When we talk about fiction and also poetry, there's what it's about. And then there's what it's about. And so recognize sort of conceptually what it is that you're trying to do. And that'll help you with a description that will help you with the images. If this is about separation, then maybe you want to talk about distance in the room. And once you start building in that idea of distance, it will make sense to you a little bit more, and the writing will flow a little bit more naturally. So if something's not working, stop to kind of pull back and say, What's the idea that I'm trying to get across here? What's the theme that I'm trying to get across and when you figure that out, he'll help you figure out the little individual details and everything will click a little bit more.
Creativity can sometimes thrive in adversity. Isolation can lead to deep thought, but not always. This is random acts of knowledge presented by Heartland Community College. I'm your host, Steve fast. Today, we're talking about creativity in the Coronavirus and Demick environment, particularly creative writing, we'll discuss some tips on tapping into the creative process while sheltering in place, rearranging your schedule, or even just looking for a way to make the most of the urge to write.
I'm Zeke Jarvis, I'm a Professor of Creative Writing at Eureka College. And I also teach in continuing education program at Heartland Community College, I have a few books that have already been published, and my first novel will come out in May. And I have a collection of short stories, which will also come out in October.
So what you teach for Heartland is creative writing, right? Yeah, I teach
creative writing, I have taught introduction to creative writing a couple of times and was teaching before we sort of got interrupted by everything writing for performance.
Well, let's talk a little bit about that we're recording this in the middle of the COVID 19 pandemic. And that's changing the way that we do everything with work. And I wonder, does a change in situation, especially if you have to be sheltering at home? Does that help people be creative? Does it give them new motivation to be creative? How do you see that process? And how would you advise somebody that wants to tap into, for instance, some creative writing desires they have when it comes to using this particular situation?
Yeah, so I'll say a couple of things about that. The first is, obviously it differs a lot from person to person. But definitely, I think we have chunks of time that are a lot different than we had before. And so recognizing when those chunks are productive, and when those chunks are not productive, I think is actually really, really important to the process. Prior to this, a lot of the writing I got done would be when I'd be sitting in my car, waiting to pick up my daughter from school. So I might be there for a half hour. And if I can crank out a page and a half hour, then that's by the end of the week, five pages that you've done. But you also don't want to sort of pressure yourself to feel like well, now that we're on quarantine, I have this free time. So every moment I have free time I have to be writing, it's okay to recognize like, Look, I'm just not focused, right? In this minute, I have a lot of anxiety, I just watched the news. And I'm not sure when things are going to open up. So now is not the time I want to write something. If I tried to write a story or a poem, it's going to be about a frustrated person stuck inside. And nobody's gonna want to read that. So I think that recognizing when you're productive, in a sense, isn't that different from any other time, but, you know, you might have more pockets. Now. I also think that it's okay to and I do this a lot when I'm driving to and from work, for instance, I'll be working in my head through a particular scene or a particular plot point. So that when I sit down, it comes fairly quickly. So when you're doing dishes when you're wiping things down, because you want to make sure that every surface is clean, rather than sort of let yourself be taken over and anxiety if you have an idea kind of be working through it and kind of have like an imaginary dialogue going but in between characters, then when you sit down, it comes more quickly. And so you feel more motivated to keep writing.
So really do a little of the work ahead of time practice before you sit down to do it.
Yes, I think that our minds work on a kind of inertia. And so if you can start with some sort of momentum, it makes it much easier to keep going, I believe. So if
you are somebody that in the course of this situation, you can create some structured time for yourself. Are there any tips that you give people other than planning ahead, like you say, on using that structured time and finding a way to maybe get an exercise or get a habit or get some sort of process in place that you can follow on a regular basis?
Yeah, I do. This is true for both creative writing and academic writing. You have to understand that your first draft is not going to be particularly good and the reason for that is you're still figuring out what it is that you're trying to To do so before I said, kind of recognize when things aren't productive and not productive on a first draft, let yourself just kind of ramble and go with the understanding that you're going to trim a lot of this out later. And then when you recognize that now isn't the time when I'm really going to be generating new writing, go back to the stuff that you've generated and kind of pick through that. So have a good sense with your schedule of like this is when I'm going to be able to be a little bit more creative, and there's going to be a burst of putting stuff out. This is stuff where I'm going to be kind of tired, but I'll be able to skim through and say, I need to cross this out, I need to cross this out. And in terms of exercises, what I tell my classes is any creative writing exercise is essentially you give yourself one limitation, and then you try and work around that. So one exercise that I saw in graduate school from one of my professors was you have to write about somebody and you can only use one syllable words. Once you do that, it's really tough, but you think very, very carefully about every single word that you put down on the page, and you sort of start to pay attention to the voice that you craft. Another might be where something that I do a lot is having two characters argue, but it's in a public place. So I can't say like, I can't like start screaming at somebody, the fact that we're being watched right now we have to kind of be very careful and speak in a sense in code, which gives a subtext to the dialogue. So it's not that either of those exercises are perfect, it's more that you recognize I'm gonna give myself one hurdle that I have to get over. And in getting over that hurdle, I will become creative because I have to figure out a way around it. So you know, don't look for the perfect exercise, come up with something which can provide a limitation. And I know it seems counterintuitive in some ways, but that limitation is exactly what gets you going. Something you
said earlier, as you talked about getting through that first draft, what have you, given your students advice wise on dealing with something they know, frankly, isn't what they want in that draft process? How do you help them get from that first step where they're not happy with what they've come up with to the next step where they're improving it?
