Week
6: Going Deeper
Carrying Writing Practice into Your Work
By now you've got several
pieces of writing practice in your notebook or on your computer. You
also have basic tools at your disposal for how to light your creative
spark: going for the crapulence, using what's under your nose, and
gaining wisdom and insight from a guide. Further, you have a framework
and some guideposts for how to carry on this writing practice: setting
yourself up to succeed and reading your work aloud.
Now comes the trick of applying this framework and these tools in
your creation of poems, articles, and stories. You've already read
some examples of how this can be done. In this final week I will flesh
out those examples and give you more specific tips for applying these
principles.
Using Crapulent Writing/"Writing What's Under Your Nose" to
Get Started
In the first two lectures we discussed writing from a place of freedom
and drunken carelessness. This is to get your inhibitions loosened
and to keep you from locking up when you sit down at the writing table.
What this type of free writing does is give you greater access to
your unconscious mind. Thus, once you get going, you might discover
that you end up on a different topic or writing with a very different
style and energy than when you started. This is usually a good thing.
I have discovered that often I must write a certain amount before
I get to what really needs to be said. More often than not, I end
up throwing out the beginning of a poem or short story because the
real meat of the piece begins further in.
For example, I have a chronic illness that causes severe fatigue.
For a long time, I wanted to write a poem playing on the double meaning
of the word "gravity" -- how it pertains to weight and fatigue (the
Law of Gravity) and also how it means something serious and deadly
(as in "grave"). So I started off with that concept of gravity and
began writing and just let it take me wherever my mind went. Below
is an early draft of the first two stanzas of the poem.
THE AMOUNT OF GRAVITY
I have to contend with is getting me down.
It's this heaviness of head and limb,
suffocating the spark of the day's inspiration.
At my first exhale the lead descends
on chest, knees, and thought, and I
cannot roll this sleeping weight off, but only off
the bed and carry her into the day,
an unwilling nurse to my own bulk,
like squeezing the air from a bird.
That's why they fall -- the sky ceases
to support them, like a rip in a seam
gravity takes flight.
I heard a bird fall.
There was a thud while I stood
in the kitchen cooking peas, the squeak
of beak and skull meeting glass, then silence.
By the time I pushed outside its eyes
were fixed, lids clicked into crescent slits
like slices of sky, wings too stunned to flutter.
I've heard that birds' bones are filled
with air -- they have to be hollow to fly. . . .
Where did you get interested in this poem? Where did your mind snap
to attention with a clear image? My writing friends all told me that
the poem began for them with "I heard a bird fall." So I cut out the
first stanza. Then I did another practice writing session where I
started from the stanza of the dead bird and went from there. That
took me to more images relating to birds. Here's a draft that followed:
GRAVITY TAKES FLIGHT
I heard a bird fall once. There was a thud
while I stood in the kitchen cooking peas, the squeak
of beak and skull meeting glass, then silence.
By the time I pushed outside its eyes were fixed,
lids clicked into crescent slits like slices of wind,
wings too stunned to flutter.
I've been told birds' bones are hollow; that's why
they fly. But what of penguins, those birds bound below
the horizon? Truncated wings hanging like deflated tires,
padding on the ice, rolling on gray frozen snow.
Are they truly flightless? No, they dive beneath
to unleash their speed -- the water more forgiving
than air. Penguin bones must flow with syrup, a liquid
gliding smooth and sweet that aids avian swimmers
in slicing through the water, sluicing below the floes.
I would live in the antarctic, if that's what it took
to be set free of stillness. At the bottom
of the world, where the air is thinner
I'd blow goodbye to gravity and swing
into that slipstream, unfurling in the wake
of my weightlessness -- skimming, oxygen
and hydrogen singing through me, with no more effort
than falling from the sky.
This time I totally went with the bird theme and ended up with the
penguins. However, the poem above is lacking the connection between
my illness and the feeling of being weighted down. So I did another
free-write on the "heavy bones" concept and came up with some verse
which I added to the poem. Here is the last draft:
GRAVITY TAKES FLIGHT
I heard a bird fall once. There was a thud
while I stood in the kitchen cooking peas, the squeak
of beak and skull meeting glass, then silence.
By the time I pushed outside its eyes were fixed,
lids clicked into crescent slits like slices of wind,
wings too stunned to flutter.
I've been told birds' bones are hollow; that's why
they fly. What weight fills my limbs, to keep me trundled
to this bed? Did a dense element enter my bones,
like lead solder -- a poison vapor while hot,
a metal millstone when cold? Even as I cool, the cast
setting inside me, I defy this ponderous illness.
For, what of penguins, those birds bound below
the horizon? Rolling on gray frozen snow, truncated
wings hanging like deflated tires -- are they truly flightless?
No, penguins dive beneath to unleash their speed. Their bones
must flow with syrup, a liquid gliding smooth and sweet
that aids in slicing through the water, sluicing below the floes.
I would live in the Antarctic, if that's what it took
to be set free of stillness. At the bottom of the world,
where the air is thin. I'd blow good-bye to gravity
and swing into that slipstream, unfurling in the wake
of my weightlessness -- skimming, oxygen singing
through me, with no more effort than falling from the sky.
Pulling Out the Lively Thoughts
Another way I use writing practice is to zero in on the places where
my writing is fresh and vital. Again, I start with the basic rules
of writing whatever comes to me, without editing, being crapulent,
slovenly, and headlong. After I've written a piece I let it sit for
a while. I recommend letting your work sit for several days. If you're
on a deadline you might only be able to wait a day or a few hours.
