One of the first times I attended a
Freefall workshop was right after a day of cycling in the mountains.
Richard was going to drop me off at the workshop and he was giving a
ride home to another cyclist. The other cyclist seemed a bit
concerned that I was willingly walking into some kind of cult. Then I
didn't know what to expect. Now I do but that doesn't seem to help
me explain what goes on in a way that someone not involved in the
workshop will understand.
I don't think I'm often at a loss for
words but when people ask me questions about the workshop and I try
to answer them I know that what is in their minds isn't even close to
what I experience when bunch of writers get together to focus solely
on the process of writing and listening to each other's work. A
common question is, “What do you write about?” Seems like a
straightforward question but it's hard to answer. The general answer
is, “anything that comes up.” Sometimes I have an inkling of
what I'm going to write about when I go to bed. (We always write in
the morning.) Sometimes I'm thinking about a dream I had when I sit
down at my computer. Sometimes I have no clue what I'm going to
write about. When that happens I usually fall back onto my training
as a poet and begin by observing and trying to describe my
surroundings. Often I find myself taken back in time to something in
my family of origin. In the most recent workshop I found myself
engaging in a rant at an author whose work made me feel inferior and
stupid. Sometimes I sit down thinking about one thing and in a few
moments the writing takes off in an entirely different direction.
It's not process whereby I sit down to
write a poem or a piece of memoir or a short story although all of
those things have come out of it. I admit that, at first, I
mistrusted this way of writing having been in many writing courses of
one sort or another. There I saw people who sometimes had many pages
of writing that seemed to have no form. They were desperately
looking for someone to help them make all these words into something,
anything, and in those classes the usual suggestions for tweaking
abounded. “This image really works. You could take out that part,
extend this metaphor. ” Often the owner of the writing would go
away looking puzzled. It's not easy to bring together the rush of
creative imagination and the form and structure of a particular
genre.
Having now experienced the process of
Freefall writing as Barbara Turner-Vesselago teaches it and more
conventional process taught by many other gifted instructors, I am
incredibly grateful for both types of experiences. Freefall has
helped me to, “get out of [my] own way,” as Barbara often says. I
am also grateful for the years in which my more critical self was
developing. All writing experiences give me more tools for my toolbox
and the knowledge to pick and choose the best tool for the best job.
After I have written a piece I can put it away for a while and then
go back to it and identify, to a certain extent, where I can compress
the writing and where I need to find more accurate words. Sometimes I
can do that better than at other times. In working with hand tools
we call it, “workmanship of risk.” Just because I cut a perfect
dovetail yesterday there is no guarantee that I will cut a perfect
one tomorrow. Sometimes the writing flows effortlessly and has
tremendous energy to draw me in. Other times it is stagnant and flat
and no matter how hard I search around for something that has more
life to it, it remains flat. Perhaps the not-knowing is part of what
draws me to woodwork and to writing. I could set up jigs on the
machines in the shop to get the same results every time but I find
that I quickly lose interest. I'd rather be trying something new
even if it doesn't turn out very well in the end.
The only way I will run out of projects
to do in the shop is to run out of things I can think of. The only
way I can run out of things to write about is to stop thinking,
period. If I can think about it I can write about it. Much of what I
write will not move beyond the computer screen just as many of the
things I make from wood will remain with me because they are too
flawed to give to anyone else.
Barbara
has written a book which helped me place Freefall in the context of
what I already knew about writing. It's a good read, an interesting
read if you want to know more about writing.
If
you're interested in seeing an example of where I am in my work, in
part, because of Freefall you can find my first attempt at writing
for Kindle Dreaming
over Water
Happy
writing and happy reading to all of you regardless of which side of
the text you currently inhabit.
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