the writing life

Guest Post: Every Damned Tangle and Knot

art, writing

 

This morning I have a guest post up at Ross Gale’s blog. It’s part of a series he’s doing on creativity. The whole series is worth a read. From Ross:

The Bereshit Bara Creativity Series asks 13 Creatives to wrestle with how they make the first move, write the first word, fling the first brush stroke, peel back the first layer of clay? What inspires them, what moves them, what drives them? I’d also like to hear from YOU. Send me your thoughts or a link to your post wrestling with these questions at rossgale4@gmail.com.

If you comment on today’s post you will be entered into a drawing to win David’s book Rookie Dad: Thoughts on First-Time Fatherhood. I’ll announce the winner over the weekend.

Creativity Series: David Jacobsen “Every Damned Tangle and Knot”

Head on over to Ross’s blog and let me know what you think in his comments.

Metaphors for writing

writing

Creative writing

is headlights on a dark road

is a way into the forest

is a way out

is a mountain we can only ever see part of

is a mirror

is a hammer to shape reality

is how we see what we think

is both/and

What do you think creative writing is?

(Most of these are floating around in our global writerly consciousness already;
I’m not claiming to have invented them.)

Why adults should read children’s literature

art, reading, writing

Pivoting off a thoroughly obnoxious post by Joel Stein about literature written for children, which I sincerely hope you don’t bother to read, Andrew Sprung says the following:

…while the best children’s books can bring many core human experiences ‘marvelously’ to life, there are many equally or more intense experiences that they can’t touch.

While there’s nothing wrong with an adult devoting leisure time to The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe or Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, they are not sufficient. They should not crowd out The Gulag Archipelago, or The Moons of Jupiter, or Midnight’s Children. Confining your reading to children’s books would be like confining your sex life to hugs and kisses…

It seems to me this is nearly as wrong as Stein’s screed, though better intentioned and less obnoxious. Stein thinks “children’s literature” consists of nonsense rhymes and vampire soap operas. Sprung thinks “children’s literature” is broader—that it can profitably engage certain subjects at levels profitable for adults to read, like family relationships or bullying.

But neither of these gentlemen read much children’s literature, clearly. Because it isn’t children’s literature or adult literature that can touch the deepest and most important experiences in life. It’s litererature, period. And some of that is written “for children.” Just as a quick look at the YA shelf shows plenty of vampire soap operas, so does a quick look at the adult shelf! And a deeper, less I’m-too-wise-and-educated consideration of the YA shelf will reveal books that grapple in a profoundly human and nuanced way with everything—everything—“grown up” literature grapples with.

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” ― Madeleine L’Engle

Adults should read literature, wherever they find it. And if you imagine no children’s literature is really literature, well, you haven’t really grown up yet.

In which a quote from Christian Wiman gets my dander up

art, teaching, writing

Christian Wiman is awesome. I love his poetry. He was just named a Guggenheim fellow. He took the time to hang out with my MFA alma mater. But a friend sent me the following transcription from a recent interview of his and it got my dander up:

You are filled and then you’re not. A poet is someone who has to exist between those moments. And between those moments you don’t feel like a poet. It’s been two months since I’ve written a poem and I don’t feel at all like a poet. It goes away. You’re just a person going about your life like anyone else. The gift seems not yours. It seems on loan. Whereas with prose you can do that anytime. You can crank that out.

There seem to be two sets of problematic assumptions in this quote. Regarding poetry:

-successful poems come from some source of inspiration outside the poet

-drafting, revising, rewriting—if you’re in between periods of being “filled” these things are of little use

-poets are gifted in a unique way, even from other creative writers (which raises a whole different set of questions)

Regarding prose:

-prose writers are never “filled” and don’t need to wait for those moments

-prose writers can and should feel like writers all the time

-most alarmingly, you can write successful prose anytime and just crank it out

I haven’t seen this whole interview yet, so hopefully the context clarifies things. However, I can’t imagine telling my beginning poetry students that they should wait to be filled, and if it takes a month or two past the assignment deadline, well, no problem! And I can’t imagine telling my beginning creative nonfiction students that patience and inspiration and and bravery don’t have a role in their prose since they can just crank it out.

Is the poet really such a different animal? How do you read this quote if you make a different sort of art, like music or visual art? I know there are people who will read this who have Christian’s email address. I’d dearly love to hear his thoughts. And I know, I know—I need to watch the whole interview!

UPDATE: Christian Wiman, I can’t quit you

Just when my dander was nice and up, along comes Wiman saying this to Krista Tippett:

It may be the case that God calls some people to unbelief in order for faith to take new forms.

How could I stay mad at you?