by Michael P S Taylor

In my writer’s CV …I talk a bit about how I came to creative writing – why and what I write about, and I also say a little about “the books wot I ave wrote” …(thank you, Ernie, for correcting me!).

But, for me, writing is about having the courage to face issues that might otherwise be hidden and to ask questions that I might not, ordinarily ask. It is also empowering; in my youth, teachers might shout: “how dare you say that Taylor”  and in those days one felt almost guilty.

Now, in my head, it’s about emotions and feelings, especially the difficult ones that I, perhaps,  prefer to avoid or lack the courage to voice in any other format. In other words, expression of thoughts and reactions toward myself, others and “events”. Being of a certain age I can barely write that word without thinking of an alleged response by “Super Mac“ to the question as to “what he had found hardest to deal with as Prime Minister”, to which (he probably did not) reply;  “Events, dear boy, events”!

That said, among the quotes I keep on my bookshelves behind me as I sit at my desk include: Write What You Know” Mark Twain; “Write what you know, leave out unnecessary words, and don’t do it to be famous”. Hemingway and “Writing is how I stay sane. It’s completely necessary” Kathryn Harrison. (Interestingly, as I set down those wise quotations, my ‘AI grammar checker’ suggested changes to all three quotations; which sure tells me something about creative writing and hi-tech in these times!

But creative writers can be a funny lot, and, even,  a tad opinionated. In my view, to be of any value in terms of words about creative writing, we need the support of scholarly brains and education to make the journey worthwhile by taking us away from “mere opinions” Also, it is not all about clever people writing  – or being otherwise creative – in an academic environment; no, it is rather about the relationship between creativity, imagination and ordinary people, folks like us, seeking to express ourselves.

Hence,  I was very drawn also to “Rhyme and Reason”: …“The relationship between creative writing and mental well-being is the subject of much debate and is often founded on conjecture and supposition …. This study … Involving adults who had all been users of mental health services and were involved in a creative writing group in the community…

… Firstly, there was a tension between the cathartic expression of thoughts and feelings and the production of quality writings and, secondly, the notion of stigmatisation as a result of being a user of mental health services emerged….  …. indicated a covert relationship between creative writing as a product (rhyme) and its therapeutic by-products which affect an individual’s mental well-being (reason)”.

For me, finding context is an essential part of most things and, certainly, that extends to creative writing itself. Even in my short time of playing in this particular field of dreams, computers and the www et al have changed, utterly, the environment and have thus also shifted context.

Austin Valenzuela, Bryanna Licciardi and Amy Fredrickson at  Study.com offer us; What is Creative Writing?: “The invention of the written word, sometime around 3200 B.C., launched creative writing with the recording of stories like The Odyssey and tales of Norse gods. Over time, the stories morphed and the skill of storytellers improved as well. …… Oral storytellers have been using elements like voice and personality to entertain and convey human experience. But what is creative writing? Although the craft has taken many forms from the poem to the novel, the core purpose of conveying human experience remains….. The dictionary defines creative writing as writing that displays imagination or invention. Creative, artistic writing uses words to convey emotion or feeling. One must use imaginary scenarios invented by themselves. Rather than being limited to academic or technical subjects, …. creative writing uses elements such as character development, plot, and the lyricism of words to share the author’s emotion with the reader. Academic writing is different in its essential purpose because it does not allow the author to share emotion. Good creative writing does this best…. ”.

Meanwhile, Andrew Cown’s views on the topic of creative writing itself include;  “The last twenty years has seen a rapid expansion of Creative Writing in UK Higher Education, with an accompanying shift in the teaching and conceptualisation of English Studies. The growth of the discipline follows the pattern of its prior emergence in the USA, which begins with a questioning of its academic credentials, proceeds …… through a period of sudden and exponential growth that provokes a further questioning of its academic credentials, and eventuates in a reformed understanding of its relationship to other disciplines”.

For those amongst us who doubt, both, themselves and or their abilities to write; in his own words, the critic and writer DG Myers offers this comfort “Literature is simply good writing—where ‘good’ has, by definition, no fixed definition”

“Literature is just the writing that arouses the impulse to preserve it and pass it on…”  and   “…. why aren’t our novelists bringing Americans together…..”?

On the same topic, Barrett Hathcock offers us; “Literature is just the writing that arouses the impulse to preserve it and pass it on. (I call that the “canonical impulse.” Canons are inseparable from literature. To call something literature is to start a canon.) “When an inability to stay interested in Sappho lasted longer than the parchment she was copied on,” Hugh Kenner says, “the poems of Sappho were lost.” There are many reasons to keep something from being lost, however.

These many reasons cannot be contained by a list of genres…., by distinguishing fiction from non-fiction (because there are whole literatures, of which Jewish literature is only one, to which this distinction is an utter stranger); nor by “privileged criteria” like sublimity or irony or artistry or “stylistic range” or “bravura performance

Being a very great admirer of the man and in particular his “Creation” I was, inevitably and utterly, taken by the perspectives extended by: “Pauls Toutonghi when he saw a sign in a San Francisco book shop: THE FOUR SADDEST WORDS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARE; GORE VIDAL IS DEAD….. and was immediately provoked into reflection. At a time when the “political rifts” between Americans are “both deep and intransigent….. why aren’t our novelists bringing Americans together? What our politicians seem incapable of doing, the novelist does in his writing on a daily basis:

The novelist is comfortable with the cognitive dissonance created by considering two opposing points of view…. . — good novelists — are ceaselessly imaginative. They have to be. They are always considering opposing views and possibilities; they have trained their imaginations to voyage into the bleakest places, to voyage into the territory of the irrational and the wildly passionate….”. and in terms of telling and recognising the truth in all our creative endeavours,…

“(Descartes” stipulated that he would ‘accept nothing as true which I did not clearly recognise to be so’; he would reject as false anything that might have the least ground for doubt ).

I find such research humbling but also immensely liberating. What I think to be interesting about these voyages of mine since my MA, is that, at one level, I was able to better enjoy the love of books that has been with me since before I was ten years old.   But, whilst my work has never, and will not ever, reach the heights at which these minds dwell, it has helped me in every corner of my life; this continues to startle me when I consider that my MA was undertaken, albeit it with the connivance of others,  and very late in life. The fact is that it has, without doubt, helped me heal – mentally, physically and spiritually since the trauma in the Himalayas caused me and my wife to reshape our lives and out of that came my creative writing.

Thus, I leave you with this thought: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Maimonides, who also told us ‘that all of Jewish law aims at two things: the improvement of the body and the improvement of the soul’  (though, in truth,  it’s a bit odd that I should quote such a source now, given my time in Arabia and present thoughts as to Gaza and the West Bank,  !!advert warning!!: try half of a chapter from my ‘Byzantium Inheritance’….)  (more about this on my Book Shelf under Home, theCafe Society. Writers Bloq).