(no subject)
Today we have a writing workshop with someone so elevated, who has such dignity and intelligence, and I still am not happy with my assignment. His assignment - in many more words - was 'find the subtext; motivation, inner addressee of your art writing'.
Um. My subtext is SHIT SHIT SHIT deadline.
My motivation is Ok I need my name in an art magazine.
My inner addressee? Well, maybe I want to impress another reviewer. Or possibly it's Hornblower, but I'm not going to admit that, am I?
In case there is a more noble sentiment lurking in my clearly shallow and awful writing practice, we're also not allowed to write 'soul-porn'. 'You don't have to tell the truth. Use fiction, metaphor, or just lie,' he said.
I object to this as fiction and metaphor are means of showing, not hiding things. So even if I did somehow want to convey that the only writing that somehow distills me into this committed, joyful, higher-plane writerly individual is fanfiction: it would be either hidden under some pseudish attempt at obscurity for its own sake, or it would be painfully obvious. Either way it would suffer from being an awful piece of writing.
This was the part of his assignment that interested me the most:
My experience is that subtexts unfold when you start poking around areas where you don’t trust yourself or where it hurts most to not know what to say.
But this is because I am an angsty fangirl.
If it goes ok, I'll post what I wrote later.
Um. My subtext is SHIT SHIT SHIT deadline.
My motivation is Ok I need my name in an art magazine.
My inner addressee? Well, maybe I want to impress another reviewer. Or possibly it's Hornblower, but I'm not going to admit that, am I?
In case there is a more noble sentiment lurking in my clearly shallow and awful writing practice, we're also not allowed to write 'soul-porn'. 'You don't have to tell the truth. Use fiction, metaphor, or just lie,' he said.
I object to this as fiction and metaphor are means of showing, not hiding things. So even if I did somehow want to convey that the only writing that somehow distills me into this committed, joyful, higher-plane writerly individual is fanfiction: it would be either hidden under some pseudish attempt at obscurity for its own sake, or it would be painfully obvious. Either way it would suffer from being an awful piece of writing.
This was the part of his assignment that interested me the most:
My experience is that subtexts unfold when you start poking around areas where you don’t trust yourself or where it hurts most to not know what to say.
But this is because I am an angsty fangirl.
If it goes ok, I'll post what I wrote later.