Creative Writing Corner

What's Your Summer Plan?

The end of May has arrived, which for me has always signified the unofficial beginning of summer. There's an entirely different mindset that comes with June: I feel an eager anticipation (I happen to have a June birthday, which helps) and also a feeling of liberation and release. The academic and work obligations of the spring have ended and it's time to change gears.

Of course, the problem with that mentality is that it can quickly lead to extreme laziness and a lack of productivity and gumption as the months wear on. The structure and deadlines of the academic year keep me focused and producing creative work; without that structure, it's very easy to let the whole summer slip by without any real writing getting done. This summer I'm determined not to let that happen. But that begs the question: how do we keep our summers as busy as we want them to be?

Pick Clear Goals

The first step toward making the most of your summer is being very clear about what you want to accomplish. If you have only a vague idea ("gee, it would be great if I could write a lot"), you'll probably end up disappointed by whatever you end up doing. Use goals to give your days direction. So this week and the next are a great time to sit down and make a list of what you want to get done. Some of my writing goals for this summer are to write at least two stories, rewrite one draft, and edit to completion a few more. It's daunting when I say it out loud, but it can be done, and so can your self-appointed tasks.

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The Need for Peace and Passion in Your Writing

  Strong writing takes a fine balance
of peace and passion.

"Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility" - William Wordsworth

When you're reading and listening to people about how to write, you'll notice how much of a fuss is made over the importance of passion in your writing. Writing without passion, you'll hear, is dead, dull, and uninteresting; it is artless. It does not have the spark of life. All of these things are true, but not enough attention is drawn to the need for peace as well as passion in your creative work.

As William Wordsworth wrote in the above quotation, which was part of a preface to his collection Lyrical Ballads, poetry with passion is only half of the equation. Poetry written immediately after an extreme emotion of observation is unchecked, wild, and undisciplined. It may contain your strongest language, but not your best language. The second part of the equation is the tempering effect of contemplation. Here, I want to write about these two parts of just about any artistic discipline, and how to incorporate both of them in your own writing.

PASSION

Teachers are right when they emphasize the need for genuine feeling in writing. For a piece of fiction or poetry to be moving and memorable, it must contain something of the way you really feel about it. A death is not tragic without the writer's experience of tragedy; a love affair isn't magnetic without the feeling of lust or infatuation or rapture that a writer can imagine and fill the writing with. The experiences or observations of our lives are the key to bringing passion to writing. You don't have to be limited by what you've experienced, but rather bring what you have felt to newly imagined scenes. Maybe a character in your story is to be murdered. You may not know what it feels like to have a friend killed. But you may have experienced the death of a loved one, and you can make the emotion of this experience apply.

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Sorry for the Delay!

Apologies for the sparse posting this week, readers; I'm in the process of both moving to a new apartment in NYC for the fall, and relocating to Boston. At the same time, there are some things going on in my family that are needing my attention. Not to worry, though; Writerly Life is soon to be back on schedule. And I'd like to keep you posted about new things that are happening on the blog.

First, Writerly Life is now on Facebook! A new page is up; if you enjoy reading the site, be sure to check it out and become a fan. We've already gotten a ton of fans, so if you'd like updates in your facebook home page, make sure you click the "like" button there.

Second, Writerly Life continues to grow. If you're a reader through my Yahoo or an RSS reader, be sure to change your bookmarks. The new feed can be found here. Update your RSS reader to stay updated! Soon the old address for blairhurley.com will no longer be updated.

Third, there are still other ways to follow Writerly Life. You can receive email updates, or you can check out the Twitter page.

Writerly Life has a ton of new content getting ready to go. Next week you can expect to see more reader comment responses; posts about peace and passion in your creative life; discussions of religious writing; and more. Keep visiting and adding to our discussion about the creative writing life!

Writerly Life is On Facebook!

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Become a fan of Writerly Life.

One of the reasons I originally started Writerly Life was to create a community of writers that could share their thoughts and ideas about writing and the literary life. Now that Writerly Life has its brand-new design and is ready for action, I've created a page for it on Facebook. If you enjoy reading and commenting on the site, be sure to check out the new page, post your thoughts, and be a fan! Spread the word about Writerly Life so our discussions can grow.

Get Inspired by Other Media

One of the wonderful things about art is how it can be informed and inspired by just about any other art form. Great pieces of writing exist about paintings or pieces of music, but you don't have to stop there. No matter what your subject matter is, I believe your story can benefit from being steeped in the experience of another art form. I'm inspired to write on a daily basis by watching good movies, listening to music, or even admiring cleverly composed advertisements. I'd like to share a few very strange, very different bits and pieces of art I've been inspired or charmed by around the web.

Mr. W.

First I want to share this fantastic video with you. It's a commercial, true, but I won't spoil for what. It's a remarkable personification of something we often take for granted, but it makes us look at a certain force in our lives in a completely new way. You can sneer at the fact that it's a commercial all you want; I admire things that make me look at the world in a fresh light, no matter what form they come in.

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Stand Up For Your Writing!

