Craft versus Body
Less than a year ago, before The Scrap Heap was The Scrap Heap, back when it was a germ of an idea for a newsletter, I imagined I’d write posts about the craft of writing, each one followed by a writing prompt. I thought inevitably I’d blend in a few stories from life but that mostly this newsletter would be writing-about-writing.
For the past eighteen years, I’ve taught writing in community college classrooms. One of my favorite parts about teaching has been to introduce an element of craft, like point of view or setting, and then lay out a prompt. I tell a room full of students they have fifteen minutes to write. After I say it, I want to hold my breath. Who am I to tell a room full of people what to do? I worry they’ll revolt, that I’ll have students sighing and rolling their eyes. (Side note: though I’ve had the classic dream of teaching in my underwear, my more common classroom nightmare involves me desperately trying and failing to get my students’ attention.)
In real life, when I say ‘Write for fifteen minutes,’ I glance at the clock and the room is already silent. This not because of me or my particular prompt; it’s because the prompt itself is an invitation. Being asked to write is a shortcut that bypasses the things that keep us from the work in our everyday lives. When you’re sitting in a classroom you can’t get distracted by the dishes or the dogs. Then there’s the contagion of silence and focused concentration. You could float a penny on the quality of that silence.
I wanted the Scrap Heap to translate that feeling of invitation to a newsletter space, and I assumed that translation would come naturally. But it hasn’t — not quite. As confident as I sometimes feel in my work these days, that confidence has little to do with any element of craft. I worry I may have been a better teacher when I was a younger writer. I was more interested in rules and could teach them without second-guessing myself. I could talk about things like three-act-structure and character development without being overly suspicious of my own lessons.
Any confidence I have in my writing lately has more to do with the body than it has to do with rules of craft. Does a space open between my shoulder blades as I write? Does the pressure behind my eyebrows lift a little? Do I enter flow? Does I feel more regulated? More and more I work to engage with a kind of knowing that is physical, not intellectual. I’m no longer thinking (not intentionally) of grammar or character.
Sometimes I think about the painstaking way I used to write sentences when I was twenty-three or so and beginning to treat writing like a craft. Writing was near-torture then. I sat at my computer writing and rewriting a single sentence at a time. For years, I thought a lot about sentences, about grammar and punctuation, length and rhythm. I don’t write that way anymore. My words come out in fits and starts, but I’m not initially painstaking. I abandon sentences halfway through and then return to them later when I can give them my calm attention. But I think of the way I once approached my work, and I like to think that I internalized a skill, that all the thinking I did on sentences — and then later on character development or three-act-structure — still lives in me somewhere.
Now, I want to challenge myself to come back to craft, because I don’t actually believe that it’s irrelevant or that it’s in conflict with the body’s knowing. Rather, I want to explore the ways that elements of craft can coexist with the energetic way that we use writing to move through our pain and tell our stories.
So I’m tossing this here on top of the scrap heap as a dare to myself for my next three posts. I commit to writing about the following elements of craft:
Image
Structure
Point of View
Maybe not in that order. I want to explore how craft and the body can inform each other, how one can be a portal to the other. I do not yet know what I mean by that.
And I want to write prompts and invite you into a shared and silent space.
Here’s one to start:
Write a list of kitchens you’ve known, and then choose one. Let your body tell you which one; don’t think too hard about it. Write about it for fifteen minutes. You can of course describe the kitchen, but also things can happen in the kitchen and you can record those. Instead of intentionally crafting, try to write down what you witness on the reel of your brain. Comments are open, so please feel free to share or report back.
Quick announcement for local friends of The Scrap Heap (Olympia, WA):
Sarah and I, along with our friend and collaborator Kathleen Byrd, will be offering an in-person workshop on grief, writing, and creative process on Friday October 13 & Saturday October 14 at The Sherwood Press in Olympia. Details and registration info to come!