. Having previously read a book by Hart titled "Strategy" and, having found his writing clear, concise and illuminating I feel confident that this book will be quite pleasing. But, as always, I'll let you know.
As for now, I am off to do some of the things that I may otherwise have put off till tomorrow. Until next we meet, dear reader.
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