a couple of days late...

Rebecca McCallum (remc@uhura.cc.rochester.edu)
Sun, 11 Jan 1998 15:51:30 -0500 (EST) 

Date: Thu, 08 Jan 1998 14:00:23 -0600
From: Susan Pearson <susanp@ou.edu>
To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu
Subject: Re: On My Disgusting Attitude (Was Good Will Hunting Before I Was
So
 Disgusting About It...)
Message-ID: <34B53057.13B3@ou.edu>

>>There's a
>> general feeling, I've found, that writing is *easy* to do. That
>> everyone's not only got a novel in 'em, they've got a damn *good*
>> novel, too. People have no respect for what an really huge achievement
>> a good piece of fiction is anymore ...
>
>I think that this is an interesting point and something that I have
>noticed a lot while taking writing workshops. Think about the prose that
>you read on a day to day basis. Most of it is good even if it is the
>paper or a novel or whatever. I think that we read so much good prose
>that we forget how damn hard it is to write the stuff. Sit down and try
>to write a story. Where to begin? What to include? What to say? It seems
>natural when we see Salinger or Ginsberg or Matt Damon or whoever do it
>and we sit around and critique it without ever trying it ourselves. Why
>is it that we learn to critique as critics and not as writers? I don't
>know what kind of tangent I'm getting on, but there it is.

Your post sent my mind on a slightly different tangent.  I've always felt
the existence of certain paradoxes on the subject of creation and
criticism. Well, maybe not paradoxes exactly, but certainly opposing
viewpoints that coexist.   
First - I feel that more people should have an understanding and
appreciation for how amazingly difficult it is to produce a work of real
beauty and genius (whether in literature, music, art, or any other field). 
Some people are born with creative gifts that make art look easy (Mozart
is, of course, the usual example of this), and others spend a lifetime
agonizing over every word or brushstroke.  But no matter what, the works
that they create don't just appear every day, and not everyone can
duplicate them.  ON THE OTHER HAND, I don't think anyone should be
discouraged from trying.  I grew up playing classical music in an
atmosphere that has way too much admiration, nay, idolization of
composers, and consequently felt that mere mortals like myself should
never even dare to try to compose something.  It wasn't until late college
that I tried my hand at it and found out - it's not impossible to do!  Of
course I'm not going to become the next Beethoven or Brahms, but the
satisfaction of hearing music that I WROTE MYSELF is more than enough
recompense for my efforts, and an experience I would never want to have
missed.  I imagine it's much the same for writers seeing their work IN
PRINT and PUBLISHED.  So how do we balance those two things - teaching
people to appreciate the difficulty of producing those works of genius we
love, yet at the same time encouraging everyone to try it for themselves,
if anything, just for the joy of creating?
                     
- Rebecca