The Burro Way

I have to admit....there was a lot of reading for this week. Halfway through I found myself doing this to let my eyeballs take a break:

  

Then when it came time to write something down, I found myself doing this:

 

Needless, to say, my mind is ready for Spring Break. BUT since school is still session, I best get my writing cap on and get to work. There is a lot I got out of the Janet Burroway's readings. Writer's block is nothing new for me. I thought Burroway had an interesting way of explaining why these things happen. According to her, either 1) the piece has a hairline fracture, or 2) the book will explode if you continue. (pg. 23)

The way she talks about the latter is almost like an act of Wyrd. Fate says no, shuts the brain down and aborts whatever you had in mind to create. I never really thought of it that way. Maybe it was my destiny to write this and that. I'll have to keep this in mind when I'm banging my head against my desk, trying to slam the words out onto the page. "Calm down and try something different. You don't want this book to explode, do you?"

Another thing, mentioned on the previous page is Burroway's advice to revise. The example she uses of the aspiring photographer is very relatable to me. When someone tells me to revise a piece that I have worked very hard on, I sometimes get distraught. I climbed my mountain to take this picture and want others to see the value of my struggle to get it, even if it isn't perfect. But Burroway encourages me. Every artist has to go through it, leaving behind the bareness of the rough draft and revise, reshape, and re-imagine something better for a story. She writes, "In those early pages and chapters anyone may find bold leaps to nowhere, read the brave beginnings of dropped themes, hear a tone since abandoned, discover blind alleys, track red herrings, and laboriously learn a setting now false." Hard truths to admit, but in order to go to the next level of writing, I have to accept this and move on.

In the chapter on "The Active Voice" on page 64, she also teaches me the importance of using active verbs vs. passive verbs. I've never really paid too much attention to these things but after reading through her examples, I see the importance of paying attention to diction while writing. "Be aware of the of the vigor and variety of available verbs." (Nice alliteration, Burroway!) Using linking verbs like, "was" and "just" make a story bump along rather than flow smoothly.

Alright, that's all for now. Peace, love, and a happy white dove,

~Michelle

Goldberg Variations

No, this post has nothing to do with Bach. Though the subject is on the same creative level as composing music. In the book, Writing Down the Bones, Zen Master writer, Natalie Goldberg, walks both amateur and aged writer through the process of...well, writing down the bones. Which is to say, putting every inch of ones' self into writing.

In the second part of this book, many things stuck out to me. One of which being the section on Obsessions. I can relate completely with being obsessed with writing. There was a solid three months last year when every day a friend and I would go back and forth, writing a story. We would post a response to the previous chapter and just build and build. I usually replied in the morning and she replied at night. I wouldn't be able to sleep until she wrote back. After reading her chapter, I would lay in bed, planning the chapter that I would write in the morning with anticipation. My heart would beat and sometimes I wouldn't be able to fall asleep unless I wrote down some nice sentences I had thought out, in fear of forgetting them overnight. If, for some reason, I wasn't able to write out my chapter in the morning, I would pine all day until I was able to get home and get the story out of my head and into word. I was obsessed. Going back and re-reading the pages of intricate little plots and funny one-liners made me fill accomplished and proud. I felt like I was doing what I was meant to do. I understand what Goldberg meant when she wrote, "There is freedom in being a writer and writing. It is fulfilling your function." pg. 70

On page 81, Goldberg quotes Katagiri Roshi. "Literature will tell you what life is, but it won't tell you how to get out of it." I really like this quote. It is enveloped nicely between paragraphs stating the importance of detail. As writers what we reveal truths about the world using detailed accuracy. We are like a mirror. But when a person looks into a mirror and sees something, the mirror can do nothing to change the appearance of the person that looks into it. If he or she does not like what they are seeing, then they have to actively change it by stepping away from the mirror and acting. If hair is messy, it can be easily brushed. Things like being overweight is slightly harder and takes time and effort to change. In the same way, reading can tell us truths about the world, things that we don't like, but it is up to us to take action. The reader can learn from books, but we must act upon it if we truly want to learn.

Other things Goldberg taught me:
~Writing is listening
~Learn specific names of flowers, animals, and basically everything (even that rock!)
~Everything is both ordinary and extraordinary
 ~Indefinite modifiers= a big no-no. Points to doubt in writing.
~"And what great writers actually pass on is not so much their words, but they hand on their breath at their moments of inspiration."
~I want to do a snake dance!
~Show, Don't Tell
~It's okay to be weird

In conclusion, here's a clip from Silence of the Lambs that features The Goldberg Variations.

The Tocqueville Perspective

The poem, "Tocqueville", contained within the book with the same title, has many difficult and heavy themes that most people don't tend to talk about. The topics make us feel uncomfortable, disheartened, or just angry at our society as it reflects all of the wretched things that oppress us. As a nation, we like to think of ourselves as one united body held by the values of liberty, equality, and freedom. When we read this poem, it is an introspection of who we are as "The United States" and how our values are sometimes compromised in the midst of a power struggle with our leaders (which at times is the government, and other times economical powers, or sometimes one in the same).

Before reading the poem, I wanted to learn a little bit more about the title. The fact that the entire book has the same title as the poem draws my attention to it. At first, I thought "Tocqueville" would be a name of a place. Maybe an ideal, fictional utopia that Mattawa would contrast with the world. To my surprise, it is a name of a person. After doing some research, and reading the links provided on the class blog page (http://223winter2015.blogspot.com/), I learned that Alexis de Tocqueville was a great French political thinker and historian. In the 1800s, he traveled from a Revolutionary French to America in search of understanding of a democracy, in hopes of being able to establish it back home. What he found had both pros and cons.

The pros Tocqueville saw were equality and individuality. Without the traditions of monarchy, America was able to start anew and create a system without an aristocracy, allowing upward mobility for those who are poor and the downward mobility for those who rich. This is the defining features of democracy, which ultimately creates equality. This is a form of individuality because it strives each person to try their hardest to achieve. Unfortunately the cons are also created because of this. People who strive for their own well-being over those of others hinder equality. It turns into a tyranny. Tocqueville noted that without checks on all levels of government, then a tyrannical society will emerge with the majority oppressing the minority. When we read the poem, "Tocqueville", we can keep this in mind. Mattawa seems to be suggesting that this is what happened to America. The white people are the tyrannical majority while the "brown/yellow folks" are the minority.

The poem is like a loud room filled with people who are having different conversations. They intersect and weave in and out. Some are overtly about the government, while some are subtle. Some are foreigners, thinking about their homes. The whole book is like this as well. While Tocqueville, a stranger to America, came and wrote a book about America, defining it, the people, the culture with all of its' beauties and flaws, Mattawa did the same. The troubles that Mattawa defines are exactly what Tocqueville predicted.

Tocqueville coined the term, "soft despotism". This means a country that rules over people with small, complicated laws that degrade the people, though it may not be obvious to the people. It gives people the illusion that they are in control, but they actually have little power. Mattawa states that this is the current state of the US. He writes on page 28, "It just doesn't look like racism. What do you call it then? A kind of mould, software, bedrock. You can make all sorts of people buy into it. Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Asiatics, Arabs, Indians. That's what happens to them when they're on your side. There's already fear that makes all kinds of violence legitimate, or a desire to kill that rationalizes itself as fear of violence. In the end, it doesn't matter which."