Brand, Myths and Little Miracles

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Myths and Little Miracles:
Advice to Beginning Creative Writing Students

Alice G. Brand
State University of New York
College at Brockport

Creative writing is a popular non-subject. This is one of the few classes where there is so much give and take and so little memorizable and repeatable subject matter. You are in fact the subject matter of this course. You are graduate students of yourselves, your wishes, lies, and dreams, as Kenneth Koch wrote. You learn the techniques of transforming your experiences into several creative forms and some tools for evaluating them.

Now, if you compose upside down in the lotus position and publish in The New Yorker, fine, we'll trade places. I'll sit down and you take over the class. But if you are adrift, estranged from creative work by the difficulty in expressing yourself, this is, first and foremost, a course about permissions, getting your mother off your back, your teacher out of your head, liberating yourself from your most critical peer. Let me assure you, if you can speak you can write. We are all in a sense prisoners of old ideas. This article is intended to demystify the creative process, to dispel the folklore we are all misguided by because old ideas paralyze the very writing they are intended to facilitate. Statements debunking such folklore have appeared often and widely over the years, yet instructors like me feel compelled to pass them on again and again because they come as a kind of revelation to young writers.

The Myths

The problem in any art is usually the same--to start the flow and then bring form to it. There are two principal methods of doing that. I call them the modeling and carving methods. By the modeling method I mean building as in clay, dab by dab, one sentence at a time. British playwright Tom Stoppard is rumored to compose that way. I imagine that he writes a line, sits with it, polishes it until it is brilliant and then moves to the second line. In the carving method we write down everything and then start carving in clay-- subtracting, gradually eliminating the excess from the gem.

For those of us great unwashed, thinking in the strict sense can curtail that flow. Writing creates ideas and experience on paper that might never have existed in the conscious mind before writing. It's scary when you are sitting at a desk, being formal, dressed for the occasion, with sharpened pencils and a perfectly appointed desk. Don't do it. Never go to your desk with an empty pad or paper or without notes. How do you get ideas? You write when you're not thinking about writing. Keep pad and pencils nearby to receive that writing. I write in the movies. I write in the car. I was once spared a ticket by a police officer whom I convinced was a former student of mine. Anything more than a "the" is a beginning.

A corollary to #1, this folklore I explode with an old chestnut my father used to tell us at meals: The appetite comes while eating. Ideas, like the appetite, come while writing. You discover what you have to say in the act of saying it. and you get up the courage to write it. James Baldwin said, Tell as much of the truth as one can bear, and then a little more. Don't be afraid of your thoughts. Writers say what other people only think. Level with your reader. But don't try to imagine against the grain. (Let someone else tell the story of Mother Theresa in Calcutta or The Rosicrucians at Lourdes.) It is never too early to apply E. M. Forster's insight: How do I know what I think until I see what I say? If ideas are not out of your body, separated like a newborn from its mother, you cannot give them proper ventilation, a chance to breathe on their own. You cannot really think about your thoughts. When you write, you figuratively make yourself two persons out of one. Once you have written, you, as subject, can review closely what you, as object, have said.

A fixed period of prewriting or planning cannot be distinguished before any writing act. Nor should it. We learn while writing. and for most of us, it is a slowly accruing skill. No one really knows when planning starts. Few of us care. What we care about is capturing ideas before they are censored or forgotten. With the subtraction method you may write a lot of junk. But you won't risk throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Don't necessarily set out to write a poem, or a short story. Stay provisional as long as you can. If a form is imposed too early, it often inhibits the flow. Get your ideas down and the piece will gradually find its form: short fiction, personal essay, poem, or drama.

Most of us are lazy. We think that if we take the time to compose sentences in our heads rather than write them down, they will come out perfectly. and we have saved the time and trouble of rewriting, fussing with them. After all, we fussed with them in our heads. Shouldn't that be enough? It is a lovely wish but for the most part inaccurate. I promise that no matter how hard you work, you will probably never write several consecutive drafts of a first sentence or last without something being awkward or unintelligible. What's more, you will probably never be able to speak more than three consecutive sentences without producing something clumsy or obscure. Decide that your first draft is your final draft and you will never write a creative word. Pre-editing in our heads to save time really wastes time.

5. Writing should be easy and its cousin, Writing should be efficient, that is, fast and accurate

Nonsense. Writing is sublimely inefficient for most of us. And it is demanding. Most of us agonize. We write. We rewrite. We move language around, manipulate it, multiply and divide it. Maya Angelou said it well: "Easy reading takes hard writing."

