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March 18, 2006
Zoetrope Writers on Writing, Discussion prompt: Xujun Eberlein's notes from AWP
Robert Olen Butler threw a panel with three of his former students, Rita Mae Reese (a recent Wallace Stegner Fellow in Fiction), Christie Grimes (MFA student at Texas State U.), Brandy T.Wilson (Ph.D. student at Florida State U.). All of the three students are featured in Butler's recent book From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction.
The following discussion transpired out of Xujun's notes and the question she asked.
Butler says that most writing programs lean drastically toward craft techniques, rather than focusing on what means to be an artist. He quotes a Japanese film director: "Being an artist means never to avert your eyes." Many students write badly because they write from their heads. Art does not come from the mind; it comes from the dream, the unconsciousness. Nor do readers respond to an artwork from their minds. Workshops are not that helpful for one's writing because if you get too far into others' dreams, it is harder to get into your own.Students are usually fine with the first two things about fiction; that it is about human beings and about human emotion. But they always miss the third, that fiction is a temporal art form. It exists in time. Poetry can be exempted from time essentially (but fiction can't).
"Yearning" is Butler's favorite word. But "yearning", the dynamic of desire, is almost always absence in the first-year students' writing. You cannot exist for even three seconds of time without desiring something. You need to deeply engage in the character's emotions.
To do this the artist uses a trance state. The best time is early morning. Write as soon as you get up, before doing anything else, before even drinking your first cup of coffee. Certainly don't read anything before writing. It's the only time you are able to connect your creative mind with your dream, your unconsciousness. It is the most creative moment you would have. Just trust the trance. You should write at the same time everyday, and forget about it for the rest of the day. (In answer an audience question, Butler says he takes only one day break in every seven days. You should find your own rhythm, he advises the person who asked the question.)
(The three other panelists then talked about their own experiences of successfully applying the writing process taught by Butler.)
Xujun: Do you believe in such a method?
Ron Currie: Since it is already so obvious to me, with my limited experience, that everyone's 'process' is different, I can't help but be surprised. But then, maybe that confidence in one's own way of doing things is what makes Butler so good.
Jim Tomlinson: I took a week-long workshop from Robert Olen Butler at Indiana University Writers Conference 2003. Much of what he teaches I've used, although I'd say the dream-state, subconscious mind business seems to work best on first drafts, that a more critical and conscious effort is needed for revising, editing, making credible in the real world. That's my experience anyway.
I write primarily in the mornings, with coffee and oatmeal, after checking for urgent e-mails (and z-mails). But I don't turn on TV or read the morning newspaper until after I've done my morning's worth. I think Butler's right about that, about valuing the state of mind when you wake, and trying to write from that mindset.
Xujun: His book is out now. I'm going to find it to read. I might try his method, even though I'm not a believer.
Jim Ruland: What if you've got babies and bills and backaches and so on? Sometimes I need the morning, but only if I've written the night before and gone to bed with a problem unsolved or a question unanswered.
Sometimes, a walk on the beach gets me going, or exercise, or reading a book or two days after watching a movie. Everyone has different methods. From what I've gathered, there are things about the process (pens, postcards, a certain kind of desk -- does anyone else remember any of this from the time where Butler did the online experiment of writing a story live?) that he tends to fetishize. We all have our talismans and tricks, they're valuable to us only because we think they are. What would he say of Joyce writing sections of Ulysses in a crowded apartment using a suitcase in his lap for a table?
Another thing is: I'm suspicious of routines and methods because they become crutches. (I can't write because I'm out of coffee or the house is a mess or the battery on my laptop died.)
I think change can be more helpful than routine. Writing in a new space. Writing at night when you're used to writing in the morning or vice versa. Writing in a notebook when you're used to the computer or vice versa. Sometimes really strong coffee when you're used to tea can do the trick or a glass of wine when you're used to coffee can be really effective. I was able to work long sections of essay in my head during my commute one week simply by leaving the radio off and paying attention to the chatter in my head.
Claudia Smith: Good point Jim. I wish I could fall into that deep concentration, the kind I used to fall into, where someone could say my name three or four times and I wouldn't hear. But I write, honestly, during my son's naptime. Someday, maybe, I'll write when I wake up from my dreams.
It's interesting, what Butler had to say. I had a teacher I adored when I was in college. She made me believe I could graduate, and do lots of great things. She told me to get up and write every day at five in the morning. I wanted to impress her, so I lied and told her I did.
This may be a bit off subject, but one thing I miss from my childhood is the way I would become so immersed in a book, lost in it in an almost dreamlike state. I could lose sense of time, read and read until the sun went down and I would not notice. Then I went to school, learned to analyze, and now that feeling is rare. It comes over me more often when I write. I do fall into a kind of trance. But, I don't think I could if I hadn't studied it for such a long time.
Ron Currie: Do you think it has to do with learning to analyze in a formal setting, or is it just part and parcel of growing up? Because I feel the same way--that's one thing, anyway, that I miss about being a kid.
Claudia: maybe a bit of both?
Girija: I think it has to do with the process of analysis. Once you become an expert on 'reading' or any other thing, you lose your 'innocence', the ability to respond without a critical faculty operating. And whether the judgment is right or wrong is not even the issue. Recently, I started reading something straight after meditating and it was a much more enjoyable experience.
Xujun: But what if you've got babies...
You just need to get up before the babies wake :-)
To be fair, Butler did not say this method applies to everyone. And I agree with you it is not practical for many people. I'm probably one of those because I'm a night person. It's not like I could connect to the dream state before the dream.
