Date:         Fri, 15 May 1998 08:52:04 EDT
From: "singing in the rain..." <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
Subject:      [WRITERS] EXERCISE: A Passion For Narrative (part 1)

[I'll be wandering around in this book for a while.  I probably won't
try to do something from it every week, but you can expect to hear more
about it over the coming weeks.  And with that brief introduction, let's
take a look at "A Passion For Narrative."  tink]

Based on "A Passion For Narrative: A Guide for Writing Fiction" by Jack
Hodgins, ISBN 0-312-11042-1

(p. 9, before the introduction)

    "There are three points of view from which a writer can be
considered: he may be considered as a storyteller, as a teacher, and as
an enchanter.  A major writer combines these three--storyteller,
teacher, enchanter--but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and
makes him a major writer."
    "To the storyteller we turn for entertainment, for mental
excitement of the simplest kind, for emotional participation, for the
pleasure of travelling in some remote region in space or time.  A
slightly different though not necessarily higher mind looks for the
teacher in the writer.  Propagandist, moralist, prophet--this is the
rising sequence.  We may go to the teacher not only for moral education
but also for direct knowledge, for simple facts...Finally, and above
all, a great writer is always a great enchanter, and it is here that we
come to the really exciting part, when we try to grasp the individual
magic of his genius and to study the style, the imagery, the pattern of
his novels or poems."
    (Vladimir Nabokov, "Lectures on Literature")

Some quotes from the introduction:
    (p. 15) "With every new story the writer is once again a beginner,
faced with the task of having to learn all over again how to write."

[a premise] (p. 18) "...learning to write fiction is not a matter of
accumulating knowledge or skills in some sequentially developmental way
but of _preparing yourself to build a new writer out of yourself and out
of your relationship to new material every time you prepare for a new
story or novel_."

(p. 19) "The fiction writer, I believe, experiences a constant tension
between 'the natural storyteller' and 'the maker of artifice'..."

"...there is the love for narration--an interest in characters, a
delight in surprises, a taste for crises, a joy in discovering and
revealing what happens next. ... This reservoir is the combined result
of imagination, experience, memory, and love of 'story.'"

"On the other hand, the writer is aware of fiction as art, and of the
writer's necessity to become a maker of artifice. ... These skills can
be discovered from the careful study of writers one admires, from an
effort to understand the new needs peculiar to each new story, and from
constant practice and experimentation."

Thus endeth the quotations from Hodgins...

Storyteller, teacher, enchanter.  Always beginning afresh, building a
new writer out of yourself.  A reservoir of love and a maker of
artifice.

And that's just the introduction!

Let's take a spin on our selves as today's exercise.  Take a sheet of
paper and right in the middle put something that stands for you--to
you.  This can be the simple word "I" or it could be something more
complex.  A snatch of phrase, a turn of rhyme, whatever...

Now put three spokes out of that central place.  Write the words
"storyteller, teacher, enchanter" one to a spoke.  (which direction
should the spokes go?  well, why don't you decide...you could have
them going out in all directions, you could point them up, you could
root them down, and you can easily change the order or location of
those "storied tales, learnings, and magics."

At the bottom of the sheet, put the word "reservoir."  (if you want
to, add some of these words: characters, surprises, crises, joys,
imagination, experiences, memories, stories.)  At the top of the
sheet, put the word "art."  (again, if you want to, add some of these
words: writers, theories, practices, experiments...or whatever defines
the artifices of writing for you.)

So you have a mandala, sparsely filled in, with yourself in the middle,
three spokes of storytelling, teaching, and enchanting leading out, and
the grounding depth of your reservoir below with the rainbow sky of your
skills above.  Start filling in the holes.  If you have a particular
memory that you want to remember in your reservoir, put something--a
word, a phrase, even a little drawing--down in the reservoir for it.  If
you think of a way that you feel especially strong as a storyteller,
perhaps a style of storytelling or some other resonance with that side
of the writer, put that into your mandala.

Don't worry if one side seems to have more detail than another, or if
the skills on the top of the sheet seem too thin for your dreams.  Just
fill it out honestly for you, now.

And if you want to sketch a word picture of the result--or what you
discovered looking at the mandala?--for your journal, or for whatever,
well, that's fine, too.

Hang that mandala of you as a writer up somewhere that you can look at
sometimes while you're writing.  Take it down and add to it whenever you
like.  Put it away and make a fresh one sometimes.  Then look at the two
and see what has changed in your picture of yourself...

This is very much a private exercise, which you don't have to share with
anyone.  But I think if you really try to imagine how you as a writer
relate to the storyteller, the teacher, and the enchanter--and what lies
in your reservoir, and what clouds, storms, and lightning hangs in your
art--you may find someone rather different than you might expect to find
hanging around there.

I suspect it will be someone rather interesting, too.

tink

(bonus exercise: have a dialogue between the you of the mandala and
the you sitting back looking at it.  engage yourselves...and see where
that exchange of viewpoints takes you.)

[what a wonderful feeling...get happy again!]