Writing - developing the art of communication.
Tue, 2005-04-12 10:51
#1
Writing - developing the art of communication.
Do you ever find yourself justifying your urge/need to write?
I am at a stage now where I am feeling the need for something tangible to justify my solitary pursuit, my relationship with the written word. I have moments of guilt about the time I spend scribbling down things that I later discard.
In the bustling world in which we live, telling people you write often meets with a reaction that affects one's self-esteem in a bad way. My self-belief suffers and I wonder about the way in which I am engaging with my world. I make comparisons between myself and those who are blatantly practical and engaged in something so obviously a means to an end - people who command respect for the way their work is very much present in the moment.
I have often realised my position as an observer more than a participant, though I have engaged intensely in some of my pursuits, essentially I'm an introvert looking on - and it's this position to which I consistently return.
Yet I come to a point, now, where I feel I want a voice, and I want it to speak through the written word. Yet still I find it hard to justify the hours of solitariness that writing requires. I don't feel comfortable with people thinking I am disengaged, in an ivory tower, unrealistic, impractical, idealistic and prone to fantasy.
By way of testing myself in this respect I've decided to try out a bit of journalism, and am currently working on two articles, one for a national paper and one for a regional paper. I want to find out if I can give a personal flourish to a short-lived feature or two and whether it's a fulfilling pursuit. I'm interested in seeing if this exercise helps me find my voice and deepen my sense of participation in the world around me. Will working to a house-style and to the essential supply/demand mechanism be a discipline that will enhance my fiction writing?
I wonder how fish and bert will feel about all the words they produce for the blog - to be producing something of such immediacy that so many will read? Does this pursuit help you to sharpen your idea of communication in such a way that will help your fiction writing? I'm realising more and more all the time that knowing your audience is vital to success. To this end you have to be engaged with life unconditionally.
So how do you balance the need for engagement with the solitary hours at the keyboard/with pen and paper?
neil_the_auditor
Emma and Drew are my two favourite writers on the site and have taught me a lot about expressing sexuality in writing. I went on a different path and tried to write about the funny, quirky world of people who indulge in moderate S+M, and I tried to find an alternative kinky website to this one. Well, I did; they loved my stories (most of this stuff is quite predictable even if well-written) and it has a great community feel. But I had to confess it to my wife and daughter, and also that I'd actually - er... let's say researched my subject practically.
As Radiodenver said, I couldn't keep my writing from my life, and didn't feel I'd much integrity if I was pouring things out to people around the world and concealing them from those I love and live with.
fish
dear emma
don't tell anyone you are a writer ... you dont need to justify it ... it's perfectly fine to be disengaged ... in fact it is why a lot of people DO write - so they can be ...
most interactions - even (or mostly) with members of your own family - can be horribly unsatisfying ... with writing you control it ... that's why so many of us writers are actually monstrously egotistical control freaks ...
hahhahaha ...
dont apologise ... celebrate! .... dont compare yourself with others ... just luxuriate ...
x x x
(p.s. am loving writing the blogs ... i dont think many people are reading them but that isnt the point for me ... writing them is ... and particularly being able to say ... shut up i am blogging ...)
drew
emma,
I agree with fish. Writing is something you don't have to justify and don't need to talk about it. The people I go out with don't know that I write, or hardly. People at work know, they ask me what I'm doing on my days off, I say 'writing' and that's about it. I enjoy it although it depresses me that time goes so quickly. I've been up since 530 this moring. Have written 2000 words and won't do any more now. But have nearly finished the novella I'm doing. I've always wanted to write a novella and now I have. Almost. First run through should be finished tomorrow.
I've been thinking about the end almost since the beginning. I don't know how to end it. It's kind of about the holocaust so I don't know if I should give it a happy end. I probably will.
On writing. A couple of weeks ago Gary was on gaydar and saw someone who had put Drew Gummerson down as their favourite writer. He messaged him saying, 'that's my boyfriend', and said to say hi if he saw us out.
Last week we were out and this guy came and spoke to me (22, into group sex and watersports (I know this from his profile)), said how much he loved my book, how everyone had read it, and I was totally speechless. I didn't know what to say. After a few minutes he walked away.
And that's it.
If that's engaged who needs it.
Better keep it a secret.
drew
ps fish, I'm reading the blog.
It does look like a shoe, doesn't it?
It's also a brilliant way to engage in the political process. I couldn't do it, I'd be too angry and there isn't a party that represents my views; all cars banned, renationalisation of all industry, banning of mobile phones, ITV, all supermarkets except the co-op and so on and so on.
fish
there's a person i work with who is ever so nice - but confessed to me last week that they are really really bothered what people think of them ... i think it's quite crippling ...
this is what you have to shed i think if you are a writer ...
from what you write emma it sounds like the approval you seek is somehow outside yourself? ... to get some recognition?
i'm with drew all the way ... i much prefer that attitude to some sort of brash in yer face kind of approach ... if someone is likely to whip out their POD volume at any moment and wave it in your face - that is kind of worrying ...
the literary equivalent of having a friend who suddenly gets into pyramid selling ...
Radiodenver
Emma,
Where you raised a Catholic?
Emma
It's not so much wanting approval or being bothered what people think - I've always been a quiet rebel (!) as you know and always out on a limb...I think I just want to find my voice and start really communicating, let go of my inhibitions and caution and say 'to hell with it!'.
There's nothing more exciting than getting a response from others, and here I don't mean approval, but an entirely different form of engagement, maybe challenging them or moving them emotionally; getting under the skin. This is what I try to do with my more erotic stuff. Sexuality is such a powerful in road into the subconscious/unconscious world. I'm experimenting a bit with dream imagery and symbolism at the moment in a piece.
