Writing the City

'Prose is all well & good, but it seems to me that poetry is full of music...'

Julia Bell

Last week, our creative writing fiction class attended a short seminar entitled 'Writing the City' by Julia Bell & Jean McNeil from the British Council & that was a nice change from the lessons that we've been having. Creative writing classes have always been a beacon for me in the past two years of college, with the exposure to interesting literature & the rediscovering of an innate hunger to write, but somehow this semester's fiction course was a little... drab. Perhaps it was the way classes were conducted; three hours of sitting in a circle & workshopping other people's work, which sometimes tended to go in circles without answering any quintessential questions (What does it mean when one says that a novel has a voice? When does one draw the line between fiction & autobiography?). Talking about writing, to me, is always necessary but often dull. Perhaps it also had to do with the kind of fiction my coursemates & I were producing, a lot of it being self-absorbed & overly-personal biography, only with disguised characters & changed names. Most of all though, it was largely because fiction doesn't come naturally to me at all, like how poetry or songs (sometimes) do, & these thirteen weeks were spent feeling largely like a fish out of water. Last week's class however, felt a bit like a breakthrough.

It was more of a reading of their work & discussion than a direct teaching seminar. The pieces they read, both excerpts of work-in-progress-novels & poems, were impressive & on occasion, brilliant. Jean, a travel writer whose work encompasses both Antarctica & Africa, talked about how good writers never let their life experiences & people & current landscapes directly translate into their writing, but how they used these tools to provide a template, a vibrant background for the invented story they had to tell, & I could definitely see how that was the case in her stories. There's a certain richness & creativity & also a curious authenticity, when a writer infuses the surrounding culture & his/her own life into a story without allowing it to be a true reflection of their own lives.

Julia also addressed the issue of fiction vs. autobiography, where she talked about how writing fiction isn't equivalent to ranting on the author's part. Throwing up your emotions on a page is the least of any kinds of writing, which often happens to writers in their early stages. Adolescent angst & bitter romances & painful experiences are treasure troves because of the strong emotion it invokes in the writer & his/her readers, but truly magnificent writing pays attention to how all of it translates onto a page & transforms personal experiences into something powerful & sublime. That is why writing is above all an artform, where things like rhyme & form & style are utilized to craft stories to the best possible form.


It was a good hour. What a terribly awful rant that must have been to some of you, but it was an eye-opener for me... I enjoyed it tremendously! Anyway, I haven't been blogging nearly enough & I promise I will soon when the obligatory final exams are over & summer holidays kick in. Till then... au revoir!



P.S. You can read about Jean's work here, & read some of Julia's poetry & short stories here.