It has begun....
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Fear, Forks & Fiction – A Love Story
As a student I dreaded writing assignments. I never knew where to begin or end an essay. I couldn’t spell (phonetically or otherwise) and my handwriting was illegible until I was in my early twenties, consequently it rarely mattered if my writing was well organized as it was indecipherable.
At college, the Student Writing Center, equipped with first computers I would ever use, helped alleviate some of the mechanical issues, but that did little to change my apprehension about having to write or my understanding of the process. I loved to read, I understood words as entertainment, but I did not really trust them.
Non-fiction was something I viewed with skepticism. I considered textbooks out-dated histories limited to the viewpoint of the conqueror, and journalism slanted: misled by “the powers that be,” whoever they were. Perhaps it was a byproduct of growing-up during Watergate and the Cold War era, but I wasn’t very confident of those who claimed to know the facts, and was less so if they were "reporting them to the world."
I enjoyed fiction and I understood it as a vehicle for truisms, but considered it too controlled an environment for understanding real people or real life, and I was very interested in both at the time. (If that sounds like sour grapes it could well be. I’d love to write more fiction these days, even limited & cliché fiction!)
My first semester at Mary Baldwin College Mom sent me an article written by a family friend, Lorane Leavy. The Leavy's youngest son had recently died and the article was a telling of her experience and the events surrounding his death. Much of the content of her piece was already familiar to me, details shared between friends and family with heartbreaking accuracy, but I was undone by this piece, undone by Lorane’s voice throughout the article: Authentic, unblinking, and accessible.
It was my first encounter with creative non-fiction. Not that I knew to call it that. What I did know was that her narrative penetrated my natural defenses. She gracefully compelled me to follow her line of thought to its close and trusted me to draw my own conclusions. Her words connected us, not as friends, or neighbors, but as human beings.
I used that article all semester as the measure for everything I wrote. I began to search for a writing style of my own, but I had no reservations about imitating hers while I looked for it. After finals, my English professor, Dr. Askegaard, told me I wrote well and encouraged me to consider writing romance novels. I was horrified. I realized, a moment too late, that he meant it as compliment. There was a sudden flurry of back-peddling, quickly followed by wishes for a good holiday, and it was done, I had survived my first college–level writing class.
While romance novels were not what I aspired to, I realized Dr. Askegaard wasn’t so far off; my writing had improved. I had worked to make each sentence written for his class honest and evocative. The result was awkward phrasing, empty adverbs, and vivid descriptions of people as well as place. I was finding my own voice and with it a deeper understanding of how and why we work so hard to communicate with one another.
These days I struggle with too many words, even after years of word limits and deadlines. I consistently need an editor for everything from formatting issues to grammatical errors. I do what I can to avoid falling in love with my own words and I rely on what I learned reading Lorane’s article all those years ago: Write fearlessly. Trust your readers. Once on the page, your words belong to them, and it is time for you to move on.
This is just as well, by the time I have succeeded in getting an idea written down chances are another deadline is looming or my family has run out of clean forks.
It is safe to say that during the month of October I was addressing a serious silverware shortage in my household. I do hope to blog about Rosh Hashanah before the holiday rolls around again next year, but it is not likely to happen soon because NANOWRIMO (National Novel Writing Month) officially began at midnight and I am participating. Thirty days from now I am hoping to have completed 50,000 words of fiction – romantic, limited, cliché, or worse- but 50,000 words none the less.
Time to buy more forks....
At college, the Student Writing Center, equipped with first computers I would ever use, helped alleviate some of the mechanical issues, but that did little to change my apprehension about having to write or my understanding of the process. I loved to read, I understood words as entertainment, but I did not really trust them.
Non-fiction was something I viewed with skepticism. I considered textbooks out-dated histories limited to the viewpoint of the conqueror, and journalism slanted: misled by “the powers that be,” whoever they were. Perhaps it was a byproduct of growing-up during Watergate and the Cold War era, but I wasn’t very confident of those who claimed to know the facts, and was less so if they were "reporting them to the world."
I enjoyed fiction and I understood it as a vehicle for truisms, but considered it too controlled an environment for understanding real people or real life, and I was very interested in both at the time. (If that sounds like sour grapes it could well be. I’d love to write more fiction these days, even limited & cliché fiction!)
My first semester at Mary Baldwin College Mom sent me an article written by a family friend, Lorane Leavy. The Leavy's youngest son had recently died and the article was a telling of her experience and the events surrounding his death. Much of the content of her piece was already familiar to me, details shared between friends and family with heartbreaking accuracy, but I was undone by this piece, undone by Lorane’s voice throughout the article: Authentic, unblinking, and accessible.
It was my first encounter with creative non-fiction. Not that I knew to call it that. What I did know was that her narrative penetrated my natural defenses. She gracefully compelled me to follow her line of thought to its close and trusted me to draw my own conclusions. Her words connected us, not as friends, or neighbors, but as human beings.
I used that article all semester as the measure for everything I wrote. I began to search for a writing style of my own, but I had no reservations about imitating hers while I looked for it. After finals, my English professor, Dr. Askegaard, told me I wrote well and encouraged me to consider writing romance novels. I was horrified. I realized, a moment too late, that he meant it as compliment. There was a sudden flurry of back-peddling, quickly followed by wishes for a good holiday, and it was done, I had survived my first college–level writing class.
While romance novels were not what I aspired to, I realized Dr. Askegaard wasn’t so far off; my writing had improved. I had worked to make each sentence written for his class honest and evocative. The result was awkward phrasing, empty adverbs, and vivid descriptions of people as well as place. I was finding my own voice and with it a deeper understanding of how and why we work so hard to communicate with one another.
These days I struggle with too many words, even after years of word limits and deadlines. I consistently need an editor for everything from formatting issues to grammatical errors. I do what I can to avoid falling in love with my own words and I rely on what I learned reading Lorane’s article all those years ago: Write fearlessly. Trust your readers. Once on the page, your words belong to them, and it is time for you to move on.
This is just as well, by the time I have succeeded in getting an idea written down chances are another deadline is looming or my family has run out of clean forks.
It is safe to say that during the month of October I was addressing a serious silverware shortage in my household. I do hope to blog about Rosh Hashanah before the holiday rolls around again next year, but it is not likely to happen soon because NANOWRIMO (National Novel Writing Month) officially began at midnight and I am participating. Thirty days from now I am hoping to have completed 50,000 words of fiction – romantic, limited, cliché, or worse- but 50,000 words none the less.
Time to buy more forks....
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