Having been a student of Jack Grapes, I am privileged to be on his email list and receive messages about reading and activities that inspire thoughts about the nature of writing.  In a recent email from Jack about authenticity in writing, I read this opening question, “If you can’t do it in the journal, what makes you think you can do it in your short story, your poem, your novel, or your screenplay?” I thought, “Yes, that’s the point, isn’t it?  We have to be real to ourselves to write.”  With Jack’s permission, I am reprinting his email and then I am offering an exercise to help you “do it in the journal.”

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Jack Grapes’ Email to His Students, Sunday, September 12, 2004:

If you can’t do it in the journal, what makes you think you can do it in your short story, your poem, your novel, or your screenplay? The journal is the core of everything you do as a writer. It’s not only the place you practice all the techniques of your craft: transformation line [the line in a piece of writing that has a personal statement in it and reveals something to both writer and reader], image/moment, and the tonal dynamics of four voices [“everyday casual speech,” “poetic lyrical effect,” “chant-like musical drumbeat,” “disjointed-mind stream of consciousness”], but it may well be the place where your poems, stories, novels, plays, etc., are created. A few weeks ago there was an article in the LA Times about the suspense/thriller film, and several directors being interviewed discussed certain great filmmakers like Hitchcock, from whom they learned how to build suspense and tension. At the end of the article, they all finally admitted that none of those cinematic techniques mattered if the characters themselves were not real and compelling. “It all starts with character,” they said. And as I am fond of saying, “Voice creates character, character creates plot.” If the voice is authentic, the character blooms, and if the character blooms, the plot takes its shape. Fiction, Non-fiction, Memoir–it’s all about character, it’s all about voice.

In this Sunday’s LA Times, Robert Abele writes about three films currently opening that “trace the blending of art, identity, and the creative process.” Here’s an excerpt that I think you’ll find interesting:

When creative types launch into a discussion of their “process,” it’s usually a cue for outsiders to leave the room. Like watching paint dry, or a writer gaze off into space, deconstructing an artist’s inspirations and influences isn’t necessarily a spectator sport. But a handful of films this fall frame the creative process in visceral, revealing ways by weaving inner life, outer life, and art. Says the director of “Stage Beauty:”

“I’m fascinated by the notion that the better you act a character, the harder it is to distinguish between who is the real person and who is the simulated person.”

 The question of how a person’s sense of self shapes and informs the creative process is also central in the Ray Charles biopic “Ray,” and in “Finding Neverland,” which dramatizes how Scottish playwright J.M. Barrie came to create the timeless children’s fantasy “Peter Pan.” What each film ultimately reveals is the importance of an artist’s core identity to what he or she creates. Tapping that core doesn’t always come easy, though, stresses Taylor Hackford, who directed “Ray.” “Whatever the medium, whether it’s a typewriter, the piano, or your voice, you only make your mark on it by revealing who you are,” he says. “And when you do, you’re terribly vulnerable, because you’re no longer copying somebody else.” In each film, we are shown how the self-absorption of creating art can be transformed into an act of love. In the end, each movie speaks to the journey of all artists going through crises of identity and ability, questioning their confidence and reaching for the new.”

So you’re going through a crisis of confidence:

BORING!
Confine your crisis to a ten-minute freak-out, and then get to the work you have to do. We all suffer from a crisis of confidence. So what? You will never be without it. It’s either going to be one of the many dragons, one of the many demons you take with you, or you will can sit at home with your demons and dragons and play with your toes.

Going through a crisis of ability?

BORING!

None of us are able. Except Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Goethe, Whitman.
The rest of us have to trudge up the mountain carrying our ineptness on our backs.
I’m a genius when it comes to playing with my toes.

So should I spend my time doing what I can do well? Is that the issue?
Or is the issue doing what you love, doing what your soul drives you to do.
As Ezra Pound wrote in his “Cantos:”

What thou loves best remains
the rest is dross
What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from tee
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage
What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee.
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What thou lovest best remains
the rest is dross

Many of us would like to think we can avoid the deep inner work by writing “fiction,” by “making things up,” by focusing on “the writing,” as opposed to “voice,” by focusing on plot, as opposed to our own truth. But you can’t. It doesn’t matter whether what you write is called a memoir, non-fiction, fiction, etc., there is no difference between the truth and what you make up, because in the end it’s all true, and it’s all made up. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE. What counts is that you discard all the crap of the brain and reach with your hands into the core of your heart and bring out what you know, what you’ve lived, what you’ve suffered and gloried through. The journal entry is bedrock, and if you can’t do it in the journal, you’re fooling yourself if you think you can do it in other forms. It’s all about the deep voice, and character: plot will take care of itself. And you’re going to have to come to terms with your truth, that that’s all you really have.
YOUR TRUTH.

It may be painful, it may be hard to write, but whatever glory you hope to get from writing will have to come from the struggles of the heart, or as William Faulkner said in his Nobel Prize speech, “the human heart in conflict with itself.”

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When we write, we become vulnerable because our idiosyncratic attributes, obsessions, and filters for seeing the world are on the page and we read them.  I am moved by Jack’s passionate request that we realize we don’t write because it is easy or even because we are gifted at writing, but because we are searching for truth. And the way to truth is through our attributes, obsessions and filters.

To help get words on the page and offer your truth, try this exercise:

Ian Frazier says about quail hunting, “You see all those birds and you shoot at them all and you won’t get one. If you want to get a bird, pick one bird and shoot it.”  Writing is like that, he advises. “Get one thing right.”

A detail or observation that you get right can be the basis for much writing. Think about events in your life that are vivid to you.  Think about events whose memory is persistent but shadowy.  They events you think of might range from weddings and funerals to business conferences and birthday parties, from TGIFs with friends to overhearing others’ fights, conversations, or secrets.  Choose one of the events you remember.  Write about it:  Who was there? Where did it take place? Why were you there? Be detailed and specific.  Reconstruct the event so it is re-experienced through the senses—give details on the page that appeal to the eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin.

When you have reconstructed the event on the page, think about something you could say you learned at the event or just after. What was it? How did you realize you’d learned it? How was it valuable?

When you return to your journal, choose another event from your memory or list.  Get that one right.  Another time, write about one more.  You might want to write about four or five events in this way.

See what happens if you group these writings under a title like, “The Human Heart in Conflict with Itself.” You might realize that there is much already in your writing about the human condition as seen through your senses and experience that you can shape into essays, poems and stories.