Emulation thoughts continued...

I received a comment on my last entry that I thought interesting enough to write another entry on. This may help explain my thinking more, and clarify my issues with emulation.

As part of my evolution/growth as a writer I needed and wanted to emulate other writers. It's not that I wish to copy other writers but that I wish to understand how craft works, and the only way to do that is to emulate the craft of other writers. I've lost none of my own voice in this process. I've become much more deliberate.

I understand this, and I don't really disagree with it. Actually, I spend a hell of a lot of time reading things that I like asking myself "What is it about this specifically that I like?" This is also true with music. I listen very closely to everything going on with the music I listen to in order to find what it is that I like and don't like, and why. Harmony, rhythm, melody, composition, timbre, form, structure, lyrics, tone, etc... In fact, I would consider myself to be nearly pedantic in how I approach analyzing writing and music.

You have to ask yourself why you write every single line and word the way you do. Purpose!

This, I guarantee, I always do. At times, I realize that something I have written isn't worth putting effort into revisiting or touching up at all because I could never get it to resonate with me, but when I feel that resonation I could spend hours and hours and hours on one or two lines in a stanza. I could spend hours deleting stanzas, rewriting them, deleting them again, and rewriting them.

For me, rough drafts are passion and purging. Revision is purpose.

I agree here, and this is where my lack of interest in attempting to get published is holding me back from going through all of my old poems to revise them in a doubly meticulous way.

Anyway, when I taught writing I often gave emulation assignments. Most students found it less intimidating than beginning from scratch, and often they found the emulation enlightening. But a few always resisted on the basis of "originality." Sigh.

The problem here is what I attempted to allude to in my previous post. Originality is not really possible, not that it ever was. But I think part of us must believe in its existence, so that we feel unique enough to live out our lives and to push ourselves creatively. I understand also that there is a difference between gaining skill and substance. As with music (writing music and poetry are no different for me, except they are different mediums and I have different talents in each), you need skill to be effective. If you pick up a guitar and can only awkwardly pluck one string at a time or know only three box chords, you will be very limited with what you can play. Not to say you can't play a lot of different things with three box chords, but that skill limits you.

Skill-building is always, let me repeat - ALWAYS - a practice of emulation. Analysis is a different kind of process, and one in which exercise will not help you. Understanding that my lifelong struggle is substance - paricularly in living in the absurd, it is no wonder that I've gotten hung up on the analysis side of things.

At some point, commitment and the need to raise myself up to my highest standards demands that I do everything I can to be the best these things I do, regardless of what they are. It seems as of now, writing is my next frontier.