Writing the Mind Alive by Linda Trichter Metcalf

Author:Linda Trichter Metcalf [Metcalf, Linda Trichter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307493446
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-12-09T23:00:00+00:00

On and on the service drones. But Mom has come to life. Having her sins forgiven has made her devout. She is kneeling. Her hands are folded. Her head is bent. The shiny polished silver offering tray comes by. We have our money ready….

We stand. We sit. We kneel. We sing. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. We open the red book. We open the blue book. Up and down. Sunday after Sunday. Year after year. Men in black robes. Shuffling shoes. Clicking heels. Hard pinches for wiggling.

Believing that everyone speaks an entirely different language, the writer Frank O'Connor, as part of his writing training, tried to hear in his head the cadence of people's voices, the sorts of phrases they used in their daily speech. But not all the exercises in the world would have given Nicole or Grant or Miranda the confidence to write if they hadn't overheard their own voices and transcribed them. What's more, since it is impossible to separate voice and subject matter in formal writing, discovering their voices helped them find their subject matter. We have often heard writers say that once they find voice for a given work, the rest falls into place.

After months of Proprioceptive Writing practice, Nicole decided to write an autobiographical novel consisting of monologues, a form she'd grown comfortable with through her Writes. She based her characters on her parents, herself, her husband, and her children, but fictionalized them as well, incorporating into them elements of others whom she knew or imagined. In the end, she faced the challenge of making the family story believable, particularizing individual voices and sustaining them throughout.

This took more devotion than she thought she had in her. It took self-confidence as well. Occasionally the thought of an audience threatened to immobilize her. But the habit of writing that she had cultivated through her Proprioceptive Writing practice kept her working. Now, as before, she had to face the blank page and concentrate. But because of her increased powers of attention and her new self-knowledge, she managed to control her anxiety.

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.