Three things I learned:
1) The importance of identy to Merri Lisa Johnson. One of here proffesed interests was "long walks on hard beach of relentless self inquiry." This theme was stressed both in her book and her commentary; her character and herslef were on a constant quest to capture just exactly who they were, and I really admire that.
2)Strategies to writing tragedy. She provided three strategies to aid this type of writing: be smary and well reasoned, find humor in any scene, and leave tedious realism behind. This type of writing is often very hard to pull off without sounding self indulgent or pity seeking, so I found this advice very helpful.
3) Reinforcement of the idea "write what you know". Johnson described how her character was partly created out of expierience of her own nueroticism, which showed in the text; the character was very realistic, and deep. I have always known this puiece of advice, but hearing a real author tell it definetly helped drive it home.
Two things I want clarified
1) To what extent was her novel auto-biographical ? She mentions that her character is influenced by her, but I wondered while she was reading whether it was a near manifestation of her.
2) What exactly is "borderline personality disorder"? Johnson described how it influenced her writing, but never got into detail about what it actually was. I was very interested in learning more about this disorder; it was one of the main reasons i chose that specific reading.
Final Question
1) What does it take to be a writer ? I realize this is very general, but hearing the strugles this author had with depression and identity, among other things, made me think about whether she thought it was worth, and if she would choose the same career again. I think a succesful answer to this question is one of the main reasons I am taking this class.
Jorden, I like the strategies for writing about tragedy section that you mentioned. I think this is a huge challenge for writers -- to avoid that melodrama and sentimentality but not to be too cold or distant!
ReplyDeleteI hope we can successfully answer this question that you have! I think we should talk about it as a class. I wonder if it's a question that really has an answer, sometimes, but I'd love to hear what you and your classmates think!