[Marguerite Van_Cook]

in reply to: Maggie_Response to WT Chapter 7 #873

What fun! This is an interesting idea to think about, when do excursus serve us and when do they not? I too like chocolate and bright, shiny things, so I wonder how much of a good thing is permissible before we over do it. Lovely idea to play with!

[Marguerite Van_Cook]

in reply to: Joanna Siwiec Response: WT: Ch. 7, Revision #872

“My fear with revising has always been what the chapter calls “rewriting the life out of a piece” (pg 100). Becoming distanced from my writing, or even guarded from it, happens in my revision process at times. If I come back to a raw piece of work a few weeks later, I find myself trying to “camouflage” it because the writing may make me uncomfortable.”
This is such a great point. I was just talking with Joshua Belknap about “hiding” things in /by/with one’s writing.
I use the term “blanketing”, as in “security blanketing”…I do it with too much decoration and description and I suppose we all do it in particular ways. It is interesting to see how you notice this in your own work.

[Marguerite Van_Cook]

in reply to: Megan H – WT: Revision #869

It is the word “kind” that resonates for me too.
“What are my motives for story-telling? When making decisions about the writing, which are for truth-telling and aesthetic? Where do these concerns meet and where are they opposed? These questions are usually the source of my writing “angst”…
You almost answer your own question, but it seems you might be hanging on to the “angst” even as you ask the questions.
I think it requires you treat yourself with the same kindness and generosity that you extend to your students. It seems clear that you hold yourself to an impossibly high standard going in to your writing.
My advice is to draw a smiley face on the top of your first draft, which might introduce the right amount of levity to get started. And then remember us, your classmates, telling you “just write, it doesn’t matter, you’ll edit later” (: …

• This reply was modified 11 years, 4 months ago by Marguerite Van_Cook.

[Marguerite Van_Cook]

in reply to: Joshua's response to WT: Ch. 7, Revision #868

Joshua, your comment about “unlearning the end product” strikes me as one that is tremendously significant to your progress. As I reflect on your writing throughout the semester, it becomes clear to me that since your first highly structured poem and throughout you work, you have been on a journey which tries to get at the same story. Each time the narrative seems to come closer to clarity, even through I suspect that you didn’t quite know where you were headed as you started. While there are so many levels to your stories, not the least of which is generational, certain aspects keep returning. They are the hard ones that you have bravely shared.
Your point about helpful work-shopping is well taken and goes further than I had first thought. We learn from each other in ways I hadn’t anticipated. In reading your work and noticing the breaking the fourth wall devices you use to address the reader,perhaps to deflect some things (what things exactly is another story) I noticed that in much the same way, I deflect uncomfortable things by using “descriptive decorations.” Ironically, perhaps we want to be seen without being heard, because the truth is too shocking to say.
So I take away much from you. I am left questioning the idea of over writing and underwriting. Thanks, Joshua.

[Marguerite Van_Cook]

in reply to: Lindsey – Felt Sense Response #717

“That said, I find this type of awareness ephemeral and elusive. But I have hopes that Sondra’s techniques may change this outcome.”

I’m with Patrick on this one. Absolutely, a patriarchal system that privileges concrete knowledge is particularly challenging for women to overcome.
I’d like to offer two citations, the first from Derrida about translation and another from Helene Cixous who speaks about women’s language:

“Babel”: first a proper name, granted. But when we say “Babel” today,
do we know what we are naming? Do we know whom? Consider the survival
of a text that is a legacy, the narrative or the myth of the tower of Babel:
it does not form just one figure among others. Telling at least of the
inadequation of one tongue to another, of one place in the encyclopedia
to another, of language to itself and to meaning, and so forth, it also tells
of the need for figuration, for myth, for tropes, for twists and turns, for
translation inadequate to supply that which multiplicity denies us. In this
sense, it would be the myth of the origin of myth, the metaphor of metaphor,
the narrative of narrative, the translation of translation. It would
not be the only structure hollowing itself out like that, but it would do so
in its own way (itself almost untranslatable, like a proper name), and its
idiom would have to be saved (PSYCHE, Inventions of the Other, Volume I, 191)

I shall speak about women’s writing: about what it will do. Woman must
write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing,
from which they have been driven away as violently as from their
bodies-for the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal.
Woman must put herself into the text-as into the world and into
history-by her own movement.
The future must no longer be determined by the past. I do not deny
that the effects of the past are still with us. But I refuse to strengthen
them by repeating them, to confer upon them an irremovability the
equivalent of destiny, to confuse the biological and the cultural. Anticipation
is imperative (The Laugh of the Medusa, Trans.Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen, 875).

Either, or both of these passages could be unpacked in the context of “felt sense” and I think that the comments about post- modern thinking in the essay are the starting point for tremendous investigations. In felt sense, can we— do we— is it possible— to move beyond gender? If we are bringing the unspoken or unspeakable into language that lives within a sensation of “rightness” are we not freed from enlightenment binaries and also postmodern logo-centricities? I’m using the “rightness” within specific range here.

• This reply was modified 11 years, 5 months ago by Marguerite Van_Cook.
• This reply was modified 11 years, 5 months ago by Marguerite Van_Cook.

[Marguerite Van_Cook]

in reply to: Joanna Siwiec Response: S. Perl: Felt Sense #715

I thought that your experience of taking written exams is very insightful and indeed, very useful. Many of us experience a horrible anxiety when we are actually very well prepared, but this tension leads us to write below our capabilities. I think this is a very good insight and one that I can use. During my last exam, written in French, I moved from a state of terrible strangles language into a fluid complexly structured sentences. I knew there was a shift and couldn’t stop to think about it due to time constraints, but in hindsight I had tapped that felt sense. I’m going to work with this for my last exam and I think it will be really helpful.
Thank you for pointing out this particular usage. I also enjoyed you ritual preparation for writing. It seems to be a triggering mechanism. I wonder if we can actively rehearse this in preparation to enter that other space?

[Marguerite Van_Cook]

in reply to: Joanna Siwiec Response: H. Malinowitz: E-Love #557

Hi Joanna,
Interesting take on an adulterous tone!
I thought this comment of yours raised a great many ideas, “however, after seeing how Harriet sets up the second piece of the text, I do think that that needy and naive voice was necessary to show us how voice is manipulated to get to where one wants to.”
I agree that she certainly demonstrates manipulation and I wonder whether she doesn’t push us too far away for its use to be effective as a writing strategy? I never feel as though she takes responsibility for her actions, her tone is all a bit cute.
I hadn’t really thought too much about where confessing to lying and manipulating might lead. It raises a lot of questions about how one might write the narrative of one’s flaws. What kinds of flaws make for interesting reading and what flaws, announced or otherwise, push us away. After all, we love some literary villains, what does that tell us?

[Marguerite Van_Cook]

in reply to: Patrick James Response: WT, Ch 6: Workshopping a Draft #361

Perhaps one of the most challenging things for a writer in the work-shopping process is to remain silent while others are making comments. Yet that enforced silence is actually a protective mechanism in itself, which lets the painful moment pass organically. Often someone steps in for the writer and moves the conversation into a useful and less painful place. It is so important to establish a safe environment where each writer can feel valued and secure.
In the past, I found it really useful to have people simply repeating back what they thought I had said, because it really showed where the weaknesses were in the basic plot. This followed by the iteration of what people thought worked well, which is useful for guiding one into new directions and providing a sort of soft landing for the “what doesn’t work so well” category. What are also helpful are the insights one gains through the critiquing of others.
Finally, I always find two questions to be invaluable touchstones: what’s at stake? and why should anyone care? As this thread reiterates, we don’t write in a vacuum.

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