"Why are you stressing out about this? Just slap some shit down and turn it in, I'm sure you'll get an A. You're a good writer."
"It's not about the grade. I don't give a shit about grades; I never have. It's about the craft."
Here is the make or break moment, where I must prove my mettle for real. I suffer from the same delusions most young writers have. It goes something like this. After completing a piece of prose, I always believe it is one of two things: A) Garbage, and undeserving of being looked at again (much less revised), or B) Golden: the Holy Bible, immaculate and perfectly conceived in every way, and tampering with it would amount to blasphemy. In other words, not to be fucked with.
Unfortunately for me, neither of these things are ever true. Writing is never finished; one could argue that nothing that has ever been written really is. Although we'd like to finally say "it's finished," it is not. Even some of the finest novels ever published could probably be revised a few more times and be better than they already are. Nothing is ever perfect.
Case in point: The low-level creative writing class I signed up for at the beginning of the semester. Our final project is to turn in a revised, polished draft of a piece of writing (I've chosen creative nonfiction), and now I am faced with tampering with something I strove to make perfect to begin with. After all, why would you turn in something you weren't sure was the best it could be in the first place? This is something they teach you early on in school, and it is the first and hardest habit to break. You must be willing to tear it apart and rebuild it from the ground up. Such a task is frightening, almost impossible to think about. What can I do to make this better?
Revisions don't come easy to me. I write more stream-of-consciousness like. I may start with a general outline, or a frame or structure to work with, and I may even delete entire pages as I go, re-write entire paragraphs, or restructure my narrative as I see fit, but all of these edits occur whilst the draft is being written, all before the last sentence has been typed, the final period placed. After that is done, I save it, and never look back. This is a disgusting habit, and it is not the path to success.
Thus am I faced with taking my art more seriously. Is it important to get a good grade? Of course. But I could really care less about whether I have an A or an F in the class (side-note: I have an A), as long as what I have turned in is as polished as I can make it, revised to the best of my ability, and can level little or virtually no criticism towards it. I could argue that my piece is perfect as stands, in terms of what I aimed to communicate and whoever didn't "get it" be damned, but that's the easy way out. The cop out. I could change a few sentences, alter a few key details, revise a couple sloppy descriptions, and say it is "better," but this is still cheating.
Why do I take it so seriously now? Why is it the only thing on my mind? 10 1/2 measly 1.5 spaced pages of 12-point Times New Roman text, with JAG or Law & Order-esque timestamps placed on them--why is it important? Because this is my life; this is all that matters now. This is what I want to do, and what I feel I should be doing with my life. Hell, my measly entry-level writing course is the only class I took this semester that I didn't dread going to. It's the only thing that stimulated me intellectually, continued to give me hope about my entire liberal arts education. It will do me little good down the road to enter higher-level writing courses while I'm pursuing a degree (and eventually an M.F.A.) and not have these habits instilled in me. I have to get serious now, because the classes (and, indeed, the craft itself) will not wait for me: they will get more serious on their own. My number one fear is ending up a fish-out-of-water in some advanced writer's course when I'm expected to turn in fantastic works of art just to get by.
"You're a good writer."
True, but good and great are two different things. I'm a damn good writer--and I'll be the first to say it. But I am not a master. And masters have to slog through a lot of shit to get where they're at. You have to build, destroy, re-build, demolish, build, polish, tweak, re-wire, re-structure, and fight tooth and nail to produce quality work. This task is what frightens me--even more than writing itself (which, believe me, frightens me a lot; on a daily basis). It would be nice if there was some book you could read that had all the answers in it, or if it were some test you could study and cram for and be assured you pass. But there are no guarantees in this. Like all art, it is too subjective. Pass, fail, it doesn't matter to me either way. I may be able to spin straw into gold, but now the objective is "Take that gold and mold it into a fucking statue."
30 April 2012
28 April 2012
Mute
I don't think I've spoken more than five words in over 16 hours.
I can already tell I'm going to have issues with this blog, I can't format my text the way I want to. This is not conducive to creative writing.
Strange thing about not speaking: I dwell inside my head, and feel the spiral closing ever inward, as thoughts get piled on top of other thoughts and are disseminated and dissected and lead to other smaller thoughts; thoughts within thoughts, thinking about the future and my writing and what I want to say but never having a way to say it. Not worried so much about writing, but rather worried about not writing. If I don't write, I cannot speak.
I ponder the essence of talent and its limitations. Are talents within the arts inherently finite, or are they cultivated and grown? I'd like to think I can cultivate and expand my talents, eventually reaching some grand virtuosic level, some kind of God of the written word, but I find myself more often thinking that I have or soon will reach a plateau, and remain there, never progressing, never moving forward. Perhaps it is something you are born with, and it is a set amount, like the number of brain cells or chromosomes.
Surely, proficiency in mechanics and grammar can be honed and fine-tuned, reaching a level of near-perfection, but I do not believe this applies to vocabulary, thoughts, themes; or, more abstractly, the ability to convey a particular idea/plot/character in the most effective way. Perhaps, with prolonged use, I can use this blog to chart noticeable progress over time.
The longer I spend not speaking out loud, the further my brain begins to spin out of control, fractal thought patterns flowing out with the tide, then crashing back down over themselves in waves. It becomes such that I start to feel myself slipping away from myself, like a silhouette or a shadow, existing outside of time and space and the real as it is typically perceived. I cannot describe these thoughts to you. I do not even know what they are, or their meaning, all I know is how they feel: like a threaded rabbit hole, one that may or may not have a bottom to it, my reluctance to trace their paths as they wind down manifesting as, in simplest terms, a literal fear of going insane.
