Self-expression and writing?

[ScintillaMyntan]

I have a book, Creating Poetry by John Drury, that specifically says in the first chapter, "Poetry is not self-expression," and suggests amateur poetry written for "self-expression" is usually kind of trash. That made me have to think for a bit. Don't we often think of writing as expressing ourselves?

In fact, I'd pulled out the book because I was thinking I'd try writing a poem inspired by my own recent problems, and sure enough, my attempts were pretty bad. My impression of them was they came out as very straightforward, even if I tried to use metaphor. Like the reaction would have been, "ah, okay, it's a poem about that, which you went through, yes" without really producing feeling.

What role, then, should personal emotions have in fiction and poetry? Does your writing have a self-expression component, and how has your life affected what you write? How can a writer make use of personal emotions while still writing well?

I think I get what Drury means. My journal entries are self-expression and they take little effort to write, being just a bunch of private thoughts and feelings I dump out, and surely they're not appealing. Fiction and poetry are different in that they're art first. We write them primarily to produce solid pieces of art, which might express emotions along the way and derive inspiration and power from emotions, but that's secondary.

I've often felt like I 'should' write something that consciously expresses the feelings I have at the time, but in practice, I don't think I ever have, except a little bit as a teenager, badly. Maybe I've figured out some level that it's not that easy to go directly from how I feel to a decent piece of writing. I think it's actually something I could be getting lots more use out of, but I'd have to figure out that proper balance of expression and artistry and get over quite a bit of embarrassment and fear over writing something so personal. I think it'd also be beneficial for me, more as a person than as a writer, to write some fiction that touches on issues I have trouble dealing with.

I'll close with another quote from Creating Poetry that I found looking up 'emotion' in the index because surely he had more to say on it than that: "Many of us begin writing poems because we need an emotional outlet. That kind of writing may have therapeutic value, but a real poem has to embody an emotion — giving it life, articulating it in gripping words, transforming it into a vivid experience the reader can undergo — not just express an emotion. Wordsworth says that poetry springs from emotion 'recollected in tranquility,' but it takes a special effort to cultivate that tranquility, to channel our emotional flood tides."

[doublejay9]

I'm motivated to write a blog post in response, Scintilla. So first, thanks for the inspiration. Second, I hope a rough draft of my thoughts will suffice for now.

I see Drury's point, but I believe his assertion is misleading. I believe it's also sent you down a rabbit hole of devaluing your emotions' utility in our craft and the concept of art as self-expression as a whole. I want to create a bottom to that hole and maybe redirect you onto a different path.

When I first read your questions, my initial responses were...

1) A foundational role. They're the foundation.
2a) Of course it does. It can't not be self-expression.
2b) This 4-year-old blog post is still relevant.

When I say "art can't not be self-expression", I'm stating it as a rational observation. Art must necessarily be self-expression because we can't ever escape from our own perceptions and truly see things from another's perspective. We can definitely sense what someone else is feeling in a particular moment, and we can imagine ourselves in another's position, but neither is completely accurate. We can empathize, but that doesn't automatically mean we understand why and how that emotion was triggered. We can sympathize with another's plight, but we are still facing it as ourselves, not as them. Looking inward, I'm sure you'll find that your experiences, troubles, and emotions are the soil and atmosphere that nurture the internal forest that is your imagination. And your imagination is where all of your writing comes from. If the forest metaphor is tripping you up, I suggest reading this blog post too for a clearer explanation.

So how on earth am I going to reconcile the above with Drury's point -- one I said I agreed with? I think you hit on where Drury's issue with self-expression lies.

I've often felt like I 'should' write something that consciously expresses the feelings I have at the time, but in practice, I don't think I ever have, except a little bit as a teenager, badly.

It's not the expression of feelings that creates bad writing. It's trying to do so consciously when they're fresh and vivid that leads to "kind of trash" work.

I'm not a poet, so I can't really speak to the accuracy of Drury's final point: how poetry embodies emotion. I'm only prepared to talk about fiction. I've come to think of it as portraying the universal patterns that shape human life. They are reflections of the journeys and changes we go through on our way to maturity -- be it a psychological state, a spiritual state, or both. It's the universality of these patterns that makes them resonate with so many readers.

But just because I'm using universal patterns doesn't mean my unconscious imagination won't slip in details that resonate with me personally. Main characters who are socially anxious, are responsible for a younger sibling, come from a military family, or spent their childhood moving from town to town are all ones I can't avoid even if I tried. Personal symbols can crop up in your stories as easily as they do in your dreams. One for me is fire as a symbol of healing. Even those symbols that only appear relevant within the context of a particular story may have connections to something more universal and profound.

I'm currently developing a story centered on fairies. Naturally, iron being a fairy's bane is a traditional element of folklore I'm incorporating. I also came up with the idea of Damascus steel having unique properties. Like iron, it is immune to fae magic, but unlike iron, it is a material that fae creatures can safely handle, thus they normally regard it like any other type of steel. For the characters, Damascus steel (and the items forged from it) is their means of escaping captivity and later symbolizes their alliance and shared destiny. On a deeper level, you could argue that I'm using Damascus steel to reflect my belief in an objective, immutable truth that goes unnoticed in a chaotic world but nevertheless exists.

