English 5599 - Creative Writing For Teachers
Is Writing A Means To Self-Discovery?
I still don't know what a writer is. I am not sad about it, because apparently I am not supposed to. Just as honest exploration breeds knowledge to some degree, any knowledge obtained is still as elusive as smoke. And whatever process is involved begins by my wracking my brain. This act of mental convulsions levels off mid-way through the process to a period of bliss. Sometime during the ecstasy, I learn something about myself or the subject that I write about. Then, the muse leaves just as quickly as she had come. The knowledge I have been given during these episodes is personal and often indescribable. But that's okay.
It's really okay.Throughout the semester I have experienced occasions of sheer elation by some epiphany that has struck me in the most unassuming moment. These spurts-if you will allow me the use of the term-of profundity have been rich (probably only to me) and helpful to my particular journey as a writer. So the first question I ask is actually rather rhetorical: Would these instances have occurred had I not been writing "creatively"?
When I write a technical document, which I do a lot in my work, I do not experience the kind of joy in gaining some new insight. Rather, I pull together the resources I have that relate to the topic at hand, and then mold together something in print. There is no exploration here, no opportunity to say to the reader, "I don't know the answer."
Dr. T-'s comments on chaos have been a source of wonderment to me. I personally have found chaos to be a treasure trove of possibilities. Here, amidst the mystery and wonder, I perceive a very real source of inspiration.
So creative writing is a means. For the student, the teacher, the published author, for the print reporter, the scribe, and the child. It is a means to an end. But what is the end? Knowledge? Self-discovery? Answers to the deepest thoughts of the Sphinx?
Creative writing, it seems to me, is the process by which we discover ourselves.
I still don't know what a writer is. But that's okay.
It's really okay.
Right now I am in a process of figuring that out. Whether I attain the goal before our course ends or it comes to me in the dark of some sweat-drenched night, I cannot say.
I appreciate Dr. T-'s comment that creative writing can be "practiced within any of the disciplines of study." I do not want to take these words too lightly. The historian can utilize the ability to explore himself and his political orientation through the process of writing creatively. The accountant should likewise have some time stirring up the chaos. If one spends too much time with numbers (which Pythagoras deemed the opposite of chaos), one's life might become to dull and sterile.
Creative writing. The act of stirring up chaos? The act of refusing of fear the unknown?
And chaos is kinetic. Chaos is electric. Chaos describes every life lived on this earth. Underneath the surface of the machinery, underneath the heartbeat and the DNA structure, beneath the regular pulsations of blood, there is chaos. There is a stirring of multifarious life. There is a multi-structural jungle of twists and turns. It is the spiral I write about when I think of process. There are no rules in the jungle of life. Why abide by rules in the creative realm?
The idea of "play" (which I must say was strange and wacky and foreign when I first thought about it), has been such a liberating facet of my being as a writer. What is a writer? I still don't know. And that's okay.
It's really okay.
I peruse my journal and I see a jungle gym. It is a playground full of new revelations. The act of play has brought me back to the person that would play in the sand for hours in my back yard, even if I knew it was infested with cat crap. The cat crap did not deter my creative mind and work. In many ways, I have seen the rules of writing as the cat crap. Work around it. Hell, use it to strengthen the composition of the sand. Like Ready-mix. Just add water!
So, how do I implement all of this in the classroom? If the purpose of creative writing resembles the above exploration, then I would do well to communicate the parallel between the contradictory nature of the writing process with the contradictory nature of the daily grind. How I will do this? I continue to wonder.