3. Modes of Creativity

I’ve had some pretty horrendous ideas for stories before.Stories, poems, scripts, everything.

Of course, at the time, they all seemed brilliant, worthy of critically-acclaimed attention, if only I would show someone. It makes me feel better that most of these ideas happened when I was younger (around 13 I wrote fifteen chapters about a girl named Cam…and nothing happens. In fifteen chapters, all she does is go to the park and talk to her friends. Sounds a little Mrs. Dalloway, huh? Too bad I'm not Virginia Woolf and I can definitely not pull that off).

Anyways, the point is, I think that maybe some of those horrible ideas I had, at the very essence of them, may have been heading in the right direction. Maybe whatever it was that I was trying to say could have become something substantial and I just wasn't using the right medium.

I took a class on Creativity a few semesters ago and I ended up having to address this topic. We used poetry, photography and another medium of our choosing (mine being painting) and it was basically about learing how to develop our of creative process. I had an idea for a poem that I desperately wanted to write; well, it was less of an idea really and more of the emotion inspired by an image. In the end, I realized that a poem wasn't right for this particular idea and I ended up using a painting instead. Granted I have no ability whatsoever when it comes to that mode of art, so I didn't accomplish what I'd hoped for, but it taught me something nonetheless.

As "poets" I think we need to be open to using other modes of expressing creativity, maybe we need to come to terms with the idea that all ideas aren't suitable for a poem. There's other genres of writing, of course: different styles of prose, short stories, scripts, etc., and then there are all other types of art....drawing, painting, music, sculpture, photography, just to name a few well-known ones. People create using everything from a paper and pen, to sheets of metal to what they find outside or in dumpsters.

I'm interested to know how all of you decide that your idea is best suited for poetry, and if you ever think to write it in another way. I'm primarily a fiction writer, so I lean towards that without thought, but sometimes I suddenly realize that maybe I need to think outside of the box a little. This discussion is particuarly important to my work because it's what this class is really all about for me...as I said, I'm not a poet. I shy away from it as often as possible and this semester I'm hoping to open myself up to another mode of creativity, or at least to the thought that not all ideas are necessarily right for prose.

How do all of you choose what form to express that creative inkling in? How do you decide what it will turn in to, what subject to use to transfer your meaning to your reader? Or, if you never think about anything other than poetry, how do you choose what form of poetry to write it in when there are so many different types? Is it a choice, or do you feel like the decision is made for you?

Who knows, maybe "BFF??" has unrealized potential and it just failed epically (as a serious poem, while soaring brilliantly as a joke poem) because it was being narrated in the wrong way.

2. Rhyming, Responsibility and Annabell Lee. Which one doesn't belong?

How do we choose our favorite poem? If it goes against everything we think about poetry, how can it be my favorite?

I want to point something out early in my blogging because it's something I strongly believe about writing and think it really applies to poetry, too, so I'd love to get everyone's opinion on it.

First and foremost: What is a writer/poets goal? What, even, is their duty, or... responsibility? Is our allegiance to ourselves, our work, or our audience?

I said, in my opening entry, something along the lines of: Writers write for themselves first, and then edit for other people later. That is basically the core of my beliefs when it comes to writing--that a writer should sit down with no one else in mind, should only write for enjoyment and, more particularly, to understand; to understand themselves (*ignore the cliche*), to understand their opinions on a subject, to...understand.

After that initial connection with a work, though, how does our responsibility change? Is it our "job"to make it relate to the reader, or does that fall in to their own hands? Should we just hand over our work and say "Here, world. Something happened to me, and I wrote this...make of it what you will, but if I change it at all, it won't be the same, so I won't. Deal with it."?

I started asking those questions tonight because I was thinking about my favorite poem. Every time I'm asked what my favorite poem is, I easily answer with the same one. "Annabell Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe.

Annabell Lee
Edgar Allen Poe

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love -
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me -
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud one night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we -
Of many far wiser than we -
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling -my darling -my life and my bride,
In the sepulcher there by the sea -
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

This poem, essentially, goes against all of the things I believe about writing. Honestly, what do I know about the love of my life dying? About tuberculous? There is absolutely nothing in this piece that I can attach to, understand, relate to. Still, I love it. In general, I do not like poetry that rhymes at the end. Still, I love it.

