(no subject)

[decemberthirty]

I'm reading a rather fascinating book right now: Creative Writing and Rewriting, edited by John Kuehl. Kuehl, who taught creative writing at Princeton for many years, put the book together out of frustration with the typical workshop-style creative writing class, which he feels places too much emphasis on product rather than process. He discusses the charge that creative writing is unteachable but doesn't do much to dispel it; rather, he suggests that teachers teach students not how to write but how to rewrite, how to take their own individual raw materials and turn them into art. To that end, he has assembled a collection of writings by some big-name authors (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eudora Welty, Philip Roth, et. al.) and printed the published version alongside an earlier draft version of the same material.

It's very interesting to see the decisions that these writers made when revising their pieces, and I think the book could be a valuable resource, but I can't quite figure out how to use it. Should I read the draft of a story or excerpt straight through, and then go back and read the published version? Should I read the published version first, then the draft? Or should I bounce back and forth, paragraph by paragraph or page by page? I've tried all of these methods, and none of them has been entirely satisfactory. I feel a little bit bad about this, like it's my fault that I'm not getting more out of the book, but I really don't know what I should be doing to fix the problem. I think the book is designed mainly to be used for a class; perhaps I'd be able to draw more insight from it if I had a class with which to discuss the book.

Comments

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

This sounds nifty- I'll have to pass it along to Jeremy, who's a writer-in-progress. I firmly believe that certain books should be read in a group to get the most out of them- authors like Joyce and Faulkner have such multi-layered, often cryptic prose that I find the discussing my thoughts alongside the opinions of others can really cause breakthroughs in my own understanding.

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I believe it may be out of print. My copy is on loan from a friend, so I'm not sure how difficult it might be to get ahold of it.

I find it kind of amusing that both of the authors you mention are authors that I've only read alone. (Well, I did technically read Ulysses for a class, but the prof was so bad that I prefer to forget and remember the time I read it on my own a few years later.) I've certainly had the experience you describe with plenty of other authors, just not Joyce and Faulkner...

Also, just because I'm curious: what sort of writing does Jeremy do?

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

Heh, I read my first books of theirs in a class, and then continued alone and felt really, well, lonely for the experience. The Faulkner I read back to back with Toni Morrison in a Race, Place, and History literature course. I was lucky, though, because I had great classmates.

Jeremy is jackshoegazer, and he is currently in the middle of a writing-basd epiphany. His traditional tastes run towards surrealism and absurdity (he loves Tom Robbins and Kurt Vonnegut, for example, with sprinkings of Terry Pratchett), and a lot of his earlier writing (prose and poetry) was in that vein. His recent reading list (I've introduced him to John Irving, with whom he's in literary love) and general development is steering him out of that direction, however, and last night he announced to me that he's "giving it up," so to speak, and that his future writing will likely not reflect that style at all. I've noticed it in the pieces he's been crafting lately, which are much better (exponentially so) than any of his more surreal writings. His best work really is more literal, more "Irving," if you will. I'm trying to corrupt him by feeding him books. :)

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

That's my favorite method of corrupting someone! (Ask my little sister, I've been doing it to her since she learned to read.)

I've never read Robbins and have only read little bits of Vonnegut, so I'm not very familiar with the style that he's abandoning, but I sure do like me some Irving... Also, I'm intrigued by the notion of going through such a sudden about-face in one's creative work, especially making a considered decision to do so. My own writing decisions seem to happen mostly on a level well below that of rational thought, so the idea of consciously choosing to put down one style and take up another is foreign to me. This is also perhaps why I find the initial composition relatively easy, and revision so goddamn hard...

I think I may go ask Jeremy if he'd mind my adding him.

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

I'm sure he wouldn't at all. He enjoys thoughtful commentary, and often posts samples of his writing.