Yeah, so I'll say two things about that, too. The first is, I tell my students to keep what I call a cannibal file, which is if this stuff is just not salvageable, I'm going to take out, you know, the liver or the lungs, or whatever it is, and I'm going to put it in this file so that later on, there's a really good image in that draft, the rest of the draft wasn't working, but that image or that character, or that dialogue, I will be able to put into something else. So don't be afraid if it's absolutely not working to take what was working and ditch everything else. The other thing that I will say is when we talk about fiction, and also poetry, there's what it's about. And then there's what it's about. And so recognize sort of conceptually what it is that you're trying to do. And that'll help you with the description that will help you with the images. If this is about separation, then maybe you want to talk about distance in the room. And once you start building in that idea of distance, or you want to talk about different barriers that people see, it'll make sense to you a little bit more, and the writing will flow a little bit more naturally. So if something's not working, stop to kind of pull back and say, What's the idea that I'm trying to get across here? What's the theme that I'm trying to get across? And when you figure that out, it'll help you figure out the little individual details and everything will click a little bit more.
Do you find sometimes that you yourself as a writer, or maybe some of your students might be writing something and they don't know what it's about? They're going somewhere, something in their brain is moving along, but then it reveals itself later?
Absolutely, yes. Like I say, on the first draft, you're still kind of figuring out what you're doing. And I guess the term that I would use, or the distinction I would use is theme versus what's often called conceit. So the conceit might be, you know, I'm going to write about the world's greatest juggler. And that's sort of what my story is about a very literal level. But then I start to realize that juggling is like managing many different things at the same time. And so I'm going to have a scene where this juggler is performing. And then I'm going to have a scene where the juggler is trying to work through their home life. And I'm going to have a scene where they're worried about their finances, and I'm going to pop back and forth. And it's not until I've sort of written some of the performance scene in the side seam that I start to get. Okay, this is what I'm trying to do with this story.
So let's talk a little bit about reasons why people might write obviously, for you, you're doing it on a professional level, you're having books published a novel stories, and not everybody that might come into one of these classes will reach that level, they might want to or they might not want to, what are some reasons that people might want to write even if they don't have a publishable goal?
So sometimes you might want to write I had a very good friend who just would sort of write poems for like friends, weddings, or as a kind of memory. And that's really nice. You know, the people who receive those poems sort of recognize something about themselves and even more than that, they recognize that there's somebody He's paying attention to their lives and caring about them. And so that's a very, very meaningful app. So that's one good reason to write even if you never have any interest in publishing. Another reason to write is that I believe the writing process is reflective. And so like we just talked about a moment ago, if you write this thing, and then you have to figure out what am I really writing about, it makes you think a little bit about your own life differently. And so you start to think about like, well, in what ways am I managing my juggling? And what ways am I managing the different parts of my life. So that in the process of figuring out what a story is, or what a poem is, hopefully you have some insight into your own mind works. And then if you are writing for publication, so my novel is called the three of them. And my daughter has cerebral palsy. And as I was looking through kind of Barnes and Noble and Amazon for different novels that featured characters, main characters with cerebral palsy, it's pretty slim pickings. And so, you know, I sort of felt like this is a good opportunity for me to write something where there's going to be a representation that there isn't a whole lot of right now. And in particular, a lot of times, if there is representation of characters with CP, they're in a wheelchair, very, very limited movement. And my daughter is much more ambulatory, she has, without getting into too much detail hemiplegic, which affects one side of the body, as opposed to just the legs. And so there are a lot of things where I just felt like this is an opportunity to tell an interesting story, but also kind of inform readers like, this is what cerebral palsy can look like, in a much different way than we typically see it in pop culture.
