It’s no secret that writing can serve as a form of therapy. All writers vent their emotions, thoughts, dreams, concerns, and frustrations even when they’re writing fiction. It’s simultaneously wish-fulfillment and the worst-case scenario. Many times writers know what they’re doing; sometimes it’s why they started writing that piece in the first place. However, just as often writers don’t realize the sort of messages that they’ve created. What about those subconscious choices? Should writers pay them any heed? Or should we avoid such self-evaluation?
I’ll admit that I often engage in self-evaluation during the later stages of editing. I can’t help it. I’m curious as to how my brain works and my writing provides the most direct path to my thought processes, not to mention it’s my only chance at viewing myself almost from an outsider’s perspective or as close as I can get to that. What I’ve found thus far has left me amused–sometimes bitterly–and often wondering what is wrong with me.
That’s the interesting thing about writers; we’re all off in our own ways and it seeps into our work. But should we try and reach the source of that uniqueness by analyzing our own works? Perhaps and perhaps not.
On the one hand, self-evaluation can help us to grow as writers and as people. We may notice trends which are overly-used in our work or which are red flags for us psychologically. If we catch the problem early, we can do something about it. We may also notice recurring themes which can have a positive impact on others and ourselves. If we spot the potential when it’s first starting to sprout, we can cultivate it.
On the other hand, we may not like what we discover. I’ve learned that I can have a rather pessimistic, or at least bitter-sweet, view of romantic relationships. That view is also on my mind a lot and intertwines with my work even if the focus of the piece isn’t romantic love at all. That’s not exactly something you want to realize about yourself.
Then we put ourselves in a rather sticky situation: should we try and chance ourselves as a result of the self-evaluation? If we do, we may lose the spark which makes us writers. If we don’t, we could lose our minds based solely on the fact that we know our minds work like that. We’re kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place.
There is no one answer that will fit every scenario. Sometimes we should delve into self-evaluation through our writing, other times we shouldn’t. Sometimes we should change and other times we should just accept and embrace who we are. It really depends on the individual writer and his/her situation. Only you know what you can handle and what is best for you psychologically.
Have you ever discovered something intriguing about yourself as you re-read your work? Something funny? Something disturbing? Feel free to leave a comment about your experiences below.
Want to know when new content appears in the Bin? Subscribe to this blog using the form on the left side of this page and receive notifications about new posts right to your inbox.
In their latest version, Disney expanded the Beauty and the Beast story and created new, more complex personalities and social dynamics for our favorite characters.
I love fairy tales, and not just the Disney ones. Don’t get me wrong, I love Disney and their recent takes are worth a long look. However, the classic fairy tales provide stronger lessons for writers. I suppose by now you’re wondering how. How, with such shallow characters and simplistic plots, could these stories teach us about writing in today’s world? How, when they are for children, can they teach us about writing more mature content? The answer is easy: they’re not simple and they’re not just for children.
As an undergrad I took more than my fair share of classes on fairy tales, including a comparative literature course. In these classes I read more than the ones our (American) parents read to us. The gritty originals, non-European tales, and the more obscure of the European stories filled the syllabi.
These classes helped us to read fairy tales as more than the stereotypical image of a “fairy tale.” We examined the stories as symbols of different cultures and time periods. Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, all of these classic tales have been explored in many time periods and many nations. The various versions of the same story or the same archetype reveal the shifting of values and attitudes both across time and geographically.
I’m sorry, I got off-track. I’m so enthralled with studying fairy tales, legends, myths, and folklore for their cultural implications that I get a bit carried away.
I consider fairy tales early incarnations of short stories. They began as oral tales and so were simplified to make them easier to remember, but they’re short stories nonetheless. Plots, characters, themes, they have all the basic elements of a good short story.
The deceptively simple surfaces of fairy tales make them the perfect tool for studying these elements. The plots are straightforward, allowing us to examine narrative arcs; the characters are simple and yet captivating, giving us the bare bones of a good character while leaving room for development; the themes are multilayered, some clearly exposed to the audience and others hiding beneath the surface, teaching us about subtext. Most importantly, whatever we dislike in a fairy tale helps us learn what to avoid in our own writing.
Snow White was only seven when she ran into the forest in the Grimm version. I can’t be the only one who has a problem with that. And the Prince didn’t even know her when he kissed her! How is that OK?