I attended a book reading on campus last night hosted by Blake Butler, with a guest speaker (who was a graduate student in the MFA program at New Mexico State University). Blake's prose both surprised and frightened me, his reading style more of an angry shouting at the audience, sometimes tumbling over himself and backtracking, me only catching every third or fourth word in the cacophony. I was suddenly struck by a sense that this is where I belong. "This is what I should be doing! I need to be writing, reading, speaking, attending other readings, meeting writers, talking to writers, about writing. This should be my life." What was more surprising wasn't the reading itself (and it was, indeed, quite bizarre [I wanted to buy some of his books afterwards, but I had no cash]), but the realization afterwards, while talking to my creative writing teacher (who invited me to the event with the lure of extra credit), that societies like this can and do exist: talented people who know other talented people, and meet with them, and discuss their talents. It was amazing. Writers, I began to think, do not simply have to be celebrities, as I had always envisioned them, but could in fact be approachable. The same way my glimmers of complex weaving thought patterns materialize at night, in my sleep, in my silence; so do these writers have their own complex web of communications and contacts: networking, reading, travelling, and, most importantly, writing. My creative writing teacher knew the man speaking, had met him personally, who had a book published that was reviewed by the New York Times, the review itself also written by a man who my teacher knew, and had met, who has also published books, my teacher also revealing in an aside comment that the man who sponsored and established the readings program at NMSU was a good friend of David Foster Wallace, and that he (the teacher) had actually met DFW as well, had picked him up from the airport once when he (DFW) had traveled to NMSU to give a reading as well, prior to his suicide. My teacher asked him about writing Infinite Jest. "How did you do it?" Allegedly, Dave Wallace's response was simply "A lot of ritalin."
My brain spun and careened out, bounced off itself, and I realized I was out of my depth. I could not communicate with these people, I did not even know them. They were writers, real writers. And I was a peon, a serf in their midst. I fled.
I can already tell I'm going to have issues with this blog, I can't format my text the way I want to. This is not conducive to creative writing.
Strange thing about not speaking: I dwell inside my head, and feel the spiral closing ever inward, as thoughts get piled on top of other thoughts and are disseminated and dissected and lead to other smaller thoughts; thoughts within thoughts, thinking about the future and my writing and what I want to say but never having a way to say it. Not worried so much about writing, but rather worried about not writing. If I don't write, I cannot speak.
I ponder the essence of talent and its limitations. Are talents within the arts inherently finite, or are they cultivated and grown? I'd like to think I can cultivate and expand my talents, eventually reaching some grand virtuosic level, some kind of God of the written word, but I find myself more often thinking that I have or soon will reach a plateau, and remain there, never progressing, never moving forward. Perhaps it is something you are born with, and it is a set amount, like the number of brain cells or chromosomes.
Surely, proficiency in mechanics and grammar can be honed and fine-tuned, reaching a level of near-perfection, but I do not believe this applies to vocabulary, thoughts, themes; or, more abstractly, the ability to convey a particular idea/plot/character in the most effective way. Perhaps, with prolonged use, I can use this blog to chart noticeable progress over time.
The longer I spend not speaking out loud, the further my brain begins to spin out of control, fractal thought patterns flowing out with the tide, then crashing back down over themselves in waves. It becomes such that I start to feel myself slipping away from myself, like a silhouette or a shadow, existing outside of time and space and the real as it is typically perceived. I cannot describe these thoughts to you. I do not even know what they are, or their meaning, all I know is how they feel: like a threaded rabbit hole, one that may or may not have a bottom to it, my reluctance to trace their paths as they wind down manifesting as, in simplest terms, a literal fear of going insane.
I attended a book reading on campus last night hosted by Blake Butler, with a guest speaker (who was a graduate student in the MFA program at New Mexico State University). Blake's prose both surprised and frightened me, his reading style more of an angry shouting at the audience, sometimes tumbling over himself and backtracking, me only catching every third or fourth word in the cacophony. I was suddenly struck by a sense that this is where I belong. "This is what I should be doing! I need to be writing, reading, speaking, attending other readings, meeting writers, talking to writers, about writing. This should be my life." What was more surprising wasn't the reading itself (and it was, indeed, quite bizarre [I wanted to buy some of his books afterwards, but I had no cash]), but the realization afterwards, while talking to my creative writing teacher (who invited me to the event with the lure of extra credit), that societies like this can and do exist: talented people who know other talented people, and meet with them, and discuss their talents. It was amazing. Writers, I began to think, do not simply have to be celebrities, as I had always envisioned them, but could in fact be approachable. The same way my glimmers of complex weaving thought patterns materialize at night, in my sleep, in my silence; so do these writers have their own complex web of communications and contacts: networking, reading, travelling, and, most importantly, writing. My creative writing teacher knew the man speaking, had met him personally, who had a book published that was reviewed by the New York Times, the review itself also written by a man who my teacher knew, and had met, who has also published books, my teacher also revealing in an aside comment that the man who sponsored and established the readings program at NMSU was a good friend of David Foster Wallace, and that he (the teacher) had actually met DFW as well, had picked him up from the airport once when he (DFW) had traveled to NMSU to give a reading as well, prior to his suicide. My teacher asked him about writing Infinite Jest. "How did you do it?" Allegedly, Dave Wallace's response was simply "A lot of ritalin."
My brain spun and careened out, bounced off itself, and I realized I was out of my depth. I could not communicate with these people, I did not even know them. They were writers, real writers. And I was a peon, a serf in their midst. I fled.
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