(Final assignment of the module Introduction to Creative Writing; Grade: A)
“What do you want to be next time?” Our mentor of the science enrichment programme at the NUS biology lab had asked the four of us over a meal at an exquisite Indian restaurant. Gynaecologist! Biologist! Doctor! My friends had replied. Author! I chirped. Looking back at my 15 year-old self and the context of the discussion - with a team of scientists whose job was to nurture our interest in a scientific career, that was pretty audacious.
Seven years on and my answer to that question is still: author!
I enrolled in this course tentative, hesitant, and afraid. That everything I relished and held dear would be thrown out the window and I would have to come to terms with my inadequacy and misguided pursuit of writing.
I’ve always loved creative writing as compared to academic or factual reporting. I know content doesn’t hold the reins of creativity, rather the opposite is true, but I find the expressive, fantastical world of poetry and fiction a much more enjoyable mode of creative expression.
I’ve written a fair share of fiction and poetry before this, but I didn’t follow guidelines and standards, simply because I’ve never encountered a professional or academic course on writing before. And frankly, I’m not an avid reader (if not for course readings). I write mainly for personal satisfaction, transferring intangible ideas floating in my mind into ink marks in the parchment of reality. Done deal. They exist now - placed meaningfully in my life.
Finding meaning
What then is a meaningful piece of written work? As authors we don’t always have the chance to set the context or explain our inspirations and intentions. Is it a valid piece of work if someone interprets it in a completely different way than intended? Further, is it a good thing to have people interpret your work as they wish and take away things that are personally applicable as long as it enriches them in some way? I am reminded of one of the poems workshopped that was intended to be about environmental conservation but others thought it was about Squid Game. Similarly, I once wrote a somber poem about death. It was titled A Friend in Death and I intended it in an ominous way. My colleague was so encouraged by it, because she had a completely different optimistic interpretation. After I told her the sad truth, I wondered if I nullified her enjoyment of the poem in some way.
Is poetry strictly about what the poet wants to express? Or can it add value in both ways - the poet feels they’ve added value to their own experience by expressing it creatively, while readers feel they have added value to their lives by what they personally take away from the poem? Must both paths be superimposed in some way or can they run in opposite directions to the delight of both poet and reader? It probably works in real life when the author/poet and reader do not interact at all.
Through workshopping my own poem, I realise I can be needlessly cryptic in a bid to differentiate myself from others. But the pitfall is I may end up writing in a vacuum, solely for my own understanding and it raises the barrier to readers even deriving their own meaning. I do appreciate poems that seem more open-ended. But from my own experience reading poems from the course reader such as From Z to A, a zoetrope with spiracles and Chronic meanings, it is also true that when you near the end of the spectrum, it is easier for readers to lose interest and give up deciphering. David Budbill’s A Poem about Pain is on the flip side in that he explains it exactly as it is without any metaphors or poetic language, and I think it is apt - someone experiencing pain is unable to muster the strength to beautify the experience with fancy words, driving home the reality of the pain.
Sometimes meaning may be derived in emotions. October by Robert Frost and All that is gold does not glitter by J. R. R. Tolkien are two poems I read that gave me warm and pleasant emotions. October is simply about the season of fall. Even without ever personally experiencing fall, I could connect to it and was drawn into the environment described. Tolkien’s poem is part of The Lord of the Rings novel; it is a description of the character Aragorn. Yet even without placing it in context, the poem has a timeless quality and seems to be able to offer comfort and encouragement in any situation.
Untold stories
Through writing experiments, I realise I have a tendency to end my stories abruptly or leave out explanations, on purpose. Upon reflecting, this habit could have arisen from my own liking for cliffhangers in short stories which I find somewhat thrilling.
A story must be told or there'll be no story,
yet it is the untold stories that are most moving.
J. R. R. Tolkien
The quote continues - there is a certain magic in stories that convey “a sudden sense of endless untold stories: mountains seen far away, never to be climbed, distant trees never to be approached”. It is not easy to find the sweet spot between divulging too much and too little that it leaves readers unsatisfied. With practice, trial and error, and examining others’ works, I think one can find that balance.
Perspective
Another major learning from this course is point-of-view. I write as an omniscient narrator by default. It was during one of the workshopping sessions that I realised the impact of the different narrative perspectives - writing from a first-person perspective means you aren’t supposed to know what’s happening where you are not present. This had never crossed my mind. I do find it difficult on my part as an author to hold back details of a scene or interaction when I have set it up as such in my mind - the inner world of the characters, the precise meanings of their body language that isn’t a matter of conjecture or opinion etc. But I do find a certain charm in reading stories utilising limited perspective. It is interesting when one character describes another through tinted lenses, leaving the impression variable and susceptible to error. Lines like “she thought she heard them say” and “it seemed to her as if he…” from The Brightest Star in the North reveal a lot about Carina - the one forming the impressions - what her senses are tuned to and gives a glimpse into how her past has primed her now biased worldview. It is interesting because I watched the movie that this book is based on first and know exactly what happened around her. But for scenes where she is absent, the book instead reveals her deductions.