The workshop environment can be rough. Having to regularly put your heart on the page and then smile and nod while students and teachers rigorously dismantle and criticize your work is emotionally exhausting. While it's important to be receptive to suggestions, I also think there can come a time when you have to stand up for your writing and for the choice you've made to be a writer. There are two particular situations I want to talk about today, and give a few tips on how to deal with difficult situations.

1. The workshop hyena

Sometimes an entire workshop will seem to respond negatively to a story in a personal way. Something about the subject matter or the way a story has been written can inspire a great deal of scorn and ire. The leaders of the workshop make a few cutting attacks. In this metaphor, you could consider them as lions attacking prey. There's often at least one student is more aggressive or contemptuous in his or her remarks, and this sets the tone for others to follow. Pretty soon students who would have normally found things to like in the piece begin to gang up on it, finding more and more negative comments to make. They're like hyenas sometimes, scavengers, leaping into the fray once they've seen someone else take the lead.

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Mailbag: Ask Yourself Why You Write

This week I'm responding to reader's comments about a post I wrote entitled Ask Yourself Why You Write. In that post, I described how my professor often started workshop discussions by asking questions about why we were reading that story and whether it could be counted as anyone's favorite story of all time. That was one of the reasons I write, I'm sure; sometimes I feel very distinctly that I'm writing a story, trying to make it someone's favorite story. Readers also shared their feelings about why they write. Pedritter said:

On many ocassions there is no clear goal, at first. You write sentence after sentence until a first draft is finished. And then, once the draft is not that hot, you read it again to discover the hidden goal. Once you have grasped the goal you were after, it is the moment to rewrite it again to make it as explicit as possible. However this is not my idea but Stephen king's

Thanks for sharing this, Pedritter. I think this is a really great point (so thank you, also, to Stephen King). This makes very clear how you can write the first draft with nothing but a sense of urgency, and try to find the meaning and purpose afterward. Don't write with the answer in mind; write with the question that needs to be answered.

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Teaching a Creative Writing Class

  How do you teach your students everything you want to?

I’m very excited to report that as part of my grad school program, I’ll be teaching an intro creative writing class to undergraduates this coming fall. While it seems very far off, a draft of my syllabus is already due at the end of the month, and I’ve been panicking a little. I’ve been given complete control over what to teach and what to have my students read, and it leaves me wondering what theory I should put to use behind structuring my class. I’ve read so many wonderful short stories over the years, taken so many craft classes and workshops, and I’m finding it very difficult to narrow it down.

I’m feeling almost overwhelmed with questions. Should I alternate fiction with poetry (I must teach both) or have half of the semester be fiction then poetry? Should I lump all of an author’s stories together in one week, or split them up depending on what theme I want to teach that day? How will I find time to workshop everyone’s work? I’ve been feverishly poring over my bookshelf this past weekend, picking and choosing. Because this is an intro creative writing class, I want to give my students a firm background in the classics, so I’m beginning with some Chekhov, Poe, and Hemingway. But I want them to begin to see the magic of contemporary fiction, so I’m filling the syllabus with Lorrie Moore, John Updike and Larry Brown as well. (If you haven’t heard of Larry Brown, his story collection Big Bad Love is on my five star list).

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Allow Moments of Silence in Your Creative Life

When was the last time you sat down and appreciated a moment of silence in your day? Unless a tragic event has occurred, these moments of silence are relatively rare in our days, but they’re immeasurably important for gaining a sense of perspective, focus, and serenity. I’m not just talking about for your spiritual or mental health, either — silence, I believe, is a necessary ingredient of your creative life, and one that’s too often neglected.

The convenience of portable music players these days has made them ubiquitous. While thirty years prior, people traveling or working or walking would be forced to listen to the noise around them, today people can shut the world out on a regular basis by putting in a pair of earbuds. Listening to music on the go is great for entertainment and for passing the time, but there’s a reason why I choose not to listen to music for my daily commute on the train. If I did, I would feel strangely disconnected from the world around me, uncurious about the people I’m sitting next to, unable to imagine their lives, all because of the distraction of music. Sometimes just listening is needed.

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Mailbag: Writing Self-Help, Drugs of Choice

This week I'm responding to reader's comments about a post I wrote entitled Ask Yourself Why You Write. In that post, I described how my professor often started workshop discussions by asking questions about why we were reading that story and whether it could be counted as anyone's favorite story of all time. That was one of the reasons I write, I'm sure; sometimes I feel very distinctly that I'm writing a story, trying to make it someone's favorite story. Readers also shared their feelings about why they write. Pedritter said:

On many ocassions there is no clear goal, at first. You write sentence after sentence until a first draft is finished. And then, once the draft is not that hot, you read it again to discover the hidden goal. Once you have grasped the goal you were after, it is the moment to rewrite it again to make it as explicit as possible. However this is not my idea but Stephen king's

Thanks for sharing this, Pedritter. I think this is a really great point (so thank you, also, to Stephen King). This makes very clear how you can write the first draft with nothing but a sense of urgency, and try to find the meaning and purpose afterward. Don't write with the answer in mind; write with the question that needs to be answered.

continued at writerly life...