So I write...I write this blog, I write for the biweekly meetings of my autobiography group. And I'm taking this yearlong memoir writing class at the U. I'm spending a lot of time on all of this. I wanted to do this, I want to do this. I like it. I want to develop my voice, creative expression. I don't know if it really will 'develop' into something. Likely not.
Last night (and in her blog today), my teacher talks about the original voice that we all bring to the writer's craft. And her fear that if she teaches us too much technique, our original creative voice will be lost, be squelched.
We kind of dance around the question of publishing, you know where you have an actual physical book that a 'publiher' produces and it's in bookstores and people buy it and then your 'published'. Ann Lamott polks gentle fun at her students, she's trying them to begin to write what they know in a coherant way and all they want to know if how to get an agent.
This really started for me when I began this blog in the spring of 2007. I had just returned from the NCAA softball regionals in Soutb Carolina, Susanna's collegiate career was over. I had spent a lot of time enjoying being a Pac 10 parent. But now, I could see with Naomi in high school and most everybody off in their own lives, my job didn't much challenge me and increasingly, I was drawn into power plays and conflicts, which I always lost. Mmmmmmm, not the best.
So back to the basics, what would Sandy, the real Sandy do. When she had the chance, and now with the job gone and some financial indepdence, what would I do. Read and write, personal expression. Time to really get busy with that. Seize the day. So I started this blog which I wholly and completely enjoy. Structure must work because I have over 1100 entries and there are SO many still to write. When the dust cleared from my mother's death, I decided to take some classes. I haddn't been able to do that for over 20 years. Writing classes, that's what.
It doesn't come easily to me. I remember taking a literature class at UCLA and was just amazed, stunned really to read these novels and, guess what, there was all this symbolism (do people still talk about symbolism?) hidden. Hidden from my sight. Who knew? So I get back to UCSC and take another literature class and they want ME to figure out the symbolism. Oh, um, didn't really know how to do that.
And if I was going to write, to what end? 'Publish'? A book? Write columns? Personal journaling? I turn to the net and see that there's now an infinite numbers of paths to feature your writing. Used to be you had to 'be published'. But heck, anybody who can figure out the blogger interface can put their stuff out there. So why not> It could lead to something or not? I read how the old boundaries to 'publishing' and 'publishers' are quickly dissolving. The line between 'being publiished' and not becomes indistinct.
But I love all this technique stuff I'm learning and trying to incorporate. It's new and challenging to me, I'm eager to take this window of time and try my hand at it. First on the Priscilla story. I've got one draft, it's enough of a set piece to be chronological. But I want to see if I can improve it, maybe add some of this writing stuff...scene...summary...musing...parts of story...arc...goodness knows what else. One technique with a chronological story is that you can interrupt your scene. Be in the scene right now, but then interrupt it and add in some supplementary background and earlier scenes. I'm trying it!
So, for right now, I don't feel that learning these things will squelch my original voice (Theo defines it as "I must speak!". But I'm only a month into it.
Picture shows a fellow writer stolen off a gaming site.
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