The creative process
December 9, 2009 at 10:08 Yesterday I unexpectedly found myself at the keyboard writing a piece of fiction. When I sat down I had no intention of writing such a thing. It started with a single sentence about a stupid girl, and I wasn't sure if I was writing a blog post or a poem or a short story. Where was it going?
Once the words began flowing, the piece took on a life of its own. Words and phrases that had been rattling around in my head since last spring found a place in it. After I'd written that first draft to its end, I recognized I had something akin to a folk or fairy tale. I rarely write any kind of fiction, and I've only written a folktale once before, so this was a surprise.
The piece had some problems, both in the clarity of the ideas and in its tone. It was exploring the idea of acting smart vs. acting stupid in romantic relationships, in youth and later in life. Once I recognized what I'd written had the flavor of a fairy tale, I began editing and rewriting with that style in mind. But as the story shaped up, I saw how it was not really a fairytale so much as a cautionary fable or parable about good people who make bad choices in love and never quite recover. It is a universal story, one that nearly everyone has lived or witnessed.
I was intrigued by what I'd created but disturbed by it too. At first, I thought the issue was the beginning of the story and the character, "a smart but stupid girl." Then I thought it was the way the boy in the story came across. I wanted the boy and the girl in the story to both be sympathetic characters, and I worried I'd missed the mark in balancing them against each other.
Finally, I realized my issue with the story was bigger than that. The story was cynical and sometimes bitter, and I wasn't sure I wanted to say what it was saying. Did I believe its message? Did I want to share it? I'm still not sure. I pulled the story off my blog editor and put it in a word processing file to sit and steep. I may leave it there indefinitely, or I may come back and pick at it, try to make peace with it, and publish it here.
What I love about the creative process is the way it unfolds and reveals what's hidden. The way it pulls ideas, words, and images out of my subconscious and into the light. It's an exciting process, but yes, sometimes it is uncomfortable and disturbing, like a strange dream. My first reaction when I write something that strikes me as odd is to think, "Where did THAT come from?" But when I'm honest and self-aware, I can see the origins of the work, the pieces of life and experience that form the composite. My relationship with the finished work is occasionally complicated. Is it "me" or "not me"? Who or what am I channeling? Why?
Today, I return to working on a professional project where every word will hit the page for a reason. It will be a good break from channeling my other Muse.
(Update: I went back to my story and worked on it some more, softening the story line just a bit and balancing the two characters. You can find it here.)
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Reader Comments (9)
Is it sometimes about how others will perceive it, particularly if they attach it to us, seeing it as a slice of our reality? I know it's stopped me working on pieces before ...
This is what keeps bringing us back to the page. The mystery of it all.
Di,
I do struggle with how others will perceive it, how they will filter their impressions through what they know about me and attach the messages to my life.
Nance,
Many years ago, I read the book What Color is Your Parachute? to better understand what job, office environment, and work style would suit me. That's when I realized I was like you: I enjoy working on tasks and projects with concrete boundaries, a beginning and an end. I like to have a physical product at the end. When I was a newspaper reporter, I found it amazing that I could write a story at 10 p.m. at night and it would appear in the newspaper tossed onto my driveway a few hours later. Of course, the rough end of news reporting is that there was little time to craft the perfect sentence. You had to go with the flow and wrap it up in a hurry.
.
i would love to read your tale, as i suspect i relate a lot to the "smart but stupid girl".
what do you think: i'm thinking of starting a "character project" next month where people are given a character name, age, location, relationship and one other detail about that character. participants write a very short scene (500 words or less) once a week based on this information and presumably creating a new character. the next week, same deal but with a new character.
imagine. at the end of the year we would have 52 characters each. each nuanced by our own style, experience etc.
That's an intriguing concept. I can't imagine creating 52 characters though. I struggle to write fiction. What might make it even more interesting is if the characters created by the participants interacted. Say the character you created one week would be "paired" with the character I created and a third participant would write a scene showing those two characters interacting.