Writing in the community and academy255
of poverty on creativity are overrated education offers at least the semblance of integrity, and the possibility of doing some good to someone at some time.
What should be your first move?
Writers
teach because they can, so the first and best thing you can do for yourself, as anew writer, is to apprentice yourself to a mentor who is a practising author, one who understands the fact that writing gets you lost, and who can help you sense the guide ropes that lead through the inferno’s circles to and from your abyss. The personal history of literature is one of writers being
taken on by other writers, of being welcomed and guided by somebody slightly further along the long way. As an academic discipline, creative writing encourages these strange but life-changing meetings.
Joyce Carol Oates said, by honoring one another’s creation we honor something that deeply connects us all, and goes beyond us. We learn creative writing because we can,
remembering that learning, like writing, is also an act of community. Writers carry a community’s story in the voice of their memory. Think of creative writing as an open space, a continent of languages and memory. Too often, we hear and see each other at distance, or not at all. This allows us to ignore each
other skim across knowledge, language and understanding and let our attention atrophy. Creative writing – even
clear writing – closes these distances between us. It makes us wake up. Creative writing throws open doors to the world, and even to other worlds within us and beyond our own. It lets in the light of language. Without telling us what to think, it makes us see and hear each other. We understand ourselves better by writing with light. Go and open your door.
Share with your friends: