Pep Talks for Writers by Grant Faulkner

Author:Grant Faulkner [Grant Faulkner]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC
Published: 2017-11-16T05:00:00+00:00

TRY THIS

DECORATE FOR CREATIVITY

What spaces inspire you? What items are charged with creativity? Decorate your desk for the characters you’d like to invite onto the page, the memories you’d like to kindle.

27

ARTISTIC THIEVERY, OR THE ART OF REMIXING

Be original.

Those two little words have loomed in my mind since I first decided to be a writer. Originality is a mantra, a revered artistic commandment, but such a daunting charge has shut down many an author. Writers so often tell me they have an idea for a novel, but they haven’t written it because it’s too similar to the Hunger Games, or it’s a vampire novel, and the market is glutted with vampire stories. I sympathize. I also sometimes get an idea I like, but then question if it’s truly new and fresh, and often decide it really isn’t. (It’s difficult to be original after thousands of years of storytelling.) I’ll wonder if I’m writing a story in a singular way, with a singular voice, with singular characters, with more and more singularity, or if my stories are simply boring retreads.

I’ve begun to wonder what originality truly is. Is it like a newfangled creature that bursts from your head—a creature never witnessed or imagined in any form by someone else? Does it have to be entirely unique, or does its originality reside in the pulse of truth, the authentic personal feeling the author imparts in the work? We have this idea that an author’s imagination flows with a sparkling, pure stream of ideas. We hear how art should be new, revolutionary, without precedent. A novel is supposed to be . . . novel, after all—new!

Here’s my view: The idea of originality is not only over-rated, but originality is never all that original. What appears to be original is actually a selection of elements from other sources that are remixed, repainted, and retold. Originality has always been done before, in other words, or the originality came about as an inadvertent accident of the artist’s pursuit through all the materials. The first story that was ever told in the world was original, but then the second story was certainly a remix, a new interpretation of the first.

Before the written word, oral storytellers retold the stories that were handed down to them. Homer’s The Odyssey was the end result of thousands of varied retellings as one person recounted the story to another who then recounted it again. Like a game of telephone, the story changed in each telling. Storytellers had to rely on their imperfect memories. Or their vibrant imaginations just took over and transformed the tale for a new audience, all the while echoing the structures, topics, and characters that came before it.

The scholar Joseph Campbell identified a universal pattern in storytelling that he found across cultures and throughout history, which he called the “hero’s journey.” It’s simple: a hero leaves his or her home, encounters other worlds, faces down opposing forces, and returns “with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” Think of the stories of Jesus, Buddha, Moses—or Harry Potter or Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.