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
| The responsive workshop What makes the responsive workshop work Students must receive enough self-responsibility so that the tutor could feel that they are almost not needed, except possibly as a guide, an initiator and then a timekeeper. Every student must contribute, either as a writer or critic, or both. That does not mean that everybody needs to speak: everybody simply has to show up with their minds open and critical reflexes on standby. When a student-writer reads from a work, there must be sufficient copies of that work in the room so that everybody can read it. If one or more students are blind, then the work is scanned onto computer beforehand, or given to them in electronic form, so that the student can have heard it, or read it in Braille, before the workshop. It is vital that all work is read aloud to the group. There is no better way to test the honesty and inevitability of writing, the precision of language or the naturalness of voice. Errors and distortions are palpable in sound. Reading aloud helps situate a story in the mind of a reader. If a student suffers from a speech inhibition (they may have a stammer or be simply shy, then they can elect to have their work read aloud by one of their friends or by the tutor without comment or introduction. All writing should be read plainly and undramatically, lest it elevate the quality of substandard work through a persuasive performance. When a student reads, they are encouraged not to open their reading with a qualification about the quality of their writing, nor should they offer an anecdote about its creation. The writer must leave their ego at the door. The writer should not talk about the knowledge that went into the creation of the Composition and creative writing 121 writing, at least not at first the subject of the workshop is like the visible part of the iceberg, the work that is above water level, the knowledge of creation below. The writing must standalone, without prejudgement or rehearsed response. The writer elects one or two members of the group to lead the response to the work. After they have finished reading, the tutor allows a few minutes of reading time, during which participants make notes directly on the piece of work. Hazards There are whirlpools to negotiate. The first is covered above the writer downplaying the work and, in that way, premeditating and guiding the criticism – a strategy to evade criticism. A second snare has the same end in view to seduce the group with easy comedy. One of the least lines of resistance in writing, as far as criticism is concerned, is middlebrow humour not extreme black humour nor tragicomedy, but an engaging, disarming and gentle writing that resists critical scrutiny. Laughter is one of the most wonderful sounds of the human world. It is wholly understandable that we are drawn to it few experiences are more rewarding than causing it deliberately, and few experiences more excruciating than causing it without intention. In a workshop, it is very tempting fora writer to play for laughs, and to bring writing that performs and pleases. The same desire to please leaps up when giving alive reading from work to a public audience many readings open with poems or stories that are either funny or familiar, rather than dark or challenging. The crowd is pleased, but crowds are fickle. Easy comedy makes for easy gains but, critically, it does not create much forward momentum in a workshop, although it does make it fun, if temporarily, for workshops are fickle also. Comedy is essential. In fact, the best and blackest comedy is the hardest to write, as Hemingway said A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book (Phillips 20). However, easy comedy etiolates a group, starving it of serious purpose, allowing a writer to manipulate an audience or group and getaway with murder or, at least, mediocre writing. Leave the easy comedy for after the meeting, when the stakes are lower, and laughter and self-mockery are cathartic. A third hazard, allied to the second, is for members of the group to fall into role play. You may act sanguine so long as your act is genuine. In the same way that members of any group or class tend to sit in the same seats in a room, so the role we play on first meeting somebody new tends to be the role we adopt and develop on subsequent occasions. If the writing group reinforces 122 Creative writing these roles, because they make fora frictionless social ride, then those roles can ossify. From an ethnologist’s point of view, the most dangerous role play arises when a member of the group, anew writer, exceeds in talent the group leader. Everybody knows it, and the Salieri knows its Mozart. However, Salieri’s duty is always to help Mozart (as historically he did, not to destroy him (as the myth has it). We become what we seem, for it is far easier to play a character than to be our open selves – and we have spent considerable time creating fictions by which to live our lives – and to populate our writing with created people. Members of the writing group tend to play out caricatures the clown or the cold fish the ingenue or the iceman the intellectual snob or the noble savage the therapist or the perfectionist the silent genius or the iron critic the wallflower or the flirt the artiste or an etcetera. Role play displaces responsibility it is a defence device. Criticism at this level is not an attack – it is not an attack on you it is not even an attack on your writing. Your writing is not important enough to warrant attack, and therefore it is not necessary to require defence. The writer should remain silent and attentive, not only to gain valuable criticism but also to signal their acceptance of criticism’s necessity. Critical not personal investment At the level of a workshop, criticism is like business do not take it personally. A constructed argument from an investigation of apiece of writing is useful to your progress as a writer. It is generous and functional, a rare human combination. What sort of things are we looking for to construct an argument? George Orwell claimed in Politics and the English Language (speaking really of nonfiction): A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus What am I trying to say What words will express it What image or idiom will make it clearer Is this image fresh enough to have an effect And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? (NE2: Have these principles in mind when formulating your responses to new work. For complete beginners, you may wish to use a slightly different recipe for critical thinking by making notes under the following headings while the writer is reading the piece aloud to the group (a) specify what works for you about this piece of writing (b) specify what does notwork (c) make one specific suggestion that will improve the work (d) contribute one suggestion as to Composition and creative writing 123 what reading might help the work or move the writer on from it. Specific and informed criticism is always more useful than general criticism or a personal, emotional, supportive response. Invest in it strongly, and it will be returned to you with interest. In my experience, to get things moving, the tutor should select two lead- critics one to go first, the other to speak if the first one dries up. The lead-critics comment, initially, on three aspects of the piece. Firstly, what did they feel worked best Secondly, what did they feel did notwork Thirdly, what changes might be made to remedy those parts that did notwork for them Finally, it is often useful to formulate a question or questions for the writer. Following this specific examination, the discussion broadens out to the bigger picture of the piece as a whole, and this is where other members of the workshop join in. A close eye must be kept on the time of these comments if everybody is to have their turn as the writer or as the critic. Download 2.89 Mb. Share with your friends:
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