Joseph Campbell on Writing
I've been reading The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers, recently. While I've read portions of several of Joseph Campbell's works, it was generally in the context of research I was doing while I was a student. My eldest son has the DVD set of Bill Moyer's interviews with Campbell, which I've been thinking of watching, and I decided that I would get the most out of them by reading the book beforehand.
I'm struck by how often something Campbell says has me wanting to jump up and find someone to share the passage with. I also find myself deeply appreciative of Campbell's statements about myth as metaphor, which help me to contextualize religion in a way that works for me.
The passage I wanted to share with you tonight is on page 71, in the chapter titled, "The Journey Inward." The point of discussion in which this takes place has wandered from a discussion of myth and religion to the relationship between myth and folktales.
Anyone writing a creative work knows that you open, you yield yourself, and the book talks to you and builds itself. To a certain extent, you become the carrier of something that is given to you from what have been called the Muses&emdash;or, in biblical language, "God." This is no fancy, it is a fact. Since the inspiration comes from the unconscious, and since the unconscious minds of the people of any single small society have much in common, what the shaman or seer brings forth is something that is waiting to be brought forth in everyone. So when one hears the seer's story, one responds, "Aha! This is my story. This is something that I had always wanted to say but wasn't able to say." There has to be a dialogue, and interaction between the seer and the community. The seer who sees things that people in the community don't want to hear is just ineffective. Sometimes they will wipe him out.
In addition to his opening statement about the place from which creativity springs in any writer (and I think it's fair to think this would apply to any artist), Campbell seems to be suggesting that there is very close connection between the writer/artist and the mystic.
When I think about my own writing process-which is a fitful one, full of days in which no worthwhile writing (or, indeed, any writing, at all) is forthcoming, or days in which every word seems to be dragged painfully from some deep well, yet also sprinkled here and there with times and days when the words just flow onto the page with very little effort or apparent conscious thinking on my part-I wonder how that fits into Campbell's view of creativity. I don't think of myself as a mystic, and I would have to say that I am probably not particularly attuned to the unconscious minds of the vast majority of the people in our society (which is, of course, a large, rather than small, one), but perhaps this is why I struggle so hard.
The preceding paragraph is one in which I'm pretty much thinking out loud. If I'd been willing to get out of bed last night, immediately after reading this passage, to share it with you, I probably would have had something very different to say. Certainly, at that moment, I had a complex, excited reaction to what I'd read. Part of this was the immediate question as I read the first sentence about whether the creative process really is that similar for all writers and artists, or whether some (possibly those who prefer detailed outlines?) would reject this notion.
So, I turn this over to you, my friends.
Do you experience the writing process as something you must open yourself to, as something to which you must yield? (As I wrote that, I realized that there is a part of me that hates yielding to that impulse, even as I long to; I want to strike this confession from any public setting, but I am going to resist doing so, because I think it may be a key component of the struggle I have as a writer and I'm sure I'm not unique.)
Do you feel that, as a writer or artist of any kind, you resemble a mystic or seer? Or, do you reject that comparison?
I'm struck by how often something Campbell says has me wanting to jump up and find someone to share the passage with. I also find myself deeply appreciative of Campbell's statements about myth as metaphor, which help me to contextualize religion in a way that works for me.
The passage I wanted to share with you tonight is on page 71, in the chapter titled, "The Journey Inward." The point of discussion in which this takes place has wandered from a discussion of myth and religion to the relationship between myth and folktales.
Anyone writing a creative work knows that you open, you yield yourself, and the book talks to you and builds itself. To a certain extent, you become the carrier of something that is given to you from what have been called the Muses&emdash;or, in biblical language, "God." This is no fancy, it is a fact. Since the inspiration comes from the unconscious, and since the unconscious minds of the people of any single small society have much in common, what the shaman or seer brings forth is something that is waiting to be brought forth in everyone. So when one hears the seer's story, one responds, "Aha! This is my story. This is something that I had always wanted to say but wasn't able to say." There has to be a dialogue, and interaction between the seer and the community. The seer who sees things that people in the community don't want to hear is just ineffective. Sometimes they will wipe him out.
In addition to his opening statement about the place from which creativity springs in any writer (and I think it's fair to think this would apply to any artist), Campbell seems to be suggesting that there is very close connection between the writer/artist and the mystic.
When I think about my own writing process-which is a fitful one, full of days in which no worthwhile writing (or, indeed, any writing, at all) is forthcoming, or days in which every word seems to be dragged painfully from some deep well, yet also sprinkled here and there with times and days when the words just flow onto the page with very little effort or apparent conscious thinking on my part-I wonder how that fits into Campbell's view of creativity. I don't think of myself as a mystic, and I would have to say that I am probably not particularly attuned to the unconscious minds of the vast majority of the people in our society (which is, of course, a large, rather than small, one), but perhaps this is why I struggle so hard.
The preceding paragraph is one in which I'm pretty much thinking out loud. If I'd been willing to get out of bed last night, immediately after reading this passage, to share it with you, I probably would have had something very different to say. Certainly, at that moment, I had a complex, excited reaction to what I'd read. Part of this was the immediate question as I read the first sentence about whether the creative process really is that similar for all writers and artists, or whether some (possibly those who prefer detailed outlines?) would reject this notion.
So, I turn this over to you, my friends.
Do you experience the writing process as something you must open yourself to, as something to which you must yield? (As I wrote that, I realized that there is a part of me that hates yielding to that impulse, even as I long to; I want to strike this confession from any public setting, but I am going to resist doing so, because I think it may be a key component of the struggle I have as a writer and I'm sure I'm not unique.)
Do you feel that, as a writer or artist of any kind, you resemble a mystic or seer? Or, do you reject that comparison?