My view on writing
This post may end up not having a lot of organizational sense because, though I try my best, sometimes my thoughts get the best of me. And I do not have a particular philosophy on writing that can be given a name. Generally though, my view is that writing is supposed to be FUN and that while I like to keep my audience interested, ultimately I'm writing for myself - because writing is what keeps me alive.
There is a tl;dr version at the end in case anyone actually reads this and goes "TEXT ;__;"
You are welcome.
This post was inspired by last Monday's creative writing class. I was workshopping (professor's term - I e-mailed my piece to all the other students and they reviewed it) a piece I'd written the week before. This isn't a rant on how I'm awesome and anyone who says anything critical about my writing is just jealous/doesn't understand the "writing process" etc etc. It's mostly a short piece on perspective, the dreaded revision process (at least it's a little dreaded for me) and what matters the most about writing to me.
Back to the class. Two students workshop each week and it was my turn and a guy's turn this time. I don't name names for privacy reasons, but the gender is important here because the assignment was about taking risks. And I can say the two of us had very different ideas of what "taking risks" meant, though I believe personally that they're both right.
My interpretation of the assignment was rather literal, focused on the characters. In a "taking risks" assignment, I'd assumed it was the characters within the work supposed to take the risk. In fact, I didn't really understand at first how one could take the way our book worded it differently. The second student took this assignment more as the author is taking a risk. To put this into perspective: I, a white woman, wrote about a male character who is pushed into getting over his fear of heights; he, a white man, wrote a piece about an African American woman who is explaining issues of race to another character.
At first I didn't really understand his piece. He included a quote at the beginning of the short story. Without that and numerous references to white and black colored people, I wrote that I doubt I would've understood what he was trying to do with his piece. And while that took away from my understanding of the piece, I liked the character voice and there was definitely a strength to his dialogue - about the way the old woman had dealt with race in her life. He avoided outright mentioning racial issues, the things that everyone ends up learning in school, and that also was a strong point of his story. It added weight that the mentioning of things the audience already had an idea of might have taken away.
It was not, in fact, until our class discussion that I came to a better understanding of his interpretation of the assignment. In the end, the only problem I could find was that the characters didn't really do anything. He gave them no action, nothing that would place the sprawling conversation the old woman and girl had firmly in reality - in regards to my professor's favorite phrase "Perception triggers reflection." So I learned a thing about perspective and also that when I feel like I've totally misread the assignment, unless I actually haven't read it over very well it's likely I simply have a different view on what it says. I very rarely do a homework assignment out of total left field, mind.
My piece on the other hand can probably best be described as incomplete. Things I figured out I need to work on in it: setting and detail. Which brings me to my second topic, audience. I sort of despise audience a little. I want to write what I want to write and considering all these other random details (like time, place, age, looks, any other random little thing that I am told I "must" include in my writing so that the reader will get where I'm coming from) will often, if not completely, take any interest of writing straight out of me. Every time.
One moment break here to describe what exactly I want out writing. My life has been, at best, chaotic emotionally and perhaps mentally. All of that is rather personal and also not really relevant to the point here except to indicate what state I started writing in. Writing has become to me one of the very few things I enjoy that doesn't come with mixed feelings. Despite the fact I've not had the best state of mind for years, I've managed to become mostly level minded over the years, especially lately since I've seemingly gained some control over who/what things affect my life. And therefore, I do actually encourage review of my work by other people - when I get over that usual feeling of "Everything I write is crap!" that is. But I have limits. I have no real aspirations of getting published though that isn't to say I wouldn't consider the idea down the line. I write because it fulfills something in me nothing else has managed to do. I write for me.
Now in last Monday's class I was told the other students were confused about my piece. They were confused because they didn't understand what was going on at first (though one student said something about revealing the story in a backwards fashion, which is an interesting concept) and thought that I should reword my first two paragraphs. For reference, the first two paragraphs were written in the character's mind so the world was viewed through his perceptions. Even though I did not really reveal much of a setting throughout the piece, the bits I did have were placed a little past the first two paragraphs. Setting, apparently, is my arch-nemesis.
