My Creative Process in Writing "Always"

I've recently self-published a short story written in 2012 for one of my classes at uni. We were required to write a piece that "held a conversation" with a poem or short story from our readings, and to write an accompanying essay about the techniques we used and our creative process. This is a little baby bit a promotion of the story (here is a link to the download page if anyone is interested in the final product; it's totally free) but it's also an excuse for more writing theory!

Anyway, on to the essay (spoilers follow)...

My First Week of (It'sNot)OKCupid

A few of my friends have forged into online dating in the last few years; one is currently chatting with a bunch of guys who all sound really cool, another has met a guy in person and had him be as great there as he was online, and another two are now in serious relationships with guys they met on RSVP—one around six months and the other over a year now. I’ve always been pretty reluctant about the idea of online dating though, even if I’m more than happy to meet new friends in the same way. Honestly, I’m still not sure I’m ready to give up on the possible Meet Cutes that happen in real life, that make telling your future children how you met their father a cool story, but in a moment of curiosity and, ok, plain nosiness on Monday, I decided to make an online dating profile. I figured I wouldn’t actually use it; I could just have a bit of a look around and see what online dating was about and maybe come back once the horror set in of hitting 25 single when, at seventeen, I was so confident I’d be getting married, if not already building a family. 

Guest Post: A Sad Place Indeed

The fate of your local independent bookseller

A closing down bookshop is a sad place indeed.

At the time of my writing this, New Edition in Fremantle has just closed its doors. (Sure, it will be opening again in eight weeks, in a new location and under a new owner, and a rose by any other name, right?) To the avid book-buyer, it’s another year, another closure. We all remember the scenes a few years back when Borders and Angus and Robertson both closed their doors almost simultaneously, and like vultures we descended on the carcasses to buy up the remaining stock at a fraction of the retail price. It was the same when Dymocks in High Street closed, and again when the Elizabeth’s Second Hand bookshop closed next door to it a few months after. For the people of Perth, statistics on bookstore closures are beginning to play out before our eyes.

 

Joan of Arc and Queen Isabella of France: Impact on Women in Society

Joan of Arc and Queen Isabella had a significant impact on women in the Later Medieval English society. Whilst both Joan and Isabella came from French backgrounds and were indeed French, they both influenced and had a part in changing England. In this essay I will be looking at the events that they participated in and how it affected England and the later consequences for the women and any social changes that occurred for women of their period. The essay will also be looking at how they broke the gender stereotypes and limitations placed on them.

Repetition in Writing

In his 1933 essay, “One Hundred False Starts,” F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed that, as writers, we write about two or three experiences in our lives that we constantly disguise and rework. The quote is reproduced in full in Matthew J. Bruccoli’s Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald:

Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves - that's the truth. We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives - experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time anyone else has been so caught up and so pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before.

Then we learn our trade, well or less well, and we tell our two or three stories - each time in a new disguise - maybe ten times, maybe a hundred, as long as people will listen.

(1981)

Fitzgerald has made three assertions in this statement: first, that authors must repeat; second, that we only have two or three stories to tell; and third, that authors write those same stories over and over in different disguises. In order to fully address each of these, I will split my argument into three corresponding parts. First, I will discuss repetition present in the writing of both professional and ‘new and emerging’ writers. I will then agree using Freud’s repetition compulsion and the role of repetition in imagination, that authors are compelled to repeat ourselves. Last, I will argue that though authors may have many moments in their life worth writing, they have only a few experiences about which they need to write.