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May. 10th, 2006 05:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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.
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.
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Date: 2006-05-10 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-11 01:15 am (UTC)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?
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Date: 2006-05-11 03:59 pm (UTC)Jeremy is
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Date: 2006-05-11 08:23 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2006-05-11 08:47 pm (UTC)