What is Childhood?

Many of my students claim that when they were children they aspired to write but got sidetracked along the way with dalliances which were enjoyable but ultimately distracted them.

I point out that our public education system does not encourage creativity, and unless we had the privilege of going to a Montessori school or private school where there was a mission to ignite passion and inspire self-motivation, a child’s dreams will vanish from lack of support.

So what is childhood? Our early childhood psychological development is a time of endless possibilities, wistfulness, and the least tangible, but the most powerful, influence in a person’s life.

As adults, my students have gotten serious about writing and are taking a class and fall in love with it.  They tell me, it feels natural, fulfilling and like something they are meant to do. The creative process is magical. Only thing is— they write in class and soon stop afterwards.

One reason is the lack of support.  I understand it’s a challenge to keep writing when no one shows interest or you join a writer’s group and you get strung along for awhile (when others ask you to write more so they come to know your voice) and you encounter criticism and eventually feel rejected for one reason or another.  Others may claim they don’t think you’ll have an audience for your book. That it’s been done before.

And each rejection feels like a slap in the face and you go through a momentary dark phase where you think that your dreams have come to an end.

But I ask you—should you place your power in the hands of other people? Isn’t that what childhood is about? When there aren’t many alternatives.

Why let others determine your fate? Whose life is it, after all? Take control!  

Most readers are able to look past the imperfections and embrace the heart of a story —the one you long to convey— provided that the writing is good and has passion.

If you are faced with rejection in your writing life it’s natural to feel the initial bruise. Go ahead, you can temporarily mope.  But never let anyone else hold the power to your life. If you believe you can do something, then you can do it. And if you have drive, a positive attitude and come from a place of love and sharing, you will succeed.

How has your childhood shaped you? And what is your experience with rejection?

How to Become a Writer

The past is gone. We've all heard this. Here’s one way to use it for the written word.

I’m often asked about how to become a writer and coming up with ideas to which I respond that a rich imagination is fueled by nurturing the subconscious.  However, our psyches or what Jungians call the shadow self can be a place of darkness, hence that area— akin to wisdom—is a double-edged sword. Personally I live for that journey but if you’re uncomfortable with the excavation there is an alternative. We all have stored memories that reside in our conscious mind.  

Have you ever had one of those encounters in which someone says something and you are rendered speechless? After the dust settles and you’ve parted ways, you come up with half a dozen appropriate or not so appropriate responses.

You can hit replay that leads to no avail or toss it away as hindsight but in writing, we have an opportunity to relive confrontations, conversations, interactions, and situations—and even change outcomes. Through the magic of fiction, we have the opportunity to do what we wish we had done and say what we wanted.

Adding a new twist to an actual life experience doesn’t mean creating a happily ever after tale that concludes with perfection. Just as we become who we are by being tested in life, our characters should come against adversity too.  Strong stories require growth, conflict and change.

As a writer, you have the power to pen a happy ending, but an unexpected yet satisfying conclusion will pleasantly surprise readers, and not leave them disappointed by a predictable outcome. Or perhaps a rewritten version of your truth won’t end on a cheerful note, just a different one.

What do you think of this psychological approach? How would you rewrite one of your experiences?

What is Creative Writing

I’m often asked in the beginning of a class what is creative writing? It is most widely understood to be writing that comes from the imagination, writing that is not true.  Creative writing is thought to be the art of making things up, in the most attractive, apt and convincing way possible. Many believe it’s the telling of lies in order to reveal illuminating and dark truths about the world and our place in it. Because of these beliefs, I’ve had students enroll for my class with expectations of writing music, a screenplay or poetry.

It’s never failed—I have one poet in every one of my classes. I enjoy them.  I too began my writing with poetry and have great appreciation for poets that I read today. On occasion these students have been disappointed when they discover creative writing involves structure.  

Others who hold the reins tight in their writing can’t seem to get comfortable with not writing about the factual and logical progression to their story ideas.  Although they can churn events into wordy flat passages, they don’t express their feelings and can’t open themselves up to less expository writing.  

