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"First Person" is
always looking for reflective essays from Creative Writing
students, parents, and artists-in-residence, both current
and past. Here is one by Sloane Martin '07, which we
originally published in the fall of 2008. At that time,
Sloane sent this brief biographical sketch:
"After
reluctantly leaving the Creative Writing program, Sloane
Martin headed to New York University and entered the
Gallatin School for Individualized Study. She took
some literature classes and explored the city before
deciding to move to Paris to study abroad for a year.
Now in Paris, she's taking more literature classes and
exploring grocery stores, where there is the least threat of
having to engage in conversations in French. She lives
with two fellow NYU students in a tiny apartment in the 2nd
arrondissement, cooks, reads, and generally avoids the rain.
The light in Paris is much more beautiful than anywhere
else, but no one cleans up after their dogs."
Interested in
sharing thoughts on your own CW experience as a student,
parent, or teacher? Send them along to:
webmaster@sfsota-creativewriting.org
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Writing is a selfish act, and
writing teaches you how to be alone. Writers are all
distinctly isolated in a way that painters or singers can
never be. It involves a complete self-absorption that is,
strangely, justifiable. My writing is all about me: my
thoughts, my dreams, my judgments, and my views, whether I
am conscious of it or not.
And so writing, and being a writer,
makes you a solitary person. It forces you to be distinct
from your surroundings, to distill and isolate
yourself—because that is all the material, in the end, that
you have to draw from. Why do writers have reputations for
being depressives, for being temperamental, for being bad at
relationships? We have to be alone to be at our most
creative, and that is a strain for even the hardiest of
human beings. It is most challenging to be with yourself,
whom you know better than anyone, whose bad habits and dark
secrets are a constant preoccupation. The poet Justin Chin
asks, “What do you want to forget in twelve years? Start
now.”
There is the benefit of
independence, our ability to rely only on ourselves, to not
put faith in others. But it also means that it is next to
impossible to find a community that is more than a
superficial linking of individuals with a shared interest of
self-interest.
Creative Writing was that unusual place where you could be a
writer—one who was actively “practicing,” one who could be
selfish and individual—and yet never be alone. There is a
strange atmosphere there, where you are completely free to
sit on or under the tables, to wear as much or as little as
you like, to say anything and everything or nothing that you
ever wanted to—and yet you are still disciplined, and
professional in your craft. Professionalism in the program
is stressed, and it should be; there is a difference between
being a writer in the privacy of your own mind and being a
writer in a community, however safe or close-knit. Being a
writer is also about being part of a community, even if
everyone in that community is solitary, because without that
community, without the criticism, support, and opportunities
it provides, you are not a writer, but just someone who
writes.
I remember being eight or nine, and
becoming giddily excited at the prospect of playing pretend,
of being a gypsy or a queen. Entering the Creative Writing
environment each afternoon always had the same effect on me.
It was a place where my fantasies were embraced, and shared,
and expanded by the people around me. There is a special
sense of trust in the program, and that is the foundation
upon which the community is successful. Trust is the hardest
thing for a writer to give. It is saying, “I will give you
access to my most private thoughts, and I will not be afraid
of your response.” This is part of the reason that the
program is not right for everyone. Not everyone is willing
or ready to make that leap, to put faith in the community;
not everyone is able or willing to be trustworthy, to
abandon the reactions that they would normally have outside
of Creative Writing and enter the singular world that is
this department. But for those who are ready, who are
willing to take on the responsibility and the strain that
comes with belonging to such an intense and passionate group
of people – for them, Creative Writing may be one of the
best things that could ever happen.
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