On Scratching

I love listening to other artists talk about their work. Comedians discussing how they structure their stand-up acts, origamists on the art of folding, painters on design, actors on preparation for a role, photographers on composition – all of it intrigues me. Shows like “Inside the Actors Studio” and “Iconoclasts” hold my attention, and I’m riveted by movies like The Beaches of Agnes, a documentary by and about the French filmmaker Agnes Varda that delightfully welds autobiography and the documentary form.

Consequently, I’ve read, over the years, a number of books that might rightfully fall into the category often called “writers on writing.” I read these for enjoyment, sometimes for inspiration, other times to glean ideas for my classes. I save those I expect to return to and pass others on to colleagues or students. I have a bedraggled copy of Anne Lamott’s beloved Bird by Bird, which I often excerpt for students, who are both reassured and entertained by chapters like “Shitty First Drafts.” Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer and Edward Hirsch’s How to Read a Poem (And Fall in Love with Poetry), likewise, have been great teaching resources.

Other books have had a direct influence on my own writing. Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and the Story and Mark Doty’s The Art of Description, for example, have been underlined in places because they manage to say, concisely and/or beautifully, what I need to hear and rehear. Gornick: “Every work of literature has both a situation and a story. The situation is the context or circumstance, sometimes the plot; the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say.” Doty: “Description is fueled by HUNGER for the world, the need to taste, to name, to claim what’s seen, to bring it, as Rilke would put it (in the ninth of his great elegies, the subject of which is the resurrection of the world within the perceiver), ‘O endlessly into ourselves.’”

There’s a subcategory of writers on writing which isn’t quite that at all. These are generally narrative nonfiction books wherein the writer does something new or unexpected and so the book becomes, for me, a model of creativity. They aren’t intended as how-to books, in other words, but they become, by virtue of a unique quality, exactly that. Lauren Slater’s Lying is probably the best example. It’s billed as a memoir, and its first chapter reads, in its entirety, “I exaggerate.”

No nonfiction writer I know has quite recovered from the mind-blowing repercussions of that opening. It’s a brilliant move, one that guarantees the reader will question every word that comes after. Chapter 1 is both reinforced and complicated by periodic moments of clarification, denial, hesitancy, contradiction, and retraction. The reader is drawn forward by the elegance of the prose, but all the while we are forced to stop in our tracks over and over again and wonder whether we’re reading fact or fiction and, importantly, to question the legitimacy of that distinction. A stellar how-to model, albeit one I will never attempt to mimic.

While dramatically different in style and content, these books have all helped me in one way or another. Sometimes that help has been immediate and practical – providing an exercise I can adapt for a class, for instance. Other times they’ve been influential in a long-term sense. There’s not much crossover, however. A given book is either useful or influential… but rarely both.

Twyla Tharp’s book, The Creative Habit, may turn out to span that gap. It’s marketed as Self-Help and, although I’m sure I’ve read other self-help books in the past, I have to admit that the genre seems, to the book-snob in me, a bit slight. No doubt I could use all kinds of help, but I’m skeptical – perhaps naively so – that a self-help book could provide anything of substance.

Luckily, I didn’t discover the label until later, and so as I browsed on Amazon my snob meter didn’t reject the book. I was looking for ideas for my advanced writing classes and came upon Tharp, whom I know as a dancer and choreographer, but didn’t know she’d written about creativity.

My initial reaction to the book upon receipt was disappointment. The print is unusually large, which made me think the publisher was trying to make the book appear more substantial than it is – rather like a student who reduces his margins or increases font size to create the illusion of more pages. And Tharp’s book features rather unimaginative questionnaires; it highlights phrases like “Give Yourself a Little Challenge.” I sighed, figured I’d thrown away ten dollars. And then, partly because we were snowbound, partly because I was bored, and partly because it was right there– a nice new book – I started to read.

Here’s where I’m supposed to let you in on a great find, claim that the book was so much more than I imagined, announce that Tharp will join Gornick and Doty on my Shelf of Important Books. But here’s the thing about The Creative Habit: there’s not a single word in its 243 oversized pages that will feel new to anyone who is living as a writer or artist. I repeat: If you’ve been working for years on your own art, you’ve already discovered every single thing this book has to say.