For example, I’m not a fan of most Snow White stories. Some of them, even some older ones, have intriguing additions that others do not but many of them, in my opinion, are frustrating. I despise her passivity. For some deep-seeded psychological reason that I can’t identify, I can get past that flaw in most Sleeping Beauty stories, but I absolutely hate it in Snow White tales. The older I’ve become and the more I study fairy tales, the more I dislike Snow White’s passivity. Perhaps it’s not even her passivity I hate as much as her utter lack of agency.
That’s why, even when a female character is passive overall, I find a way to give her some agency. Sometimes it’s as small as internally complaining about an invasive male or as significant as her ordering a man to get out when he doesn’t get the hint. I’m tired of passive female characters having no agency, probably because I worry that I’m so passive that I let myself get stepped on, and so I work to incorporate female characters with agency, whether they are passive or aggressive.
Fairy tales may be considered “children’s stories” nowadays but they haven’t always been that way. They were once oral tales told by adults to keep themselves entertained while working and were later adapted to serve as cautionary tales for children. They can teach us a lot, and not only about the times and cultures from which they come. They’re worth re-reading as adults and as writers to learn more about the bare basics of our crafts. Besides, they’re entertaining and easy to read, a good break from our everyday stresses.
As I’m working on my end-of-year essay for my Master’s program, I can’t help but feel exhilarated. Stressed, a bit frustrated, and banging my head against the wall, but exhilarated. For whatever reason I find most–not all but most–academic/essay writing exciting. (Yeah, I’m a geek. I own it.) I’m not alone in my love of academic/essay writing, not even among fiction writers. Edgar Allen Poe wrote essays on literature and writing. Virginia Woolf composed essays as well, most notably her book-length essay A Room of One’s Own.
Sometimes you can combine fiction and essay writing. Virginia Woolf wrote A Room of One’s Own with a fictional narrator and narrative.
Image retrieved from the Wikipedia entry on A Room of One’s OwnBut what’s the appeal? Why would anyone want to slave over books and analysis, real people and real-world issues, even statistics and other dry facts, rather than letting the imagination run wild in fiction or poetry? I say it’s because academic/essay writing isn’t actually much different from fiction and poetic writing.
What we tend to forget is that academic/essay writing is a creative act. Yes, it can feel very stifling when we’re assigned essay prompts in class and have to worry about writing something that the professor thinks fulfills said prompt. Yet even that sort of academic/essay writing can be creative, if we stumble across a prompt that we’re excited about. That’s where the creativity of academic/essay writing first appears: the topic.
As with anything we write, academic/essay writing becomes its most creative when we are passionate about the topic. We aren’t always so fortunate when we have to write essays for school; I just happened to luck out with my end-of-year essay in that I like one of the prompts and I have many, many thoughts on the book I’m analyzing. However, essays–even academic essays–outside of the classroom can be about anything you want. You just have to be interested in the subject and know something about it.
I personally have a lot of topics which I want to cover in an essay or academic book someday: sexuality and Harry Potter, an extension of my undergraduate critical thesis; the influence of Arthurian romances on the modern soap opera; even the evolution of the word “gay.”
Of course, not everyone who writes essays, even academically, write about literature or writing. My entire world is pretty much books and words. They’re how I understand and navigate the world and how I express my thoughts. It’s only natural for me to gravitate towards analyzing literature and its sociological, historical, and/or psychological impacts. You can write essays on the physical benefits of yoga and meditation, how economic turmoil after World War I served as a catalyst for the Nazi regime, your views on human consciousness, and so on. You can also write personal essays. (I’m not too familiar with these so I’ll leave a link to a Writer’s Digest article on the matter.) The possibilities are endless.
The part of academic/essay writing which requires the most creative effort, however, is the actual writing.
Let’s face it, first drafts are difficult in fiction and poetry; they’re even harder in non-fiction, especially academic/essay writing. The topic you’re writing about may be interesting but you’ll never keep the reader’s attention if your writing isn’t just as interesting.
Length is probably one of the first things we’re concerned about when reading–and writing–academic pieces and essays. As readers, we don’t want to read something tremendously long for fear of being bored. Still, we want the writer to thoroughly cover the subject–if they don’t, it’s not even worth reading. Academic/essay writers must be careful to find the right balance, and this balance is never the same from one piece to the next. We must know what to keep to make our point and which darlings to kill, a creative act which we find in fiction and poetry as well.