I'm not even sure why I have problems with setting. It is not the first thing my mind goes to, maybe. And because I think too much (guilty as charged) I get distracted by other thoughts and never really come back to the idea my readers might like to know where my characters are. I have ideas as to why the where, the physical outside, does not occur to me before the internal inside but that's just the analyzer in me. It's not important right now. Anyway, this is what peer review has taught me - I need to remember setting. Here's what peer review has failed to teach me - I don't see a point in introducing setting within the first paragraph, though early, yes. I'm no expert in short story writing and I actually don't really like short stories to begin with, but setting is never really the most important thing I notice when I read a story. Conflict, characters (maybe specific things if I do notice setting, like country names or an often named store or something) theme I pay attention to. Maybe this is due to the fact I'm rather directionless in real life. I need personal GPS at times.
But anyway. That night I ended up rewriting my piece. And I mentioned things about setting - place, season, that sort of thing - and did some research so certain details match up. Research. Another issue. I don't hate research. When I'm writing a piece and I come across a subject that I don't know much about, but would fit within the story, I like to go research it. I have a paranoia about messing up details about certain things. And maybe I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Perhaps.
That night I did a little research that I feel helped strengthen the piece over all. And applying a bit of setting did make the story a little more rooted on a foundation. It did. Also not writing "They were in the woods" in the first paragraph did not seem to detract from the story. I made sure my setting was mentioned early enough. It is not, nor will it likely ever be, the first thing I establish though I will try and make it one of the first few. And I don't disagree with people who think setting is everything. I just differ. That's about all. What I do like to introduce first is a sense of a character. Overall I see character as the most important part of any story. The plot and the conflict, yeah sure, but I don't resonate with those impersonal things like I do with actual people/spirits/animals etc etc. Just a quirk of mine I guess.
That said, peer review has also taught me to work character relations. It's silly, but sometimes it seems that I don't connect all of my characters well. During my rewrite, working on Sebastian's character really brought out the sort of cruel streak he has, which was absolutely missing from the first version. So I do appreciate peer review for things like that.
Where my limit comes in is when people start going "Well, it's good and all, but here, what I would've done..." This phrase never really got on my nerves at first. And I do consider, well, maybe the different perspective would work better than what I'm thinking. However, when I have characters I have a feel for - characters that have backstory, set personality, prejudices and flaws - "This is what I would've done" said in that way that really means "You should change this to fit with my idea of reality" starts to irritate me right off.
This, and a fact that I am endlessly confused by are two things I feel listening to peer review may actually detract from my writing. For some reason (and it isn't all people, indicating a problem with me, but this particular teacher) some people get confused who is talking in my writing. I don't always go "blah blah blah" said Vincent. Sometimes I go "blah blah blah" and then Vincent walked to the other side. Maybe I'm missing something, but that "and then" there implies to me that the named character said "blah blah blah" and then moved to the side. The point is, the other student who was workshopped had no tags at all for large pieces of dialogue and this issue did not come up for him. I did write a note on his paper about being confused about who was speaking, especially since characters spoke more than once. Still, even if my way of tagging is vague, it's not like I've made it up. I've seen books that tag speech this way and I've been able to follow them perfectly fine. Also, adding purple prose to my speech tags doesn't interest me anymore (since I've seen it actually clumps the text and doesn't assist as much as I thought) except sparingly, but using the word said over and over sucks the life out of dialogue to me. So sometimes I drop it and use other clues instead. I will try to be more clear with who is saying what, I suppose.
Finally, this leads to what I actually feel about writing, what I want from it. My professor said my piece had "potential". I suppose that that potential is what I want out of writing. While I live my life I often get intense emotions trapped within my head, unable to escape. I am not very extroverted and yes, I am wary about other people. So when I get these emotions in my head my hands get the itch to write. I see the potential in my writing as a form of catharsis. And since I also read a lot, sometimes I get ideas. So when I write for catharsis, the rants and the poems turn into stories. And I'm perfectly happy with this arrangement, thanks. I include ideas and themes, perhaps a moral statement or two, but I am not one of the believers in a story must have a reason to exist, must teach. If the reader somehow learns/is comforted/starts questioning something or another for a good reason, because of my story - that's great. I will literally be in awe and adore this person who thinks what I wrote had that much meaning. But my stories have meaning to me first. Perhaps I am selfish. That is also okay with me.
