Things We Owe to Shakespeare

Over Labor Day weekend Husband and I took another trip down to Ashland, Oregon.  This time around we stayed overnight so that we would have time to attend a show in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  We saw Love's Labor Lost, one of the plays that I we were not familiar with.  It is a comedy and we really enjoyed it!  In honor of our trip I thought I'd share this little find:

I don't know who the original credit for this lovely little tidbit goes to, but I love it.  Shakespeare is certainly not my specialty, but I'm not surprised how many phrases we owe to him.

I've been working on planning my syllabus for the freshman writing course that I am teaching this fall.  I'll have lots of thoughts about that coming soon!

"Say It Like You Eat It"

I have recently submitted my application to the Masters Program in English at Portland State University.  For the second time.  There were a few different reasons that I didn't get in to the program last year, but among them, I believe, was a not-so-strong statement of purpose.  Not that it was a terrible piece of writing, but I was absolutely terrified when I wrote it.  I remember looking at those how to write a good statement of purpose articles online.  First of all, they wanted me to come up with some great story about why I wanted to go to grad school; something to get the reviewers attention and make them pick me above all the other candidates.  Well I didn't have some big story about why I wanted to go to grad school, I just wanted to go learn.  I wanted to be an English teacher and a Masters in English is a step in that direction.  What else could I say?  Second of all, these how to articles suggested that two months and ten to twelve drafts is a normal way to write a statement.  Multiple drafts I'm okay with, but I wouldn't be a very good English student if it took my two months to write ten to twelve drafts of a two page essay.  I started it the night before it was due.  Probably not the smartest idea, but mainly because as a result I was determined that I had to get it right on the first draft.  I remember specifically thinking that I just didn't want to make myself look bad.  Just stick to the basics, don't try anything fancy, there isn't enough time to worry about saying something stupid.  I think I succeeded in this goal, but the result was probably the most boring statement of purpose ever written.

Photo credit: Lindsay Brown

This year I didn't do much better on the time issue.  I sat down to write the morning before it was due instead of the night before, giving myself only a few extra hours.  This time, however, I sat down to write overflowing with emotion.  The application process brought back all the feelings of rejection, the feeling that I was misunderstood, that I hadn't presented myself properly.  I had continued taking graduate classes after I wasn't accepted last year and while I have definitely grown over the course of the year, I felt like this just proved that they should have let me the first time I applied.  I wanted to find a way to convey in writing that I have grown, that I have shown that I deserve to be in this program, but still that I am the same person I was last year.  I wanted to be honest, to be myself, and to not concede that there was any reason why I shouldn't have been in the program right along. 

So I decided to just write it all down.  Instead of sitting down to write a statement of purpose, I just sat down to write about what happened, why I wanted to go to grad school, how I had changed and how I hadn't changed, how I felt about not getting in last year, whatever.  I figured I'd end up with at least five pages, which I would then work down to a more appropriate two, but it turned out that I hit on some inspiration pretty quickly.  I got going on a train of thought and just kept going.  It turned out better than I could have hoped.

I asked my sister to read my statement and she responded with something amazing.  She said that she liked the way I told my story.  I hadn't even realized it, but I had a story after all.  Maybe it wasn't a story about a life-changing event that made me want to go to grad school, but it is my story.  I think in any piece of writing you have to tell the story.  In a cover letter you have to tell the story of why you came to want the job and how you are qualified for it.  In an essay you have to tell the story of your subject.  Even in story writing, where this would seem obvious, maybe we have to remember that we're not just sitting down to write a novel, we have to tell the story.

I am currently about halfway through my first reading of Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love.  I say first reading not because I plan on reading this particular book multiple times but because yes, I really haven't read it until now.  In case you were wondering.  I bring this up because of a moment in Gilbert's story that I would like to channel.  She is in Italy and trying to explain some complicated emotions to an acquaintance:

...I'm still having trouble figuring out how to talk.  Giovanni smiles and says encouragingly, "Parla come magni."  He knows this is one of my favorite expressions in Roman dialect.  It means, "Speak the way you eat," or, in my personal translation:  "Say it like you eat it."  It's a reminder -- when you're making a big deal out of explaining something, when you're searching for the right words -- to keep your language as simple and direct as Roman food.  Don't make a big production out of it.  Just lay it on the table.

This is my process.  It's the only way that I can write really successfully.  I can't sit down to write a cover letter or an essay or a statement of purpose.  I have to sit down with the intention of telling the story; I just have to get it all out there, say it like it is without worrying about the purpose that I'm writing for.  Sometimes this requires lots of editing later, picking through pages and pages trying to find the good stuff.  But a lot of times it just seems to work itself out as I go.  Either way, like my good friend Lindsay says about writing and life: you have to trust the process, whatever that may be.  If you do, good things will come.

