G.A. Ghanshyam Iyengar
Professor of English
Govt. M.L. Shukla College (Bilaspur University, Bilaspur) Seepat, Bilaspur (C.G.)
495 555
Creative writing is not just a matter of practical mastery, but of intimate emotional identification between subject and word – something that cannot be acquired by schooling, reading, or elegant conversation. [David McCutchion. As qtd. In Indian English Poetry: Critical Perspectives. – Jaydipsinh Dodiya. Sarup & Sons, 2000. 27].
Creation is sublime for it transcends and elevates ordinary mortals to the heights of the divine. Creative writing is an expression taking flight on the wings of imagination and steered by the able guidance of art. For any one aspiring to be a creative writer, the foremost criteria to be fulfilled are: wide range of reading, writing, keen observation and profound mode of expression. The choice of genre depends entirely on individual preferences, familiarity and knowledge of the nuances required. Every learner in his/her English language class had to do creative writing as a part of the learning process. Even outside the realm of education there are various people who write. But not all of them can be called creative writers and even few can be referred to as writers of any stature.
The conscious mind is the editor, and the subconscious mind is the writer. And the joy of writing, when you’re writing from your subconscious, is beautiful – it’s thrilling. When you’re editing, which is your conscious mind, it’s like torture.
– Steve Martin
Inspiration is spontaneous and the resultant expression overflows with the shades of that inspiration transformed through imagination. But true and great art is never the consequence of an instinctive impulse; it requires perseverance and refinement through conscious and consistent efforts of the writer. So torture it might be but editing is a necessary and important part of the creative process. But it should be kept in mind that it is never to be a part of the writing process at the very outset. Editing comes later as the finishing touches to a painting.
In every age, there have been particular genres or themes that have gained more prominence than the others. If plays were the dominant genre in the Elizabethan age then fiction/novel were more popular in the Victorian age. Even in themes, we can clearly distinguish a certain preference in certain periods of time, like the importance given to Nature and related themes during the Romantic age.
Creative writing in English in India had a late flowering, and owed its inception to the introduction of English education by the British. Beginning from its initial stage of imitation it has now emerged as a distinct form expressive of the underlying Indian ethos, culture and expression. Since its initiation creative writing in India has undergone through various stages of development and transformation.
Earlier writing was done in close affinity to the European models of writing that were the sources of inspiration for the newly emerging writers in English. The influence of the Greek and English classics gave to the works of the Indian artist, the colouring and shades of the European form.
The perception and expression of the Indian English creative writers were through the Eurocentric models of art.
Writing under the influence of the great Romantics like Wordsworth, Byron, Keats and Shelley, the renditions of verse were traditional and sourced from Western convention and classics. Creative writing in the past was thus traditional and followed the conventions of the English classics with which the pioneers of Indian English writers had grown up. Poetry was written in confirmation of the English poets and their poetry.
Why hang’st thou lonely on yon withered bough? Unstrung for ever, must thou there remain;
Thy music once was sweet who hears it now? Why doth the breeze sigh over thee in vain? Silence hath bound thee with her fatal chain; (Henry Derozio “The Harp of India”)
The above lines very evocatively evoke the imagery drawn by Shakespeare in Sonnet 8.
Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly? Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy. Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly, Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy?
This was the initial stage of imitation that was followed by themes that were Indian but a treatment that again echoed the English model. With the arrival of poets like Toru Dutt, who though imbued in the Western tradition and education, was still an Indian at heart and returned to her roots; through her poems.
“Hark! Lakshman! Hark, again that cry! It is, it is my husband’s voice!
Oh hasten, to his succour fly,
No more hast thou, dear friend, a choice. (Toru Dutt “Lakshman”)
Even where we take a different genre into consideration like the first Indian English novel by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, it is clearly visible the influence of its British counterpart. Thought the setting is in nineteenth century Bengal and the author draws an authentic account of the social milieu of that period, yet the characterization of a strong female character represents a beginning of a new India of the future, while the language employed reveals strains of a language borrowed from the British. “Woman, deceive me not. Canst thou? Thou little knowest how I have watched thee; how from the earliest day that thy beauty became thy curse, I have followed every footstep of thine…” (Monday, January 24, 2011. Rajmohan’s Wife: Bankimchandra Chatterjee http://lifewordsmith.blogspot.in/2011/01/rajmohans-wife- bankimchandra-chatterjee.html)
Creative writing is not just scribbling down a few lines on some fancy but requires dedication and perseverance. It requires a balance of emotions and thought, rendering the personal into the universal. In the early renditions of creative writing by the Indian writers, there are visible clues of European influence and imitation but they are richly imbued in the writers’ attempts to create in a language that is strange to the land and the ethos.