I lived this lie when I went to public school. I remember ink wells, writing inside thin red margins, eradicator that bleached my paper and the desk beneath it, and ink erasers that rubbed through almost everything in their way. One draft written in pen, I could never quite get it. Of course, writing can be neat for some people. But, by and large, early drafts need be no one's but yours--so long as they are readable. Getting the ideas down is the overarching goal of these drafts--no matter how boring, childish, or chaotic they may be. I have come to trust my fits and starts. I am confident that the seemingly aimless jottings of my first 17 lines are indeed responsible for the success of, say, line 18. I don't concentrate on prettiness or perfection. I lower my expectations and move on.

This is partly true. While you cannot always expect to create a story at the drop of a hat, you can get used to writing all the time, especially when it resonates in your head. Keep paper and pencil in the bathroom, at your bedside, in your pocket or purse. When an idea itches, scratch it. When your mind wanders, follow it. When imagination offers you an idea, write it down, no matter how digressive. The digression might even be better than what you were digressing from.

By the same token, don't procrastinate. Don't take a break to dodge your work. Take a legitimate break to reflect, for ideas to incubate. Put another way, give yourself lots of time: If you are worried about what other people will think of your creative work, don't put yourself in a position of writing an important piece without giving yourself a chance to revise -- a chance to make constructive and clarifying changes. Restricting yourself to a single draft with no chance for change only invites writer's block and mediocre output. Some writers let their material sit for six months, others twenty years. Moreover, set realistic goals for yourself. Rutgers University Professor Doug Penfield used to say: A page a day is a book a year.

When I feel totally barren, I return to the writers I love. I read until I start believing I can say that. I can write that. and I do.

Nothing could be further from the truth. No one wants to be a considered a simpleton. But practiced writers know that the level of sophistication of the writing is linked to audience, not to them. Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias, responsible for the Big Bang and Black Hole theories, uses esoteric, highly technical language that defies understanding by none other than his peer astrophysicists. Yet, one night years ago I heard him talk on the Dick Cavett show in a language that a sixth grader could easily understand. Skilled writers are sufficiently versatile to adjust their material to match the comprehension levels of their readers. Don't be fooled by this myth. Simple writing can express profoundly complex ideas, as in much drama, fiction, and literary nonfiction.

You don't have to be Hemingway to become a critical reader and maintain sentence logic. Most people sit down and want to make a fancy entrance, commit an act of literature. After a while they become themselves, and throw away the first lines. Compare these two statements:

I don't know about you, but I have this voice that goes: "What? NAW. That ain't no way to write a damn sentence! That's the limpest damn piddliest damn saddest-looking most clogged and whiney damn hitching-around piss-and-corruption-covered damn sentence I ever saw. Boy! Anybody can snuffle along through the pine straw! I want to see you down with your teeth in the dirt! Reaching and gnawing and chewing and gnashing on some oak tree roots! Right on down through to where the juice is. Git it. Drive. Show me something!" (Blount qtd. in Lindemann 125)

At least to begin with, keep your creative writing conversational. You have a natural grammar at the tip of your tongue. Short fiction writer Grace Paley put it this way: If you say what is on your mind in the language that comes to you from your parents, your block and your friends, you'll probably be saying some very beautiful things.

Many of us go through the stages of writing song lyrics, Hallmark cards, hormone poems, I call them (or stories), about unrequited love, sexual stirrings, the last touch, the first good-bye, the greatest story ever told. You have felt them. I did. We get caught in Grade C rerun-thinking, clich,s, abstract and stereotypical reality--me included. John Ciardi once said:

It helps to love what you do. and to do well at what you love. But I write mostly whatever and whenever I need to--even if I do not particularly want to. Sometimes I write what I call cognitive or head poems--when I don't really feel strongly about the subject. Other times I write the predominantly feeling poems. These come out easily and relatively whole and unrevised. They start from different places, but they ultimately marry in my mind (Brand "On Seeing").

Facts are ultimately no good without feelings. So think and feel deeply about what you write. Look at the beginning of an article on teaching that I published some years ago:

Writers come from all socio-economic strata, from all educational backgrounds, and with distinctive stories. Don't be ashamed of your family or friends, their quirks. Don't be ashamed of your home or its peculiarities, its curious truths: a cousin of mine constantly washes his eyebrows; a maiden aunt covered with Band- Aids photos of relatives she disliked; my husband keeps me at bay by listening to public radio.

Probe something with childlike curiosity. One of my creative writing students wrote about wearing black every Friday to "make a statement." Another wrote about the competition between his father and him for the best designs they cut on their lawn with the rider mower. Ed Lueder's said it best:

The biggest difference between writers and wannabees is that writers write. Intelligence is necessary but not sufficient for creativity. In other words, intelligence and creative ability are wedded only up to a point. Above a certain intellectual baseline, creativity separates from its cognitive base and moves in inexplicable ways toward the novel and illogical. We experience a rush of curious ideas. That's what makes the work creative. In fact, sometimes I believe that creative writing has to resist the intelligence almost entirely. So relax. Free associate until the right incongruity comes along. It will.

