foot remains in mouth
Inquiry: What was the debt of inspiration that I referred to in blog post, “A Retraction”?
Response: I suppose I only meant that I began thinking about the issues I discussed based on the impressions I got from the readings. But, saying it in that way seemed so uninteresting. I was inexplicably compelled to dress up my impression in an attempt to resurrect my thwarted dreams of being a creative writer, especially because I so much enjoyed the creative approach of the critics. Aha! The inspiration was my enjoyment of the style of the articles.
Digression: My first attempt at creative writing….no wait, my first attempt was a story I wrote about a Panda Bear trying to outmaneuver a Mongoose (I think, now, that I was merely ripping off Rikki Tikki Tavi).
Revision: The attempt at creative writing that I want to talk about…I, at 9 years old, saw a tiny white mouse fed to a snake (name: Alice Cooper). The grotesquely unhinging jaw, the distorted lump, half wiggling as it is forced down the snake’s throat- not even its throat, but as it is squeezed along inside the lengths of the snake’s body- haunted me. I cried inconsolably.
Not allowing the matter to rest, I obsessively recalled the memory and found it ghastly and selfish to pretend it had not happened (at this point I must have been unaware of the dynamics of meat production, for I didn’t become a vegetarian for another few years. I made no connection between my own eating habits and the snake or I would probably have become intolerable to my caretakers). It seemed to be horrible to go on with such a tragedy in the world.
I would right (or do I mean write?) this wrong. I set about telling the story of the mouse’s life, to make known he who was, now, no more. It would be my first, my finest, my only novel. I got as far as chapter one.
Story: Mouse, I forget entirely what I named him, but he had a name, no doubt, one that shined with nobility and excellence (or, more probably, it was stupid) had a little sister (very much like me). The two would play marbles together until the fateful day when prized marble went missing… Finis…
I think my plan was to make the mouse go in search of the marble and thus be captured, taken to pet store and meet with doom, but I could never get beyond the first part. I lost my inspiration when my childish resilience would no longer allow me to obsess about the mouse, or maybe I found I preferred to let him live, to ignore the fatality of death that unhinges its jaws before us all. In any event, it was prematurely cut off.
Conclusion: My business as a creative writer has continually been cut short. Is it that I lack the inspiration that I facetiously claimed a debt to in ‘a retraction’? To be guided to find it again in an assignment like the alter-ego/mystory would be excellent fun. I would like to try it someday. Or perhaps in the essays read for last week, I saw the potential to yield to my impulses to creatively write the wrongs of the world while still doing so in a $cholarly way.
If you want edit me? just go to your profile than add description text as many you like. ^_*
February 8th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
***Inexplicable (line 3) was changed to inexplicably in the name of grammar. Please note that error was initially there, author doesn’t mean to alter reality. Error too obnoxious to remain. Author aware of back-pedaling from former elitest view of error correction.
February 8th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
One of my first stories was about a pterodactyl named Terry who traveled from the past to protect a young boy (and his tree fort) from the merciless attacks of a school bully and his bulldog.
Terry the pterodactyl and the narrator eventually triumph, but the celebration is cut short when Terry is forced to return to the past. The narrator is left alone and pensive.
It was ahead of its time.
February 8th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
First off, did the anonymous comments you’ve been getting begin after you changed the name of your blog?! Your title is far more alluring than, say, something stupid like “Reading and Writing.” (Maybe I should jazz up the title of my blog…)
The question that came to my mind as I was reading your post was: why oh why am I enjoying this so much if she doesn’t write creatively?
Answer: She does write creatively, and she does it damn well. I say you should resurrect the mouse story, definitely.
February 8th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
I also love your writing. Something I said to my husband today comes to mind now, though I’m sure it’s only a tenuous connection at best. The Nyquil is starting to get the better of me.
I looked over at a name tag he was drawing, one of his profs makes the class use them, and I was amused since I had written one out this morning in my sloppy handwriting for Major Jackson’s visit. (Those of you who couldn’t make it missed a great conversation!) I said - to Brian, my husband - Sometimes, I forget you’re an artist. He replied, “Was.” His W was definitely capitalized.
I argued with him that an artist can stop creating art, but he or she does not loose the quality of being an artist, just as a writer may stop writing, but that doesn’t end them as a writer. That doesn’t happen until they stop thinking about writing.
Thinking about writing. Do we have to think about writing in a Scholarly/Non-Scholarly way? Is there such a thing? I am sending a copy of King Leopold’s Ghost to a friend of mine with NO interest in literature of history because it is such a fabulously written narrative. I have been provoked to thoughts about the essential spark of wonder as a catalyst for academic research by a short story Eric mentioned.
I’m not so certain the chasm between Creative and Composition is any wider than the one between Writing and Rhetoric.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
[Should be] No chasm between creativity and composition.
If there is, the snake already has us.
February 11th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Interestingly, all anonymous comments were before the name change. The provocative shift has sadly failed to attract the attention that “Exciting! Secret! Thoughts!” seems to court.
Oh, the capriciousness of Mankind…