Heinz Insu Fenkl: Butler is talking about the method attributed to Hemingway (writing early in the morning before the dream state entirely dissolves). You can do the same thing late at night or in a dark room with a small dose of melatonin (which is the natural brain chemical responsible for dream imagery) as it breaks down into DMT (which creates vivid visual and auditory hallucinations). It helps to keep the computer screen off if you touch-type, since you don't want to READ when you are WRITING.
Or, you can learn to induce the "trance" state at will with a little practice.
The problem is that what comes out in such a state needs a significant amount of editing (though sometimes this will only be necessary at a structural level). The "raw" material almost always has the quality of a 3rd or 4th iteration fractal, which means it contains a kind of organic/gestalt quality you wouldn't want to undo, but the material generally needs an organizing context, also. Sometimes even the context can come from the unconscious, but in my experience the unconscious is terrible at it, and this is where craft comes in.
Jill Stegman: Don't know if some of what you have written here is tongue-n-cheek, but I bought your brain chemistry analysis.
I think what you say is very perceptive. It is easy to let the trance state take over after you have, at least, a little knowledge of craft techniques. Then you are utilizing craft on a subconscious level as you write. The words just pour out into a coherent story. But if you don't have that experience behind you, you're in for some ferocious editing.
Yes. It definitely works. I actually get up very early, around four, to write. It sounded outrageous when I began two years ago, but the writing definitely flows better then. I never know what I'm going to write about. I can edit any time, but for the first draft, I really do best beginning at this early hour. There's just something magical about it for me.
Xujun: One thing I agree with Butler is that you need a certain mood, or engaging in certain emotions, for your writing. I don't write when I don't have that particular mood needed for a particular story.
I feel the first usable draft is always the most difficult work. Once I have it, editing is almost a pleasure.
Myfanwy Collins: Interesting. Thanks for this, Xujun. I've gotten up in the middle of the night and written before, but I can't do it first thing in the morning. Too addicted to my coffee and yogurt.
Xujun: I write whenever I have the mood. Or don't when I don't have the mood. One reason that I'm not very prolific. I also like to read before writing. It's interesting that Bill Roorback, my instructor in a nonfiction workshop, told us to read an hour every morning. He certainly has a different method from Butler's.
Kathy Fish: Interesting, but yeah, my "dream state" is pretty much shot to hell the second I open my eyes. A dog that needs to be let out, kids demanding pancakes, my own overwhelming need for coffee; if I could figure out a way to write while I'm actually still asleep!
Gail Siegel: Uh, ambient, maybe? Instead of sleep-driving and sleep-eating, maybe we can somehow get ourselves to sleep-write?
Jessica Lipnack: This is really fascinating. I do love the early morning writes, go for them whenever possible though they probably don't qualify, as I have a cup of coffee in hand. That said, I've had the experience any number of times of feeling as if I'm simply 'taking notes' as my fingers fly across the keyboard. No thinking involved. As an obsessive word counter, these occasions really pile them on (and as you say, Heinz, are desperately in search of the editor's scalpel).
Jim Ruland: When I'm really into a project and it's going pretty well, but it's getting late, and my body are shutting down, if I can leave the desk mid-scene, mid-problem, the part of my brain that composes the sentences will mingle with my dreams; not so much where I can control them but the composition process, fixating on certain words, playing with rhetoric and syntax, shuffling through tropes, becomes part of the dream. It's pretty cool. On those mornings I all but float over to the computer.
Claudia: long commutes are good. time for deep daydreaming.
Jim Tomlinson: I've missed my exit off the Interstate more than once, mental writing on my commute.
Jim Ruland: I've had some success writing with the monitor off. It's like tossing words into a cave in which some beast resides. When you turn on the monitor surprises abound and you're never quite ready for what you find.
My favorite writing instructor, Robert Kirsch (a past chief literary critic at the LA Times) said for the brevity of good prose: "write fast and write tired." I try to do that (the last part is easier than the first part) and, for me, it results in stories with minimal padding and/or coherence.
He taught several tricks for inducing creativity but the one I remember best is to eat dinner with your fingers. Salad works better than soup for this. You give attention to each leaf or segment, chewing until the item is liquified, swallowing. He claimed this allowed dreams to be remembered as the brain digested information in much the same way as the digestive process--although he stopped short of identifying resultant text as... I forget what made this sound logical at the time, but it does work.
Mark Hubbard: My eyes start glazing over when people mention dream states, trances, etc. I don't even know how much credence I give to the notion of a subconscious. For me, writing is as much an exercise of intellect as anything else, so it's a fully woken, fully straight, fully sober activity.
Posted by girija at March 18, 2006 01:32 PM
Comments
Thanks for posting this, Girija. By the way, your blog is beautiful.
Posted by: Myfanwy Collins | March 19, 2006 12:27 AM
So interesting, Girija. Beautiful blog!
I think this trance thing is the reason so many writers become dependent on alcohol. Being one of those drinky writers, to a degree, and concerned about my health, I've started going to bed early and getting up early too. It's easier to get in the flow for me first thing in the morning. But it's a new experiment, and I'm in revisions now. We'll see how well it works on my next project.
Posted by: Anne E | March 21, 2006 09:28 PM
So interesting, Girija. Beautiful blog!
I think this trance thing is the reason so many writers become dependent on alcohol. Being one of those drinky writers, to a degree, and concerned about my health, I've started going to bed early and getting up early too. It's easier to get in the flow for me first thing in the morning. But it's a new experiment, and I'm in revisions now. We'll see how well it works on my next project.
Posted by: Anne E | March 21, 2006 09:30 PM