Creative Writing Corner

Photo of the Week

princeton 010, originally uploaded by skylove.

This is an excellent photo of an art installation on my college's campus. It's supposed to be a metaphor for the holocaust and I do think it speaks very powerfully, with these headless, identical figures all marching in step. Does it give you any ideas to write this week?

Is Writing Work or Play, Career or Passion?

One thing I often wonder about is what writing means to other writers. It is such an intensely private and personal feeling sometimes, almost as personal as religious sentiment, and so I eagerly read interviews of famous writers that talk about what drives them. You don't have to be famous to have a powerful drive to write, and so I'd like to ask you as well:

What does writing mean to you?

Is writing the soothing pleasure trip you take once a day, or is it your daily torture? Do you feel addicted to writing, or do you feel committed to it as with a relationship or a career? Do you feel like you are fulfilling a sense of duty when you write, or do you feel like you are succumbing to a powerful and uncontrollable compulsion?

There are as many kinds of writerly feeling as there are writers, of course, and sometimes any one writer can feel a variety of different ways about it. Most of the time, I think I personally feel that writing is part of my identity more than if it were just career or hobby. Who am I? I am a writer. It comes as naturally to my thoughts as if I were to answer the question with 'I am female' or 'I am an American' or any number of other things that feel stitched pretty close to my skin. Whether I ever make it big or not, I think I'll always be a writer.

But I want to know how you feel. So tell me in the comments: what does writing mean to you?

What Books do You Come Back To?

There are some books that seem to become touchstones in our lives, that carve out a place for themselves in our memories and that we can't help returning to again and again. Many people have reported coming-of-age novels like The Catcher in the Rye having that effect on them, for example.

The funny thing is that these novels don't always have to be the novels we consider the best or our favorites. One book I come back to again and again, and always derive some great pleasure from reading, is Frank Herbert's science-fiction epic Dune. It's not the best-written book (though it is solid writing), but I just find it to be the perfect blend of religion, politics, philosophy and old-fashioned exciting storytelling to grab me again and again. I've read it more times than I can count.

Other books that continue to hold me do reach a very high literary calibre, such as my old fave The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Another book I adored reading once and have already returned to again is E.M. Forster's A Passage to India. These are epic but also luxurious tales that unfold slowly and carefully, with rich and unhurried development of character and place. I do love feeling like I am thoroughly inhabiting the world of the novel, and all three of these books have that strong setting backbone in common.

So what books continue to call you back after you have closed the cover? Tell me in the comments; I'd be very interested to see what other books stick in the minds of my readers.

Becoming an Early Riser Again

As a college student who usually doesn't have classes before one in the afternoon, I've become a bit of a lax riser in recent years. I tend to feel affronted if I have to wake up before ten, and I'll feel groggy and disgruntled for the first few hours I'm awake. All that has changed this semester, though, with the acquisition of a new job that demands that I wake up at eight am twice a week, and two ten am classes that require that I get up at nine the other days of the week.

I thought it would be torture at first, but as long as I have an alarm set, I've found that it hasn't been too bad. As long as I get a bit of breakfast before I go out, I find myself feeling alert and ready to take on the world by 8:30 or 9, and I love having these new hours of the day opening up to be used. Of course, I'm sitting in class or working in the library in these morning hours, but I emerge after noon feeling like the day has only just begun and I've already been productive. It's a great feeling!

It reminds me that many famous writers seem to use their morning hours to greatest effect, and end up getting the most creative work done before lunch. There's something refreshing and invigorating about writing while the sun rises over your shoulder. If you've had a good night's sleep the day before, that is. My days of going to bed at two am are over.

Write for Writerly Life!

At long last, the Write for Us page is up and running, ready to give you information about writing opportunities at the Corner. Check it out and see what sort of topics I'm interested in having. I'm interested in expanding Creative Writing Corner's focus to include all aspects of the writerly life, including the nitty gritty things like the most comfortable chairs, the best pens and notebooks, and organizing a writing workspace. In addition to that, of course, I'm always eager to see other bloggers' views on the writing craft.

Creative Writing Corner cannot afford to pay writers for their contributions, unfortunately. However, I'm happy to do a guest post exchange and write a guest post for your site. I'll also cite your post with a link to your blog. I've written several guest posts for other blogs and I'm happy to do more, if you're willing to consider an exchange. So head on over to the Write for Us page to learn more!

Finished My Longest Story Ever!

Last week I finally, finally finished my longest story yet. The actual time spent writing wouldn't add up to more than a few hours, but the work I'm calling "Vasitthi the Madwoman" took over three months of solid thought and research and clocks in at a solid 20 or so pages (and 6,500+ words). More than that, this story felt like a rather ambitious accomplishment because of the largeness of its ideas. I was trying several new things in this story, from portraying an adult romance to portraying an adult's grief for her lost child, to trying to write some of the best prose I've gotten down yet. There was a scene in this story that just had to be beautiful in order to work, and I worked very hard to get my writing level up to snuff for it.

