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Dec. 20th, 2009 12:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ann_leckieWow, so, um. A lot of people have suddenly appeared on my f-list! Hello! I’m happy to see all of you.
I have, as it happens, lots of thoughts about writing, but I usually assume that no one is particularly interested in them, or that they're not sufficiently interesting or original to post about. Maybe that isn't the case.
Or maybe it is--who knows? But now that I've hit my regular blogs and cleared slush and have no real excuse not to work on my current project, nattering about writing instead seems so very, very tempting...
So. You know, by the way, or you should, so I'm telling you, that anything I write here is my own speculation and opinion. Every writer is going to be different, have different methods, different strengths and weaknesses, different histories, and all that affects how we think about writing, and how we actually write. So if I say something that contradicts your experience or beliefs...well, I can't really speak to anything but my own experiences and beliefs, and don't intend to invalidate anyone else's, so long as they're working for you.
I think that how we think about writing actually does affect how we write. I think it matters, what advice and metaphors we use and pass on to other writers. Some are of the "it works for me but not for you, okay" variety, but some, I think, are pernicious. I've got a list of them, in fact.
First on the list--The Muse.
On one level, the problems with The Muse are obvious--how many would-be writers have you met who want to write someday, fully intend to write someday! But they're waiting to be inspired.
Yeah, uh-huh. And I'm waiting to win the Lottery. Put your butt in the chair and your fingers on the keyboard and stop waiting for Greek deities to visit you. 'Cause like Heracles says in the story, the gods help those who help themselves.
But I think it's a problematic metaphor even when you've gotten past that point. The Muse externalizes the creative process. When you invoke her you're invoking an outside agency whose attention is chancy at best. The truth is, though, that all that stuff on the page came from your very own brain.
Your very own brain is, of course, a tricky mechanism. Some folks can make it cough up material pretty easily and regularly. Some have to resort to odd tricks to make it perform--but it's all you. Metaphors can be a way to trick your mind into doing things you might not have direct conscious control over--this works on a physical level, certainly, as I learned when I took voice lessons in college. "Imagine," said my teacher one day, "that as you sing your voice is spinning, spinning, spinning out from your forehead." Uh...huh...wha?
Here's the thing--it worked. And I notice, as I recall those lessons, that she never told me to imagine my voice wasn't my own, or that an outside agency had granted me the desire or ability to sing.
I also notice that the odd images involved working with my own body. They were eminently hackable--what would happen if I spun my voice out of some other part of my head?--where an appeal to an external agency would not be.
I think writing is kind of the same, for a lot of us. We learn tricks that trigger our brains to give us what we want. If you think of those tricks as hacking your subconscious, the process is more or less transparent and alterable. You can experiment, you can try different things. But if you're imagining a Muse, an outside inspiration that "just comes" or sometimes just doesn't come, what can you do, when you want it and it's not there? Sacrifice a goat?
I'm quite sure some writers have no problem with this--they recognize that they're merely personifying an internal mental process, they can make it work and their "Muse" delivers regularly enough for them, and they have no need or desire to tweak the process. But...that won't be everyone. I don't think it's most of us, by a long shot.
And "The Muse" is a metaphor that's only actually helpful once you understand how it really works, which is btw a common feature of things on my list of "writing advice/common wisdom Ann doesn't like." These things are like koans--understanding them is a species of writerly enlightenment. But unlike the stereotypical koan, they're not ostensibly incomprehensible or contradictory, and the surface version of their meanings can lead new writers in unhelpful directions.
On its face, "inspiration/The Muse" implies that art is only made by those who are inspired to do so, who are chosen by whatever ineffable force out there taps an artist on her artistic shoulder and says, "You!"
And see, I don't think it's like that. I don't think some people are "born" to be writers while others aren't. Yeah, teaching fiction writing is a dicey thing, and yeah, some people are better at it than others. Talent exists--but talent only gives you your starting point. (Since I've already brought Aesop into it, I'll toss out the Tortoise and the Hare for your consideration.) And writing talent isn't one single thing--it's entirely possible to have particular gifts that make up for lacks in other areas. The question isn't "do I have talent?" The question is, "am I willing to do the work it takes to get to where I want to be?" The answer might be yes or it might be no--that's up to you.
If you take your feeling of inspiration, your desire to be an artist, your motivation to put words on the page, and the ease with which those words flow out of your fingers, to be a sign of your ordination as an artist, you get...well, you get Anne Rice, only usually without the sales to make up for it. Or, frankly, anything even half as readable as Interview with the Vampire.
And if you don't feel inspired? If it feels like work, hard work? That model leaves you wondering if that's just a sign that you're not "meant" to write. It can stop you in your tracks, freeze you up solid, when really all you needed to do was put one foot in front of the other to win the race.
For both those reasons, I don't think it's a good idea to use that particular metaphor for the creative process, or at least, not to use it when giving advice to young writers. I would advocate, instead, discussing the metaphor, because it's so unavoidably common. Discussing why some people find it helpful, why it might not be, unfolding it so that a writer knows what she's ingesting, if she decides to take it for herself. So that she can take the bits of it she needs and leave the rest off, when the extra bits might have made her development more difficult than it needed to be.
