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Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
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1:27p - Martin's high standard and my selfishness
“To idealize: all writing is a campaign against cliché. Not just clichés of the pen but clichés of the mind and clichés of the heart.”
- Martin Amis
We’re trying, Martin. Not always successfully, but we’re trying.
Last month, Little China Girl and I attended a three-day writing workshop called City Fiction. Let me just say, that group rawked harder than Van Halen. Well, maybe not harder, but darned close. Our workshop facilitator was eloquent and generous and our shopmates were interested and interesting.
For a final assignment, we were asked to write three postcard-size snippets of fiction set in, of course, the city. I could only scrounge up two, and it was a painful birthing process too, considering put together my pieces didn’t even cover one whole page.
Anyway, while we were critiquing the pieces, one shopmate seemed to me to have gotten completely lost reading my second piece. He kept throwing his hands up in the air and asking, “What is that for? What does it mean?” It was a disconcerting reminder of a skill I have obviously not yet mastered: the ability to write for other people.
I can’t do it.
In high school, our English teacher asked no one in particular who we write for when we write. Without thinking, I piped up that I write for myself. Also instinctively, a classmate said, “Well that’s selfish.” I hadn’t thought of it as selfishness until someone pointed it out. It was just the only way I knew how to do it. Even when I am required to write, as with the writing workshop, I can’t think to write for whoever is asking me to do so or whoever will read the piece. I don’t know why. Nobody taught me how. Or is that supposed to come naturally?
current mood: dizzy (3 comments |comment on this)
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