October 18, 2006

Paulla Ebron: Writing Performance, Writing Ethnography

On October 10 we had the first “How I Write” conversation of the new school year with Paulla Ebron, associate professor of cultural and social anthropology.

A delightful African American woman with a sly smile and twinkling eyes, Prof. Ebron shared all sorts of insights, particularly when it comes to writing ethnographic studies.

I’ll mention a few highlights of the talk — from memory. This may be a little telegraphic, but at least some interesting points should come through.

She first became interested in writing when she saw an ad on the back of a magazine for a correspondence course on writing when she was a little girl. She sent in the coupon, but since she was very young, they wrote back to wait until she grew up a bit.

Her book Performing Africa investigates the “griots” or “jolies” of the Gambia and Senegal regions of Western Africa. These people are stroytellers, historians, singers, songwriters, gossips, matchmakers, community leaders . . . In short, very powerful, dynamic people who are very concerned about their reputations and power. Consequently, she was very concerned about what they would think about what she was saying about them. She wrote, as she put it, with all of these people in her head, with their voices constantly in her ears. She felt watched — which made the writing a slow process. Writers who feel responsible to communities often feel this — especially ethnographers who intend to show their work to the communities they investigate. This could be tough, and it could even cause a writer to get paralyzed. Still, Prof. Ebron slugged through it, slowly working out each section.

When I mentioned that she wrote with style — her writing was vivid, her descriptions palpable, and there was often a narrative flow — she shared a secret: “I went to some creative writing workshops. ” Academic writers are not supposed to be “ creative, ” at least not in the sense that they are writing fiction. But ethnography calls for description and narrative and characters — many of the elements of fiction. So, the skills involved in “creative” writing are very much a part of what is supposed to be “social science. ” This was a great relief: finally, academic writing (or at least some of it) can involve style and grace.

I also mentioned that her ending or conclusion to Performing Africa seemed unusual. In the conclusion she outlined the book and described what she did, the sort of thing that’s often done in an introduction. She said she was just following the old injunction of “tell people what you’re going to say, say it, and then tell them what you’ve just said.”

Part of her creative writing bent was a practice that she’s engaged in over many years. She gets up in the morning and writes three or so pages of “Morning Writing.” This consists of anything that comes to mind, written by hand, sometimes illegible or garbled, other times caustic or angry or mournful — whatever. The point is that she clears her “system” every morning and she’s constantly putting herself in the writing mode. She has stacks of notebooks of these “Morning Writings.” She has them in storage. One of these days they may be useful for something — but for now they are useful for keeping her writing chops in shape.

Whenever Prof. Ebron writes a draft of an essay or book she does the first draft by hand. Like many others, she likes the way her writing (and thinking) slows down when hand-writing. But she also knows that when she sees it on the computer screen the text looks too perfect, too published-like, and that induces bouts of perfectionism. And, as we all know, perfectionism leads to paralysis.

When she does get stuck, she practices the cello. She’s just learning, so it’s much harder than writing. So, after hacking away at the strings for a while she returns to writing — and at that point it all seems much easier!

When she gets overwhelmed with many other writing assignments, such as writing letters of recommendations, and fears that she will abandon her own work, she sets an eggtimer for, say, 45 minutes to force herself to write — or even just to sit and stare at her manuscript — until the bell goes off. Bing! Time’s up, and she’s free to move on to the mundane things of life.

Hilton Obenzinger

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May 19, 2006

Marjorie Perloff: Memory and Collage

On May 3 we had a “How I Write” conversation with Marjorie Perloff. Although in her seventies and retired from teaching in the Stanford English department, she remains incredibly dynamic, vibrant, loquacious, and smart, and she’s producing articles and books and appearing at conferences and talks at a fantastic pace. Plus she’s the current president of the Modern Language Association. Phew.

She writes on contemporary and avant-garde poetry and poetics, as well as on intermedia and the visual arts. Her many books include The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage, The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant-Guerre, and the Language of Rupture, and Wittgenstein’s Ladder. One of her most recent books is her cultural memoir The Vienna Paradox, and she spoke about how she wrote it during out talk.

We spoke about a lot of different aspects of writing – and if you were at the talk and want to add something, please send it. But I was intrigued with The Vienna Paradox in particular.

