This week our assignment for the Masters in Professional Writing Program is to read the first 75 or so pages from a collection from the Washing Post Book World, "The Writing Life: Writers on How They Think and Work." I am so intrigued by these writers and what they have to say. I really wish I had read this when I was in college the first time. I think it may have changed the way I planned my days. My writing habits would certainly have become a priority much earlier. Oh well, we are here. The time is now and I’ve got more deadlines than I can possibly meet.
In Joanna Trollope’s “Looking for the Spark,” she delves into the old question of teaching creative writing as a process. Yes, you can give instruction on the structure and format, she notes, but it is one’s observation and the kind of interpretation that make a creative writer different. She cites Coleridge’s explanation that there are two kinds of imagination: the Primary and the Secondary. And we all have the capacity to perceive, to notice, but only truly creative people have the capacity to select, translate, and then illuminate the observations, particularly when it comes to human complexities.
I agree that’s where the difference comes in. It is not what we SEE that makes a great writer, but how we take the observation and translate it into something new, whether it is “excitingly wonderful or terrible.”
Trollope says there is “nothing new to say about the human condition.” I agree; Shakespeare or Sophocles [and many others] have brilliantly said it. But I must argue that each writer has not only a different style or voice, but a totally different perspective, which reaches readers in its very own way.
She quotes English critic Philip Toynbee, who says, “The definition of moral progress is the realization that other human beings are fully as human as oneself.”
And I concur. It is as my friend’s father from Columbus, Georgia used to tell us in his southern drawn down-home way, “Peepul’s peepul.” [Or people are people. We are all human beings.]
And doesn't the human experience also change with the historical perspective? Does that not create new issues to reflect upon regarding the human condition? Or is it all recycled stuff?
ReplyDeleteI still don't know how I feel about the idea of teaching creative writing. A lot of the creative writers we have read this semester seem to think that while structure and form can be taught, there is something else intrinsic in creative writing that has to come from within the individual rather than from external instruction. I think I am going to sign up for Dr. Levy's playwriting class next semester even though it won't count toward my concentration or support area. I'm kind of curious about how creative writing classes are run, and I feel like if anyone can effectively teach creative writing, it's Levy! (Remind me to tell you about his Principles of Writing Instruction class that I took as an undergraduate -- it was life-changing!)
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