I find the second-person perspective highly immersive. When reading excerpts from Ray Bradbury’s The Night, there is a sense of being led by the nose as to what to think and feel, of being made into someone else entirely and living another life. The lines “You realize you are alone. You and your mother. Her hand trembles. Your belief in your private world is shattered. You feel Mother tremble. Why? Is she, too, doubtful? But she is bigger, stronger, more intelligent than yourself, isn't she?” puts me in the frame of mind of naive, eight-year-old Doug and the internal crisis he is going through.
The alternating timeline - between flashback, present and dream state - in the short story Another Beach was also interesting. Because it was told from a first-person perspective, the transitions were not at all jarring but flowed naturally with the expansion of the main character’s thoughts and associations.
A fascinating perspective was used in Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville ghost. Though the story starts off seemingly told from a third-person perspective, there were sudden and unexpected interjections of ‘I’ sprinkled sparsely throughout the 23-page story to remind readers that the story was actually unfolding through the observations of a mysterious entity - present yet invisible to the main characters. Lines like “I am bound to acknowledge”, “if I may use such a theatrical expression” and “I should mention” add a certain humour as if the author himself was interjecting.
Details of the daily
On top of not being scared of the ghost, the Otis family attempt to offer him balm and ointment for his ailments. The way Oscar Wilde stretches the humour in this already comical turn of events in The Canterville ghost is by being oddly specific about the names of the products offered: Tammany Rising Sun Lubricator, Doctor Dobell's tincture, Pinkerton's Champion Stain Remover among others. These ‘household’ names juxtapose the grimness of the haunting and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Such niched details can also add a feeling of homeliness. In the short story Branch, localised details bring out a certain sense of nostalgia and family tradition. I remember some classmates commented that my workshopping piece Longkang reminded them of their childhood and captured the zeitgeist of the early 2000s because of references to local snacks and cartoons.
Malgudi Days is a collection of stories inspired by ordinary people in ordinary situations but there is always a twist in the endings. Many times the irony wrenches my heart and makes the stories memorable. R. K. Narayan also has a knack for short yet meaningful titles. They would seem merely descriptive and vague at first but in hindsight the simplicity of the title speaks volumes and has dual-meanings.
Fellow-feeling (one of the short stories in Malgudi Days) and Hills Like White Elephants are two dialogue-driven stories centred on a single scene. Stories such as these are something new for me. I find that it takes skill to bring interest to details in the scaling down of macro to micro, leaving out movement from place to place and time skips. To do so, the author would need to be highly sensitive to all the things that can happen in a single moment such as split-second sounds and subtle movements and arrange them in a certain rhythm. I think watching movies and observing people can make one privy to these under-the-radar happenings and help make details more realistic.
All in all, this course has exposed me to more writing techniques that I hope to incorporate into future works. The writing experiments and workshopping also gave me opportunities to reflect on my own work as well as appreciate and learn from that of others. It was an enjoyable and enriching experience.
Appendix
Title of work | Author | Year | Source |
The cask of Amontillado | Edgar Allen Poe | 1847 | |
The Canterville ghost | Oscar Wilde | 1997 | |
Malgudi Days | R.K. Narayan | 2006 | |
Branch | Yeo Wei Wei | 2015 | Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. Vol. 14 No. 2 |
Another Beach | Damon Chua | 2008 | Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. Vol. 7 No. 4 |
The Night | Ray Bradbury | 1946 | |
2 B R 0 2 B | Kurt Vonnegut | 1962 | |
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again | J. R. R. Tolkien | 2006 | |
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales: The Brightest Star in the North | Meredith Rusu | 2017 | |
Is this Greatness? | Singapore Kindness Movement | 2019 | |
Autobiography | Alfian Sa'at | 2001 | |
October | Robert Frost | 1915 | |
A Poem about Pain | David Budbill | 2017 | |
Passengers | Denis Johnson | 1995 | |
All that is gold does not glitter | J. R. R. Tolkien | 1954 | |
Brothers in arms (song) | Dire Straits | 1985 | |
I Know What You Think of Me | Tim Kreider | 2015 | |
Literature for Children: A Short Introduction | David Russell | 2019 | |