Creative Writing

So that last entry was an essay that I wrote in my Creative Non-Fiction class that I took in the Fall here at NU.  It was taught by the lovely Professor Fran Paden, who may very well be the greatest writing professor at the university.  I've found that English and Literature teachers tend to become obsessed with one form of the language or another at times, and Professor Paden was absolutely enthralled with the sentence. One of the first exercises she had us do in the class was to take a sentence by a specific author, such as Annie Dillard, and replicate the syntax and rhythm as best we could.  For example, she gave us the following on day 1:

"His journal is tracks in clay, a spray of feathers, mouse blood and bone: uncollected, unconnected, loose-leaf and blown." -- Annie Dillard

And here was my attempt to replicate the sentence:

"Her music is pen on paper, a rhythm of words, ideas and tone: no melodies, no harmonies, a sonata all her own." -- Jonny Gomez

It was this type of work that got us thinking about sentence structure as more than simply iterating an idea.  A sentence could be as beautiful as a poem, wrapped up in a tiny syntactical bundle and hidden away within the walls of a paragraph.  

In my senior year of high school, my AP Literature teacher used to wax philosophical whenever we ended class early. Our bags would be packed and we'd be getting ready to bolt at the first sound of the bell when Mr. Colin (yes, my Lit teacher's name was actually Mr. COLIN) would lean his tall, lanky frame against his podium at the front of the class and begin to audibly mull over the thoughts in his head. People were usually too busy checking their watches and staring at disbelief at the clock on the wall, silently willing the bell to ring a few minutes early, to pause for a moment and listen to what he had to say. On this one day, I actually listened.

"Painters paint," he began in his deep, stentorian voice. "Musicians make music and actors act. But for me... Writing is my art."

I shifted the weight of my backpack from shoulder to shoulder and leaned in to hear him better.

"I remember being in college," he continued, "distraught over the fact that I was not artistic, that my talents only leant themselves to researching and cataloguing and the sort. Then one day a professor of mine said to me, 'Bruce, don't ever forget that anything can be artful. The simple grace of the dancer is no more art than the eloquent beauty of the written word. Writing, is my art.' "

Mr. Colin glanced up at his class, all of us there physically, only about half of us there mentally. 

"Don't ever be embarrassed to embrace your art," he finished.

It was sometime after this moment that I knew I wanted to be a writer. It took me some time to figure out exactly what kind of writing would be best, but it was that moment that I remember; tall, sweater-vested Mr. Colin reliving a moment from his past while his class looked on.  Only artists become so lost in their own minds.