Tl;dr version
I gained new perspective on writing in a creative writing class, peer review has caused me to find some of my flaws but also recognize when my way of writing is simply my way of writing, and in the end, I write because I want to write.
There is a tl;dr version at the end in case anyone actually reads this and goes "TEXT ;__;"
You are welcome.
This post was inspired by last Monday's creative writing class. I was workshopping (professor's term - I e-mailed my piece to all the other students and they reviewed it) a piece I'd written the week before. This isn't a rant on how I'm awesome and anyone who says anything critical about my writing is just jealous/doesn't understand the "writing process" etc etc. It's mostly a short piece on perspective, the dreaded revision process (at least it's a little dreaded for me) and what matters the most about writing to me.
Back to the class. Two students workshop each week and it was my turn and a guy's turn this time. I don't name names for privacy reasons, but the gender is important here because the assignment was about taking risks. And I can say the two of us had very different ideas of what "taking risks" meant, though I believe personally that they're both right.
My interpretation of the assignment was rather literal, focused on the characters. In a "taking risks" assignment, I'd assumed it was the characters within the work supposed to take the risk. In fact, I didn't really understand at first how one could take the way our book worded it differently. The second student took this assignment more as the author is taking a risk. To put this into perspective: I, a white woman, wrote about a male character who is pushed into getting over his fear of heights; he, a white man, wrote a piece about an African American woman who is explaining issues of race to another character.
At first I didn't really understand his piece. He included a quote at the beginning of the short story. Without that and numerous references to white and black colored people, I wrote that I doubt I would've understood what he was trying to do with his piece. And while that took away from my understanding of the piece, I liked the character voice and there was definitely a strength to his dialogue - about the way the old woman had dealt with race in her life. He avoided outright mentioning racial issues, the things that everyone ends up learning in school, and that also was a strong point of his story. It added weight that the mentioning of things the audience already had an idea of might have taken away.
It was not, in fact, until our class discussion that I came to a better understanding of his interpretation of the assignment. In the end, the only problem I could find was that the characters didn't really do anything. He gave them no action, nothing that would place the sprawling conversation the old woman and girl had firmly in reality - in regards to my professor's favorite phrase "Perception triggers reflection." So I learned a thing about perspective and also that when I feel like I've totally misread the assignment, unless I actually haven't read it over very well it's likely I simply have a different view on what it says. I very rarely do a homework assignment out of total left field, mind.
My piece on the other hand can probably best be described as incomplete. Things I figured out I need to work on in it: setting and detail. Which brings me to my second topic, audience. I sort of despise audience a little. I want to write what I want to write and considering all these other random details (like time, place, age, looks, any other random little thing that I am told I "must" include in my writing so that the reader will get where I'm coming from) will often, if not completely, take any interest of writing straight out of me. Every time.
One moment break here to describe what exactly I want out writing. My life has been, at best, chaotic emotionally and perhaps mentally. All of that is rather personal and also not really relevant to the point here except to indicate what state I started writing in. Writing has become to me one of the very few things I enjoy that doesn't come with mixed feelings. Despite the fact I've not had the best state of mind for years, I've managed to become mostly level minded over the years, especially lately since I've seemingly gained some control over who/what things affect my life. And therefore, I do actually encourage review of my work by other people - when I get over that usual feeling of "Everything I write is crap!" that is. But I have limits. I have no real aspirations of getting published though that isn't to say I wouldn't consider the idea down the line. I write because it fulfills something in me nothing else has managed to do. I write for me.
Now in last Monday's class I was told the other students were confused about my piece. They were confused because they didn't understand what was going on at first (though one student said something about revealing the story in a backwards fashion, which is an interesting concept) and thought that I should reword my first two paragraphs. For reference, the first two paragraphs were written in the character's mind so the world was viewed through his perceptions. Even though I did not really reveal much of a setting throughout the piece, the bits I did have were placed a little past the first two paragraphs. Setting, apparently, is my arch-nemesis.
