Manifestoby Glen Sallee |
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Reflection
Our assignment was to write a manifesto describing our unique opinions on the definition of creative writing. I thought that I would try to write a poem in metrical verse to do the job. The most important thing that needs to happen in creative writing is that the author write an original work. A writer begins with the first line and adds new lines over and over until the piece is done. I wanted to use the word “line” figuratively as a metaphor for creative writing. Writers write lines and I thought that I could have some fun with the word line to describe what creative writing is all about. In creative writing, we aim to write the straight truth, our own truth, our own perspective of the world. That does not mean we are always right about what we write, just that we are sharing the truth, as we know it when we write it down. Writers of history do not have this luxury: they must use the available facts to tell the story. Creative writers get to turn and go in new directions, we can guess at the facts as long as we let the reader know we are guessing. Of course, we stop, edit and revise: and then we keep writing. We should break a few rules when we are writing, like I did when I did not capitalize my sentences in the poem. We assign and align new experiences and knowledge with our sense of the world and we get to share our perfect vision of the world. At least we get to try.
We cannot be good creative writers if we are not reading good creative writers. Good writing, whether it is a poem, novel, or textbook stretches our minds and increases our capacity to visit new and interesting worlds. Writers write and good writers write all the time, even when they are not right or do not feel right. All this hard work enables the writer to develop his voice or rather to share his inner voice with the reader. Sometimes what the writer must share is painful to him. However, as Dylan's words might suggest, when you are done writing you will be just fine. So if you want to be a good creative writer, you must write and you must share. Then you must write some more.
Above right is a picture of a Japanese umbrella pine, which I included in my poem for two reasons: First, it takes six syllables to say it and it allowed me to finish the ten meters of that line, and secondly, all the pine needles are lines. Some of the needles curve, others are straight, some are long, others short. The pine needles burst from the end of their branches in all different directions running parallel and perpendicular at the same time. The pine tree has many branches. Each branch is home to many needles, each one is unique and different from its neighbor. Together all the branches and all the needles work in harmony and we see an awesome tree. Now imagine that tree is a writer, that each branch represents the experiences and knowledge the writer has gained throughout his life, and that each pine needle represents every unique piece written by our writer. What I see when I imagine that is something truly extraordinary, something beautiful.
We cannot be good creative writers if we are not reading good creative writers. Good writing, whether it is a poem, novel, or textbook stretches our minds and increases our capacity to visit new and interesting worlds. Writers write and good writers write all the time, even when they are not right or do not feel right. All this hard work enables the writer to develop his voice or rather to share his inner voice with the reader. Sometimes what the writer must share is painful to him. However, as Dylan's words might suggest, when you are done writing you will be just fine. So if you want to be a good creative writer, you must write and you must share. Then you must write some more.
Above right is a picture of a Japanese umbrella pine, which I included in my poem for two reasons: First, it takes six syllables to say it and it allowed me to finish the ten meters of that line, and secondly, all the pine needles are lines. Some of the needles curve, others are straight, some are long, others short. The pine needles burst from the end of their branches in all different directions running parallel and perpendicular at the same time. The pine tree has many branches. Each branch is home to many needles, each one is unique and different from its neighbor. Together all the branches and all the needles work in harmony and we see an awesome tree. Now imagine that tree is a writer, that each branch represents the experiences and knowledge the writer has gained throughout his life, and that each pine needle represents every unique piece written by our writer. What I see when I imagine that is something truly extraordinary, something beautiful.
When you write what you know, you stay in control. One of the first things I encourage my writing students to do is to lose control - say what they want to say, break structure.
Natalie Goldberg