Creative Memior EDC#534

For the memoir assignment I want to talk about the first time I ever feel I accomplished something as a writer. I was taking a Creative Writing class at CCRI but was planning to drop after the very first night because the professor was blind. I figured her blindness would mean we would be forced to read our work out loud and had already decided to drop the course.

As I was walking out of class that very first night a fellow student asked what I thought. I replied that it seemed like a good class but I was not staying. He agreed with me but said that he would stay in the class if I did. I told him I wasn’t sure but I would think about it. We exchanged information and stayed in touch the whole week. He loved to write poetry and was serious in his craft. I was writing fiction but was also quite serious about how different authors approached different subject matters. We spent several nights discussing different writers and read to each works that meant a lot to us. We listened to Bob Dylan in the car and even attended local poetry readings. We forged a friendship from that very first night after we both decided to stay.

One night after class the teacher told me that she loved my last piece. She said she couldn’t get over how good it was and really wanted me to send it somewhere. I was flattered but I had no intention of seeking publication or seeking an audience for my writing. It was something I did because I loved the craft. I have written stories about so many things and figured I was an adequate writer but nothing special or extraordinary.

After a few weeks of really pushing me to do something with my writing I finally relented and sent some of my stories out to a summer writer’s retreat at Skidmore University in New York. I figured they would reject me but that she would leave me alone because I tried.

The semester ended and I am still good friends with the young man (now old man) Mark I met in that class and I figured that they didn’t even bother to reply to me because I was so terrible. Then a letter came in the mail that I had been accepted and that they wanted me to attend. I had a million different excuses that I couldn’t go; work, classes, lack of money, no transportation, distance. Anything I could think of to not attend this retreat.

She battled each one of my excuses down until I had no excuses left. One by one she broke me down into long lengthy discussions about “When is writing done?” or “What to do with writing when I finish?” or even “Does good writing need an audience?”.

To me, writing was always about wrapping myself in a story and creating characters I liked. Perhaps it was lack of self esteem that wanted me to hide but I was just happy doing my writing. Mike Csikszentmihalyl discusses how experiences in your life can bring you happiness much more than the things we think make us happy. I spent two weeks living in a dorm in this tower doing nothing but reading and writing and discussing fiction as a craft.

I could not have been happier. Like anything else in life the creativity needs adventure and exposure outside of the comfort zone. This was my first dive outside of my comfort zone and it only made me want more and more. I have since earned several degrees and been published a few times but nothing is as pleasurable to me as just discussing how good fiction works. I think my life would be different if I had confined myself to look at publishing as “the end” so to speak because I like revision and making it new and seeing it again. These things matter to me and are a part of my process in creation. Sometimes I write myself into a corner and I have to take a step back and let the characters themselves find their way out. Wallace discusses the period of Illumination as when the creative spark hits. This illumination always came to me through great frustration when I couldn’t think of what to do next. I would trust to just put it down and think on other things – maybe a new story – but get myself away from my block and let the story work itself out. Then while driving or playing a video game it would hit me. The answer seems so obvious that I would get embarrassed it took so long to arrive. This was the process I enjoyed, I loved; it was solitary and left me to create worlds that my characters had to play against. Those times I didn’t trust or wouldn’t let the characters fend for themselves left me with an empty feeling, as if the entire story had been forced and pushed to a conclusion. Most of those stories were thrown away never to return.

When we discuss the idea of truly original creative ideas or are they pieced together from scraps of other ideas it seems like a romanticized fallacy of the process. If I allow myself to be creative and create worlds for my characters to inhabit but steal other ideas to finish them or to prolong them this is not an authentic creative moment. I am simply piecing together scraps of other works. But if I pay homage to the stories that I loved and enjoyed from before in order to create an authentic experience for myself I have found creativity and happiness. In cases like this the inspiration speaks for itself and the trajectory can be traced. This is a completely different matter than stealing an idea.