Just A Set Of Signs?

This week a friend sent me this beautiful poem. If I were to receive a poem a week from a friend, well, life would be perfect…

From March '79

Tired of all who come with words, words but no language

I went to the snow-covered island.

The wild does not have words.

The unwritten pages spread themselves out in all directions!

I come across the marks of roe-deer's hooves in the snow.

Language but no words.

Tomas Tranströmer

(Translated from the Swedish by John F. Deane. You can find the original, and hear it here.)

It’s got me thinking. We can use words, but not really be communicating. Sometimes I’ve been asked to read stories and memoirs, and found they are like that. There may be a set of signs on the page, but they have left me unmoved, and with only a vague sense of the characters and world they are describing.

Conversely, language is not always a set of signs that we can use verbally. It can also be something more subtle- a rhythm, a felt sense, an atmosphere. Communication is the key. The important questions are: How do want to affect our reader? And, how can we convey the essence of the world/person/thing that we are describing? This thought process has led me into the work of Jeanette Winterson. She writes, in Art Objects,

‘The artist is a translator; one who has learnt how to pass into her own language the languages gathered from stones, from birds, from dreams, from the body, from the material world, from the invisible world, from sex, from death, from love. A different language is a different reality; what is the language, the world, of stones? What is the language, the world, of birds? Of atoms? Of microbes of colours? Of air?

So we go on learning our craft, trying to make something meaningful of these black marks on the page.

The Weekly Writing Prompt

‘Words but no language…language but no words’.

Write a non-fiction or fiction piece, in prose or poetry, using this line as inspiration.

If you’d like to publish it as guest post on the Wild Words Facebook page, I'd be delighted. 

This blog was first published on April 5th 2013.

A Writer's Process: Kate A. Hardy

I used to have a boyfriend whose creative processes came to life at about two in the morning.

He could work all night, cocooned in his dimly lit room, working on scripts and emerge briefly at around six in the morning when I was feeling at my most artistically productive . . . needless to say, the relationship didn’t last.

    And so it has continued. Six-thirty in the morning, in bed, with tea, that’s my writing time. The day hasn’t really started, lists of stuff to be done, safely downstairs. Dreams still cling and the previous days visual and audial impressions have been stocked ready for use – consciously or subconsciously. On the rare occasions that I don’t work at that time I feel slightly distracted all day, a niggling cloud hovering over my personal horizon.

    So, the writing process itself . . . I want to make structure but often (mostly) that seems to be an elusive thing, less so for short stories – an idea presents itself and refuses to go away until written down at least in a skeletal form. As they are short (5,000 or so words) it’s easier to craft a structure, a beginning, middle and end.

  Novels, for me, are more of a vast plane stretching out with a million possibilities

However much I try to plan, they take on a form of their own – usually fabricated by the characters themselves who seem to decide themselves what is about to happen next.

    This spontaneous form of working is exciting and I never find myself staring at a blank page wondering where to go next, however it does mean a lot of work later, rewriting, figuring out plot continuity elements and reining in the more ‘tangenty’ aspects of my writing.

    After my early morning a start, real life starts to encroach.

I pack up the ideas for a while and deal with the everyday. At some point I will walk dogs. For my writing process it’s vital to walk and think, look at trees, clouds, buildings, peoples’ gardens, etc. Most ideas seem to spring from my body being engaged in movement – swimming, particularly.

    Throughout the day, when possible, I will edit and re-write, write blogs and generally carry out stuff associated with writing, but the actual, real writing is an early morning activity; anything I ever write late at night will be stilted, probably incomprehensible and will need to be deleted at six-thirty the following morning . . .    

Writing Effortlessly

There are two things in my life, particularly, that have always invigorated me, and that I’ve instinctually known how to do without strain. Writing is not one of them (unfortunately).

However, through them, I’ve understood how to write with maximum ease, and enjoyment. 

This morning I did one of them. I went jogging. Surprised by the sudden chill of autumn, and lit by autumn’s soft light, I made it up to the ruined Cathar castle, and looked out over the Pyrenean mountains. Layered one in front of the other, the furthest silhouettes were still tipped by snow, recording last winter. The jagged sides of the nearest were carpeted with trees, their leaves just on the turn towards the completion of the seasons.  

On the winding track down, I met an older woman, in shades and slippers (really). She was struggling to keep up with her Cocker Spaniel.  She caught her breath and exhaled her question. ‘Did you go right up to the top?’ I nodded. Looking exhausted at the very thought, she replied, ‘my husband says I should do that. But it’s such an effort, isn’t it?’ I assumed the most sympathetic face that I could muster whilst jogging on the spot, and with a bon journee, we both went on our way.

But the thing is, it isn’t an effort. Not at all.

Firstly I don’t consider myself a ‘jogger’. It’s just that sometimes I put on trainers, and loosen my body up a bit by moving it on down the road.

I start very slowly. I go absolutely with the level of energy that is present for me that day. I ease into that, whether it’s a fast pace, or a slow pace. I stay with my bodily experience, and don’t aim to go any particular distance, or move at any particular speed. I watch the change of energy. Usually, the act of moving releases more, so I naturally speed up. But sometimes it doesn’t, so I don’t. Sometimes I feel I could push just a tad further into that store of energy. I do that, and watch what happens.

