Monday, June 2, 2008

tomorrow's lesson: Writing meets Yoga

Every time I go to yoga class, which I do maybe 4-5 times per week, my teachers stress the contrary actions necessary to do a yoga asana or pose. The front of the arm turns in toward the face, while the back of the arm turns outward, for example. The word "yoga" itself is said to mean "yoking," tying these opposites together into a balanced whole.
I would submit, along with the Structuralists, who rode the hobbyhorse of unified opposites almost to eternity, that writing is also a matter of yoking opposites. Writing a narrative is a matter of telling a story that moves forward relentlessly in time. However, that is not all there is to it, as badly written, plot-heavy narratives will testify. If it were, just having a juicy story to tell at the water cooler would be sufficient and we wouldn't need literature or writers. But it's the way someone tells a story that matters, the words that person chooses, the details she hangs the story on. Description delays the forward action of a narrative, making the reader stop smack in the middle of a sentence while the writer inspects in a loving, leisurely way the interior of the fridge from which the character takes his slightly flat bottle of Sam Addams, or the scuffed finish of the maple living room suite, circa 1975, with its homely plaid sofa. And without it, no one would care how the story ends.
Today I visited my friend Reb's literary blog, The Mark on the Wall, http://themarkonthewall.blogspot.com/ ,which linked me to a lecture in which a writer named Ron Carlson who teaches at UCI dissected a hunk of a story he had written for an audience of aspiring writers in UCI's MFA program, phrase by phrase and sentence by sentence. It was fascinating because it emphasized the process I describe above: the writer has a story in mind, or a piece of a story, an incident, but he has to build the setting, the context for this story, as a jewelry maker designs the setting for a precious stone. And he does it, as it were, in the dark, having no real idea where he is going with this. In fact, part of the reason he perseveres in the process, which is often fruitless and frustrating and frequently thankless, is that he is simply curious to see where it goes, to learn what tricks his own mind has in store for him.
In my experience, which mostly involves poetry, writing is not quite like this. I might have one image or a particular rhthym stuck in my head, and mostly there is description, but not necessarily narrative, though it can and does happen too. Or I might have a feeling, and nothing else. Maybe that is the difference between fiction and poetry? Who knows.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Robinka,

Will come by later with thoughts, I hope. Right now I'm fresh home from the concert and b-e-a-t.

Anonymous said...

aHA! You know what's happening? As you teach this workshop, your own writing skills are loosening and flexing. Feels good, yes? ;-)

Rebel Girl said...

I'm glad you found the Carlson - he inspried me.

About the difference between poetry ane fiction, I wouldn't know anymore.

Robbi N. said...

Lou, Yes it is true. I am allowing my writer self out of the box. Usually, I can't do it because I am too occupied with other things. Maybe now I will not be able to stuff this self back into the cage, and I'll be off, writing regularly rather than regretting that I'm not able to do that.
I still find that I cannot let loose with narrative; the only time I find that is possible is when I am falling asleep, something that doesn't happen so often anymore as I have many difficult nights because of hormones and worry about running out of money for my parents and then having to make them live in substandard ways. Maybe that will loosen up too.
Thanks Reb for putting that up and for making that information available. I will refer my students to it also. In fact, I'm going to play the Carlson in class today, if there is time at the end of class.
Thanks Marly for visiting. See you again soon.

Rebel Girl said...

I have the Carlson books - I can drop them by if you like for you to share and read ---

Robbi N. said...

Thanks Reb. I'd love to see them.

Anonymous said...

Do you remember that RHWD word-generated exercise? (Everybody picks one, not too complicated. Good if it functions in more than one way gramatically. Then use almost all in a sketch or poem.) That's one thing that often produces great results--why that one, I don't know. Perhaps because it's really about form and letting something besides your guts make the story or poem--leaving some space for something to enter in that's not all about youyouyou.

Robbi N. said...

Hi Marly. I was planning to use that word exercise, and some others I made up, at least for poems. It's the fiction (which I'm teaching separately and first) that troubles me because I am so new to it.
This week, as per Lou's suggestions, I taught a couple of description exercises and the students loved them. They still need to work on that skill though. They don't really understand the difference between abstract diction and sense-details. I find that odd, but I guess they aren't listening. What else is new?
So I need to keep working on description and character and point of view and structure and dialogue... all things I never learned to do in workshop because I never wrote fiction.

Anonymous said...

Ah, well. You're doing it now! Nothing like writing your way into teaching fiction.

You know, there are a lot of sites with "prompts" and exercises. I don't imagine that they are any better than you can make up yourself and tailor to your students, but it might be useful to read a list when you feel stuck. You ought to make up some that you would like to do yourself, and so you can write with them and even share if you like. I would think that starting with a piece of writing you would like to use in class and then designing an exercise around it might be useful.

Don't you think that beginning writers tend to have little conception of what it means to revise and re-think? Briefly looking at two versions of something is eye-opening--like the draft and final version of "The Second Coming."

It seems to be hard to move from what the teacher says to doing it yourself. With fiction, it seems easier to muddle through a draft and then get specific comments. Do you know that David Madden book, "Revising Fiction"? I just thought of it--have not read it, though I have a copy that belonged to my father--just wondered if it might be a help.

Well, you wanted wisdom, but I see that my only wisdom is that I don't have any wisdom!

Robbi N. said...

Thanks Marly. I would like to see that book, but I am kind of broke right now. Can't order anymore, even used from Amazon because of the things I must buy. For example, the cats seem to have creamed my printer by breaking off the paper guide shute. I will have to go out tomorrow and buy another one.
The revision idea is good, and I had planned to talk about that at the end of the fiction unit, though they have already been revising the exercises they have been writing, and I have been writing them too. In fact, I turned one of them into the class. It was an autobiographical narrative about being held captive by a mentally ill girl when I was five years old. Since I couldn't remember details of what she looked like, etc., I made them up, so it's half fiction. In fact it's largely fiction because I know that I did it, and sort of remember a few salient details (the hypodermic needle she chased me around with, for example, and sitting on the front stoop crying), but most I can't remember at all.