For this book that's coming up. It's a young adult themed novel, it seems like when people are writing in what is called the category of why a, it seems to be the only thing that really makes it that is that they have a protagonist that is about that age. Did your daughter Inspire? And how did you come to this story? You mentioned that, obviously, you called upon a bit of your personal experience for it. But did the story come to you first? Or did you seek out the story because of your own personal experience.
So this kind of ties back to the idea of about the story centers around three teens with different disabilities. And they also have paranormal abilities. And the reason why I introduced that was, I've been there for my daughter from the moment she was born. And so I've sort of watched her life. And yet, I still don't fully understand like what the physical experience is, just because I am able bodied, I'll never fully understand what it's like for her like when we're cooking, or when we're doing other things, and she has trouble grasping with the right hand. So the idea of embedding paranormal abilities as well is this idea of sort of how they talk to people about their experience, how they let some people know and other people not know, and sort of this difference that other people can't totally understand, but can have some kind of passing understanding of. And so I wanted something where theoretically, you could get at that experience of there's something that's different about me from others. There are pros to that there are cons to that, but they can't totally understand. So I was sort of doing my best to represent what her experiences with the understanding that I have limitations, even though again, I've kind of been there. And so I did things where like the type of occupational therapy that she experiences or that she has to do that gets kind of embedded into the characters experience. But to get to your other question about what makes ya different. I think a lot of times, in some novels written primarily for adults, you can be a little bit slower. And you can have sort of more lush descriptions, you also can have like a very meandering plot, or a plot that doesn't totally exist in the reader as to form those connections. Definitely, like you said, it's usually young adult characters, and sort of their experience and their types of concerns. So you can't have your characters worrying about how they're going to pay the mortgage. Even though I worry someday is about paying the mortgage, you have to have it be things that like the young adult readership can tap into. And so again, that idea of sort of identity and how identity gets formed, I think is there and the character is and I think will be something that hopefully I'm going to readers will be able to tap into
talk a little bit about the process you went through in writing this book, how many drafts for instance, yeah, I think that people that are interested in the process of a publishable piece, I kind of wonder how long it takes everybody to do it and what they do, how long did it take to write how many drafts did you have to go through?
So I did two starts to the novel that I threw both of them out. But those are valuable because I sort of figured out like what the characters were and what I was trying to do in the first place. So even though I didn't use those, they were still helpful. Once I figured out what I was doing, I kind of put myself on a program of get through two pages. per day for the rough draft. And if you do two pages per day, it'll be a little over three months, you'll have 200 pages, about three or four months is what it took me to produce. Once I really started going the initial draft, I then set aside I finished that up, I think around like an April and then set it aside for most of the summer, and towards the end of the summer came back to it. And the reason for that is once you produce something, what you were thinking when you first wrote it is in your mind. And the problem with that is your readers don't have access to that. And so you'll sort of if you cut a scene, have that in your memory, and you won't remember, wait a minute, the readers never seen that. So I can't include details from that. So it's really important to set your work aside for a little while and then come back to it. And I probably spent like another three months cutting an awful lot. And then once I cut an awful lot having to build stuff back in. So all told it was probably around about a year from first being kind of focused in what I was producing to have something that I felt like I could shop around. It's also the case, though, that once you submit to a publisher, they'll accept it. But they'll ask for little revisions here and there. Usually, it's not like, you know, add in a wacky next door neighbor or something ridiculous like that. It's usually something which makes sense in which demonstrates they get what you're trying to do. But it's often the case that publishers will ask, can you polish this or that? So a little bit more polishing after was accepted, but not too much, actually with the novel. So yeah, it was about a year between when I sat down sort of seriously. And when I felt like it was ready to shop around
your publisher is rogue Phoenix press. And is this the first novel you'll have published? first novel? Yes. Did they send you a copy of it yet?
They sent me the digital copy. And they had me working with the cover artists a little bit before that. So that was kind of exciting, too.
So you're looking forward to getting that physical copy bound in your hands.
Yes, absolutely. It's always exciting when you get that first job.
Well, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us today. Hope you're getting a lot of work done while we're in our shelter at home situation. Although you never know, maybe maybe it's a little bit harder to find that quiet time. If you've got a lot of extra people at home too.
It's tough to find quiet and focused on Absolutely.
Zeek Jarvis teaches at Eureka College and he teaches creative writing continuing education classes at Heartland Community College, his novel, The three of them is available from Rogue Phoenix press. If you're interested in other interviews about writing, being creative, history and more, please check out our other random acts of knowledge podcasts on Apple podcasts, audio boom, Spotify, or wherever you found this one. Thanks for listening
