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Author Topic: Different Folks; Different Strokes
extrinsic
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As in brush strokes. I've noticed different folks approach writing from different strokes or approaches. I don't mean the subtle differences of genre and method, of expression or culture, or personal likes and dislikes, and so on, but differing approaches from platform, tools, application, and revision. Like approaching writing from a reading perspective, or editing, or publishing, or audience, or as I specifically mean, as writing.

I've spent a significant fraction of my time these past few years reading compositions by inexperienced writers, more than three thousand between twenty and one hundred pages length. By and large, the manuscripts are not publishable in the sense of traditional publishing industry and culture expectations.

My opinions of their strengths and shortcomings had no bearing or impact on the compositions' status. My role was to document their content for digital searching purposes. Of course, I had to read them, as tedious as it sometimes was. I had to consider them on the basis of their content, not their organization, nor expression, nor appeal, nor even the caliber of their mechanical style. I learned to read past their faults and warts. I became entirely objective regarding their content. Though I cringed at times as if the compositions were my own creations and I felt the at-times disapproving reactions of whoever had to read them before, the audiences or audience of one, maybe two or three readers.

I grew as a writer from the experience, mostly from realizing taking into account the audience's wants and desires for appealing expression, content, organization, and preferences respecting mechanical style form a basis for the conversation that writing is. But I also realized that the writers only had the limited perspectives of themselves and perhaps a few others to evaluate their writing strengths and shortcomings. I wonder now whether their approaches were as writers or as servile apprentices just getting by as best they could on their own. They wrote to meet a minimal expectation. Their mentors did not serve them effectively.

One of the subtler realizations I had was that the content was all there, hidden behind misunderstanding the content and purpose or intent of the writing, obscured by clumsy organization and construction, diminished by neutral or contradictory expression, and barricaded behind projected uncertainty of and indifference toward mechanical style. They didn't approach the writing from an engaged and engaging perspective.

I realized if I didn't approach these compositions from a writing perspective, I'd have lost my mind and my mellow. In the end, when my part of the project ended, I came away with a stronger appreciation of what writing from a writing approach means, to me, perhaps for other writers, to possible publishers, and ideally to audiences.

This has left me curious about how other passionate, dedicated writers struggling for publication success approach writing creatively. What does a writing approach mean to you?

Edited to add: I ask this question in a context and texure--who, when, where, what, why, and how--theme, in one part of many writing features, applies to a writing approach in my preparation of a post on theme's meaning for writers as a development and revision tool.

[ July 11, 2013, 11:45 AM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]

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Reziac
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My brain hurts. What was the question??

Seriously, I read the whole post twice and can't decide what it is you're asking!

=====

I've mentored a few budding writers. I bang on their heads about mechanical flaws, and kick them in the direction they're trying to go -- which is to say, I try to see what they want to accomplish and point out what does or doesn't do that. Someone who wants to write dreamy fantasies is not going in the same direction as someone who wants to write cowboy adventures, and needs different aspects of their work hung up for inspection.

I think as critics (and mentors) we need to always ask ourselves: did the work get where it meant to go?

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extrinsic
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As a writer, how do you approach your writing? What does taking a writing approach--if differing from a reading, editing, publishing, criticizing, or teaching approach--mean to you?
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Reziac
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Hmm... let's see if I grok the question now [Big Grin]

How I write has been described as "following those people around and recording what they do". I think that's reasonably accurate (well, it's more like "NOW what have you people been up to? I can't turn my back for two seconds...") At this point I edit on the fly and it's not really a separate process anymore.

Reading -- I do that purely as escape and entertainment. I prefer that it not trigger any desire to edit.

Editing -- I guess I view this sorta like sculpture; it's polishing and occasionally patching where something didn't get filled in right. The ultimate object is to have it all "be itself" as a single whole. Crit would be describing where the chisel needs to be applied, and teaching I do by example.

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History
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quote:
Originally posted by extrinsic:
As a writer, how do you approach your writing? What does taking a writing approach--if differing from a reading, editing, publishing, criticizing, or teaching approach--mean to you?

1. Inspiration/Possession (the idea)
2. Perspiration (the writing)
3. Obsession (the rewriting)
4. Compulsion (the polishing)
5. Patience

Respectively,
Dr. Bob

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Owasm
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I agree with Dr. Bob.

The given must be mechanical competence (which I only marginally have). Past that it's a heavy, heavy dose of creativity... putting words to work that explain the story and characters in an interesting way. Then comes the drudgery... rewriting and polishing... followed by another flash of creativity in getting the piece to market... queries, book blurbs, covers and interior design.

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rcmann
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There is no standard approach. Everyone is different. Like every other art form, each artist has their own unique style of working.

I suppose the only universal thing to keep in mind is that the creative part of the brain has no discipline to speak of. Meanwhile, the rational, editorial part of the brain is inherently incapable of creating anything at all. So you need to make sure that they don't interfere with each other.

I'm not positive, but I think it was a guy named Mackintosh who said that there is hope in honest error, none in the icy perfection of the mere stylist. On the other hand, without rational discipline, you end up with a bucket of... James Joyce?

Exactly how you go about subdividing yourself depends on who you are as a person, what your personal history is, what your working environment is like, etc. But trying to create something with the editorial part of your brain engaged is an exercise in futility.

All the editorial/critical part of the brain is capable of doing is applying pre-determind rules and patterns onto what it perceives to be chaos. It is literally incapable of thinking outside of the lines. Its entire purpose is to keep you *inside* the lines.

Whereas, the creative part of the brain does not acknowledge any limits of any kind whatsoever. Not even the basic limits of grammar and punctuation that make a piece of writing legible/comprehensible.

Both sides are critically important. And left to their own devices, they will remain locked in silent combat with each other, second guessing each other and leaving the writer paralyzed and incapable of producing anything. Or anything fit to read. They have to be beaten, both of them, into submission and driven whimpering back into their respective corners - to wait obediently until called upon.

Doing that is the hardest part. Once you got that part, even slightly, you can write something. Otherwise, even if you do manage to create something, you will end up eviscerating it yourself before an editor gets the chance to.

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legolasgalactica
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Extrinsic, can you explain what you mean? What's the difference between writing from a writer's approach and writing from a reader's approach? You're terminology is so technical it's hard for me to grasp the concepts involved.
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legolasgalactica
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Does it even make sense to write from an editing or publishing approach? Do you mean with that end or task in mind or rather: as an editor how would I write vs as an average reader, how would I write?
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legolasgalactica
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The way I understand the question is: How do you approach your writing--or what process do you go through when you write? Those questions don't seem to express what you seem to be saying based on the experience you shared and the interesting comparisons I apparently can't grasp.
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extrinsic
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Writing from a writing approach to my thinking involves consciously composing audience-appealing features as well as a facility with voice, craft, and mechanical style. Or from composition pedagogy, audience accessibility and appeal, expression, content and organization, and grammar.

Creative writing demands more creativity than general composition writing. Though composition generally includes creative writing, creative writing is separate and apart from the general expository nature of composition. Other composition metagenres include researching and reporting; problem, inquiry, and solution; and argumentation. Aesthetics emphases, like voice, as well as careful attention to content and structure, distinguish creative writing from composition writing. In my experience, composition writing is less difficult than creative writing due to creativity's enhancing dimensions. Most composition writing I've read is one- or two-dimensional.

Differences between approaching writing from a writing or reading perspective to me revolve around function mostly: on the surface, one to entertain, the other to be entertained; deeper, one to instruct, one to be instructed; though both function by varying degrees to persuade, to caution, instruct, correct, or control behaviors. Approaching writing from a reading perspective generally emulates priorly experienced structural features, less emulation of aesthetic considerations. Writing from a creative writing approach emphasizes aesthetic considerations: to a degree emulative, to a degree unique to the writer.

Approaching writing from either or both an editing or publishing perspective emphasizes audience accessibility and appeal: the end consumer or, ideally, many consumers. These approaches consider product distribution from an aesthetic approach. For an editor, is the content accessible and appealing for an audience, perhaps privileging accessibility over appeal: is the meaning at least reasonably clear? For a publisher, the consideration might be does the content appeal to a practical-sized audience justifying the expenses of publication, perhaps privileging appeal over accessibility: is the meaning resonably clear and strongly appealing for many readers?

I wear several hats when I write, or at least when preplanning writing: a research and development phase. I might anymore begin with is a topic of interest appealing to a practical-sized audience? If not, what might develop appeal anyway? Since a narrative can take two or more years to pass through the publishing pipeline, after writing completion, projecting ahead of the time and space curve demands a degree of prescience if not astute insight into the marketplace culture, the public culture, and the intended audience culture.

Or I might begin with an inspiration that comes in out of the wild blue yonder. The same considerations of audience appeal arise in my preplanning phase. I rarely anymore launch into draft writing right out of the moment of inspiration. Too many of my narratives have contained inadequately broad audience appeal. I'm blessed with the curse of markedly different perspectives than many of my acquaintances, which is both frustrating to reach across the social divide and potentially influential for fresh and original creative writing. Yet understanding the meaning of circumstances in my life is one of the more appreciable reasons why I write.

Creative writing, as I know and pratice it in all its depths and shallows, allows me to more fully understand and appreciate others, events, and settings and their influences upon me. However, it's a cooperative conversation where I may influence in return: ideally persuasively, though as Emily Dickinison suggests in her poem 1129, creatively from an indirect approach, which is a strength for fiction:

"Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind --"

In other words, a meaning I take from the poem, tell an engaging story, don't preach a lesson.

[ July 18, 2013, 04:32 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]

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rcmann
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I don't write to appeal to an audience. I used to try that, when I was hoping to persuade someone else to publish me. I produced crap. Now I write to please myself, and I turn out stories that my readers tell me are worth reading. I recommend turning your creative mind loose. Don't worry about audience appeal, or what anyone else might think. Write whatever comes out, then polish after the story is written. But to each their own.
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Reziac
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I'm with rcmann. I write to please myself, and that will please a certain audience, but not others... oh well; I too am a better writer when I write what pleases me. I've become rather difficult to please, but most of the time now, I manage it. [Big Grin]

An excellent article:
http://hollylisle.com/writing-integrity-why-everyone-shouldnt-like/

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extrinsic
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I'm in the camp of writing to please myself and also writing to please the audiences I target. Writing to please myself is comparatively simpler. Writing to please the audiences I target encourages me to grow as a writer. Lots of room for growth on this Poet's Journey.
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