This is the point I'm trying to make, Scintilla. There's no need to be embarrassed by your desire to transform your experiences and struggles into art. Continuing in this assumption that your emotions are worthless to your writing is counter-productive (and that's putting it politely). All I'm cautioning you on, all that I think Drury is cautioning poets on, is trying to produce something so close to reality right now. If you need to get something off your chest and onto paper, do so, whether that's a journal entry or a "kind of trash" poem or story. But then don't share it widely (at least not immediately). Leave it alone to compost for weeks or months. You may find elements of it unconsciously popping up in your other work, or the plot may reincarnate with new symbols, characters, and setting. That fairy story I talked about before? It's actually built on a meta-plot my muse is currently chewing on that wants to incarnate three different ways. (Possibly a fourth, if I let its ambitions run wild. Why it's forcing me to work on them all simultaneously though...)

So to conclude by answering your third question: make use of your personal emotions by letting them appear unbidden and in unplanned ways.

[RAVENEYE]

Whew, I think this is a very important question, and one every serious author should probably meditate on as they take their writing to the next level.

I'm not sure how easy it's going to be for me to express my thoughts on this, since my feelings/thoughts on it are abstract, but! here goes nothing.

What role, then, should personal emotions have in fiction and poetry? Does your writing have a self-expression component, and how has your life affected what you write? How can a writer make use of personal emotions while still writing well?

Since all of our writings come from us, I think every story/poem starts with a feeling or idea that sparks strong feeling. At least, I HOPE the writer feels strongly about their topic or they'll be bored stiff and the reader will intuit it. AFTER I had gone through a spiritual/faith crisis, I wrote about a character dealing with a faith crisis--SO THAT I was viewing the experience from a wiser distance and remembering the feelings in a moment of tranquility. I did not write about it while I was going through it. How can clarity come out in the storytelling if the author is still muddled inside the crisis? (This is writing what you know. Not writing what you're going through.)

But that differs from the story/poem being ABOUT the author's feelings/emotions. In good writing instruction books, we are warned to not infect our characters with OUR thoughts, feelings, reactions, but to ensure the character feels/thinks/behaves how THEY will for the benefit of the story. It's tiresome and just gross when a reader clues in on an author's mistake of channeling themselves through the character, generally the hero or some tortured, angsty protagonist. That boils down to catharsis and generally makes for emo melodramatic storytelling. Blech.

I can see how this is more difficult when it comes to poetry. Unless the poet is writing about a world event or a person not themselves or some other "outside of self" thing, then naturally the poem will "be about" the poet. I think this is why I despise reading song lyrics. The music conveys the emotion, so the words don't have to. The words themselves get away with being shallow, angsty, angry, etc, while the music does the actual poetry work on behalf of the songwriter.

So thanks for this question, ScintillaMyntan. it's good to reflect on what makes a moving poem effective. When I think about the poets I turn to, they generally don't say "I feel sad and nobody understands me." That's angsty teenage poetry, an outlet for feelings, stick it in a journal and leave it there. Instead, they describe the moment that made them feel this way, so that we as readers can feel those same emotions rise in us--for ourselves. That's when we say "Yes! I've been there! This poet just said what I couldn't say myself."

Since Wordsworth was used as an example, when he wrote about daffodils on a lakeshore, he was remembering in tranquility a moment of wonder and beauty and contentment. He never says outright that he was filled with wonder at the beauty of the daffodils. He just describes the daffodils so we feel the wonder of them too.

[Alatariel]

This is a deep question. I haven't ever really considered emotion to be a negative thing in writing poetry, but rather a necessary component. I do like the end of your post where you clarify by adding poetry must embody an emotion, not just express it. I find that to be VERY truthful. When I write in the middle of an emotional moment, it's definitely more of a stream-of-consciousness type thing rather than a calculated coherent thing. When I read poems written in the midst of emotional turmoil, I find them less relatable. The author needed to write it, it can be therapeutic in the moment, but will it embody the emotion or simply express it? I find the latter to be true more often than not.

For our works of fiction (I rarely write poetry, for me it's not therapeutic), I find that certain themes find their way in without planning sometimes and that's due to my personal world-views and experiences. I've come a long way from my teenage years where the main character of my story was 100% me and her BFF was 100% my BFF in real life. But I did that for fun and to express my emotions. Now, I feel my work embodies emotions because I allow my characters to be themselves without my direct influence. There have been times where I write something my character does or says then stepped back and realized that would NOT be their response but mine. I have the ability to see that because I'm not writing from an emotional place.

So even though I think all art is an emotional outlet, I think the best work comes with distance.

[ScintillaMyntan]

doublejay9, no, I get it. I didn't think Drury meant we must prevent any personal stuff from leaking into our writing or something; like you said, our experiences and values are inextricable from what we even think of writing. I more meant to discuss consciously using our personal lives in our writing and whether therapeutic writing could ever have artistic merit too.

Seems like what everyone's saying is the key is distance: if you're going to produce something worthy, you have to work with your emotions, shape them deliberately— write something you think is good, not write something that tells the reader how you feel.