I have, as it happens, lots of thoughts about writing, but I usually assume that no one is particularly interested in them, or that they're not sufficiently interesting or original to post about. Maybe that isn't the case.
Or maybe it is--who knows? But now that I've hit my regular blogs and cleared slush and have no real excuse not to work on my current project, nattering about writing instead seems so very, very tempting...
So. You know, by the way, or you should, so I'm telling you, that anything I write here is my own speculation and opinion. Every writer is going to be different, have different methods, different strengths and weaknesses, different histories, and all that affects how we think about writing, and how we actually write. So if I say something that contradicts your experience or beliefs...well, I can't really speak to anything but my own experiences and beliefs, and don't intend to invalidate anyone else's, so long as they're working for you.
I think that how we think about writing actually does affect how we write. I think it matters, what advice and metaphors we use and pass on to other writers. Some are of the "it works for me but not for you, okay" variety, but some, I think, are pernicious. I've got a list of them, in fact.
First on the list--The Muse.
On one level, the problems with The Muse are obvious--how many would-be writers have you met who want to write someday, fully intend to write someday! But they're waiting to be inspired.
Yeah, uh-huh. And I'm waiting to win the Lottery. Put your butt in the chair and your fingers on the keyboard and stop waiting for Greek deities to visit you. 'Cause like Heracles says in the story, the gods help those who help themselves.
But I think it's a problematic metaphor even when you've gotten past that point. The Muse externalizes the creative process. When you invoke her you're invoking an outside agency whose attention is chancy at best. The truth is, though, that all that stuff on the page came from your very own brain.
Your very own brain is, of course, a tricky mechanism. Some folks can make it cough up material pretty easily and regularly. Some have to resort to odd tricks to make it perform--but it's all you. Metaphors can be a way to trick your mind into doing things you might not have direct conscious control over--this works on a physical level, certainly, as I learned when I took voice lessons in college. "Imagine," said my teacher one day, "that as you sing your voice is spinning, spinning, spinning out from your forehead." Uh...huh...wha?
Here's the thing--it worked. And I notice, as I recall those lessons, that she never told me to imagine my voice wasn't my own, or that an outside agency had granted me the desire or ability to sing.
I also notice that the odd images involved working with my own body. They were eminently hackable--what would happen if I spun my voice out of some other part of my head?--where an appeal to an external agency would not be.
I think writing is kind of the same, for a lot of us. We learn tricks that trigger our brains to give us what we want. If you think of those tricks as hacking your subconscious, the process is more or less transparent and alterable. You can experiment, you can try different things. But if you're imagining a Muse, an outside inspiration that "just comes" or sometimes just doesn't come, what can you do, when you want it and it's not there? Sacrifice a goat?
I'm quite sure some writers have no problem with this--they recognize that they're merely personifying an internal mental process, they can make it work and their "Muse" delivers regularly enough for them, and they have no need or desire to tweak the process. But...that won't be everyone. I don't think it's most of us, by a long shot.
And "The Muse" is a metaphor that's only actually helpful once you understand how it really works, which is btw a common feature of things on my list of "writing advice/common wisdom Ann doesn't like." These things are like koans--understanding them is a species of writerly enlightenment. But unlike the stereotypical koan, they're not ostensibly incomprehensible or contradictory, and the surface version of their meanings can lead new writers in unhelpful directions.
On its face, "inspiration/The Muse" implies that art is only made by those who are inspired to do so, who are chosen by whatever ineffable force out there taps an artist on her artistic shoulder and says, "You!"
And see, I don't think it's like that. I don't think some people are "born" to be writers while others aren't. Yeah, teaching fiction writing is a dicey thing, and yeah, some people are better at it than others. Talent exists--but talent only gives you your starting point. (Since I've already brought Aesop into it, I'll toss out the Tortoise and the Hare for your consideration.) And writing talent isn't one single thing--it's entirely possible to have particular gifts that make up for lacks in other areas. The question isn't "do I have talent?" The question is, "am I willing to do the work it takes to get to where I want to be?" The answer might be yes or it might be no--that's up to you.
If you take your feeling of inspiration, your desire to be an artist, your motivation to put words on the page, and the ease with which those words flow out of your fingers, to be a sign of your ordination as an artist, you get...well, you get Anne Rice, only usually without the sales to make up for it. Or, frankly, anything even half as readable as Interview with the Vampire.
And if you don't feel inspired? If it feels like work, hard work? That model leaves you wondering if that's just a sign that you're not "meant" to write. It can stop you in your tracks, freeze you up solid, when really all you needed to do was put one foot in front of the other to win the race.
For both those reasons, I don't think it's a good idea to use that particular metaphor for the creative process, or at least, not to use it when giving advice to young writers. I would advocate, instead, discussing the metaphor, because it's so unavoidably common. Discussing why some people find it helpful, why it might not be, unfolding it so that a writer knows what she's ingesting, if she decides to take it for herself. So that she can take the bits of it she needs and leave the rest off, when the extra bits might have made her development more difficult than it needed to be.