Time does pass so quickly when you are writing though, and it's such a slow and painstaking process for small results - and I understand how you felt about the man from gaydar, Drew...you want to go deeper with your experience of communicating because you have put your heart and soul into your work.
With the article writing, I'm really experimenting with the possibility of a little subterfuge and manipulation! I want to add sensuality to what may appear to be every day subject matter. Enrich the ordinary with the extraordinary and make it magical for the average person.
Radiodenver
Don't write what everyone else writes Emma. Mainly...because....everyone isn't "everyone." You have a very unique and lovey voice in your writing, but in my opinion, you sterilize it with restraint. Just an opinion, but it's an honest one.
fish
p.s. thanks drew ... i knew it looked like a shoe ... have been making bert squint at the screen from across the kitchen just to prove it ...
as for engaging with the political process ... the more i look into it the more baffling it all becomes ...
drew
"Drew...you want to go deeper with your experience of communicating because you have put your heart and soul into your work. "
No, actually I meant the opposite. I can think of nothing worse than actually talking about it. I meant really that you should keep it apart from your engaged life.
Emma
Ah, yes, I see your point, Drew - yes, you can make yourself very vulnerable if you 'talk' about it in your 'engaged' life and it can dilute things so much (second law of thermodynamics?).
So do writers live double lives then? And have to be able to? I think I know the answer to that. Woolf found it difficult didn't she.
Sometimes I get weary of what is essentially a double life, but then again, I find that each 'life' leaks into the other, sometimes with pleasing results. People can be very engaged by a small comment said in passing in the school playground that is the result of spending some time on creative work. That's satisfying.
Radiodenver
I don't know Emma, sounds to me like you want to keep your writing separate from your life, your own little personal place. That is self defeating if you ask me. If you write, you have to include your life, if you are a writer; you have to incorporate writing into your life. When the two meet up, they have to exist mutually in synchronization to be successful at either. Toss the fear and guilt, let others carry the monkey on their back so to speak. Make the world come to your expectations of who you are and what you do. When you are teaching, do you become a teacher? Do the people around you know this? Do they interact with you knowing what you do. The same holds true for writing, or gardening, you have to take what you do and make it part of who you are.
Questions I ask myself...
a. Do I do Engineering? or b. Am I an Engineer?
Answer....I am an Engineer....
a. Do I write? or b. Am I a writer?
Answer...I am a writer...
I can't do something without being it. I have to merge the two. You can do more than one thing with your life.
Once I’ve merged the thought and understand the truth, I learn to be a better Engineer or a better writer. There’s no turning back at that point, there is a commitment, there is a focus, and the only remaining doubt now becomes the method of making the journey.
emily yaffle
I really don't think that everyone who writes is a writer, and I don't think that everyone who writes poetry is a poet. That's not to say that writing or poetry are wastes of time. But I think unless you have a degree of control over what you're producing, then you're not a writer.
I feel after 5 years of trying to get better that I am now a writer about 25% of the time that I am writing (in that what I'm trying to get out of my head makes the transition to paper without being too clumsy and ugly) and that this figure has gone up enormously in that time. I hope the figure will keep going up, but I'm aware that I can produce ugliness very readily if I don't really work hard at it. I still can't reliably take what is in my head and set it down the way I wanted it, and that's the control that I'm speaking of.
People write for all sorts of reasons, I write because I haven't found another way of shutting the stories up. Whyever you write, Emma, I think you should stop stressing about it and write what makes you feel happy.
Emma
Yes, yes, yes...!
;-)
Emma
Sigh - I feel much better for all your replies. (Did you notice?)
It's sunny too, and B's coming over tonight...'nuff said.
fergal
I concur with that.
I never used to wonder 'am I writer, why do I write?' or any of those things until I came on the course at uea. What happened then was I was surrounded by people wondering whether they were 'a writer' and after a while it did my head in a little.
The thing is, I write, I enjoy writing - if I don't feel like writing I don't for sometimes months and only do it if I feel like it, or feel like I have to.
If I had to start justifying things to myself it would be terrible. It would squeeze all the fun out of it.
In the past I have found I was questioned quite strongly by my family - who all grew up in a different area of the country with different beliefs, interests than me. I learned to let them do the bothering - I will never convince them that being a 28 year old divorcee yet to be a mother who quit a good job on a magazine to go to do an MA in Creative Writing was a good thing, but then, why should they think it is a good thing? They are welcome to think it isn't good, just as I am welcome to do it and think it is. You will never get all the people to be impressed/understand all your choices all the time. As long as you understand them, I wouldn't worry.
You know what.... don't think so much.... at least not about this.
Enjoy yourself, eh?
drew
I've never thought I was a writer, only that I write.
When I told my dad I was writing a book he was very pleased and would ask me about it constantly. For him it was confusing why anybody would want a mortgage or to go to work every day.
He preferred to sit in the sun and drink brandy, write poetry, and talk about women a lot.
I guess it's what your brought up to expect.
fergal
I prefer to sit in the sun and drink brandy, write poetry and talk about women a lot.
well, sort of.
fergal
I like to keep my writing separate from my life, but you can't always.
I once told someone I'd had a bit of a thing with that I come on here. He came on and found a poem that I guess he thought I'd written about him, which he quoted to me in the middle of the pub under his breath.
It freaked me out. Even though I'm hardly one for secrecy and suspence.
I don't base characters on people I know exactly, I just sort of pick bits and pieces from all over the place. If I had to think about it too much I might lose my will to do it.
Emma
There are some interesting thoughts coming up on this thread, and that has gone some way towards redeeming what was essentially a self-indulgent post of mine - I'm going to shut up about it now and just get on with writing. Aaaaargh!
fish
i like the sound of your dad, drew ... i'd like to be him when i grow up ...