Even more than that, I know the reason I love it is the rhythm of it, which of course is very much because of the end rhyming I usually hate so much. Everything I feel about poetry is negated in this favorite of mine.

Usually, I like to pick poems apart, decide word by word what it means, why it was chosen, what ulterior meanings I can give it that even the writer knew nothing of. I've never done that with Annabell Lee. I take it as a very surface level poem, a man mourning the loss of a love, something Poe could of course relate to. Maybe I love the poem because of that, or because I feel for the speaker despite not understanding his pain. Did Poe accomplish something, then? By making someone with no experience in this area, with absolutely no way of relating to the subject or the characters, sympathize with the narrator...did he do his "job," do justice to his responsibility? Am I justified in liking this poem because of that?

I guess, more than anything, I want to know if a writer has a responsibility. And if so, to whom? Again, I usually say that once you've reached the stage where you accept that your writing is more than personal (accept that you'll allow others to read it), you should accept that it is your job to make your reader understand, to take part in that self-knowledge you should have set out for. Am I right? Or do we have a responsibility only to ourselves? Or to someone else? Why do I love this poem that goes against what I thought I believed?

Thoughts, opinions, objections?

1. Inside Looking Out

Where to begin? It seems impossible to explain who I am in one short introduction, because I have nineteen years of ME, and if I can really sum that up in one blog entry, what does that say about who I am?

I could tell you I spend my weekends grinning as a party hostess or posing as Bat Girl, depending on my mother's mood, before changing out of my cartoon-character blue uniform and in to the person my group of tight-knit-always-feuding group of friends know. That girl is the type who carries at least two types of hand sanitizer at all times and is a little too honest with the people that matter. That girl is a fiction writer, whose essays are always three pages longer than they were allowed to be. That girl loves to go out to eat by herself, would rather see a movie alone than otherwise, and has a paralyzing fear of relationships that not even she herself understands, much less any one else.

I could tell you my favorite color (purple), or my favorite TV show (Charmed, followed by Supernatural). I could tell you about my parents, my younger brother and sister, the Venezuelan exchange student living in my house. We could discuss the plethora of books I adore, all for different reasons (The Time Traveler’s Wife, the Sword of Truth series, Pride and Prejudice, The Scarlet Letter. Twilight.)

I could tell you I’m a Sophomore at West Georgia this year, and all about wanting to be a fiction writer supporting herself with an Editing career. Maybe give you details on the fanciful image I have of myself in the future: living in a pristine glass house in the middle of the woods, being a normal, functioning person in society by day and a happy, partially-crazed writer by night.

And though all of that is entirely true, will anyone really remember that? Probably not. What you’ll come to know about me throughout the semester is who I am on paper (more real than anything else, and don’t you just love the juxtaposition of what I mean and what the saying “on paper” means? I do.); what aspects of my past, present and future life shape the writing I manage to produce.

You’ll see the affect my two wonderful, loving parents had on me…the two people who dragged me kicking and screaming from my comfortable life on Long Island, NY five years ago, insisting I would easily fall in love with our new home down South, where it the Summer season was so much longer (I hate the Summer season), the winters much less cold (I love the cold), and where there were still flowers in February (I mean, really, who cares?). In that same instant you’ll see a girl who doesn’t know how to coincide an adoration for her new, Southern friends with an intense longing for her best friend of fifteen years. In a way, you’ll all know me better than any of those people. You’ll see that, though I preach self-confidence to everyone with a pitiful expression on their face or a few self-loathing words, I wish I didn’t need everything straight, germ-free and in multiples of three.

I believe that you write for yourself first, and edit for other people later; that more than anything else a writer should use their work to learn what they think about a particular subject and then make it relatable for other people. I think writers need to be selfish, and then self-deprecatingly selfless. We need to be uncomfortable with writing, and we need to have a love-hate relationship with that discomfort, because as soon as we’re comfortable with it, we’re no longer writers. We need to have strong characteristics in order to know who we are, or we’ll lose ourselves to our characters whims. I believe that no one cares what we believe, and we need to know that, too.

Essentially, I believe writers live in a world of paradoxes, and I hate to love to hate that. I don’t really need to introduce myself fully, because anything I tell you now will be surface level compared to who I’ll become to you throughout the semester. I’m terrified of that, but I welcome the challenge.