I see that thinking speeds me up. If I get lost in trains of thought, and lose connection with my body, I find that I am racing, disconnected from my physical experience of flow. Effort and resistance move in, and it’s no longer enjoyable. I am duller in body and mind, rather than more alive. 

If I jog in the right way, I arrive back on my doorstep invigorated. If I don’t, I’m exhausted.

The same is true of dancing. It’s about feeling the rhythm of the music, and allowing my body to respond. Not expecting.  Not hoping or fearing. Just waiting patiently for the responses, the messages, and answering.

I’ve taken these principles and applied them to my writing process:

1. I am someone who writes, rather than ‘a writer’ per se.

2. I never count words. Instead I put myself in my writing environment for a certain length of time, stay there whatever, and see what emerges.

3. I move my hand on the pen, or fingers on the keyboard, in response to the energy that arises. Sometimes I edge into it a little. Sometimes, I stop myself from moving away from a task, kindly. But my golden rule is never to force anything. (That risks plots, characters and phrasing being born as lifeless as forced flowers).

4. I have an outline of the section of story I’m going to write next beside me as a signpost, but otherwise I set up as few expectations for myself as possible. I do not berate myself for what my body/mind cannot do on any given day.  It’s my whole self that has a need to tell the story. I have to allow that to be what it wants to be. That’s the whole point of being someone who writes.

This is how I’ve learnt to write in a way that sustains through the months and years of long projects. This body-based learning has done more for me than any techniques offered to my rational mind. 

The Monthly Prompt

What small, physical activities do you do, without effort? E.g. are you an expert chef, lover, cyclist, make-up artist, singer or swimmer?

How could you apply what you know in other body-based arenas to your writing? 

A Writer's Process: Teresa Benison

My first thought when asked to write something for Wild Words was, what about a piece on The Writers’ Day?

Except, this writer’s day isn’t terribly interesting: desk; caffeine; fuss the cats; admire the collared doves roosting in my tree; lunch, then the same thing all over again….

Ok, so what about some musings on the process of writing?

A long time ago someone told me ‘you can’t call yourself a writer until someone else calls you a writer…’ It was seductive and, being young, it made a sort of sense. I see this now for what it truly is, a deeply damaging statement.

I do believe in the importance of connecting with those ‘someone elses’ (readers) but ‘being a writer’ is more than that. It is not what I do, it is what I am.

Story runs deep for me, it always has, and it is everywhere.

Once, walking through Cambridge city centre, I saw a sign on a lamppost advertising, ‘Public Executions’. In a flash my brain was off, transporting me to a dystopian future where executions habitually take place outside John Lewis with the BBC in attendance to capture reactions from the family and friends of victims.

It took me longer to write that paragraph than to envision it. There was a split second between seeing the sign and realising I’d misread it, that it actually said ‘public exhibition’, but that was more than enough time for my brain to go into overdrive. Moreover, for me the reality was far less interesting than my imagining.

So what I would like to do here is celebrate the fact that these days I embrace such moments. They are the flipside to the nag of self-doubt that I’m sure is common to many writers.

I have learnt to trust myself and my process. I never cease to relish the wildness of words and the power of story.

Story bubbles in my brain like a slow-cooking pot; add to that the special alchemy when story is transformed into words, words which take on a life of their own in the mind of the reader… what could be better, more exciting than that?

There you have it: a fragment of this particular writer’s process. Thank you for reading to the end, but now it really is time to get back to the cats and the caffeine, for I sense another story brewing…

Teresa Benison is a writer living and working in Cornwall; visit her at www.teresabenison.com

A Training Guide For Writing Wild

A student told me the other day that the thought of going outdoors to write terrified her.

In response to our conversation, I jotted down a few ideas which I hope will support you to just get out there. Take them with a pinch of salt  :-) 

-If the computer or television is more familiar to you than the world outside your front door, acclimatise slowly.

Start by venturing out into your garden (assuming you have one), then take on your local park. After that you should feel confident to go further…

-Get familiar with darkness.

Try lying in a dark room for twenty minutes, without falling asleep. You could also put on a blindfold, and feel your way around a room, or garden. Notice how the senses other than sight will come to your aid. See that your fears are bigger then the reality.

-Practice with texture under your feet and hands.

Exchange carpets and varnished floorboards for barefoot scurrying across your pebbled drive.  Swap flat white walls for touching brick and stone. Touch plants (carefully) that you usually consider too spiky.

-Consider going ‘off-line’.

Leaving the phone and Wi Fi behind is the new trend, have you heard? To really go into the unknown means to rely on your own resources, rather than those of your mother/partner/friend/therapist at the other end of the line. Face the reality that where you’re going there may not be a phone signal anyway. To prepare for this, turn your phone off for ten minutes, and see how it feels. Then progress to twenty minutes. Go up incrementally from there. When you can do three hours -the length of the writing of the first draft of your epic poem- you’re ready.

-Decide where to go.

You want to go into unknown territory. It will give you the sharpness of attention that’s conducive to vivid writing. But you don’t want to go anywhere that will frighten you too much, or where you place yourself in danger. A scared writer just freezes up, that is not creative.

-Make your destination information available on a need-to-know basis only. 

Threaten teenagers with loss of privileges if they contact or come looking for you in anything other than a REAL emergency (borrowing money/the car, trips to the supermarket for Nuttela etc… are not classed as real emergencies).

Finally. Remember. You deserve some time for you. Take it. Without apologies or excuses.

The Weekly Prompt

Put the six encouragements above into action :-)