The gift inside the writing

Okay, trying this again.

I have written that I think that working on this project is making me a better writer, and that is true, but when I wrote that post, I had intended to write about the way this has been helping me emotionally.

What I found was that to do that, I need to go over what writing does, and I don’t have a direct path for that—it is going to be lots of little stories that put together I believe add up to something. Because of that, I’m afraid that this post is going to be more of a shaggy dog post than usual, but there should be at least one point in here by the time it’s done.

Remember my schoolmate who could not complete thoughts, and I thought he should try journal writing? So these are some things that have come from people who write more.

This is from Alan Moore. I read it when I was researching comic books:

"One word balloon in From Hell completely hijacked my life… A character says something like, 'The one place gods inarguably exist is in the human mind'. After I wrote that, I realised I'd accidentally made a true statement, and now I'd have to rearrange my entire life around it. The only thing that seemed to really be appropriate was to become a magician."

I disagree with his statement and his conclusion, but it totally makes sense that he would state a belief that he had not fully crystallized in the process of writing.

There was a similar quote from Gerard Way, which I could not find again, about “The Kids From Yesterday”. There is a line in there: “You only hear the music when your heart begins to break.” If I remember correctly, what he said is that they realized it was true and it had not been said before. Now, you could spend a lot of time arguing about what that means exactly, and in what ways it is true. The greater point I am trying to make here is that when you are writing, things come out that you didn’t know were there.

Now let me go to something that I had a friend, who is also an English teacher, wrote up for a newsletter:

“It was my first year teaching the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, and we were well in to the book and had already gone through class period after class period trying to move beyond summary and identification of themes and into discovering how the author uses language and images to create an intended effect.  It was at this point when a quiet student in the back slowly raised his hand, then put his hand back on his lap, only the raise it again with a little more courage the second time.  He had noticed that the end table next to one of the characters’ bed was made of drift wood and wondered if it connected to the death earlier in the book which happened on the shore of the ocean. All the other hands in the room went down as every student looked back at their book with silent respect, wondering both why they hadn’t noticed it and what this could mean about the character.  After a fascinating and rather lengthy discussion on the motif of the ocean, another student, more brazen than the first, raised her hand and challenged the entire discussion.  “Did Amy Tan really do all of this on purpose or are we simply overanalyzing?”

We discussed that question that day but I still think about it frequently. The conclusion that I have comfortably settled on is that, as readers, finding connections between things is important and even if Amy Tan, or any good writer, did not intentionally create the connection, because of the nature of being a good thinker, she had been unconsciously creating connections between everything in her life and mind as a matter of routine and this manifested itself in her writing.”

(A Student of the Scriptures by Jennifer Wecker, November 2011 Aloha 1st Ward Relief Society newsletter)

Let’s get back to that letter writer I mentioned yesterday, wanting to stress that not everyone could be a great writer, defined as someone who could make other fall in love with the English language and get hooked on reading. Actually, I’m going to link to that:
http://blog.oregonlive.com/myoregon/2012/09/letters_a_writers_lifetime_int.html 

A writer's lifetime

I applaud letter writer Dick Bohrer's dedication to helping people learn to write ("How to teach writing," Aug. 28). To a degree, he's correct: Great teachers can help aspiring writers find their way using tools such as structure, constructive editing and rhetorical techniques. With effort, poor writers can become proficient, and average writers can become confident enough to express themselves with charm and grace.

The picture darkens, however, when one speaks of becoming a good -- much less great -- writer, one who writes from the soul, who takes a reader on an original journey and who burrows deep into his or her own fears and suffering to return with resonant truths about the human condition. That, unfortunately, takes a lifetime, even for writers of innate talent. And some, despite years of admirable work, may, sadly, never get there.

With the right teacher and willingness, most of us can learn to write, and we are indebted to professionals such as Mr. Bohrer. Very few of us, though, will ever be able to say we write well, to be one of those authors who leads us to love literature.

That can't be taught using recipes. It must be earned.

STEVE PATTERSON
Southeast Portland  

Possibly correct, but I am going to make a few contradictory points. One, there is considerable room for disagreement on what makes a great writer. Joyce and Fitzgerald and Hemingway work for some, but not me. I’m sure there are people who don’t love Austen, and it would be wrong for me to call them wrong, even if I kind of secretly think it. And some of them arrive at it sooner than you would expect. It is not just the polishing of the writing style, but also who the writer and the reader are. Most people would not consider Rowling a great writer, but she’s turned lots of people on to reading, and there are messages and truths in her books, despite being fiction.

In addition, there is something great about a person being able to shore up their memory, or express love, or discover themselves, or do any of those countless things that are accessible to everyone by writing. Teaching writing, and having good techniques for doing so, has a far broader importance than producing the next Twain.

One of the things I remember from Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed” is that when she would tell her coworkers that she was an undercover writer, they weren’t necessarily surprised or impressed, because they were all writers. Maybe it was just that they kept a journal, but it was a very normal thing for those around her to be recording their lives. Okay, she was a professional; they weren’t, but they still had something there. I love that.

So, that is my roundabout way of saying that writing brings things out of you, and it is valuable. Next time I will see if I can with more clarity express what this writing has done for me. If I have not yet made this clear, it does not always come out right the first time.