So writing...

So John lent me his creative writing book. To read. Because we agree I'd totally enjoy a creative writing class, but a) there's no time in the schedule for it and b) I'm not sure if I have anything to write about. Writer's block, yeah, I guess that's it. Actually, I think it's more laziness. And afraid that I can't write as well as I used to.

Kind of like my drawing skills. I want to draw again. But I've actually tried to draw things I used to and...yeah...they aren't as great anymore.

Wondering if that's because I do too much of tv & interwebs that my creativity kind of died. Or if because I'm not so fearless to explore myself anymore.

But anyway...on this creative writing book. I picked it up, held the laminated paperback covers in my palm, spine up my index finger, and let it flop open. OH BUT OPEN IT PROPERLY. Okay fine, so I thumbed to the front. It's a used book, highlighted by someone else and even a blue post-it with page numbers and exercise numbers that never got removed. The pages stick together. It's a good sign, at least to me, to see a book used and kind of roughed up, dogeared. Means it's at least served its purpose, y'know?

So I'm thumbing through the table of contents and thinking about how this is a book for a class and seeing the blue post-it with the exercise numbers and it got me thinking. Is this a textbook? Because I know I almost never read textbooks in order. Oh sure, I probably read the sections in order, but they're sections. You read one focusing on that one and remembering what happened before, but you should already KNOW what happened before. You can read sections out of order and it doesn't really spoil any part of the book. Textbooks read out of order can actually focus my mind, because I focus on what's important, instead of swimming around the sea of HUH for two chapters until the authors finally get to the goddamn why already.

But stories...those you've got to read front cover to back cover. Yes, pay attention to past chapters and look out for premonitions, but you read it in order. You read it out of order and it's just not the same. Like knowing Frodo gets out of Mt. Doom with Sam at his side before you read how Gollum gets Frodo to ditch Sam at the Stairs. You read the ditching, calmly, because you know Sam's not gone forever. But if you read it in order, you might have actually cried, heart-broken, like I did, because it's a crisis in the whole strength of friendship journey for Frodo & Sam.

So...is this creative writing book a textbook or a story? I'm supposed to grow in a technical sense, I suppose, refining my art through writing more things and more kinds of things. But am I not also supposed to grow, develop, my person, my voice? So should I read the creative writing book in sections, to feelinglessly improve my technique? Or should I approach it like a conversation with a friend and go as we go, maybe skipping ahead if he gets an idea or coming back when we remember that one trick from before.

I kind of want to go cover-to-cover, and read it all the way through.