Then I come back to the piece with fresh eyes and a pencil. I read
it through aloud at a good clip, stopping only to circle
or underline the sections that feel hot . These are the
places where an image clicks in my mind, where I feel compelled and
pulled in to the story, or where I feel startled and awakened.
Then I collect those sections and work with them. In some cases I
have created poems this way -- by pulling the hot lines from a writing
practice that was not necessarily a poem, putting them into some order,
maybe fleshing them out a bit.
In other cases I have used the hot sections (which may be as small
as a phrase or as big as several paragraphs) to free-write from. If
you look through the stages my gravity poem underwent above, you will
see that I used this technique many times.
Here is a practice writing that I did a year or two ago. This is its
totally raw and unedited form:
This is what happens when you live alone. You eat all the nuts out
of the chocolate bars, leaving foil wrappers of muddied, nibbled pieces
like fussy squirrels had gotten into your pantry. You wear the same
pair of socks every day, the bottoms smeared with dust and cat hair
and chocolate that fell when you were excising the nuts with your
incisors. You make little jokes to the dogs and laugh at them and
call yourself witty and notice that your skin looks clear and soft
in the mirror. You leave the bathroom door open when you pee and watch
TV while you cook dinner. You eat lunch at three and dinner at midnight
and have dessert before breakfast. Why not? When you burp you still
say "Excuse me," but then laugh and turn to the cat "You don't mind,
do you?" You drink directly from the seltzer bottle. You check your
voice mail at 2 a.m. You write poetry in bed when you can't sleep
or sitting on the toilet with your pants around your ankles or on
the couch with a game show audience cheering in the background or
on the computer as dusk falls. Living alone is good for being a poet.
I read it through and save only the lines that felt zingy to me:
This is what happens when you live alone. You make little jokes to
the dogs and laugh at them and call yourself witty and notice that
your skin looks clear and soft in the mirror. You leave the bathroom
door open when you pee. Why not? You drink directly from the seltzer
bottle. You write poetry in bed when you can't sleep or sitting on
the toilet with your pants around your ankles. Living alone is good
for being a poet.
I take those lines, rearrange them, and do a very short free-write
off of them:
This is what happens when you live alone. You make little jokes to
the dogs and laugh at them and call yourself witty. You leave the
bathroom door open when you pee. Why not? You notice that your skin
looks clear and soft in the mirror but there's no one around to touch
it and tell you that, so you do. You drink directly from the seltzer
bottle. You write poetry in bed when you can't sleep. You write poetry
when you're sitting on the toilet with your pants around your ankles.
You write poetry with a game show audience cheering in the background
because somebody has won a new car that they will not have the money
to pay on the taxes. You wonder how come they don't know this. Are
they pretending to be happy or are they just foolish? You always wonder
if they will sell it for enough to cover the taxes on their winnings.
You wish that someone else was here to touch your skin, to tell you
that it's soft. Living alone is good for being a poet, but it's not
so good for living as a human being. Living alone is a quiet, peaceful
hell.
Again I save only the lines that work and do writing practice from
them. In this case, when I do that again, I end up turning it into
a poem:
LIVING ALONE
You make little jokes to the cat
and laugh and call yourself
witty. You drink directly
from the seltzer bottle. You leave
the bathroom door open when you pee
and notice in the mirror
as you wash your hands
how clear and soft
your skin is today.
Living alone is good for being a poet.
When you can't sleep you write poetry
in bed. You write poetry
when you're sitting on the toilet
with your pants around your ankles
or with the cat on your lap
smelling of soil from the yard
and the breeze from the open window
telling you it's spring.
You haven't been out
to check; you're too busy
writing poetry and wondering
when someone else
will notice how soft your skin
is under their hands.
So, there you go. This probably is not a poem that I will use -- it
doesn't feel strong enough for me to continue to work on and try to
publish. However, the process of working with these words and concepts
has been fun for me, and it's likely that at some other time, in some
other piece that I write, a line or a concept from this poem will
find its way into my work.
Now you are going to get the chance to work with your raw writing.
We will use some of the writing you've already done to practice the
techniques I have demonstrated above.
ASSIGNMENT 6
Pick one of the writings that you've done in the last five weeks to
read aloud to a classmate. Choose any writing except the piece that
you read aloud to your classmate last week. Set up a time to call
that person again. E-mail her a copy of the piece you're going to
read to her.
Have both your piece and her piece printed out and in front of you
when you speak. As she reads her work to you, listen for the lines
that are liveliest and most intriguing. After she has finished reading,
thank her; then take a moment to circle (or underline or bold) those
sections that rang out with inspiration. Mark them on the page in
front of you while they are still fresh in your mind. When you read
your piece to her, she will also make note of the sections that felt
the most exciting and creative.
When you read your piece to her, listen for that same snap and excitement
in your own work. After you have finished reading to her, circle those
sections that have the deepest resonance. Then, e-mail your buddy
the sections you circled in her piece. See where there is overlap
-- which parts of your writing felt the most alive to both of you.
Use those lines to launch a writing practice: Write for twenty minutes
starting from the most inspired parts of your previous efforts. If
you get stuck, you can repeat one of those "alive" phrases until something
comes to you. Or use the "what I really mean to say is" trick.
If you want, you can go on from here. A good way to do it is to post
this newly expanded writing practice to the class listserv. Ask everyone
to indicate which sections they find the most creatively inspired.
See if there is agreement among the class on certain sections being
strong and interesting. Take those "alive lines" and expand upon them
again -- for instance, using them as the basis of a thirty-minute
writing session.