Marjorie was born in Vienna in 1931, and she recounts her life before fleeing the Nazis and coming to America, as well as her early life in the Bronx. But the book is not only the story of her life, it’s a cultural history of pre-War Vienna, of the society of High Culture, especially the assimilated Jews, who made the city a Mecca for intellectuals and artists — and many of whom were related to Marjorie or had some connection to her family. Freud, Wittgenstein, her grandfather Richard Schuller, a high government official throughout successive Austrian governments until forced to flee. And she speaks of the exile community revolving around The Ethical Culture Society and other sites in New York. This is a story of people who lived a life intoxicated with High Culture.

It’s a fascinating memoir. But when she was first asked to write a memoir she was reluctant. She wrote literary criticism and not narrative. But then it dawned on her that she could write a memoir as a collage. “I always write about collage in poetry, ” she said. “So why don’t I do one mysel? ” And what an interesting technique she devises.

The basic chronological line remains — her birth, early schooling, coming to America, adjustments in the Bronx — but she weaves in observations and stories about the intellectual life swirling on around her or before she was born. The fate of Arnold Schoenberg and his papers and scores — in exile in Los Angeles and then returned to Austria — appears, for example, alongside items of her own life.

The style is not disjointed, the way one might expect a collage. But it is somewhat dreamlike, alternating between the personal and the historical. Any reader can see this when reading the book, how it moves back and forth between different realms. But hearing Marjorie describe this process as collage was enlightening. How many other accounts can be done piecing together the small and the large, the personal and the public, the sensual and the intellectual, all circling around each other?

Hilton Obenzinger

Posted by hilton at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)

April 09, 2006

Writing Fiction: Three Jones Lecturers

The How I Write conversation on February 26, 2006 was a panel with three fiction writers. Tom Kealey, Tom McNeely, and Malena Watrous are all in the midst of writing novels. All three are Jones Lecturers in Creative Writing teaching fiction classes. This was the first time that a How I Write conversation focused on writing fiction, so it was exciting, and the three of them had very different insights into the process.

Steven Tagle attended the event and sent in these observations and comments. Steven is a film-maker and writer, majoring in English and Psychology, and he’s planning to do an honors project in Feminist Studies.

“If you’re not having fun, then why are you doing this?”

Kealey writes on the Caltrain everyday. He finds himself writing 2-3 pg scenes. It’s an hour of writing time back and forth. After he gets back to the city, he usually goes to a coffee house and puts in another hour of writing so that he can ride out his creative energy. Saturday is his big writing day. He goes to the UCSF library, spending 3 hours in morning and 2 hours in afternoon. He’s a very flexible writer. He sees writing as a marathon, not a sprint.

McNeely finds it hard to write without a large block of time. He can fiddle around at his computer for an hour.

For Watrous, it depends on her stage in the writing process. She works subtly, a little bit each day. During the rough draft stage, she works a steady 3-5 hours each day. The first draft is hard. She doesn’t write that linearly. She keeps going back to scenes. She has header and footer notes on her computer that say, “Move forward, ” and “If you’re not having fun, why are you doing this? ” She keeps many versions of her scenes. After writing, she goes through and highlights what she likes and what’s wrong. Once she sees the ending, she really wants to get there. In a 2-month period, she has written 200 pages. She just waits for that time when she sees the ending and works off of her excitement and fear.

Kealey writes on the train, commuting to Stanford. A lot of his sections are about the same length — whatever he can write during the commute. Hilton Obenzinger commented that he once spoke with a graduate student who wrote her whole dissertation on the train. She just bought a Caltrain pass and rode up and down the line between San Francisco and San Jose.

Kealey keeps a sheet of paper with his ideas. He has a plot point or two in mind to give him direction.

Watrous works with causality, fueled by a “deluded optimism. ” McNeeley has note cards that he moves around on a table, revising. There is a temptation to start from page 1 and revise. However, when revising on the draft itself, it is hard to delete things. It is much easier to put things on a page than to take them out. Therefore, Kealey suggests that you print out a draft. Open a new blank doc and insert what you like from the old draft into it. You can’t do a revision within a draft.

Watrous believes that real writing comes in the revision. For her, it is the funnest part. On a computer, she believes that you miss the proportion of each scene by scrolling.

When these writers get stuck, they read things, try to get away from their work, try not being so inside the problem. Watrous does a fun repetitive task. She believes that you’re working even when you’re not at the computer writing. Kealey works on multiple projects and enjoys declaring a “winner of the day. ” He suggests having 2 people to listen to you, 2 safe listeners. They can read your piece and tell you what they find interesting, what they’d like more of.