They have a hard time understanding when I say, creative writing doesn’t tell, it shows.

Some creative writing remains fiction and makes no actual claim to the facts.

What we do know about creative writing is that it is partly inspired by real events or based on people or things we are all familiar with.  Real life scenarios and real people can sometimes directly or indirectly make a creative subject.  “Write about what you know” is the writer’s maxim that has long fallen into a crashing cliché - but it‘s a cliché for a good reason. Many writers do precisely that and thus it becomes Creative Non-Fiction. 

What puts the Creative into Non-Fiction has a great deal more to do with how a subject is treated rather than the nature of the subject itself. The personal involvement of the narrator with its subject or subject matter is common, and events are not recounted in the same way which we tend to associate with factual or informative writing. 

But the chief hallmark of Creative Non-Fiction is a higher, more stylized technique, closer to that of the novel, transcending the boundaries of convention, execution and approach and this immediately distinguishes it from other types of writing.

Satisfying Social Drama

It’s no secret…the year 2012 for films I saw and books I read were unmemorable. For more on my book reviews go to Goodreads. However I did find stories that were intelligent on a medium that I have made a point to veer from… until now and that is PBS and cable television. The writing and the casting of Downton Abbey http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/downtonabbey/ is sharply etched.  It’s gorgeously shot with beautiful art-direction and the fascination doesn’t stop there— its writing and acting is brilliant. 

Certain tender scenes play in my head long after I turn off the set.  Last Sunday in tears I watched another royal wedding.  And I love weddings.  But the character I adore most is the brazen matriarch Maggie Smith who plays Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham.  She is multifaceted and flawed— the strongest and most outspoken of the bunch.  Lady Violet advise is far from politically current by today's standards and she is a bit rough around the edges.  She says it like it is and doesn't let her age or gender prevent her from getting things done. But the best part about her is her wit and impeccable delivery of dialogue. It’s so good, I watch pen in hand thinking to myself— I wish I would have written and said that! 

Naturally you would have had to have seen the show to understand its context. But for a lesson in dialogue, here are some of her finest quotes. 

1. “No Englishman would dream of dying in someone else's house . . . especially somebody they didn't even know."

2. "One way or another, everyone goes down the aisle with half the story hidden."

3. Cora Crawley: "Are we to be friends then?"

Lady Violet: "We are allies, which can be a good deal more effective."

4. "Well, give him a date for when Mary's out of mourning. No one wants to kiss a girl in black."

5. Mrs. Crawley: "I'll take that as a compliment."

Lady Violet: "Oh, I must have said it wrong."

6. "Your quarrel is with my daughter, Rosamund, and not with me. So put that in your pipe and smoke it."

7. "I'm a woman, Mary. I can be as contrary as I choose."

8. Cora Crawley: "I hate to go behind Robert's back."

Lady Violet: "That is a scruple no successful wife can afford."

9. "Don't be defeatist, dear. It's very middle class."

10. “Oh really! It's like living in a second-rate hotel, where the guests keep arriving and no one seems to leave."

Have you watched the show? What character do you like most? 

Promises Promises

“I can’t pretend that what I think is wrong can be made right.” That’s not an original line but taken from the song, Promises, Promises.  Still it describes precisely how I feel about the books I read in 2012, a thumbs down. I was asked to get back to you on the books I bought in October and I’ve added one that I received as a Xmas present. So now for the drum roll…  

Rules of Civility has a promising title, a glowing cover and being enthralled by the 1930’s I expected to be swept off my feet by a novel about the young and reckless in New York.  The major problem I had was this—its main character and narrator, Katey Kontent, is supposed to be from Brooklyn, of a blue collar family. Her voice, on the other hand, is that of a young man from outside New York, a Midwesterner—dull but well-read. There is no real woman whatsoever in Katey. It turns out to be her wild and wacky friend Eve who is from the Midwest. 

