On writing workshops

Writing is not an easy task, unless you are of the 0.01% of the population for whom words simply descend from the Heavens and pour into your lap into perfectly constructed, syntactically adventurous, yet tasteful units. Unfortunately, I must confess that I belong to the other group, papers and hair askew from the daily frustrations of trying to lay something worthwhile onto a sheet of seemingly innocuous paper.

I hope that one day my thoughts will grasp the empty, beckoning lines vigorously – sensing it and exploring it – discerning its every crevice, every minute thread of fabric to better understand the medium unto which my consciousness is reflected. One day, I hope fail to shrug and sit complacently like they do latent in this fickle specimen that is called a “mind”. To write with alarming alacrity, to write so vibrantly in the subtleties, to abate the appetite of allowing time to sift like sand, idle and tired through my fingers. I hope that these commodities are not purely congenital. I hope that in part that it can be acquired, much like the refined and beautiful tastes tapering out of every ethnicity. I want to write because to pantomime for half a century will not suffice; I do not want to be Possibility Girl and bask in the adulation of my potential.

And what does Lady Caroline, say about all this? She would say, shrilly:

“…and pray tell her from me, that she cannot expect to excel if she does not practice a good deal.”

Although I claim to enjoy writing a great deal, it is still a common struggle that I confront with nearly every day to commit myself to sit down and produce something of my own, fresh and original. The ideas, so pristine, so perfect – how could I ever lay them down in risk of tarnishing them with the wrong words that misguided intuition sometimes selects from my internal lexicon? Many writers like myself, are trapped in this guilty paradox of yearning to write but finding ourselves making excuse after (albeit, creative) excuse not to write today because of reason X. Replace X with anything from actually desperately needing to study for that biochemistry exam looming like hawk around the corner of the weekend, to feeling inexplicably compelled to making sure that the entirety of the iTunes library has the correct album art and meta-data. Yet, that elated feeling that one gets when a sentence is successfully wrestled onto paper, that sense that it has been perfectly grafted from the mind to a language that can be conveyed onto others – that’s what keeps the craft of writing alive for the vast majority of us all.

If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.

— Ray Bradbury

This is the reason I had signed up for an English workshop class this semester; the pressure to produce something that would be halfway decent for another human being to read keeps the words coming. It’s an entirely nervous ordeal at times, to present these words and ideas that are lovingly yours to a group of (mostly) strangers for them to scrutinize and turn over in their hands. And yet, despite the anxiety, I could not be more thankful for this same group of people, whom inspire me to write and take the time to thoughtfully write suggestions in the margins. If you don’t belong to that other 0.01% of writers in the world, I highly recommend taking a writing class if you are truly interested in the field. Writing prompt websites like Write One Leaf, are quite useful as well.

Here’s to a week of words!

Sue majors in Neuroscience & English and tends to lurk in bookstores.