Words for Writing and Life

"There must be no gap between expression and meaning, between real and declared aims... It means not saying or thinking, 'I didn't mean to hurt your feelings,' when there really existed a desire to hurt.  It means not saying 'luncheon' or "home" for the purpose of appearing upper-class or well-educated.  It means not using the passive mood to contribute to no one in particular opinions that one is unwilling to call one's own."

- Donald Hall 

"What the Hell is Water?"

This past Sunday marked the two year anniversary of the death of David Foster Wallace (who it just so happens that I Write Like).  A friend shared this excellent example of his work.  It makes me wish he had given my commencement speech.  Enjoy:

A speech by the late David Foster Wallace

William Safire's "Great Rules of Writing"

Some excellent advice from William Safire, author of New York Times Magazine column "On Language" from 1979 until his death in 2009:

Do not put statements in the negative form.

And don't start sentences with a conjunction.

If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.

Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.

Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.

De-accession euphemisms.

If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.

Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.

Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.

Funny... but it's true.  Good writing is simple writing.  My rule of thumb: If there are words that can be removed from a sentence without changing the meaning, remove them.  

Example:  I originally wrote "My general rule of thumb:  If there are words that can be removed from a sentence without changing the meaning of the sentence, then you should remove them." 

You get the point.  I'll be adding these to my wish list:

Taking the Time to Write

Yesterday my mom asked me about Joyce Carol Oates' writing style.  While I happen to be quite inexperienced with her writing, I was explaining to my mom what I know about her writing habits and the habits and writing styles of other prolific writers.  This got me thinking about the amount of dedication and time that writing, whether as a career or hobby, requires. 

In The Midnight Disease, Alice Flaherty describes writers who suffer from hypergraphia, an uncontrollable compulsion to write usually caused by high temporal lobe activity such as temporal lobe epilepsy and bipolar disorder.  People with hypergraphia write constantly and extensively.  For example, Lewis Carroll, who is believed to have had temporal lobe epilepsy, wrote 98,721 letters from his late twenties to his death at sixty-five.  Flaherty also talks about "normal" but prolific writers, such as Joyce Carol Oates, who do not have abnormal temporal lobe activity, but who write almost as extensively as writers who do.

It's not easy to put that amount of time into writing.  For me, the difficulty is putting aside all the other things that need to be done, or could be done.  There are always dishes to do, mail to sort, stuff to look at online or out the window.  A long day working at the job that actually pays is always a good excuse.  In Bird By Bird, Anne Lamott describes writing constantly, every day, even when she was working full time.  This is what is really hard, the commitment to just do it, just keep going.  Lamott follows the advice of her father, who was also a writer:

"Do it every day for a while," my father kept saying.  "Do it as you would do scales on the piano.  Do it by prearrangement with yourself.  Do it as a debt of honor.  And a commitment to finishing things."

I have friends who write, too and I think we all have the same trouble with it.  One has been writing for years, has even been published.  She tells me, "I'm going to start writing again," and weeks later she's still telling me the same thing.  Another says to me, "let's go somewhere and just sit and write" so we go to the park and we sit and we talk and we people watch with our notebooks and pencils in the grass beside us.  I think that there is value in the desire to write and in the intention to write, but at some point you actually do need to just sit down and write.

See also:  The Inner Manic

Thinking Backwards

I love discovering the ways in which different creative media influence one another.  Among other greats of the fashion and art world that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen interview in their book Influence, Mary-Kate talks to interior architect and designer David Collins.  He tells her that he is inspired by Gone with the Wind because of the way it was written.  Margaret Mitchell wrote her manuscript beginning with the final chapters and worked her way through the story backwards.  In fact, the manuscript was accepted for publication before she had even completed the first chapters (Blair Rouse).  Collins explains how this style of writing has influenced his work:

You have to know the ending; how you got there is the story--because there are so many things that are a series of accidental happenings.  That's why, when I'm approaching a design project, I've got to figure out what it's going to feel like in the end.  I need to think about the ending first.  You don't always know what it's going to look like totally, but you have to think of what its going to feel like at the end.

I think this is often true in writing.  Not that you always need to or even can know the ending, but that it often helps to know what it is that you are trying to accomplish.  The mood, the tone, the style; what you want it to feel like at the end; the effect you want it to have for you and for the reader.  For me, the first draft usually doesn't come out feeling like I want it to, so I have to reread, rewrite, revise and sculpt it into something that serves the purpose that I meant for it to serve.  This is what people in the writing world call the "felt sense," among other names. It is what you keep coming back to when you get stopped, or when you just need to make sure you're staying on track.  Without it, writing can go everywhere and be anything; with it, writing can be effective, focused and meaningful.

