The Cambridge introduction to creative writing
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Harry G. Broadman - Africa\'s Silk Road China and India\'s New Economic Frontier (2007, World Bank Publications) - libgen.li
| Composition’s action Movement Some of our best ideas come when we are otherwise distracted, as when we are going to sleep or driving. Audio-record your thoughts on these occasions, but recognise that there is a good reason why good ideas come at such inconvenient moments your unconscious and dreaming mind is communicating with your conscious quotidian mind. There are other ways to bring this state of open-mindedness into play. The classic pose of a writer at work is a person sitting still at their desk in silence. There are obviously times when this is essential. However, both exercise and music have the capacity to elicit creative thinking, by blocking conscious thought and inviting contributions from the unconscious flashes of insight we call them, or inspiration, or the given’, when they are no more than the synaptic impulses of dreamers. You need to trial these practices to test if they work for you (and to make sure you do not use them as excuses to stop writing. Music and movement areas totemic to some writers as the place or pen. William Wordsworth composed poems while pacing the metres of his garden’s gravel path. Ted Hughes used the concentrations of fishing. Try different forms of exercise before writing. If you begin to dry up while writing, then take a walk. Solvitur ambulando – it is solved by walking. Try playing different sorts of music until something begins to answer and propel the rhythm of your work. Props and prompts for action Aside from notebooks, pens and computers, anew creative writer needs the support of a Word Hoard, such as the Oxford English or Chambers Dictionary, to locate words and to use them precisely. Dictionaries are richly seamed places to spend time looking for prompts to making creative language. The etymologies of words are anecdotes told by language across time. Words bristle with meanings they are prickly with their histories and usages. Precision of language is important in developing good personal style. Your style will be judged not only by the way you order and play with words, but also by your choice of words. Therefore, you also need an excellent thesaurus, such as Roget’s Thesaurus, in order to find alternative words to keep your language lively, surprising and varied. The dictionaries and thesauri that come packaged with word-processing programs are digitally tongue-tied when applied to creative writing (although they are generally fine for academic writing or reports. Strunk and White’s The 104 Creative writing Elements of Style ( 2000 ) and Fowler’s Modern English Usage (various editions) are useful props while you are drafting and editing. They can be enemies to fluency while you are writing. Writers find it useful to have books by other authors around you, so that you can borrow or steal from their verbal energy if you find yourself floundering in the middle of apiece of dialogue, or have forgotten the order of lines in a pantoum or sestina. Exploit anything that prompts your processes, be they coffee or the Middle Dutch origin for the word ‘prop’. Download 2.89 Mb. Share with your friends:
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