As I was reflecting during Mary Ellen's demo, I realized that when I talk or write about my writing process, I almost exclusively (unless prompted to do otherwise) focus on my academic writing process, what I do when I sit down to write a paper that is required for graduate school or to create a lesson plan due to my principal the next day. Because I have defined my writing self within an academic context for so long, I have forgotten what it means for me to write in other ways. I don't know what I do to prepare for writing a memoir piece or other creative nonfiction piece because I so rarely do. I'm not sure what revising would look like outside of a literary analysis or reflective practice piece because my writing is so often in one of those academic boxes. I consider myself to be a writer, but only to the extent that I can push out an "A" paper on the use of the Yiddish language in Maus in 24 hours.
During SI, I am hoping to continuously challenge myself to write outside of my comfort zone, to reconnect with my roots as an expressive writer with something worth saying. I really want to work to become a writer that I can be proud of, a writer my students can be proud of...but there I go again with the "recognition" motif. Obviously, I am still very much caught up in my perfectionist English Studies bubble. But is that a bad thing? Do I have to write creatively to consider myself a true writer? Maybe I am limiting myself to a single story about writers. My mind is going a bit crazy...
I do feel like all of the writing and technology can make us all feel a little crazy. I think that as a writer what is most important is to be yourself and write what you are interested in writing. That interest may challenge you to write creatively or it may not. If you stick to the idea of what interests you personally, I think you will be less worried about if you are a creative writer or not and more focused on how to say what you mean in the best possible way. You may still have to explore different ways to write about your interests that differ from the traditional academic, but you will be less caught up in what type of writing you doing.
ReplyDeleteAlso, while I think it is important to tap into your creativity it can also be a source of stress. I know that for me if I try to write something really witty and comedic, I feel stressed because this is not my personality. I have occasional bursts of wit, but I'm not typically in that mood. However, if I sit down and write fantasy or describe a setting it flows from my mind easily. My point is that it is important to challenge ourselves so we discover if what we can and can't write, but there is a point where we have to realize our limitations and what matches our personality best.
You also asked a question about revising creative writing. Ben and I were actually discussing this idea in class today. We both write fantasy, and we did feel that revising a creative piece of writing would require us to use less traditional approaches. We felt that discussing what is appropriate for that story or genre was an important component to revising fantasy. We also found that for our reader to fully understand what we were writing that we needed to have a discussion with them about where we wanted to take the piece and have some background reading some of their work before we could give accurate and helpful feedback.
Thought-provoking point about needing to understand the conventions of the story and genre is really important to offering effective feedback in revising fantasy. Makes me think of Kendra's demo when we ranked the different examples of writing. I have read fantasy books but have never tried writing one and I think that the genre does have a lot of different challenges--like the world building you and Sarah talked about today during lunch. Is the feedback from someone unfamiliar with the conventions of that genre ever helpful (like seeing something with new eyes)?
DeleteOoh interesting line about maybe limiting yourself to one story about writers. I think I sometimes have that same limiting assumption or hang up about "creative writing" or "creative writers," that it's something so distinct from academic writing or literary analysis. And that the freedom can be overwhelming (you mean I can write about anything?? what will it look like? it's not going to be graded?? how will I know if it's good or not?). And I'm not saying that those are the same types of thoughts that go through your mind, but just some of the things that sometimes stop me a little bit from my own creative writing, I guess.
ReplyDeleteI like Ashley's point about how tapping into creativity can be stressful. I want my writing to be amazing and meaningful and that kind of pressure can be daunting. I remember reading something Anne Lamott wrote in her book, "Bird by Bird," about absolutely terrible first drafts (not exactly the words she used though...). And how we just need to get those words down on paper, no matter how horrible they are.