And yet… I found The Creative Habit somehow comforting. It was like Tharp, (with help, I should mention, from Mark Reiter), was saying yes, you’re right. This is how you do it.

Here’s her thesis: “I will keep stressing the point about creativity being augmented by routine and habit. Get used to it. In these pages a philosophical tug of war will periodically rear its head. It is the perennial debate, born in the Romantic era, between the beliefs that all creative acts are born of (a) some transcendent, inexplicable Dionysian act of inspiration, a kiss from God on your brow that allows you to give the world The Magic Flute, or (b) hard work… If it isn’t obvious already, I come down on the side of hard work.”

This premise reflects my own experience. Inspiration exists, but is, for me, a result of pursuit and cultivation and openness and readiness… It’s mysterious, to be sure, and can be elusive – but I don’t see it as a bequest from the gods or some fickle, fetching muse. I look for it, I track it, I know its hiding spots. I’m willing to cajole it or court it or circle it or wait it out – whatever it takes. These are practices, one can learn and develop them. As far as I can tell, most writers and artists know this.

One of the reasons I liked the book, however, is not just because of the reinforcement value – I actually tend not to appreciate being told what I already know – but because Tharp has written in a concise and accessible manner about things that sometimes feel quite complex to me. Her writing contains no surprising leaps or lifts or spins – it is grounded and straightforward. If you return to a passage, it won’t be for its grace but for its economy. Well-said, you might find yourself thinking, but not wow.

Among Tharp’s topics: Failure as an inevitable and valuable part of the creative process. The need to negotiate between involvement and detachment. The difference between planning and over-planning. The benefits of limited resources. The importance of practicing fundamental skills.

Tharp also emphasizes the need to “scratch,” which may sound oddly diagnostic but is her euphemistic way of talking about seeking new material. “Scratching is what you do when you can’t wait for the thunderbolt to hit you. As Freud said, ‘When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it.’” She follows up by suggesting that you never scratch the same place twice. “If you scratch the same way all the time, you’ll end up in the same place with the same old ideas.” I don’t entirely agree with this – there are certain writers I’ve reread for years, particular artists I return to repeatedly, looking for a spark to push me further into a new piece of writing – but it occurs to me that by returning to the same artists I may be returning, always, to my own methods and, by extension, always writing in the same way(s). Time, perhaps, to review my scratching technique.

As a teacher, I’m glad I read this book. I sometimes worry that students see their creative writing classes simply as classes and don’t take advantage of the apprenticeship college offers. It’s as though they think “I’ll start really writing when I graduate,” and defer the work of developing strong skills, for instance, or learning to research, until then. I’m concerned that they also believe that some magic will happen at that point, whereupon not only will they be able to master aspects of grammar and spelling and punctuation that they’ve put off as too tedious to dwell upon, but will miraculously also discover troves of inspiration which will allow them to sit in front of a screen and effortlessly channel their bestsellers. Then a roving literary agent will knock on their parents’ front door and ask if the writer in the basement has any new work; they’ll turn over their manuscripts and wait for that first big contract to set them on their way.

I’m exaggerating, but only a little. At 18 or 22, my own vision of the future wasn’t much less fanciful, but what I had in my favor was the willingness to work and, eventually, the habit of self-discipline. I’m hoping that Tharp’s ability to, in effect, break down the process of a creative life into manageable steps might be meaningful to at least some of these young writers. I’m hoping that their understanding of the artistic process will be refined by Tharp’s explorations of what it means to desire and seek inspiration. It means that you create inspiration. She’s not taking the magic and mystery away. She’s saying that the artistic process relies on the active engagement of the artist; you don’t sit and wait for art to find you... You discover and practice ways of finding it.

I respect Tharp for putting this project together. The self-help label is, in the end, accurate. The Creative Habit is a clear and readable source of what is essentially basic training. When my own processes feel stagnant, or when I have worked myself into a rut, there is appeal in reading what another artist has done to counter such occasions. Not every piece of writing is meant to dazzle with grand leaps and spins. Sometimes it all comes down to walking slowly across a bare stage. Sometimes it comes down to scratching.

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Donna Steiner penned this marvelous essay. She has an amazing blog: Life in a Northern Town and is mostly drowning in Lake Effect snow as we speak. If you happen to find her, pull her out of the snow drift.