Ruminations

So, I realize this won’t be four pages and it’s a bit late, but I got to thinking about the worst part of workshopping as I was trying to fall asleep the other night. And I’m not even sure it’s the worst part for me particularly but it’s something I’ve noticed and wondered about so I’m putting it out here.

Workshops are meant to provide feedback on works in progress. That being said, ultimately every writer in the room will always be focusing a thousand percent on the advancement of his/her own writing. Which presents a problem when it comes to feedback because that advancement of individual work mentality seems to create this need to come to class with a list of things that need to be “fixed” in someone’s submission, which then creates, (or seems to create), an element of doubt within the author. And granted we all have to practice our thick skin abilities but I wonder if there’s a way to accomplish a workshop without making ourselves question ourselves.

Whether we’re good at vocalizing it or not, I’m pretty sure deep down as writers we all have a sense of what we’re trying to accomplish in our writing. So I wonder what would happen if instead of being told: go this direction, change x, make Julie a sassy brunette, (which I admit I almost hate to give up because sometimes really good ideas spring from those brainstormings), but I wonder, if we just said, look Zoe, you’re speaking here in this piece and this is what I hear you saying, this what I see this piece accomplishing, this is where I’m confused, or this word made this line unclear, and these are the questions I have, and maybe I’m crazy but this is what you’re writing said to me and I hope it helps you clarify how your individual writing mission is working within this piece.

I wonder if that might be more beneficial than trying to pick things apart as heavily. Because we’re all just speaking. We’re all sitting here in our towers of individual/personal language trying to reach everyone else’s language and the writers that we read are no different. They’re just published speakers of their individual truths. And it’d be great if we could all step outside of our truths to hear everyone else’s truth in a workshop but that feels like asking for a miracle.

But I think Elizabeth Gilbert had a point, I think some aspect of creativity is this outside force, something unnamable, indefinable, that we somehow tap into or that taps into us. But even beyond that creativity comes, like Elmaz said, in the space when all the outside noise is quieted. Quieting that noise is not the same process for everyone but wherever you create your silence is the place, the crossroads. That’s the place where the veil’s thinnest and the divine and the mundane touch, or in Gilbert’s example the little creature henchman/genie thing channels itself on into your body/mind and the writing (or art/song/picture whatever) gets not just creative but impassioned and inspired.

And workshops, I think, but maybe more specifically a list of things to fix, do not exactly promote quieting the noise.

Anyhow. I feel that I may not be making sense anymore but I wanted to put some quotes up here from the Creators on Creativity book that stood out to me too so here they are:

“Now when you learn patterned movement, you’re so involved in learning the pattern that the tendency is simply to cut off the feeling aspect… And when you become aware of the movement and the feeling it’s evoking, you begin to have the freedom to use it consciously and excitingly, and that’s when you begin to become an artist in your material.” Anna Halprin pg 45.

“But if your attention as an artist is only on what you are getting therapeutically, you are not paying attention to the fact that essentially you’re a craftsman, that essentially your job is to be a vehicle for other people.” Anna Halprin pg 46.

“Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.” Henry Miller pg 30.