As in fiction and poetry, the voice and tone of the work can make or break the essay. In personal essays you also need a narrative arc. Then we have the demons that seem small but can have a huge impact: organization, grammar, sentence length variation, and word choice. Even the most minor error in word choice could put your essay out of the intellectual reach of your target audience.
Academic/essay writing is as much a creative act as fiction and poetry. Neither the topic nor the writing can be boring, especially to the writer. If something is boring the writer, it will certainly bore the reader. Academic/essay writing requires research, thought, and originality. You only need to find a topic you’re interested in and approach it like any other writing endeavor. You never know, you might be able to profit from it. (I had an essay published in the UC Davis Prized Writing Anthology as an undergraduate.)
We’re in for a long weekend, folks, at least in the U.S. Yup, it’s Memorial Day Weekend. Now, I’m sure that everyone will be busy with BBQs and picnics and other fun ways of soaking in the glory of a three-day weekend. However, it’s also important for my American readers and I to remember that this holiday is meant to honor those soldiers who died in service. That’s why I’m going to present you with two writing prompts today.
The first prompt is a popular one for developing dialogue. What you do is go sit in a public place, particularly one where people are talking, and eavesdrop. Whatever snippets of dialogue–or entire conversations–you hear, write it down. I would suggest doing this for about twenty minutes to half an hour. This may seem like a long time but you’ll be more likely to get good chunks of conversations that way.
After finishing that part of the exercise, go to your usual writing space and create at least one scene or poem out of the dialogue you recorded. It can lead to longer pieces like a full story, book, or multiple poems, but you should at least write one scene or one poem utilizing all the dialogue you noted. Get creative with it. Try not to just record what you saw the people doing; in fact, try to ignore any visuals when you initially make notes on the dialogue. That way you’ll be forced to create entire characters, settings, and actions for the dialogue. You’d be surprised at what you may come up with. I once did this exercise for a writing course at a Stanford summer program; the conversation I overheard was two guys sitting at a table in the dining hall and talking about how one broke his leg, but I ended up with a scene in which two men were hunting a bear.
Whether you’re an American celebrating Memorial Day, a Muslim observing Ramadan, someone just having an ordinary weekend, or any combination of the above, this first exercise should be easy enough to do. Just plop on a bench at a BBQ, listen to your family’s everyday conversation, spy from a park bench, whatever you want.
The second exercise is intended for Americans celebrating Memorial Day but it’s generic enough that anyone can do it. I just want you to write something honoring someone who has fallen in combat. A scene, short story, poem, essay, letter, blog or Facebook post, anything that honors the people who have died fighting for your country. It can be funny, sad, bitter-sweet, uplifting, a tale of hope, a plea for world peace, etc. I just don’t want my American readers to forget the origins of Memorial Day amidst the BBQs and drinking.
However, I think that people of all nationalities can benefit from this exercise. No matter your position on war, war is currently a worldwide reality. It’s influenced many writers’ works and, as uncomfortable as it is, the subject is a rich field for fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Read about it, write about it, explore it. You may find that soldiers and combat best convey your message.
Be sure to share your experiences with these exercises below.
Have any ideas for future Friday Fun-Day writing prompts? Drop a line in the comments or contact me at thewritersscrapbin@gmail.com.
Warning: The book reviewed in this post contains X-rated content. Please proceed only if you are 18 years of age or older and if you do not object to controversial/explicit writing. Thank you.
I’m taking a new path for this review and turning to a self-published author, Anna James Watson, and her book Blackmail. Be advised that Blackmail is erotica, so there are many “steamy” scenes. I trust that people reading this post beyond the warning are adults, so please conduct yourselves as such in the comments. Sex isn’t always the most comfortable topic but it’s a prominent part of the human experience. As such, we can’t avoid it and we should assess erotica as literature, as we would any other genre.
That being said, I’m not a regular reader of erotica. I do, however, try to read widely and this novel caught my eye. I’m happy it did; the book is much better than I had expected.
Blackmail by Anna James Watson, image retrieved from GoodreadsBlackmail is the first novel in Watson’s The Skeleton Key series. It illustrates the affair among three Yale students: undergraduate students Mia and Tristan and their TA, a philosophy graduate student named Julian. As the title implies, Mia is pulled into Tristan and Julian’s unconventional relationship due to Tristan’s need to blackmail her. As they try to continue life as though nothing has happened, their social circles become more thoroughly intertwined through mutual acquaintances, the philosophy club Y.U.P.S., and a society called The Skeleton Key. What follows is a whirlwind of secrets, internal struggles, emotional upheaval, and, of course, sex.
