Tag: #virginiawoolf

• Creativity has no rules: stories of authors who broke the rules of writing and succeeded

  

  I’ve always been skeptic about storytelling courses, first of all because I think there’s onlyone rule in writing: either you can write or you can’t. It’s the same thing for a painter: either you can draw and paint, or you can’t. All the rules in this world can’t teach you to be creative, art is something you can be expert of, but the capability to make a work of art is totally another story, and no one can teach you how to do that. Of course this is just my arrogant and useless opinion, I know.

  Anyway, it happened that, being curious, I enrolled in an online course of storytelling whose aim was to “let me understand how a character could be interesting for publishers.” Let’s try, I said. Let’s see “how a character can become interesting,” let’s see if there are rules. Of course, I think, when we talk about money and publications there should be rules, otherwise there would be much more stories on the libraries’ shelves.

  So, I enrolled. In the first lesson, focused on “what is narration,” I saw all my literary studies, in high school and university, and my two degrees become summarized in some little sentences, and I thought “oh my, there’s much more than that.” Then I thought “and if there’s not, I wasted a lot of money in my studies! I could just have learnt these two sentences and that would have been all!” But then I became polite and kind, and said that, at the end of the day, the amount of information was enough for an online course. There wasn’t enough time to develop the subject, maybe.

  

  Then all the “students” have been asked to write a subject for a possible story. I wrote it. And the comment was “ do not write in first person, and do not address the hypothetical reader. Be outside your story.” And then “you have to develop another character, because it seems you have only one protagonist.” The thing was that I thought of a story in which there should have been only one protagonist. And that I did not want to write in third person, I wanted to engage the perspective of a character inside my story, and the subject I wrote was exactly giving that idea! You could tell me what makes a character interesting, or at least you can try to define people’s taste in some way, but you can’t tell how to write my story. Otherwise it would be YOU to write it. The funny thing was that the initial motto of the course was “you can write whatever you want. There are no rules.” Oh, well, except a thousand you will tell me along the way. I do not doubt that teaching how to write is an impossible task – that’s precisely what I think – but at least in trying to do that you should not contradict yourself.

  So, here are a couple of stories of authors who have been said to write in a certain way and they didn’t’. And succeeded.

  1.

  “Writing is not a thing you should do for a living. You should marry a rich man and that’s all. Writing is not for women.” Something like that was said to Jane Austen and many others before and after her. Well, she never married and became a famous writer.

  2.

  In response of what has been said to me – “write in third person, and be outside your story” – I mention Fitzgerald and his Great Gatsby which is written in first person, engaging the reader, and – hear, hear – the narrating voice is a character of the story! To that I add Henry James’s style – see The turn of the Screw- and also Jane Eyre by Brönte, in which the narrating voice always addresses the reader, and talks to him.

  To me it has been said “you are not the author of If on a winter’s night a traveler by Calvino, in which the author addresses the reader… True. But why can’t I write something like that? There’s a rule which says that I should not write in a “Calvino style”? Or “Henry James style”? Or “Fitzgerald style”? I guess that’s not a rule you can impose me, saying that that’s what will make my character more interesting, not to write in that style. But the teacher did.

  3.

  I don’t know if you have ever read The Malavoglia, by Giovanni Verga. Anyway, he is famous for having invented a new style of discourse which is called “free indirect discourse” that is a sort of direct speech in third person and without markers of report. One should have said to him “oh you’re breaking the rules of grammar here! You should not do that! Bad boy.” Well, in that case we would have lost a masterpiece and a new form of writing. But he wrote it anyway. And succeeded.

  4.

  James Joyce and his “stream of consciousness style.” No commas, no dots, nothing, for us to become crazy reading Ulysses. Someone should have let him know that it was grammatically incorrect? – sarcasm. He did it anyway, and succeeded.

  5.

  Virginia Woolf, not only followed Joyce and his narrative technique – or was he to follow her?- but also broke the scheme of narration, which was supposed to be made by stories of different events and much more longer in time that just one day: think of Mrs Dalloway, instead: the book is focused on just one day. No, Virgi, please, let’s do something following the rules and structure of narration!

  I could mention many other authors here, but my point won’t change: there are no rules for creativity. And I know what you’re thinking: you’re not as good as those authors you mentioned. True. And I was not aimed at making any masterpiece. But judging a work of art is God’s job. If there were rules for artists – ‘cause writing is nothing else but art – we wouldn’t have innovation and we wouldn’t have works that change the perspective of the critic and become masterpieces. What if Jane Austen would have followed the rules? What if Fitzgerald would have listened to the publishers saying that his book would have been better “without that Gatsby character”? What if Verga would have used markers of report? What if Joyce would have kept the commas? What if Virginia would have done the same? Art is not conformist. Art is art. You can’t put art in a cage. You can’t have rules when it’s about art. Because that’s precisely the point in creating: making something different, making something new, to escape from the rules.