Eve, for reasons unknown, ignores her parents or treats them abominably; runs away from friends and lovers; drinks too much; passes out almost dead on a regular basis; and is rude and generally unlikable. She is in a terrible car accident early on in the book, but she was rude and unlikable before that. Then there is Tinker, who appears to be a blue blood, but is not, though he might have been. There is some sort of triangle among the three, though you never get any idea why they like each other. Is it Chemistry? They keep running away, but always happening upon each other again.  And speaking of chance encounters —Katey Kontent never meets anyone of any significance whom she does not bump into again at a crucial moment.  Very trite indeed. You would think New York were a village.

Many pages are filled with detailed descriptions of activities not essential to building plot or character, like building paper airplanes or shooting different types of guns. But lots of pages are filled. Also, everyone in the book drops quotes from famous authors with alarming frequency. And everyone has a hidden talent! Singing, playing an instrument, building those very elaborate paper airplanes—it must be difficult for an author to write about a time period with which he has had no real experience, and though there are some nice physical descriptions of the city in Rules of Civility, the book overall feels contrived. 

As one of the very few who have not read J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books I thought I’d be an unbiased reading candidate for The Casual Vacancy. I was quickly drawn into the story and the characters have traits of those that we can identify with—they feel like people we know.  It’s a disturbing character study.  There are no traditional protagonists or antagonists, just people going through life. Rowling explores the various ways that people become cruel, angry, or jaded with each main character showing a different form of cruelty and a different reason for it. How we get hurt by others pain and anger. How we can take pleasure tormenting each other, how many of us become so wrapped up in our own little dramas that we become blind to others suffering, or choose to look away; how we prey upon those weaker than ourselves, and how when we do nothing the consequences can be devastating.

This isn't an easy book to read, but it is a well written descriptive book, just not for everyone.  Some of the issues in this book may be considered depressing and won’t appeal to everyone’s humor. It’s dry British humor, combining comedy with social commentary that you’ll either love or hate. 

I expected so much more from a book that was five years in the making. I did not feel this book measured up to that expectation. J.K. Rowling previously said that she would not want to talk to anyone who did not cry at the end of this book. I’m sorry to disappoint her, but not a single tear did I shed. Instead, I pondered over the human race and pessimism—the darker view on life and felt vacant. 

Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems for Hard Times opens with an amazing introduction but then drifts into cynicism. Still it depicts what is already taking place. "You lie in a hotel bed at night, remote in hand and surf a hundred channels of television. . . and you can drift for hours among the flotsam and you will never see anything that shows that you're in Knoxville or Seattle or Santa Fe or Chicago and nobody will ever speak to you as straightforwardly and clearly as poetry does."

He opines that America is in hard times now with "the levels of power firmly in the hands of a cadre of Christian pirates and bullies whose cynicism is stunning," with the perversion of religion, a tax system that favors the rich, while newspapers decline and the censor abounds. He fears for a future when America has "no binding traditions," when the public cannot name senators and most acquire their political knowledge through television and their "only public life at Wal-Mart."

Keillor is democratic in his choice of writers. There are verses are about the rubber meeting the road. The subject matter of these poems is diverse, from 1977 Toyotas and spiral notebooks to baseball, which is not to say that many of the selections are not varied.

Among the poets included, are the ones we read in English Literature anthologies: Auden, Robert Burns, E. E. Cummings, Emily Dickinson, Donne, Frost, Hardy, Keats, Shakespeare, Whitman et al. Also included are modern names— Wendell Berry, Charles Bukowski (whom I dislike immensely), Raymond Carver, Billy Collins, Rita Dove, Donald Hall, Mary Oliver— and a host of poets I had never heard of before.

Although this book makes poetry accessible, it wasn’t something I found impressive.  The modern poets did not uplift or touch my soul in anyway.  Many poems were mediocre and some were bad. Very few were good and I wondered how these modern ordinary poems were published and found their way alongside the profound poets of the past.