My Partial Literary Narrative

Annik Spencer

May 9, 2011

WSC 2

Paper 4

My Partial Literary Narrative

            In Joan Didion’s talk, “Why I Write,” she describes when, why and how she started writing.  Didion and I are very different in our individual reasons why we write.  I feel as though I write because I am required to and she writes because she wants to.  Didion writes because she is so inspired by and observant of her surroundings that ideas come to her simply by being attentive of the world around her.  These inspirations fester in her head until she must write them down.  She says that while she was developing as a thinker and a writer she “would try to read linguistic theory and would find [herself] wondering instead if the lights were on in the bevatron up the hill.”  She is so distracted by her environment that she cannot focus on facts and theories, but only on inspiration to write.  She must write because she is so stimulated by the world around her.  I must write because I am told to do so and because I need to write to communicate.  I am required to write papers, essays, emails, and text messages many times a day.  I enjoy writing and don’t mind writing, but I will only write if I am required to. 

Didion also discusses how she has “pictures” that “shimmer” in her mind that she must write about.  These pictures motivate and dictate her writing.  They begin her writing process and “arrange” her entire piece of writing.  She says, “The picture tells you how to arrange the words and the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what’s going on in the picture.”  Didion and I may write for different reasons, but we create art for the same reasons.  The “shimmered pictures” in my head are choreography that then turns into steps to a dance.  I am not required to create this choreography.  I want to.  Creating movement is to me what creating writing is to Didion.

            Since I “write” in a physical way, like by creating choreography, I envision a sentence starts out like a good, long run.  First you start off thinking, "wow I really do not want to run three miles, but I know it is good for me and I'm at the gym so I might as well."  Then after that first lap around the track, you're off.  You let your mind roam and you think about things, while your legs just put themselves one in front of the other.  You do not even think about what you are doing physically.  All of these thoughts that you have are the sentence.  The ideas and themes in your head while you run are the words you write or type in your sentence.  And then you finish that good, long run by sprinting to the finish, or while writing, by closing up that magnificent sentence.  The finish line is your period at the end of your sentence.  And then as you look back at your run, you congratulation yourself and think "I will run longer next time and continually get better."  This is your revision of your sentence.  Maybe you change a few things in the sentence, but in the long run your sentences will just continue to get better and better.

            And I want my writing to get better and better.  I am a perfectionist, and so even though I feel as though I only write because I am required to, when I do write I want to get it right.  In Billy Collins’s poem, “The Flight of the Reader” he discusses how he feels about his readers.  Collins describes in his poem that he really has a crush on his readers.  He even goes as far to say that, “[he] hates to think of that morning when [he] will wake up to find [his reader] gone.”  Billy Collins and I feel the same way about our readers in this way.  I too want to please my reader and hope that he or she “[stays] perched on my shoulder.”  Collins and I both constantly think about our reader while we are writing.  Collins and I have different outlooks on the extremity that we relay on our readers.  In his poem Collins says that, “It’s not that [he] cannot live without [his reader].”  I disagree with this because I think so much about reader’s reaction to my writing endlessly.  While I am writing I tend to do exactly what Collins says he does not do which is “pester” my reader “with invisible gnats of meaning.”  I tend to embrace my reader so much that I am almost begging him or her to love and appreciate my work.  Collins and I both agree and disagree with how we feel about our readers.  And since I love my readers so much, I have much advice for them and their own endeavors in writing.

            My advice is to remember and then forget.  The remembering part is to remember your roots.  Remember how and where you learned how to write.  Always remember the essential writing techniques that you learned.  Keep this technique with you, so that you can write without fear.  Also, always remember who you are and what your personality is.  You need this in your writing.  After all, it is you who is writing what you write, so you must be in it.

            After you remember, you must forget.  This is hard to do if you are used to coloring in the lines like I am.  Nevertheless, forget everything you think is right.  Even if you can only do this for just a split second, it is essential because this is when creativity starts.  This is what makes you a truly, wonderfully, readerly, writerly person.  This forgetting references Ron Koertge’s poem, “Do You Have Any Advice for Those of Us Just Starting Out.”  His last stanza says, “When the tower
falls, be like that child. Laugh so loud every body in the world frowns and says, ‘Shhhh.’” Everyone else is frowning and quieting you because they are stuck in their boxes and their technique.  They cannot forget.  Please remember what it feels like to be those people, then throw your head back and laugh.  This moment is when you will forget and just create.  Write on.