Archives for the month of: December, 2010

All right, then — pleasure, if you will

24 December 2010 //
0

I wrote a couple of entries ago about writing as pleasure. This is not meant to be a philosophical or psychological disquisition. It’s just an attempt to assure you that writing can be, even should be, a pleasure.

If Freud, bless Herr Freud, talked about the pleasure principle, you see, he was talking about the instinctual pursuit of gratification. But it doesn’t take a WHOLE lot of sublimation to raise us above the level of the gutter, as some would have it.

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud, looking dour enough for you?

Writers have written in gutters, of course, of economic circumstances, or libidinal, but whatever their original ground, or inclination, they tend to rise above their circumstances. And with enough heat generated by the effort of writing itself, of saying something new in a new way, the old cold reluctance melts away and a new day breaks, like a yolk, on the horizon of consciousness.

Practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect, no. But it sure as hell makes you warm!

Play ball!

Categories pleasure, practice

Writing as pain

14 December 2010 //
0

We spoke the other day of how writing can be pleasure, or can generate pleasure. We meant that the pleasure comes, like a gift, often enough, through the pains of finding something to say and then pursuing that something.

This is hardly a revolutionary concept. Compare writing to the pleasure-pain of running, say. You may hate going out on the road at 6 am, doing your roadwork in chilly weather, in reluctant times. And doesn’t a comfy bed make for reluctant times?

Still, you get up, don your runner’s togs, and light out for the streets before anyone else is up. You do this every day despite the pains and find that somehow the pains give way, as you stride along, day after day, mile after mile, to some strange buzz of pleasure.

Maybe the pain centers have just numbed up. That which, unused, hurt — now, used, is pulsing with pleasure. The old muscles have stirred and risen up. It’s a kind of rebellion against indolence and ennui.

You’ll find that practice in writing if it doesn’t make perfect — at least makes it possible. Makes it possible to go on, loping, plodding, trotting, however you are going. And that daily, weekly, monthly practice builds up the muscles and habituates you to the exercise.

You’ll start finding a rhythm, as a runner finds his rhythm too. So that you needn’t think about every stop, plot it out, outline your route. You warm up, don’t you, stretch a bit — and then start loping.

For a writer, warming up may be as simple as jotting down stray ideas. Brainstorming, that is, making connections. Brainstorming (which deserves an entry or 10 on its own: wait now, please) will start building heat and lighting fires. It will put things together that you had no idea belonged together. It will create its own odd logic.

You can start an essay about the pains of writing, for example, by jotting down:

  • unused limbs
  • practice makes perfect?
  • practice is not theory, demands exercise
  • body-mind connection: remember those tight hams, but once you started jogging they loosened up
  • la dolce far niente, the Italians say (the pleasure of doing nothing), but we are Americans and have to keep moving!
  • the art of putting the seat of your pants in the seat of your chair
  • sitting, but moving while you’re sitting

And so it goes. This brainstormed list is not much, just a beginning. There’s not much order here or method. But there’s heat. There’s the beginning of a fire. There’s the dawning realization that this exercise is not all that bad. That the emotional and intuitive parts of the brain, and the being, can get in on this work too.

As a writer and teacher of writing, I believe 100% in the power of brainstorming. Often, my students wish to avoid this prep work. It’s not just that they’re lazy (which they may be). It’s that brainstorming seems so silly, irrational, purposeless.

Precisely!

Hell, this is almost fun already!

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Categories pain

Writing as pleasure

10 December 2010 //
2

This blog is dedicated to discovering, bit by bit, what the writing process is all about. What communicating means. How we can do communicate better. And how we can avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

Sometimes writing catches fire and illuminates.

Thomas Mann said that a writer is someone who suffers more in writing than other people.

A paradox, for sure. We might well think that writers are born, not made. That they rise up out of pure air flaming with the perfect words, phrases, sentences. That nothing they touch need be retouched.

But, as Mann suggested, this is usually far from the truth.

Writers become writers for various reasons. Some to pursue fame. Some to make money. Some simply to express their ideas as clearly as possible. But all share a preoccupation with craft. It’s not merely what they say that counts, in other words, but how they say it.

So much for mere “content providers,” as if all writers had to do was shovel mass quantities into a box.

In fact, good writers all take pains to say well what they say because, without these pains, there’s no proper way of saying it.

But for writers, the pains lead to pleasure. Writers must sit down daily, making writing a discipline, so the words and thoughts flow freely. They flow, in fact, so freely that the pain gives way and the pleasure builds.

A day without writing becomes painful. A day that’s not recognized in some written form or other.

More later about how discipline builds pleasure. The important thing at this point is to assert that practice and discipline can have this gratifying, and productive, result.

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Categories pleasure