When I read erotica, I’m looking for more than just smut. I want characters that feel like real people, evolve and change throughout the narrative, and have real emotions and real social dynamics. I want the book to say more than “these attractive people had a lot of sex, often unconventional sex in unconventional places.”
The first several pages of this book are, admittedly, smut-heavy. Mia, Tristan, and Julian also start as rather stereotypical characters: the smart girl who normally doesn’t do this sort of thing, the rich pretty-boy who can’t afford people finding out about his “extracurricular activities,” and the mysterious romantic. I would’ve preferred to see more character development before the erotic side of the novel began, but I suppose in this genre it’s best to start those scenes early. Nevertheless, you see glimmers of real people with desires, limits, goals, and concerns right from the beginning.
The initial “steamy” scene is very well-written and sets the bar high for the rest of the novel. That aspect is consistently engaging and enthralling throughout the narrative, something best read behind closed doors and which I’m embarrassed to admit I really enjoyed. From the sweetly romantic love-making between Mia and Julian to the battle for dominance Mia has with Tristan, these scenes provide the perfect balance between sensuality and tension.
I’m most intrigued by the kind of relationship explored, i.e. MMF. When we encounter books, movies, or TV shows about polysexual/polyamorous/polygamous relationships, they’re most often one man and multiple women. So long as everyone involved is of age and consents, I have no issues with this sort of relationship. Still, the prevalence of MFF over MMF–I can’t even think of another example of MMF without more detailed research–suggests a disproportionate representation of unconventional relationships. It’s refreshing to see the exploration of more types of nontraditional relationships.
Mia may be the main character but, for me, Tristan and Julian’s relationship steals the show. Watson shows the issues of them privately accepting their identities–Julian is pansexual and Tristan is bisexual–while still trying to keep the wrong people from discovering them. Watson heightens the tension by investigating the strengths and struggles Mia adds to their love life and the strains that Tristan’s obsession with The Skeleton Key puts on them. I despise rich pretty-boys and yet I worried for Tristan and his relationship with Julian, as well as felt annoyed by how Tristan approached their joint relationship with Mia. Tristan and Julian put me through an emotional roller coaster, something I didn’t necessarily expect from erotica.
With the introduction of Y.U.P.S. this book becomes erotica for the intellectual. The philosophical debate may not be accessible to everyone. I had to re-read it a couple times to get a good grasp on it. Regardless, I find it exhilarating, as much as (if not more than) the sex scenes. The back-and-forth and Watson’s mastery of altering pace adds tension and excitement to a topic in which some readers might not have interest.
This book is intelligent on multiple levels. One of these levels involves Tristan’s and Julian’s names. The name “Tristan” is most famous for the Arthurian romance Tristan and Isolde. “Julian” derives from “Julius”, as does the name of a very famous character in romance fiction: Juliet. I could write an entire essay analyzing the use of those names alone. Of course, not all of the names in this book are that creative. Mia’s last name, Winters, is rather plain. Tristan’s surname, Masters, is almost too much considering his need for dominance and his social station. Still, these names do not detract from the brilliance behind the naming of the two leading males.
Anna James Watson: mother, wife, intellectual, writer
Image retrieved from GoodreadsThe intelligence of the novel seeps into the subtext. I could go on and on about how this book plays with Sedgwick’s homoerotic triangle and the utilization of a secret society to complement the main characters’ secret relationships. However, such analysis would take too long and is best left to future posts. My main point is that this book is an intelligent erotica, a niche which is often left unfulfilled. As an intellectual, I’m very pleased to see someone address the hyper-sexual potential hiding beneath every smart person, even if that person is unaware of it or isn’t sexually active.
I could say so much more but I’d rather give you a chance to read the book yourself and start a discussion in the comments section. You can get an electronic copy of the book for free on Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited or for $2.99 through Amazon’s regular Kindle store. Also remember to check out Watson’s website for information on The Skeleton Key series and to access her blog.
Do you know of a little-known, up-and-coming, and/or indie writer you think deserves more attention? Let me know in the comments below or drop me a line at thewritersscrapbin@gmail.com.