  

  26 giugno 2018

  #reading, #stories, #virginiawoolf, #writing, article, author, books, calvino, creativity, critic, fitzgerald, ireading, Libri, LIBRIDALEGGERE, literature, magazine, onlinetraining, opinion, storytelling, training

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• “Datele altri cento anni e una stanza tutta per sé, e la sorella di Shakespeare rinascerà.” – Virginia Woolf, Una stanza tutta per sé

  

   

   

  Nessun libro che parla di donne e indipendenza può essere più attuale di “Una stanza tutta per sé” di Virginia Woolf. Me ne rendo conto mentre a caso, nel giorno dell’anniversario della sua nascita (25 gennaio) risfoglio curiosa le sue pagine. Me ne rendo conto fin dall’inizio, quando la ritrovo seduta sulla sponda di un fiume a pensare a cosa rispondere quando le viene chiesto di parlare di “women and fiction,” donne e la loro relazione con la scrittura. Me ne rendo conto quando, fuori dalle porte di Oxbridge descrive lo sguardo stranito di un uomo che le passa accanto e la vede seduta sulla sponda. Quando vede le porte della biblioteca chiuse alle donne e pensa a quanto sia brutto essere chiuse fuori, e a quanto possa esser peggio rimanere chiuse dentro. In ogni caso, sei sempre rinchiusa da qualche parte, in una condizione o stato dal quale non puoi uscire. Me ne rendo conto ancora quando al college di Oxbridge con Mary Beaton, si ritrova nuovamente chiusa in una stanza, mentre gli uomini discorrono in solitudine di questioni più importanti e di economia. Me ne rendo conto quando ripensa agli effetti della “povertà sulla mente,” e cerca di spiegare per quali condizioni uomini e donne hanno un destino diverso, un’educazione diversa, possibilità economiche diverse.

  Tramite una magica finzione letteraria, Virginia Woolf tratta di temi importanti con la leggerezza di un passero in volo. E spiega come per Mary Beaton (personaggio fittizio) sarebbe impossibile praticare gli ozi altolocati degli uomini, perché sua madre non le ha lasciato abbastanza denaro per essere indipendente. E d’altronde, come avrebbe potuto? Se anche ne avesse avuto l’ingegno, la maternità l’avrebbe frenata almeno per una decina d’anni, dovendo crescere tredici figli e dedicarsi completamente a loro almeno fino al sesto anno di vita, perché “sembra non stia bene lasciar scorrazzare i figli per strada.” E mi rendo conto di quanto sia attuale, se pensiamo che la maternità e la carriera ancora oggi per molte donne sono elementi di difficile connubio.

  E ancora, quando passando una giornata alla British Library, con l’etereo personaggio Mary Seaton si rende conto che le donne sono il soggetto di molti libri scritti da uomini, ma ben pochi se ne trovano di libri, su quegli scaffali, scritti da donne. E, soprattutto, la maggior parte dei libri che trattano della figura femminile sono scritti con rabbia. E  Virginia/Mary, leggendo quelle pagine rabbiose, si infuoca di quella stessa rabbia. E conclude che forse la rabbia deriva dalla paura di sentirsi defraudati della propria autonomia, della propria superiorità. Che quegli uomini che scrivono con rabbia forse partono proprio da quella stessa paura. Non bisogna scrivere con rabbia per essere imparziali e descrivere una situazione, dice Virginia/Mary. Perché la rabbia non è imparziale.

  E poi ripercorre la storia, e pensa al perché quegli scaffali siano spogli di scritti di donne. E se Shakespeare avesse avuto una sorella, diciamo Judith, quella sorella sarebbe potuta diventate poetessa come il fratello? Prima di tutto, le donne non potevano ricevere un’educazione al pari degli uomini. E persino ai tempi della Woolf era difficile che potessero essere ammesse all’università. E se anche Judith Shakespeare fosse riuscita, come il fratello, a scappare nella grande Londra e a tentare una carriera in teatro, il suo unico destino e la sua unica possibilità di sopravvivenza sarebbero stati un matrimonio e dei figli. E così che in questa triste storia la sorella di Shakespeare si toglie la vita.

  E analizzando i grandi classici dell’ottocento, Virginia Woolf inneggia a figure come Jane Austen, le sorelle Brönte, George Eliot, che non avendo una stanza tutta per sé potevano aspirare solo alla scrittura di mirabili romanzi, non trovando abbastanza concentrazione per la poesia. E tutte insieme le donne che impugnano la penna dovrebbero portare un fiore alla tomba di Aphra Behn, la prima coraggiosa che osò dedicarsi alla scrittura.

  E poi Virginia Woolf analizza un finto romanzo contemporaneo, della finta Mary Charmichael, che certo non è brillante come le sue antenate, ma che magari, tra cento anni, se avesse soldi e una stanza tutta per sé, potrebbe diventare geniale.

  Allora secondo quale prospettiva bisogna guardare al rapporto uomo-donna, e alla possibilità del loro ruolo nella società? L’androginia, risponde Woolf. L’equilibrio mentale che porta l’essere femminile e l’essere maschile ad accettarsi l’un l’altro, ad unirsi in un’unica prospettiva di uguaglianza, per essere geniali. E ancora, mi sembra un discorso contemporaneo, se pensiamo alla campagna femminista HE FOR SHE, che sembra proprio riferirsi ad un suggerimento “androgino.”

  Alla donna, dice Virginia, chiudendo il suo saggio, servono cento anni, una stanza tutta per sé, dei soldi e la possibilità di alzare la sua voce senza che essa venga soffocata dalla società. Cento anni, del tempo. Una stanza tutta per sé, l’indipendenza. Dei soldi, la libertà economica.

  Cento anni sono passati. Donne, raise your voice.

  29 gennaio 2018

  #books, #lettura, #libri, #recensione, #scrittura, #stories, #unastanzatuttaperse, #virginiawoolf

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