I'm not even sure why I have problems with setting. It is not the first thing my mind goes to, maybe. And because I think too much (guilty as charged) I get distracted by other thoughts and never really come back to the idea my readers might like to know where my characters are. I have ideas as to why the where, the physical outside, does not occur to me before the internal inside but that's just the analyzer in me. It's not important right now. Anyway, this is what peer review has taught me - I need to remember setting. Here's what peer review has failed to teach me - I don't see a point in introducing setting within the first paragraph, though early, yes. I'm no expert in short story writing and I actually don't really like short stories to begin with, but setting is never really the most important thing I notice when I read a story. Conflict, characters (maybe specific things if I do notice setting, like country names or an often named store or something) theme I pay attention to. Maybe this is due to the fact I'm rather directionless in real life. I need personal GPS at times.
But anyway. That night I ended up rewriting my piece. And I mentioned things about setting - place, season, that sort of thing - and did some research so certain details match up. Research. Another issue. I don't hate research. When I'm writing a piece and I come across a subject that I don't know much about, but would fit within the story, I like to go research it. I have a paranoia about messing up details about certain things. And maybe I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Perhaps.
That night I did a little research that I feel helped strengthen the piece over all. And applying a bit of setting did make the story a little more rooted on a foundation. It did. Also not writing "They were in the woods" in the first paragraph did not seem to detract from the story. I made sure my setting was mentioned early enough. It is not, nor will it likely ever be, the first thing I establish though I will try and make it one of the first few. And I don't disagree with people who think setting is everything. I just differ. That's about all. What I do like to introduce first is a sense of a character. Overall I see character as the most important part of any story. The plot and the conflict, yeah sure, but I don't resonate with those impersonal things like I do with actual people/spirits/animals etc etc. Just a quirk of mine I guess.
That said, peer review has also taught me to work character relations. It's silly, but sometimes it seems that I don't connect all of my characters well. During my rewrite, working on Sebastian's character really brought out the sort of cruel streak he has, which was absolutely missing from the first version. So I do appreciate peer review for things like that.
Where my limit comes in is when people start going "Well, it's good and all, but here, what I would've done..." This phrase never really got on my nerves at first. And I do consider, well, maybe the different perspective would work better than what I'm thinking. However, when I have characters I have a feel for - characters that have backstory, set personality, prejudices and flaws - "This is what I would've done" said in that way that really means "You should change this to fit with my idea of reality" starts to irritate me right off.
This, and a fact that I am endlessly confused by are two things I feel listening to peer review may actually detract from my writing. For some reason (and it isn't all people, indicating a problem with me, but this particular teacher) some people get confused who is talking in my writing. I don't always go "blah blah blah" said Vincent. Sometimes I go "blah blah blah" and then Vincent walked to the other side. Maybe I'm missing something, but that "and then" there implies to me that the named character said "blah blah blah" and then moved to the side. The point is, the other student who was workshopped had no tags at all for large pieces of dialogue and this issue did not come up for him. I did write a note on his paper about being confused about who was speaking, especially since characters spoke more than once. Still, even if my way of tagging is vague, it's not like I've made it up. I've seen books that tag speech this way and I've been able to follow them perfectly fine. Also, adding purple prose to my speech tags doesn't interest me anymore (since I've seen it actually clumps the text and doesn't assist as much as I thought) except sparingly, but using the word said over and over sucks the life out of dialogue to me. So sometimes I drop it and use other clues instead. I will try to be more clear with who is saying what, I suppose.
Finally, this leads to what I actually feel about writing, what I want from it. My professor said my piece had "potential". I suppose that that potential is what I want out of writing. While I live my life I often get intense emotions trapped within my head, unable to escape. I am not very extroverted and yes, I am wary about other people. So when I get these emotions in my head my hands get the itch to write. I see the potential in my writing as a form of catharsis. And since I also read a lot, sometimes I get ideas. So when I write for catharsis, the rants and the poems turn into stories. And I'm perfectly happy with this arrangement, thanks. I include ideas and themes, perhaps a moral statement or two, but I am not one of the believers in a story must have a reason to exist, must teach. If the reader somehow learns/is comforted/starts questioning something or another for a good reason, because of my story - that's great. I will literally be in awe and adore this person who thinks what I wrote had that much meaning. But my stories have meaning to me first. Perhaps I am selfish. That is also okay with me.
Tl;dr version
I gained new perspective on writing in a creative writing class, peer review has caused me to find some of my flaws but also recognize when my way of writing is simply my way of writing, and in the end, I write because I want to write.