Clearly not. We have unique composing styles, cognitive styles, temperaments, and experiences. Capitalize on your idiosyncrasies. During what time period do you do your best writing? What location is most conducive to your creative imagination (kitchen table, attic, bed, beach)? What equipment facilitates your creative writing (legal pad, computer, felt tip pen, colored paper)? If you write better at 6:00 am, do it. If you write best evenings, do that. If you write best on a park bench, go there. Or in a local luncheonette, get a cup of coffee. I like writing on airplanes. So I travel prepared with paper, pencil, even a stapler and scissors for cutting and revising. I also like the Peak Quality #2 pencils, soft but not waxy. My family indulges me. My children buy them for me at Christmas to the tune of 17 cents apiece.

Although I admit that I do my best revising serenely alone, I have discovered an interesting tool: Talking my writing to someone. Even if you experience writer's block, you probably don't have talker's block. When I am stuck, I read out loud sometimes the smallest sentence to the departmental secretary, to my husband, or, when all else fails, to myself. If I am having difficulty, sometimes I use a temporary crutch and start my piece as a letter. "Dear __________," becomes the scaffolding for finding and sustaining my natural voice and is removed later. If I am still having difficulty explaining myself out loud, I find a real person and I start my explanation with a WIRMTSI or "What I really mean to say is. . . " and the rest of the ideas inevitably and lucidly follow. What I am trying to say here is: Write not what you're supposed to say, but what you mean to say. Nothing more. Nothing less. Write to be understood, not to impress, not to make an effect. If you want to communicate, say exactly, and I mean exactly, what you want to say, no matter what. After the WIRMTSI has served its purpose, edit it out. When in doubt, you can do no worse than K I S S, Keep It Simple Sweetheart. Gradually you come to say something that you previously ignored because it was too difficult to express.

I once had a student who, reaching thematically for global cooperation, used the pop culture expression "We are the World" several times in a poem. Apart from plagiarizing, John expected to embrace this highly complex notion in one overworked slogan, when in fact he moved no one in the group. Because we saw nothing. We touched nothing. New students of creative writing do not realize that by trying to say it all, they say nothing. If we are consumed by cosmic themes, the subject is buried or lost. If we concentrate on the subject, the themes take care of themselves.

Students believe that getting too specific disables readers from relating to a fictive situation because in the Northeast, for example, we say submarines and in the Midwest they say hoagies. So students end up writing lunch or sandwich--neither of which works. In a word, if words fit everyone, they fit no one.

As an author, your obligation is to promote emotional identification with the material. If a character leaves the ladies room with toilet paper stuck on the sole of her shoe, I transfer that embarrassing moment to the time I lost a cap of a molar on an olive at a dinner party. Or the time years ago my boss reminded me that the back of my dress was unzipped. What transfers is not an event per se but the emotional content that it triggers in you, by reminding you of a similar event in your own experience.

The route to memorable creative writing is found via the concrete and the specific. Name names. Name places. The minute details. Saying Howard is always better than merely saying a man, because I can visualize a Howard better than I can Nondescript Man. It may not agree with your vision of Howard, but until you change my mind, it is what I need in order to hang meaning onto, to work up some empathy for. I trust that you as author will guide me along.

To summarize, give yourself permission to make mistakes. Good writing is durable but delicate. The procedure is simple. In a nutshell, just write down every idea about your subject that comes into your head. Don't throw out any ideas even if they sound silly. Don't try to rank them or evaluate their importance. Don't worry about being repetitious. Don't worry if you start writing about something else. You can always bring yourself back and edit later. Ignore correct grammar, spelling, punctuation for the time being. Try not to edit and compose at the same time. Strive for quantity; the more ideas the better. Keep your eye on the truth of the subject, your truth, not someone else's. The worst is over now. You have material on paper that you can develop, organize, and proofread.

In short, your first composing should be quick and dirty. Then your editing should be slow and careful. The process is nothing short of miraculous.

[1] Among others, Peter Elbow, David Holbrook (72, 188+), Stephen Joseph, and Frank Smith (85) have articulated several of these misconceptions.

Brand, Alice G. "On Seeing the Green Parrot and the Green Salad," Colors of a Different Horse. Eds. Wendy Bishop and Hans Ostrom. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1994. 146-157.

Brand, Alice G. "On the Teaching of College Comp: Will There Ever Be a Once and For All?" Freshman English News 10-1 (1980): 18-20.

Elkins, William R., Jack L. Kendall, and John R. Willingham Literary Reflections. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976.

Holbrook, David. English for the Rejected: Training Literacy in the Lower Stream of the Secondary School. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 1964.

Lindemann, Erika. A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Myths and Little Miracles: Advice to Beginning Creative Writing Students

Alice G. Brand State University of New York College at Brockport

The Myths

Myths and Little Miracles:
Advice to Beginning Creative Writing Students

Alice G. Brand
State University of New York
College at Brockport