Read an Excerpt
Creative Writing for People Who Can't Not Write
By Kathryn Lindskoog Zondervan
Copyright © 1989 Zondervan
All right reserved. ISBN: 0-310-25321-7
Chapter One
The Wonder of Creativity The world will never starve for want of wonders, but only for want of wonder.
-G. K. Chesterton
In a modest house in Dublin there lives a young man who has never said a word. He has never been able to print the letters of the alphabet. He can't go to college.
Christopher Nolan lives strapped in a wheelchair because he has been severely spastic since birth. His face contorts, and his head lolls and jerks. All that he can control well is his eye movement, and so he communicates with his mother, father, and sister with his brightly blinking eyes. His mother has developed an uncanny ability to read his eyes. How else could anyone read him?
When he was eleven years old Nolan learned to type one letter at a time with a stick strapped to his forehead. (To do this he has to have his mother hold his head steady for him, and it can still take him up to fifteen minutes to type one word.) After all his years of being mute, Nolan described his slow typing as a "dam-burst of dreams"; and he soon started typing out the prose and poetry that he had been secretly composing in his head since he was three years old.
Nolan's mother was amazed at her silent son's vocabulary and literary talent. His collection Dam-burst of Dreams was published when he was only fourteen years old, and it won him much literary acclaim. Then at the age of twenty-two Nolan won Britain's coveted $35,400 Whitbread Book of the Year prize for his second book, a 1987 autobiography titled Under the Eye of the Clock. This book also won the prestigious Whitbread Biography Award.
The chairman of the literary panel that selected Nolan's book for the Whitbread Biography Award insists that sympathy played no part in the decision. "He won because of the merits of his book, period." British literary critic John Carey says that completely aside from his handicap, Nolan is "a brilliantly gifted young writer."
In response to a contact from a Hollywood film producer, Nolan said, "I want to highlight the creativity within the brain of a cripple and while not attempting to hide his crippledom I want instead to filter all sob-storied sentiment from his portrait and dwell upon his life, his laughter, his vision." He is determined not to allow Hollywood to tell his story wrong.
Thousands of people have written letters to Christopher Nolan. His mother says, "He has shown them that life is worth living, and it doesn't matter whether you're in a wheelchair or a bed; it's what's going on in your mind and your soul that is important."
Nolan believes that his creativity and gift for language were planted in him. This is how he describes it: "My mind is just like a spin dryer at full speed. My thoughts fly around my skull, while millions of beautiful words cascade down into my lap. Images gunfire across my consciousness and, while trying to discipline them, I jump in awe of the soul-filled beauty of the mind's expanse."
Inspired Creativity
Tradition says that truly creative writing is that which comes in mysterious bursts of inspiration. (Teachers are usually down to earth and emphasize that writing requires ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration.) For most of us the bursts are so tiny and mild that we are not apt to notice them. We modestly miss the mystery of our own creativity. We tend to focus on other people's dramatic dam-bursts of genius that seem far more exciting than our own accomplishments. And that is a mistake.
Abraham Maslow pointed out correctly that a first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting; and ordinary activities like homemaking and parenthood, done with insight and resourcefulness, are actually more creative than writing run-of-the-mill poetry. Sublime poetry is sublime; but some poetry is like canned soup, and we might as well admit it - the world likes lots of canned soup. Feeling arty is no sign of great artistic talent, and feeling sentimental about sentimentality is no sign of refined perception. Spattering human emotion onto reams of paper may feel good, but it is not necessarily very creative.
We are too easily awed by stereotypes. For example, the phrase "poetry and prose" certainly sounds more creative than ordinary writing. Actress Kim Novak once told a reporter that she loves to read, and that she reads mainly poetry and prose. I wondered what else she thought she read.
When I ask classrooms of adult students if they can speak or write prose, most are too modest to answer yes. I say, "Congratulations! If you are not writing poetry, you are writing prose. You have been speaking prose since you were two years old and writing prose since you first printed 'See Spot run' in first grade." Many students seem rather awed by the news. It's as if they've been doing calculus all these years and didn't know it.
Nonfiction prose is what most of us write most often, and it can be marvelously creative - which means insightful and resourceful. But in many schools "Creative Writing" includes only poetry, fiction, and drama. I think that definition of creative writing is too narrow. There is nothing very creative about copycat dramas by hack writers, but even an ordinary thank-you or sympathy letter can be inspired. What kinds of writing are creative? It all depends upon the writer.
Joyce Carol Oates is a one-woman fountain of fiction who has published at least two books a year for over twenty years. She says, "People are curious about the creative process. And I try to explain, particularly to my students with whom I work, that the creative process is inherent in all human beings and that people who don't think they are creative, in fact, often are." Like many authors, Oates finds creative inspiration a mystery (she says that long walks help), but she finds the conscious part of her writing extremely hard work. She claims that she sometimes types and throws away the same page of a book seventeen times in one hour. (Most of us can't even type that fast.)
Although she says she enjoys teaching college even more than writing, year after year she turns out an amazing stream of novels, short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. It looks as if she may be addicted to creative writing. (Perhaps creativity causes the brain to release endorphins, our natural chemistry of pleasure.) Inspired creativity in any field is one of life's most unfailing delights. And it does not matter whether the creative act is sublime, practical, or ridiculous.
Inspired Humor
One of my favorite inspired-creativity stories is about nonfiction author and editor Leo Rosten and his most embarrassing moment. In 1939 he was a little-known writer working on a serious sociological study of the movie colony in Hollywood. He was surprised and thrilled when he received a telegram inviting him to a banquet in honor of W. C. Fields at the Masquers' Club. (W. C. Fields was the popular red-nosed comedian who acted outrageously rough and gruff.)
When Rosten arrived at the dinner, he was being paged urgently over the loudspeakers. Then he found out that he should have arrived early because he was going to be seated at the head table with the celebrity guests of honor. He had to make a grand entry with the likes of W. C. Fields, Groucho Marx, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Jimmy Durante, George Burns, Edgar Bergen, and Milton Berle. The star-filled audience clapped madly for the others and then looked at him, the last one, with puzzled disappointment. He was nobody and he knew it.
After the delicious dinner, a famous wit named William Collier, Sr., got up and began what is now called a roast. He delivered a brilliant series of affectionate insults to W. C. Fields. Then without warning he looked at his notes and said that the next speaker was Leo Boston. He looked again and said, "No - Rosten." The room was almost silent.
Rosten was paralyzed. It was either Red Skelton or George Burns who jabbed him and forced him to his feet. Then he stood there silently praying that he would somehow disappear. Seconds dragged by. He was a total blank. He heard a hoarse, disgusted-sounding voice nearby mutter, "Say somethin!" He gulped helplessly.
Next he heard some words come out of his own throat. They were "The only thing I can say about W. C. Fields ... is this: any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad." That one sentence brought down the house, and Rosten sank back into his seat bathed in glory.
Newspapers around the world repeated the quip the next day, and both CBS and BBC featured it on the radio. Both Time and Newsweek ran it. Overnight, Rosten was an international wit.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Creative Writing for People Who Can't Not Write by Kathryn Lindskoog Copyright © 1989 by Zondervan. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