Writing is Hard

Most of us would agree that writing is not easy. Someone was recently talking about the "struggle" of writing. I often use the word "agony." You have to find the best words to say what you mean; you have to make it interesting; you have to keep it organized; it has to make sense; you have to figure out how to transition to the next paragraph; you have to worry about whether your readers will get it; and so on...

Take this as a good sign.

One definition of a professional writer (a definition which much of their own testimony implies) might be this: one who finds ways to write in spite of, not without, the discomfort of writing.
- James Seitz

Experts on writing say over and over that a sure sign of an immature writer is one to whom writing comes easily. Immature writers write what comes to mind, assume that it's the best they can do, and are satisfied. Mature writers know that writing is hard, that they must struggle through it, even agonize over it, and that they may still never be fully happy with a final product.

Of course, this struggle is part of what makes great writing so great, and it is part of what does make writing so satisfying. To have worked through it, to have come up with something that you feel is worth something, or to have discovered something that you didn't know you had to say makes it all worth it.

Topic Block

Can you have writer's block if you haven't even started writing? What if the question is how to begin writing? or where to begin? or what to begin writing about? Whenever this question arises in my mind, my answer is simple: start anywhere. Just think of something, anything, and start writing. This tactic can have surprising results, as evidenced by the author E. L. Doctorow:

Well it can be anything. It can be a voice, an image; it can be a deep moment of personal desperation. For instance, with Ragtime I was so desperate to write something, I was facing the wall of my study in my house in New Rochelle and so I started to write about the wall.... Then I wrote about the house that was attached to the wall. It was built in 1906, you see, so I thought about the era and what Broadview Avenue looked like then; trolley cars ran along the avenue down at the bottom of the hill; people wore white clothes in the summer to stay cool. Teddy Roosevelt was President. One thing led to another and that's the way the book began, through desperation to those few images.

I also like Anne Lamott's advice:

Start with your childhood.... Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O'Connor said that anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life. Maybe your childhood was grim and horrible, but grim and horrible is Okay if it is well done. Don't worry about doing it well yet, though. Just start getting it down.

I find this helpful in academic writing, too. I just start writing about whatever I find interesting about the subject matter, and before long a topic begins to form. The most important thing, as Anne Lamott points out, is not to worry about how "good" the writing is. I remind myself that I am not committed to the words on the page, that they are changeable and that I have that power. I try to remember that there will be time to revisit it later, to sort the good from the bad and to rewrite if necessary. I repeat my simple mantra, again and again each time my writing begins to slow: just keep writing. just write.

The Inner Manic

What do prisoners do? Write, of course; even if they have to use blood as ink, as the Marquis de Sade did. The reasons they write, the exquisitely frustrating restrictions of their autonomy and the fact that no one listens to their cries, are also the reasons that mentally ill people, and even many normal people, write. We write to escape our prisons. - Alice W. Flaherty

In the first chapter of The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain, Flaherty draws the connection between mental illness and writing. She notes that studies have shown that "writers are ten times more likely to be manic-depressive than the rest of the population, and poets are a remarkable forty times more likely. Even student poets not diagnosed with mental illness have more manic traits than students who do not write poetry."

Importantly, Flaherty makes the distinction between these writers and those who write for outer gain, for recognition, for money, for success. Writers with mental illness write for themselves, to release what is within, to feel that they are being productive, or simply because they must. Isn't this why we should all be writing?

This, of course, does not mean that we need to have a mental illness in order to write. But reading this makes me want to look inside a little bit and search for signs of my inner manic.

Mozartians vs. Beethovians

The writing process. Now there's a topic. We all go about writing in different ways and as part of this we process the information that we are writing about in different ways. Some of us process it in our heads, but many, or perhaps most, of us have to process it in writing. This is what differentiates one-draft and multi-draft writers.

Here is Muriel Harris:

By one-draft writers I mean those writers who construct their plans and the pre-texts that carry out those plans as well as do all or most of the revision of those plans and pre-texts mentally, before transcribing. They do little or no retranscribing. True one-drafters have not arrived at this developmentally or as a result of training in writing, and they should not be confused with other writers who -- driven by deadlines, lack of motivation, insufficient experience with writing, or anxieties about "getting it right the first time" -- do little or no scratching out of what they have written.

