Diary of a Mad Editor

Archive for July 10th, 2008

He Must’ve Been Unconscious

The other night I participated in a poetry discussion group. The sort of thing that is part book club and part informal workshop.

A small group of us met in a local coffee house after hours and sat around reading and talking about poetry. The evening was going swimmingly until, about half-way into the meeting, this guy showed-up — late and kind of grumpy. You know — like he had someplace else to be but his car broke down and he just stopped by to use the phone or get out of the rain or take a dump. Anyway, he sits there like a lump and doesn’t say a word until it’s time for him to read his poem. You can tell that he’s one of those poets who thinks every line that drips from his pen is spun from gold and that sun shines from his asshole. He goes into this long tired introduction about how he was inspired to use stream of consciousness in his poem. I’m sitting there thinking, read the fucking poem, already — my balls are falling asleep fer christsakes! So he finally reads the poem. It goes on for about 2 or 3 pages. When he is finished, I comment that I appreciated the rhythm of the poem but that what he has written is not stream-of-consciousness. You’d think I cracked him across the jaw with a Louisville Slugger, because he did this whiplash motion with his head. He starts to argue with me: “No, no. It is stream-of-consciousness. You don’t know what you’re saying . . .” What! Are you addressing moi? I looked around the room and considered the company I was in, the setting, and the old guy’s absolute refusal to listen to reason and came to the conclusion that there is great wisdom in picking your battles. So, I quickly changed the subject and let him sit there in his ignorance, kind of like how a bad parent might let a toddler sit in a dirty diaper because it’s too much trouble to change.

But, here I am 3 days later still pissed about the matter.

I’m sorry, but writers who talk out their ass about writerly stuff they should actually know about but don’t bothers me. And it wasn’t so much that the guy was ignorant — it was that he had no interest in correcting his ignorance. Old grumpypuss was confusing stream-of-consciousness with free-writing. But that’s not even the worst of it. What he had written wasn’t even free-writing. See, what he had actually done was take several different kinds of formal verse and splice it together into a long poem which, I suppose, could be considered an experiment in form. That’s not stream-of-consciousness and it is, most certainly, not free-writing. So, he was not only ignorant — he was doubly ignorant.

Considering the sorry state of our public education system, it’s really no wonder people confuse stream-of-consciousness with free-writing. Hell, I remember back in the 10th grade, my English teacher didn’t know the difference. Nonetheless, it’s something every writer should know whether or not one uses either technique. Because you never know, you know.

So, for the record:

Free-Writing is a guided writing exercise used to conquer writer’s block. The exercise usually has a time limit but otherwise follows no rules other than to keep writing non-stop regardless of mistakes or straying off-topic. You do a lot of this kind of thing in creative writing classes. The technique was pioneered by writing instructors like Natalie Goldberg. This technique should not be confused with stream-of-consciousness or automatic writing.

Stream-of-consciousness is a specific form of interior monologue. Rather than being a straight narrative of thought, it seeks to emulate the randomness of the thought process using fragments, broken syntax, unruly punctuation, wordplay, allusion, etc. The most famous example of this technique is James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, but many other writers have used it to a degree including contemporary novelists such as Will Christopher Baer and Jonathan Safron Foer.

Automatic writing is a form of writing championed by the Surrealists in their day in which an individual entered a trance-like state and tapped into the collective unconscious. Generally, automatic writing is dismissed as a parlor trick today and is not utilized much. But, again, it shouldn’t be confused with free-writing or stream-of-consciousness.

And while we’re on the subject (and just to be thorough and crystal fucking clear on the matter), stream-of-consciousness should likewise not be confused with a dramatic monologue, which is a type of poem where a character either historical or fictional explains himself to an imaginary audience. Examples of this are found in Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” and Robert Brownings’ “My Last Duchess.”

So, I hope this has been helpful to some of you. And, grumpy old dude . . . please read this blog — preferrably after you’ve had a bran muffin and emptied your bowels.

Here’s a Site Some of You Might Enjoy

Came across this site this evening while browsing (yes, I am an unapologetic web surfer), that some of you might enjoy. I enjoyed it, anyway. It’s JPChambers.com, a personal humor blog. Chambers’ style is light and breezy and accessible. His sense of humor is observational — more cute than wry, more cheery than thought-provoking. It’s the kind of humor that elicits a smile rather than a full-on guffaw. Still, I enjoyed it. I especially enjoyed the essay section. His essay, “A Novel Idea,” about National Novel Writing Month alone is worth a visit –it’s the kind of thing almost any writer can appreciate.