Work at your craft, be true to your art

Posted by: maggenpye

When I was a fledgling, before I could make real letters, I'd write. I remember this, I was perhaps three or four. I remember the newsprint scrapbook and the yellow wax crayon. I remember that in my head I was the very best story teller. My stories were the best. Everyone in the world wanted to hear them. I spent hours filling pages and books with 'stories' that changed each time I told them. I had to learn written language, it was the only way to pin the story down.

I wrote poetry as a teenager, bad emo poetry, which started to get almost quite good in my early twenties. Enough to get me invited to read at a Listener Women's book Festival. I organised poetry gigs in support of art shows. Because the curator asked me to. We had books and T-shirts and everything! Wow, I thought - I've made it! I fluffed up my feathers in joy and pride. Over the course of a year, from writing I earned $42.65. Less $479.50 for drinks and taxis.

I also wrote fanfictions, but I'm too embarrassed to even name the show now. Because I struggled with the transition from verse to prose, someone lent me their book on writing, by a writer, for other writers. Work at your craft, be true to your art. The writer said. I figured my art wasn't in copying other people's characters.

Then I went to one bad reading too many, heard about one too many post-menopausal 'dried up tunnel of love', saw one too many boy show off their bits and call it Physical Poetry. I figured my craft wasn't in saying the first thing that 'felt like it had meaning, you know? Structure would have killed it.'

Writing took it's 'proper' place as a background activity in support of other interests. Hell, I even got a diploma and worked on a newspaper for a while, spending hours researching and interviewing. It was the most fun job I ever had (and I've had a few, flitting from one shiny job offer to the next). Getting paid for writing? Isn't that the dream? I could distill 6000 words into half a dozen paragraphs, lose nothing and receive tearful thanks from the subject for telling their story so eloquently. Their story.

Reading Jane Austin (not my only vice, but the safest to mention in mixed company.) I found a copy of Persuasion that had both the published ending, and the first one she wrote. She had the last bit tied up, where she skips over the fact that they get married and live happily every after - she knew that that's where they were going, but the meaty bit where the heroine resists the villain and the hero realises that he's been in love with her all along? Completely different. Jane Austin couldn't pin the story down.

After forty years I picked up my newsprint scrapbook and yellow crayon equivalent and began writing my stories.

I don't write the way they teach in courses. I don't edit the same or plan the same. I've paid my dues learning how to write poem and histories and news items and short stories - learning a whole new set of rules each time. I still read books on grammar and listen intently when someone tells me a sentence, paragraph, chapter or character don't work. That's my craft, I'll never stop working on that. I'm writing my second novel in eight months, and I do spend hours finding the perfect word, rewriting whole scenes, because it's my art.

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21 Jun 2007 20:21:15

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On 22 Jun 2007 00:05:28 Travis said:

The piece that gets me the most is "and I do spend hours finding the perfect word, rewriting whole scenes" - how do you finish 50,000 words in 1 month, and how do you do it faster than all us other smoes who don't do that?

On 22 Jun 2007 09:50:28 Maggenpye said:

Easy, type out the easy words while the difficult one is festering at the back of my head - go back later, change it, rinse and repeat!

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