Category: 1 - inter-text-ures

Writing about your writing 12/06/2009

Max Liebermann's The Granddaughter, Writing

That may sound like something easy to do, but believe me it's not. In fact, most writers dread having to explain why they write.

Ricardo M. de Ungria, in his introduction to A Passionate Patience: Ten Filipino Poets on the Writing of Their Poems (1995), says that poets — and perhaps most writers — become reticent when asked to talk about their works or their own writing process.

And when they do say something about how they wrote their creative works, according to de Ungria quoting I. A. Richards and Harry Levin, the kind of talk writers make about their oeuvres become “suspect.” Whatever they say may be construed as self-aggrandizing statements about their art or artistry.

For how can writers honestly describe what went on inside their heads while writing their pieces? Since ancient times, the creative process has always been cloaked in mystery and mysticism – with the genesis of creative works ascribed to divine possession or to the inspiration of the Muses or to the duende.

The same idea persists to this more rational age, and may account for how the rest of humanity looks at writers and other artists. But the actual production of creative works may involve artists applying the same rigor as that demanded of scientists.

As de Ungria quotes Valery: “Graciously the gods give us the first line for nothing, but it is up to us to furnish a second that will harmonize with it and be unworthy of its supernatural elder brother” (xv).

The scientific method employed in empirical investigations finds its parallel in the four stages of creative production – preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification – or the more pared-down two phases – inventive and selective/critical (de Ungria xvi). So writers labor, as Horace pointed out, hoping they do not produce a mere mouse.

And the operative word is labor. For writers and other artists do not just pull out of thin air and present with a flourish a poem or a novel or painting; rather, they toil over their creations – poring over the lines they wrote, changing a word or two, or applying more paint onto the canvass.

And this striving benefits a writer’s psyche more than the pocket. So the question asked of writers, why do they write?

As Gémino H. Abad explains in “Why I Write,” originally published in his Manila Chronicle column and later compiled in a book entitled State of Play: Letter-Essays and Parables (1990), he writes because he is “obsessed with Writing” (13). He elaborates: “Writing is what I’ve always wanted to do, and believed I could do best … I was curious how one could look with words and see things clearly again” (14).

But that is the seasoned poet speaking there. How about you? Why do you write?

I ask this question because we usually begin our critical preface by explaining why we write, how we got into this "business" of "artfully arranging words on paper."

Why do I write? Perhaps I can illustrate my “obsession” by quoting a passage from Ricky Lee’s Trip to Quiapo: Scriptwriting Manual (2001):

"The writer’s task is to see, and to show others what s/he sees. When we watch a magic show, we just don’t enjoy it with jaws hanging in amazement. We go backstage because we need to see how the magic is done. And if we aren’t allowed backstage, we imagine what is there. We writers like going backstage" [translation added]. (3)

Perhaps that's one way of beginning your critical preface: find a good quote that somehow resonates with your ideas about why you write.

Here's one site you can pick quotes from: Writers on Writing.

Looking for that organizing principle 11/22/2009

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This is hard work. Having said that, let's proceed.

Looking for an organizing principle that will tie up all our creative pieces into one collection requires taking a long hard look at what you've written.

That means reading your work as if these pieces were someone else's. It's not an easy job, given that you labored over them all the way from conceptualization to revision. It's kind of difficult to disassociate yourself from the whole process of creating the pieces.

But if you're getting to get anywhere, you need to look at your pieces with a critical eye. You need to find that common element in all the pieces.

One way to do it, of course, is try to look for similarities in themes, in characters, in settings or locales, in images or symbols, etc.

And if you're lucky to have wittingly or unwittingly created stories or poems or plays or essays that have these common elements, then it would be easier for you to look back and try to recapture that moment when you were writing these pieces.

But if your pieces are so dissimilar, then the next best step is to try to recall that time when you were writing your pieces. How did you begin a story or a poem, where did your idea for a play or an essay come from? How did you transform this idea into the creative work you crafted? What problems did you encounter in transmuting this idea into your stories, poems, plays or essays?

Another way, of course, is to find out if you started off with some critical perspective in mind? Did you think of your works as somehow transforming how readers will look, for instance, at women's plights? Did you write your pieces with the idea of how various readers would possibly interpret your works?

Hopefully at the end of this long, hard look at your pieces you will have arrived at an answer (however tentative that may be).

The next step of course is to write what we'll just refer to as the "Rationale" part of your critical preface. As the term implies, this is the raison d'etre for your writing. And this "reason for living" may be found in the answer that reached after that long, hard look at your creative output.

As we said, this is hard work.

CW 200

Creative Writing (CW) 200 or "Creative Writing Thesis" is a six unit course taken over two semesters. Students enroll three units in the 1st Semester and submit for Workshop their creative writing portfolio. They take another three units in the 2nd Semester and complete the revision of their creative writing portfolio, and submits this along with a critical preface as their Creative Writing Thesis. They defend their Thesis before a panel of critics, as well as produce a public presentation of their selected works.