The Cambridge introduction to creative writing

52
Creative writing
and planet-sized physics. Mathematics and the arts are not poles apart, but the same pole reached by different routes. You can write a poem or story based on the order of Fibonacci numbers sequences of numbers found in the patterns of leaves, grasses and flowers in the branching of bushes and trees or in the arrangements of tines on a pine cone.
These patterns seem distant from the machinery of politics and the media.
Censors do not understand it. Natural magic does not just surround us it
is us, as much as we are part of the environment. It informs every function of our own bodies, plots our lifespan, and operates the way we perceive. In the same way that the natural and seemingly rational magic of the natural world simply gets on with things, so we as writers must simply get on with our work.
The way in which the best writing workshops are conducted is to supply the right environment fora kind of rapid learning what I would calla stochastic evolution of talent, one that runs in phases and leaps of progressive learning.
As environmental change forces species-evolution, so the environment of the workshop causes a natural response and a progression in expertise new wirings in our brain’s neural networks. As form gives body to language, so writing gives form to the brain. What works is given a chance; what does notwork is laid aside as a useful lesson, a neutral selection, a phase from which we receive no harm. That chance can take the form of a story, a novel, a play or a poem.
There is a natural history to language which takes place inside us – a matter of alternative forms, variation and mutation. Workshops premeditate and push such variation.
We push students over into the natural magic of the language of fiction,
nonfiction and of poetry, almost to make them lean into books as the writer of that book must once have leaned, daily, in despair, curiosity, pleasure. We read books as readers, but we learn, by that leaning into language, to read books and worlds as if we were their writers. We learn to write and live as writers, in that risky position of near-topple and exposure.
There is a danger involved in such teaching and learning the danger that students might fall so badly against their own inexperience that they are hurt to a degree that they turn away from writing, that they lose confidence in the long game. That is why it is important that we must learn to play at such moments.
To play with our reading and writing, to play with language, even when in danger of falling into pretentiousness or opacity or simple mediocrity, is to take control of the situation. The more control we have, the less likely we are to be controlled. The more practice we have of this, the more playful we can become, and the more confident in our ability not only to control – but also to let go.

Creative writing in the world
53

54
Creative writing
Sigmund Freud argued that the creative writer does the same thing as a child at play. He creates a world of phantasy which he takes very seriously while separating it sharply from reality . . . As people grow up, they cease to play, and they seem to give up the yield of pleasure which they gained from playing Ever the metaphysician first and the physician second, nevertheless
Freud’s reflection will be seized and understood by our own thoughts and self- experience. You will observe it, any of you who are mothers, fathers, brothers,
sisters, teachers. Is creative writing’s job to reintroduce us to play?
Rediscovering pleasure
In the afterword to his book on teaching children to write poetry, the American poet Kenneth Koch addresses the question of teaching teachers to play again with language and creative ideas Such writing might begin with something as simple as writing a wish poem before they ask the children to . . . If an unprepared six-year-old can write a wish poem, probably a teacher can, too.
It’s a pleasure to . . . rediscover one’s feeling for poetry, which life and (mainly)
education may have scared out of one (
1999
: 311). Mainly) education springs a billion traps, but the damage is reversible. One can be released back into the continent of writing there is no need to be scared of play.
There is no need to be scared because writing is ultimately pleasure. Of course, we must play, or rediscover play and pleasure. However, as creative writing keeps growing as a discipline – as it becomes more and more accepted,
even respected – we must be careful it does not become part of a machine to produce more teachers of creative writing. Is it getting too respectable Is it getting less playful Whose rooms are we in As Aristotle taught his students,
so we must also remember that, historically, the impartiality of learning an art form is possible only because of the rapacious material interests that allow that process to take place. In that sense, creative writing already stands in a very interesting place in the world, and possesses some interesting allies.

Download 2.89 Mb.

Share with your friends: