Skip to header Skip to main content Skip to footer
Helpful Village logo
Add me to your mailing list
Youtube channel Facebook page
Header image for Pasadena Village showing nearby mountains and the logo of the Pasadena Village

Blog archive

October 2024

September 2024

August 2024

1619 Wide Ranging Interests
08/19/2024

1619 Wide Ranging Interests
08/19/2024

First Anniversary
08/19/2024

Alexandra Leaving by Leonard Cohen
08/16/2024

Muse des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden
08/16/2024

The God Abandons Antony by Constantinos P. Cavafy
08/16/2024

Ch – Ch – Ch –Changes
08/15/2024

Cultural Activities Team offers an ‘embarrassment of riches’
08/15/2024

Engaging in Pasadena Village
08/15/2024

Future Housing Options
08/15/2024

Message from the President
08/15/2024

There Are Authors Among Us
08/15/2024

Villagers Welcome New Members at the Tournament Park Picnic
08/15/2024

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas
08/14/2024

A narrow Fellow in the Grass by Emily Dickinson
08/13/2024

Haikus
08/13/2024

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop
08/13/2024

Poem 20 by Pablo Neruda
08/13/2024

Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
08/13/2024

Trees by Joyce Kilmer
08/13/2024

July 2024

June 2024

May 2024

Emergency Preparedness: Are You Ready?
05/28/2024

Farewell from the 2023/24 Social Work Interns
05/28/2024

Gina on the Horizon
05/28/2024

Mark Your Calendars for the Healthy Aging Research California Virtual Summit
05/28/2024

Meet Our New Development Associate
05/28/2024

Putting the Strategic Plan into Practice
05/28/2024

Washington Park: Pasadena’s Rediscovered Gem
05/28/2024

Introducing Civil Rights Discussions
05/22/2024

Rumor of Humor #2416
05/14/2024

Rumor of Humor #2417
05/14/2024

Rumor of Humor #2417
05/14/2024

Rumor of Humor #2418
05/14/2024

Springtime Visitors
05/07/2024

Freezing for a Good Cause – Credit, That Is
05/02/2024

No Discussion Meeting on May 3rd
05/02/2024

An Apparently Normal Person Author Presentation and Book-signing
05/01/2024

Flintridge Center: Pasadena Village’s Neighbor That Changes Lives
05/01/2024

Pasadena Celebrates Older Americans Month 2024
05/01/2024

The 2024 Pasadena Village Volunteer Appreciation Lunch
05/01/2024

Woman of the Year: Katy Townsend
05/01/2024

April 2024

March 2024

February 2024

January 2024

About creative writing

By Kit Davis
Posted: 07/24/2020
Tags:

The writing I taught was what we call literary writing as opposed to entertainment. I defined the former as the attempt to create the illusion of the lives we live as they are, not as we would like them to be. I discouraged the writing of science fiction because of its temptation to preach, and that of fantasy because of its temptation to look inside our wishes and daydreams for our subject instead of outward at the world in front our eyes. If my student put a unicorn in her story, it had to have a digestive tract.

I began by saying that creative writing can be learned but cannot be taught. We learn how to do it by reading great art written in our own language and in a few fine translations; by doing it every day, barring those days we need the relief of entertainment; by reading that work as working writers--how did this man or woman do the astonishing trick of moving us to want to write something astonishing too--and by writing fiction every day, as nearly as practicable.

The teacher’s function is to assign the reading, to look at the student’s work, say how near it has approached or failed to approach to being literature, and to suggest new ways of reading and fresh ways of understanding experience.

I promised my students that every story I assigned was great art, no argument allowed.

Some provisional rules:

We learn what we mean to say by saying. We don’t decide beforehand what we mean by our story or novel or how we intend to construct it, anyway not all of what we mean and intend. If we know that, we are in danger both of formula-making and sermonizing. We let our story carry us to its own end, build its own building.

Writing fiction, I think like all art, is the process of finding out what we didn’t know we knew, and what we believe and didn’t know we believed.

What we call style in the art of writing is the voice that becomes our literary language as opposed to the one we use in our daily lives. It is learned by writing. Rarely, it is present almost from the beginning. More often, it takes years to develop.

If a writing teacher offers a formula for writing a successful story (read publishable), talks about beginnings, middles, ends, get out of that class and study something that is useful and demands discipline, a new language for example. A diagram assumes we know where we are going before we begin our journey, and then we are in the land of entertainment again.

Robert Frost to his writing students: "Tell me something I don’t know. Surprise me."

-Kit Davis-

Tagged as Writing
Blogs Topics Posts about this Topic