I'm happy to say it seems like the story has turned out to be a success. I know mothers tend to be easy critics, but my mom, who tends to be tough but fair about my writing, said she cried. My advisor seemed to really like it as well and had only minor suggestions for edits. Hurrah! It always feels great when hard work pays off with what seems to be a quality piece.

To give you a taste of what the story is about: Annie Hillford, my main character, is a middle-aged convert to Zen Buddhism, a serious spiritualist in a family of lapsed Christians uninterested in the kind of mystic life she seeks. Her sister, Violet, has recently lost her young son to cancer. Annie and her brother have always been protective of Violet, but now this tragedy threatens to tear her carefully constructed world apart. In a desperate attempt at emotional freedom, Annie embarks on a meditation retreat that will cut her off from all communication with her family. But can it be that easy to shed the responsibilities of her grieving family?

I hope I've piqued your interest. Maybe someday this story will be appearing in print!

Photo of the Week

Stealthy, originally uploaded by paul+photos=moody.

Have I mentioned my love of horses enough? I miss riding them, but more than that, they are simply beautiful and inspiring animals. Maybe this photo will make you smile, and maybe it will get you writing too.

How Much Psychology do You Use in Your Writing?

 Sigmund Freud, father of modern psychology...
with some very skewed views on women
and sexuality.
Image from Wikipedia.

If you're writing realistic fiction these days, it usually necessitates the use of at least a little bit of psychology, even on an amateur or expert level. Humans do have a tendency to behave according to reliable and scientifically proven patterns in response to many situations. If you have your characters behaving too bizarrely out of these psychological laws, it will seem unrealistic, and worse, un-human. At the same time, you don't want your character to be exhibiting psychology in too classic a manner, because then they become a cliche, a scientific stereotype, and less than an individual. So how do you walk the line?

One primary psychological concern to keep in mind when writing is the question of motivation. By and large, people just don't do things for absolutely no reason. Even deliberately random behavior is usually out of rebellion or demonstrating a refusal to conform, or something like that. So try to ask yourself this question while deciding what your character will do next: what is his/her motivation? Is he despairing over the death of a loved one? Does she want to prove to the world that she isn't her mother? What are the deep psychological roots of what is governing their behavior?

After the jump: how not to use psychology.

Tinkering with Design Details

As I mentioned earlier, I've been tinkering a lot with Creative Writing Corner and another site I run recently. I'd really like this site to have a clean, professional feel, but I don't know much about professional web design, so I've just been kind of winging it all these years. I've only just begun to acquire some of the heavy-hitting design tools out there, such as photoshop, and a desktop blogging client (I use Marsedit). I've finally gotten something I wanted for CWC for ages, which is a navigation bar. It's fully functional (except for the Write for Us page. That's coming soon!), and it made me stretch my limited html skills to a new level, to get one image to have multiple link locations within it.

One of the great benefits of running Creative Writing Corner over the years is that I have learned a tremendous amount about html and web design and function. Wanting my blog to be up-to-date has kept me up-to-date with the latest blog technologies (even if this modest blog has no need for the flashier aspects of web 2.0). I wonder, though, if being web-savvy is completely compatible with being a creative writer. Shouldn't I spend less time tinkering with the tools of my trade, and more time just working with words? Getting back to basics?

I don't worry too much, though, about being simultaneously a techie and a writer. No one is 100% of one personality type. And really, there's never been any question in my mind that while techie stuff is a hobby, writing is a passion and a lifestyle.

Characters Embody their Emotions

In my last meeting with my thesis advisor, he had a very interesting comment to give about one of my stories. My protagonist had just experienced a deep personal trauma; someone close to her, becoming increasingly violent, finally turns this violence in on himself and commits suicide. In my first draft, I had my character withdrawing into herself, becoming small and shrunken and shy with grief. There's definitely something legitimate about the withdrawal from the world that grief and contact with violence causes.

But at the same time, my advisor thought my portrayal wasn't quite complete. There's another thing going on, that I do think is something very real. When we experience a strong emotion or traumatic event, like grief or violence, we take the energy of that event into ourselves. We let it grow and breed. We come to embody the grief or the trauma. In this case, a character who has come so close to violence cannot help but take violence into herself, becoming borderline violent. Her actions must betray some of that brush with violence that she has experienced. That is, after all, the nasty root of the reason why violence seems to breed, and one person's violence leads to more violence from others who are affected by it.

After the jump: other emotions, and how characters take them on themselves.