The element of the novel that Kealey tries to focus on is narration (what’s going on inside the heads of characters). We need to know what the characters are thinking, especially when it’s not what they say. McNeely and Watrous try to focus on description, dialogue, and plot. McNeely is uncomfortable with omniscience and the camera POV. He views the title as the first line lyric.

Kealey: Find a novel you admire and read it 3 times for structure. Piggyback that model for a while. Pick 4 times every week to write for 2 hours. Really hold on to that time and make the most of it. Write 7 pages or 3 sentences. At least you can say, “I wrote something last time, I can write something again. ” Always get words on the page. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. You need to like your characters, like interacting with them. Make sure it’s fun. Maintain a sense of play. Be excited about it! You’re your first reader. For example, add a tiger just because you want to have a tiger.

Kealey suggests finishing a scene before jumping in to revise it. He also says to read your work to someone and to write a scene for a specific person. Watrous says to write your novel for yourself. Write the book that’s missing, that you would like to see on the shelf.

Response:

I found this installment of How I Write extremely valuable, especially since I am about to embark on writing a novel of my own. Each of the panelists had very distinct, quirky methods of writing, and I’m glad that they so freely shared the methods of their madness with us. Three main points that stuck with me were Kealey’s discipline in creating a writing routine, Watrous’ reminder to herself, “If you’re not having fun, then why are you doing this? ” and Kealey’s suggestion to always revise onto a new document. My writing style is a lot like McNeely’s. I require large amounts of time to write, and I often find myself wasting the small pockets of time that I do have. However, I would like to become a more disciplined, flexible writer like Kealey. I liked his idea of writing on the train because it gives you the illusion of productivity, being in constant motion. Watrous’ headers really stuck with me because writing should be fun, something you choose to do. However, there are many times that I make it a chore in my mind, and I should revise that way of thinking. Finally, Kealey’s suggestion to always revise onto a new document shows how much writing is about psychology, tricking yourself in that “deluded optimism” that Watrous mentioned.

Posted by hilton at 09:59 PM | Comments (1)

January 30, 2006

Anne Firth Murray: Activism and Writing

Anne Firth Murray has been an activist for decades. Founder of the Global Fund for Women, she has years of experience writing grant proposals and reports and Op Eds in support of women’s rights around the world. In our “How I Write” conversation on January 14 , 2006, she spoke of three types of writing that she has done:

First, she spoke of a kind of personal writing: Many years of writing letters to a friend, as well as many years of writing in her journal, along with poems written late at night, all by hand. Very satisfying, relieving the agonies of the struggle, but often slow-going. And in the case of her journal, sometimes with lapses of many years.

Another kind of writing, she explained, are all those grant proposals and reports and opinion pieces. All on the keyboard, first the typewriter, now the computer, and all done very fast and with great ease. Once she knows what her goals are, she noted, she can write a grant proposal quickly, with everything flowing from the goal or focus of the grant.

Now she has embarked on a new writing experience. She has just completed a book, Paradigm Found, which shares her experiences in building the Global Fund for Women so other people can do something similar. It’s a how-to book, in many ways. Writing this involved pulling together all those old proposals and reports and telling her story. This went very well, and Professor Murray was able to use activist sensibility to work through the book.

But now she‘s writing yet another book, this one on critical issues of international health for women. She feels this is a more difficult book because she’s used to writing as an activist and this is supposed to be “academic.” There are a lot of problems she needs to address, such as trafficking in girls and female infanticide, but there has been very little research on these topics. So now she feels stymied because she doesn’t have the material to write about it. How can she say anything academically sound if she just doesn’t have the data to prove it?

This is a difficult situation, and it’s very common for writer’s, especially to students who feel awkward about their sense of authority. I offered Professor Murray some suggestions for how to overcome this block, and in the next post I will share them with you.

But as for the conversation we had that night, it was filled with emotion. There’s a lot of pain and determination involved in struggling year after year in the face of such intractable problems as female genital mutilation. People in the audience asked how she was able to sustain herself. She explained that she had her own spiritual practice, such as walking on the beach, communing with nature, and writing poems late at night, and that refreshed her spirit. Emotions were palpable in the room. Rarely have we had a “How I Write” conversation that brought together such a combination of pain, emotions, determination, spirituality, and writing, and it was a pleasure and an honor for everyone to participate in such an exchange.

Posted by hilton at 02:51 PM | Comments (2)