(no subject)
My thesis class friends invited me to Bear's Lair with them but instead I have chosen to sit in this weird false-rock patterned section of Barrows Hall. I have never been here before. It reminds me of the lobby of a post office. People are walking around except for this one blonde girl across from me who is lulling me to sleep with the sound of her snapping gum.
Everyone else's thesis sounded better than mine, but I think everyone else thinks exactly the same thing, and I have no way of knowing if it's actually good or not. So i can read Tender Buttons, and I might be able to show someone else how to read Tender Buttons - that is, not in the way that I read it, but how to read it for themselves. I guess that by itself is something good.
I think the best thing I learned from the thesis is that everything I experience, think, feel, etc. cannot be represented in writing. That's not a defeat as it may sound but it is the reason to write in the first place. Writing and reading are mutually exclusive activities. Well, literary writing, anyway. We read for fun not to learn what the author thinks, but to experience something that we wouldn't otherwise experience on our own. It sounds simple but there is a lot compressed behind and underneath that sentence.
I guess that's part of why I generally disagree with creative writing as a learned profession. What I learned from my brief experience in it is that it tries to teach the writer to also inhabit the place of the reader, to try to judge the "effect" of something. I guess you could say that editing your own work is like being a reader. But reading your own writing is so different than being an unknown reader, because you know exactly what you mean (or at least you think you do) that it's not quite the same thing as an audience reading your work.. that's why it's called editing, I guess, and not reading.
Not enough people know how to edit. I barely know how to edit. I think it takes a long time to edit something. Years. That is also why I disagree with creative writing as a profession, because it makes you put something out too quickly. Writers should not give a flying fuck about who their readers are... that is, they shouldn't stoop low simply to please others.
I'm hungry but all the food is in wrappers it is processed and looks like bricks and tastes like bricks. I'm getting tired of going through transactions to eat. Why aren't there any fruit trees on campus. I would like to go outside and pick an orange for myself.
Everyone else's thesis sounded better than mine, but I think everyone else thinks exactly the same thing, and I have no way of knowing if it's actually good or not. So i can read Tender Buttons, and I might be able to show someone else how to read Tender Buttons - that is, not in the way that I read it, but how to read it for themselves. I guess that by itself is something good.
I think the best thing I learned from the thesis is that everything I experience, think, feel, etc. cannot be represented in writing. That's not a defeat as it may sound but it is the reason to write in the first place. Writing and reading are mutually exclusive activities. Well, literary writing, anyway. We read for fun not to learn what the author thinks, but to experience something that we wouldn't otherwise experience on our own. It sounds simple but there is a lot compressed behind and underneath that sentence.
I guess that's part of why I generally disagree with creative writing as a learned profession. What I learned from my brief experience in it is that it tries to teach the writer to also inhabit the place of the reader, to try to judge the "effect" of something. I guess you could say that editing your own work is like being a reader. But reading your own writing is so different than being an unknown reader, because you know exactly what you mean (or at least you think you do) that it's not quite the same thing as an audience reading your work.. that's why it's called editing, I guess, and not reading.
Not enough people know how to edit. I barely know how to edit. I think it takes a long time to edit something. Years. That is also why I disagree with creative writing as a profession, because it makes you put something out too quickly. Writers should not give a flying fuck about who their readers are... that is, they shouldn't stoop low simply to please others.
I'm hungry but all the food is in wrappers it is processed and looks like bricks and tastes like bricks. I'm getting tired of going through transactions to eat. Why aren't there any fruit trees on campus. I would like to go outside and pick an orange for myself.