Last night was the most heartening class yet, and I’m almost…bummed out about it. Because, let's be honest here: when shit sucks, writing is just soooo much more inspired then when everything is happy and wonderful. Which is an interesting discussion in itself, right, and a topic I have wondered about since I had my first real breakthrough with my fiction writing. That is: do you need to suffer in order to create your greatest and most expressive art?
For me, that particular breakthrough piece of mine was written during a highly tumultuous and brutally emotional period in my life, and channeling those feelings resulted in the best fiction piece I ever wrote. Shit, even with my nonfiction writing, it was always something remarkable or powerful that urged me to put my thoughts to the page in a way that resulted in something meaningful, versus were I to write about something run-of-the-mill. So when everything is going great - like this class - well, what the fuck do I write here?
It should be noted that I have not made up my mind on that front, the whole suffering v. creativity thing. Not even with the totally convincing video we were told to watch as a precursor to the first class. (For those of you who are interested, it was a David Lynch written/narrated video about the idea of creativity. What stuck out to me was how he firmly believes you *do not* need to suffer in order to create, memorable mostly due to his elegant argument, which was, well: “if Van Gogh suffered from constant diarrhea, how could he ever have had the time to paint Starry Night between trips to the bathroom?” I shit you not, and, pun intended.) So yes. Even with such elevated prose as that, a small part of me will probably always remain in the school of thought that challenging situations will result in the greatest stories.
But, alas, in the meantime, here we are: class is going well, I’m actually learning things, I’m getting past my own inner obstacles, and holy shit, I have no idea how to make that humorously bitter at all.
So, instead of my usual grumblings, I’ve decided, at least for this week, to post what I wrote during one of the exercises.
To set the scene, what we focused on in class this week, was “point of view”, which was to me, a natural progression from last week’s theme of “authentic voice”. It was also much more in depth than last week, given that class didn’t simply open with a quote of an author’s take on the subject, but was promptly followed by a solid 15 minute discussion. What this quote said, in part anyway, was that in writing, there are two pictures going on at once: what the character sees, what the world is, and the writer’s job is to make the reader see only one – what the writer sees. I liked that, and I liked how when other students began to speak up, that many of them suffer from the same issues and questions that I do. Not that I’m rooting for my fellow students to be in the woods and filled with despair, but I felt a real sense of camaraderie in our grievances. Such as: what should I describe? What should I leave blurry and out of focus, and what should I make sharp and clear? Should I describe setting and landscape, or should I hone-in more on the characters thoughts and inner voice?
The take-away was for me was that a lot of that gets hammered out through practice, and that do what feels right to you.
All that in mind, the first exercise was us closing our eyes, and her talking about a doorway. She wanted us to visualize the doorway, what it looks like, what the room we're in looks like. Then through the doorway, what do we see? What do we notice first? A smell, the light, a feeling, what? I remembered thinking damn, I really should meditate because this is crazy how calm and focused I’m feeling.
But then, bam, “Open your eyes, write what you saw”.
Without further ado, what I saw:
The door is just barely ajar, a short sliver of light curling like a beckoning finger. My heart is racing as I walk slowly towards it, the floorboards under my feet creaking with each step I take. Shadows cling to the walls like cobwebs, and living in their threads are the echoes of children’s laughter, and then, of screams.
I don’t know why I came back here. I don’t know why I drove all this way. How many years did I try to put this place behind me? How many years did I try to gouge out my own inner eyes to the memories of this house-
“Jane.”
I whirl around in a flurry of heartbeats. I can barely see who has called my name from the darkness, but then he emerges, his face just as white-washed and sickly-looking as when we were kids. “Michael?” I say in disbelief, “How – when did you – “ “You felt it too, then,” is all he says. My mouth snaps shut, but too late – it’s utterly dry, my sawdust tongue unable to evade what is happening. His eyes, so big and brown, are still so filled with sadness. I stare at him, then slowly, I nod. We turn to the door. It hasn’t moved, and yet, it seems to open wide to call us towards it, to cross its threshold and enter a room we hadn’t stepped foot in for decades.
And...that's it, haha. As I retyped it from my notes for this post, I am considering maybe bringing a laptop to the next class, because hot damn, I write WAY slower by hand.
Anyway, til next week...
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