So I’ve been thinking about some of this a lot, specifically because I’ve been reading a lot more contemporary works lately (brushing up, looking for monologue material, reading good work in order to write better work), and I get especially enthusiastic about it when I’m coming down off a caffeine high (I drink coffee in order to teach; it doesn’t exactly leave my system immediately thereafter and the people who love me know that when I start talking 200 miles a minute that I’ve probably had coffee sometime in the recent past). Anyhow.
I may have mentioned that I double majored in theater and English. There was on particular week in my senior year where my acting class had a direct crossover to my literature classes, where we were reading the exact same Shakespeare play in both (ironically, I cannot remember which one. Might have been Macbeth. Might have been Othello. Either way, doesn’t really matter). The point is, the conversations in these different classes were focused on the same play, and yet, the conversations never overlapped.
The way the actors approached the material was so vastly different from the way of the English majors. And the focus of the English majors was something that never came up for the actors. So, read the rest of this rambling still-using-up-the-remaining-caffeine-in-my-system rant through that filter.
Death of the author: the concept that once an author writes something, who they are, where they are and why they wrote it become less important than the words themselves. (English professors, argue with me on this point, but this is my watered-down still-with-me-in-my-conscious-life summation for the moment). This always bugged me: who a person is, where they come from and what they deal with on a daily basis has EVERYTHING in the world to do with the words they put on the page. Yes, once a manuscript is released to its reader, it develops a new relationship with the next person. But the fact that Charles Dickens went through an early life rejection and lived in Victorian England with Victorian ideals…. this greatly informed what he wrote and why he wrote what he wrote.
Take this in direct conflict with “Backwards and Forwards,” which I reread recently and states something along the lines that ‘no play is written for universality; authors write for their own specific place and time.’ While this takes into account my own belief system that who and where an author is informs their work, I still disagree with the idea that authors don’t write for universality. I mean, if I’m writing in Miami, I can still hope that my work could still be read and understood in California, or England, or Germany, or South America.
Once again, theatrical and literary types take two separate views on the same topic.
On a side note, I got Scrivener recently, after getting a discount for it for completing my 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo this last November. It’s the tool I never knew I needed! I know I’ll eventually import November’s work (54,000 words towards the first Theater Door book) sometime soon, but I figured I’d start with Sophomoric – the manuscript I started while waiting to hear back from grad schools last March, that topped out at a whopping 20,000 words (thank you, NaNoWriMo for showing me the light) and, well, VASTLY differs from the YA/Middle Grade Reader I worked on this last November.
You know what sucks about no longer being in school (this is for all you students who just can’t wait to be out of the institutions you’re in)?
When I was in undergrad, other co-eds would just come in and install crap on my PC. While this may have bordered on the intrusive, I was always up to date with the most cutting edge, current and useful programs. Once you’re out in the real world, you keep using those old programs while the rest of the world moves forward.
It sucks.
I wrote 54,000 words on Word. WORD!!!! Fishing my way through 50 pages of manuscript, scrolling and scrolling, hoping I’d eventually find the moment I’m looking to revise or enhance….
And I wonder why I never went back and wanted to actually revise or edit the 200 freaking sonnets I wrote during and post-college!!!!!!!! I wanted to arrange them into a more comprehensive order (and potentially add footnotes, considering a lot of them have direct references and inspirations from Shakespeare and Sir Philip Sidney sonnets and footnotes would be helpful to the burgeoning scholar) but the idea of editing on Word (when I even wrote it on WordPerfect) just intimidated the sh*t out of me.
I’ve done well with 20 and 40-minute play scripts. And short works. But Sophomoric? The Sonnets? Theater Door Book One?
SCRIVENER LOOKS LIKE A LIFE SAVER!
It’s like Word and OneNote (which is my current monologue/book notes/important information keeper) had a baby!
Right then.
Back to my literary criticism rant. I sure as…. sunshine… don’t want to sound like a critic who criticizes because they can’t do. When I whine that the majority of contemporary works seem self-absorbent and self-congratulatory, it’s because I don’t want my work to be interpreted this way. I also want art that inspires hope and faith in the world, no matter how bleak and dismal the picture of the world can be.
The fact of the matter is, I don’t think anyone cares one whit about my personal life experience. I think I have some interesting stories, lived through some interesting challenges and interesting times, and I recognize that I am today because of who my parents were yesterday and how they screwed with me as a child (mom, don’t lie – I know you used your BA psych techniques on me), and I know I’ve lived in such a way as to laugh and learn and grow…. but I don’t honestly think that my experience is enough for a literary work.
On the surface, I’m a spoiled little white girl living in a first world country. No sympathy. No interest.
Thus, when I write, I’m writing for other people. And I want to write in such a way as to transcend myself. I’m trying to do this with Sophomoric. I’m trying to do this with the Theater Door. (The sonnets are kind of complete on their own – they’re just not organized in a cohesive order). I tried to do it with every short play I wrote for my students. I read widely and vastly in the hopes that this will help me.
And while I maintain that life sucks (it does: life is suffering; we start dying the moment we’re born), there’s always hope.
So… I hope this explains some of my opinions. And I hope I can live up to my visions. And I hope I can figure out how to use Scrivener. No matter how intimidating and overwhelming it is to try and do it on your own….
Erika Diane 