Multi-drafters, on the other hand, need to interact with their transcriptions in order to revise. Independent of how much planning they do or pre-text they compose, they continue to revise after they have transcribed words onto paper. Again, true multi-drafters have not reached this stage developmentally or as a result of any intervention by teachers.

I find this explanation helpful, but I rather prefer Stephen Spender's terms. Janet Emig explains them well:

Spender divides artists, after their formidable ancestors, into Mozartians and Beethovians. The Mozartian is one who can instantaneously arrange encounters with his unconscious; he is one in whom the creative self leads a constant and uninterrupted life of its own, serene to surface disturbances, oblivious of full upper activity... The Mozartian can "plunge the greatest depths of his own experience by the tremendous effort of a moment" and surface every time with a finished pearl - a Cosi Fan Tutte, a Piano Concerto in C Major.

The Beethovian, on the other hand, is the agonizer, the evolutionizer. Scholars study his first notes to a quartet or a symphony, as Spender points out, are astounded by their embryonic clumsiness. The creative self in a Beethovian is not a plummeting diver, but a plodding miner who seems at time to scoop south with his bare hands. To change the metaphor, for the Beethovian, composing is not unlike eating an artichoke - pricks and inadequate rewards in our tedious leaf-by-leaf spiraling toward the delectable heart. I say our for how many of us can claim ourselves Mozartians?

To those who can compose completely in their minds and whip together an excellent first draft, bravo. As for the rest of us, those of us who are true Beethovians and those of us who fall somewhere in between, I say we embrace our multi-drafting tendencies. Make it work for us. Leave ourselves the time to work through draft after draft until we reach the heart of the artichoke.

Writer's Block. What the Heck Does That Even Mean?

I'm not sure that I believe in writer's block. It is, at the very least, an over-diagnosed affliction. You mean you can't produce an entire essay/novel/poem/whathaveyou off the top of your head at a moment's notice? How surprising.

I have come across far too much information on the subject to deal with at one time, so I'll start with a favorite. This is the introduction to "The Essential Delay: When Writer's Block Isn't" by Donald M. Murray:

Morison isn't writing. He's a professional writer, published and anthologized, but he's not writing. He goes to his typewriter and jumps up to find more paper. He organizes and reorganized his notes, makes a third cup of tea, visits the stationery store to buy a new pen, hunts through the library for that one elusive reference. He makes starts and notes and more notes and folders and outlines, but he does not produce a draft.

He wonders if he has writer's block. He clears writing time on his schedule, shuts the door to his study, and watches a tree grow. Slowly. He makes neat work plans, types them up, pins them above his desk, and doesn't follow them. He drafts letters - in his head - telling the editor he cannot deliver the piece. He considers going into real estate, or advertising, or becoming a hit person. He composes suicide notes - in his head - that are witty, ironic, publishable. He grumps at his wife and lies awake at night wondering if there is a treatment for writer's block.

But Morison knows he doesn't have writer's block. He's been writing for almost 40 years. He is passing through the normal, necessary, always terrifying delay that precedes effective writing.

Murray goes on to explain that this "essential delay" is just a period of waiting that writers must go through before they have collected all the necessary elements of writing. He identifies five of these elements: information, insight, order, voice, and of course, a feeling of need to write. These may seem simple enough but we should all know that they don't turn up overnight.

While Murray doesn't offer much in the way of a solution to this waiting game, I find it gratifying to know that my procrastination is not (necessarily) ill-spent. At least I know I'm not the only one.

The Why of Writing

According to the National Endowment for the Arts 2004 Reading at Risk Survey, personal writing was the ONLY literary activity that increased between 1982 and 2002.

The question of why we write is one that I will likely revisit often. There is a wealth of opinions out there and I can't seem to stop coming across them.

"The Artist is of no importance. Only what he creates is important, since there is nothing new to be said. Shakespeare, Balzac, Homer have all written about the same things, and if they had lived on thousand or two thousand years longer, the publishers wouldn't have needed anyone since."

William Faulkner (The Paris Review Interviews 1956)

How many titles would the average person recognize but not be able to match with an author? Worse, how many stories would we recognize without even knowing so much as the title? So few writers are recognized. So few win awards. So few make any real money. Do the few who find success really even matter?

"The more the public is interested in artists, the less it is interested in art. The personality of the artist is not a thing the public should know anything about. It is too accidental."

Oscar Wilde (Mr. Oscar Wilde on Mr. Oscar Wilde 1895)

So, unless you know that you have something to contribute, unless you are the successor of Shakespeare, Balzac, Homer and Faulkner, maybe there is no point in writing at all.

"But I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do - the actual act of writing - turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward."

Anne Lamott (Introduction to Bird by Bird)

Well said.