If the early writers were expressing themselves within the shade of colonial perception, they were also striving to come out of it. In their endeavour to break free of the colonial shackles, they undertook one of the most significant phenomenons of all colonial history working towards a postcolonial future. In fiction a new beginning was made by writers like G.V. Desani who
molded the colonizer’s tongue to suit the native utterance. “I write rigmarole English, staining your goodly godly tongue, maybe: but, friend, I forsook my Form, School and Head, while you stuck to yours, learning reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic.” [November 29, 2007.All About G.V. Desani’s All About H. Hatter in The NY Sun, by Hua Hsu. http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2007/11/all-about-gv-de.html]. In the employment of themes there is a steady growth towards the native culture and expression. In all forms of creative writing, poetry or drama or fiction, there is a tendency to source inspiration from the local rather than the colonial. If Sri Aurobindo’s plays like Rodogune or Perseus the Deliverer, are Elizabethan in their making and have Greek mythology as their sources, then his Vasavadutta was modeled on the plays of classical Sanskrit playwright Bhasa.
Every gem of creation no matter to which school of thought they confirmed or were sourced from evoked the nuances of great art, representing the universal themes of love, music, romance and emotions that were subtly and creatively given a literary expression.
The social conditions pertaining to the period of independence seeped into the literary creations of the writers. Apart from drawing up the picture of Indian life and characters, Sarojini Naidu for instance painted a word picture of her ideal and the leader of the Indian masses, giving him attributes that depicted his divine appeal for them. In her poem “Lotus” written for Mahatma Gandhi, she thus gives an expression to her ideal:
O mystic lotus, sacred and sublime, In myriad-petalled grace inviolate,
Supreme o’er transient storms of tragic Fate, Deep-rooted in the waters of all Time,
Writers like Mulk Raj Anand brought in a wave of social realism into the realm of Indian English Fiction. Creative writing thus became an expression of the common man’s life and problems: a depiction of the social realities and prejudices. Language incorporated the Indian way of life and utterance with the inclusion of Indian mode of expression and terms. In the poetry of Nissim Ezekiel there is the emergence of the individual self -“I went to Roman Catholic school, / A mugging jew among the wolves.” (“Background Casually”), as well as the assertion of the individual– the Indian with his unique Indian English and his own native usage of the language. Like Anand, Ezekiel also reflects the reality of a common man along with his limitations and frustrations.
I am never neglecting my responsibility, I am discharging it properly,
I am doing my duty,
but who is appreciating? Nobody, I am telling you.
(Nissim Ezekiel “The Railway Clerk”)
A significant feature that evolved with the evolution and development of the creative writing was the gradual strengthening presence of the female voice. Transforming from the earlier subtle expressions permeated in tradition and conventions, the voice gained momentum during the national movement and later independence. The beautiful feminine expressions of love in Sarojini Naidu as “Tell me no more of thy love, papeeha, / Wouldst thou recall to my heart, papeeha, / Dreams of delight that are gone” (“A Love Song from the North”), gradually transformed into the bold and often raw and crude expression of physical love in the writings of poets like Kamala Das.
………….. It was not to gather knowledge
Of yet another man that I came to you but to learn What I was, and by learning, to learn to grow, but every Lesson you gave was about yourself. You were pleased With my body’s response, its weather, its usual shallow
Convulsions. You dribbled spittle into my mouth, you poured Yourself into every nook and cranny, you embalmed
My poor lust with your bitter-sweet juices. You called me wife, (Kamala Das “The Old Playhouse”)
A trend that is not confined merely to the women writers; physical aspect of man-woman relationship finds a prominent representation in the writings of contemporary writers to the extent that they have eclipsed the delicacy and tenderness of love and mutual relationships. The physical, the mundane and the routine find a frequent portrayal in the writings of the contemporary creative writers. Every genre be it poetry or fiction, has turned towards sensationalism rather than sublimity in expression. If it is the description of an afternoon journey in the train by Gauri Deshpande (“A Lunch on the Train”), to the visualization of the physiognomy of the male and female body (“The Looking Glass”) and the pathetic life of the people from the fringes of society (“The Dance of the Eunuchs”) by Kamala Das; the representation of the contemporary dilemma of alienation and fragmentation in the fiction of Namita Gokhale, Shobha Dey or Bharati Mukherjee; the fury and frustration, the disillusionment of the common man in Salman Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh; creative writing has emerged today in varied hues and shades. It is a vast body of writing that defies confinement in one definite description of its meaning or features. In fact contemporary writers like Salman Rushdie or Girish Karnad have amalgamated and fused together the different threads of influences working within the Indian creative genius. Weaving together the heritage of myth, tradition and folk lore, these dynamic creative writers have evolved a unique blend of the Western influence and the Indian tradition.
