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Writing Your Way into Literature--Creatively |
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There is no doubt that writers read other writers. They do so for a myriad of reasons not the least of which is to stimulate their creativity. However, how many of us ordinary readers realize that by reacting creatively to what we have read, we can often unlock a richer and more meaningful terrain of responses? Some theorists make the point that each reading of a story is a "rewriting" of it. If we can look at reading as a creative and imaginative act to begin with, we can see how that is so. As our imaginations bring to life the discourse and the history of the work, we inscribe with our minds eye, with our experience, and with our schemas and ideologies. To what extent is the reading act enabled but also constrained by the text we encounter? To what extent do we want it to be? Can writing creatively become a violation of the original text? If that happens, when is it justified, if ever? This page will try to answer that question and to give you some suggestions and examples for writing creatively to enhance your reading. It seems there are some basic and obvious ways that readers can react and compose creatively to texts. Imitations First of all they can imitate texts. To do this one attempts to emulate style or content. The impulse to imitate can be a kind of ordinary copy cat impulse where the desire is to do the tried and true. Of course, every formula device in plot or stock character in a story or canned sentiment in a poem has probably originated with a writer reading and then recycling these materials or ideas. Is that what we want to do? It is certainly frowned upon as derivative and uninspired. On the other hand, some artists will write and emulate in an effort to understand better, practicing style for example. Techniques can hardly be mastered without doing so. Just what is the sentence patterning or imagey characteristics of a story by Edgar Allen Poe? How does "minimalism" work? What is the logic of form in a sonnet? These can be analyzed and then imitated for significant new realizations. Often teachers or text books will ask you to imitate an author. What would Poe's "Cask of Amontillado" be like if it were reset on an American College campus, for example? Sometimes the writer wishes to pay homage to the writer. Read, for example, Raymond Carver's story, "Errand," in light of Chekov's influence on Carver. It is not merely about Chekov's death but echos Chekov's style. Satires When imitation is pushed to an extreme, to the point of charicature or distortion, one ventures into the realm of satire. Many artists satirize other artists. This can be a gently kind of mocking parody or a more radical and severe kind of criticism. Sometimes the primary work is not imitated but rather reimagined in other ways in the creative response. The new work answers the original in some manner. Here the creative work provides a seemingly conscious rereading of the primary work. Revisionings Joyce Carol Oates' "Literary Marriages" is an example of revisioning. Perhaps you have read her frequently anthologized "Lady with the Pet Dog" which is a reworking of Chekhov's story by the same name (depending on the translation). It is merely one of many examples of Oates visiting classic works and refashioning them. Visit Celestia Timepiece <http://www.usfca.edu/fac-staff/southerr/literary.html>, a site devoted to Oates, to read about this book: Monica Loeb's Literary Marriages: A Study of Intertextuality in a Series of Short Stories by Joyce Carol Oates (Bern: Peter Lang AG, 2002). You will gain insight into Oates' accomplishment. Then, of course, you should seek out and read some of these fabulous transformations which appear in Oate's work: Marriages and Infidelities (New York: Vanguard, 1972). <http://www.usfca.edu/fac-staff/southerr/marriages.html> There are other examples of artists rewriting and revisioning cultural masterworks with more radical critical intent. For example, a recent court case involved the work, The Wind Done Gone (HMCo, 2001), by Alice Randall. The blurb on this page describes Randall's work as a "rejoinder" and as "ingeniously and ironically transforming" the original work. She gives voice to the African American characters in Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. As a result the publisher of The Wind Done Gone, Houghton Mifflin Company, was sued for publication. The dispute is explained and documented on these pages: Information about Sun Trust Company v. Houghton Mifflin Company <http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/features/randall_url/index.shtml> This extensive site covers the court documents, press releases, and much more. For a quick overview read the The Wind Done Gone: Questions and Answers about this dispute page <http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/features/randall_url/qandas.shtml> This entire incident exemplifies the fact that some creative responses to literature can also be an act of resistence in which gaps are filled and voices heard, voices from characters whose silence in the original work was strategic. Revisioning as Reader Exploration When we read, we do not necesarily want to offer a cultural critique of the original but rather sometimes we merely want to arrive at that richer understanding that our exploration can bring about. Here are some suggestions for doing this. In some cases the strategy involves rewriting a famous story from a different point of view, usually the point of view of another character. However, one can write in any "gap" of the story. For example, one can write beyond the ending or before the beginning. One can fill in ellipses or gaps in time. All of these stategies can entail discoveries of new ways to look at the work.
These are examples of what students in the past have explored, discovering, some more successfully than others, those key moments or nodes in stories when implications arise which can be imaginatively filled by the thoughtful reader!
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