Cultures and societies change and evolve through time and this is aptly represented in literature. Subjects, themes and language that were earlier considered as taboo are now used quite openly and without much ado. This particular feature explains the common usage of slang, regional expression and words, open description of man-woman relationship in terms of physical and many a times casual relationship, individualization of the writer’s voice and so on.
Creative writing includes imagination, literary awareness and knowledge of genres and their nuances, constant practice, novelty and most importantly creativity. However recently it seems that creativity is fast disappearing from the realm of creative writing. Today, when publishing has become a flourishing business, catering to the demands of the market and dancing to the tunes of monetary music, anyone can claim to be a writer. Many works of writing of negligible literary value find a platform to be launched as works of literature. There is a medley of writings claiming to be literature but without the presence of a corresponding yardstick to compare and judge their worth and value in literariness. In their attempts to be realistic they either lose their imaginative appeal or overdo their element of imagination to an absurd degree of improbability. Creative writing is an expression of the individual voice but it is also a representation of the multicultural, multitudinous world of complexity and chaos. The fragmented, disjointed perception of life and reality is best reflected in the free verse of contemporary world that employs personal symbols of representation, and the non-linear, fragmented narrative of
contemporary fiction with their depiction of dissolution of the diverse realms and de-structuring of the accepted norms of truth and reality.
Rushdie had said, “. . . the novel is about a world in transformation . . .” (Colin 68), and this can be applied to every form of literary endeavour. [Colin, McCabe. “Interview: Salman Rushdie talks to the London Consortium about The Satanic Verses”. Critical Quarterly. Vol 38 No. 2 Summer 1996. 51-70.]. Literature being a mirror to society, portrays the changes. When older genres have undergone transformation, there have been experiments in form and content that has resulted in the emergence of new genres. Chik Lit is one such genre that represents the modern, contemporary urban woman. Written by and representative of the city bred, educated, career oriented, urban woman, the genre portrays professional women, trying to strike a balance between their career and family. Wikipedia defines the genre as addressing the issues “of modern womanhood, often humorously and lightheartedly.”(file:///D:/Chick%20lit%20-
%20Wikipedia,%20the%20free%20encyclopedia.htm). Not considered as belonging to the same literary stature as works of other mainstream and prominent authors, Chick Lit however enjoys wide readership amongst the young generation of female audience, whose life, problems and issues it depicts. Bollywood Confidential by Sonia Singh, Imaginary Men by Anjali Banerjee or The Zoya Factor by Anuja Chauhan fall in this category of writings while the popular and highly successful novel Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat, is a fine example of the campus novel- a genre that recreates the campus life of students at the universities.
A haven for amateur creative writers and even the serious ones, blogging is the latest genre to have emerged from a happy culmination of a need and desire for creative writing and the internet. Their popularity on the rise, the genre is democratic in character, and though not much literary value might be attached to their content, yet it cannot be denied that it provides a fertile ground for future creative geniuses to emerge and evolve. An expression of the individual author, it is a platform for all kinds of writers, and allows the authors to interact with the readers, thereby giving it a dialogic form.
Creative writing draws extensively from intuition, close observation, imagination, and personal memories. One of the chief distinguishing characteristics of creative writing is a playful engagement with language and innovation. Creativity is a trait that cannot be taught or coached. One is born with the creative genius that can only be perfected and refined with training. It is like the raw diamond that only needs the expertise of workmanship to bring out the sparkle of magnificence hidden within the piece of rock. Creative writing is an expression of creativity that requires perseverance and constant practice. It is an instinctive impulse that some individual’s are born with. There is hardly any conclusive evidence as to the formal education of William Shakespeare, but the creative genius that he grew up to be can never be denied or forgotten. Creative writing is an expression of imagination co-mingled with the art of articulation, literariness, experience, observation, memory and perception.
Creative writing in English in the past was a result of the colonial experience, freed by the growing realization of the native identity and feeling of national consciousness and paving its way into the brightness of the luminous present, wherein it matured into its own, evolving and transforming into ever new modes of representation through changes in language and themes employed, and branching off into novel and innovative genres of expression. In the present it has out grown its adolescent years of rebellion, representative of its confessional mode and has now given scope to the portrayal of social and psychological realism, and a revelation of the inherent and deeper truths of life hidden behind the surface nature of things.
Someone had rightly commented that there were civilizations that had existed without inventing the wheel but there were none that had no stories to tell. Every culture, society and individual yearns to give a voice to their existence and self – this they strive to do through creative writing
– which is a reflection of who we are, what we are and what we ought to be and can BE.