Bart Westgeest

Kategori: English

  • Natalie Goldberg – Writing Down the Bones

    I can understand why Natalie Goldberg’s “Writing Down the Bones” is a bestseller. It is a inspiring book with a mission: To get people to write as a habit in an honest and spontaneous way. She advocates the practice of freewriting – that is to sit down and start filling up that white paper. Don’t think but trust yourself and let your pen do the work. In her opinion the best writing is done this way – messages from the heart – unfiltered by ego or too much intellect.

    The book is divided into 64 short chapters and most are – as Natalie says herself – written in one session. In these many chapters she deals with many aspects and problems one might encounter when creating the habit of writing as a act in itself. It was interesting to read her approach to deal with the feelings connected to it – the voices inside of us. To beat one’s worst criticizer – oneself – is the key to good writing.

    This approach of training writing skills by continual practice for the sake of practice might not be for everyone, but maybe it should be. I think that every writer or would-be writer at least should try it.

  • Organize your Stories

    While playing a game of cards it struck me how important it is to organize well. First it looks like the cards don’t combine and that I have no chance of winning the game, but when I start to sort them it suddenly becomes clear how my chances really are and what I am missing. So it actually changes my perception of my chances and possibilities and makes me feel far more secure and optimistic. It helps to get a good flow into the game.

    It is obvious that the same is true for my writing and that is why I spend a good deal of time tagging, sorting, editing and collecting the pieces, stories and poems I have. I made a map with stories that I think are finished and stories I need to work on, and there is a third map with stories (and ideas) that didn’t make it to the second “almost done” map.

    In an attempt to catch things I might have deemed “unworthy of any map” in the first place I implemented the habit of going through a random page in my journaling software (There is a shortcut for it) at least once a week.

    It is satisfying and motivating to know more or less precise what the actual state of my writing is.

  • Just Write

    When words come quickly and my fingers barely can keep up with the stream of thoughts I usually don’t stop to look up a word in a dictionary. My English vocabulary isn’t too big unfortunately so I sometimes use words in three different languages. My own, that of the country I live in and English. In this way I keep the flow when freewriting.
    When editing I translate the foreign words into English and this helps me to build a vocabulary of my own.
    Sometimes these non-English words express something in a certain way that can be hard to translate and that keeps my writing personal.

  • Short Story Writing Articles

    http://www.literature-study-online.com/creativewriting/index.html is a useful overview of the basics of the technique of writing short stories. The 16+ articles, written by Ian Mackean, are short and to the point and form a good introduction.

  • Welcome to the Internet

    I read in the The Writer’s Handbook 2008 the article The Globalisation of Poetry by Chris Hamilton-Emery about the world of poetry but found it confusing as a lot of articles can be these days when dealing with the new situation after the internet got as popular as it is now. The writer seemed to have a very chaotic view of it all, apparently feeling that a lot is lost and going down (tradition, unions, order) and that there on the other hand now are overwhelming possibilities that one should get involved in and deal with in order to get the most out of it. I didn’t read much about a natural flow of wanting to get things out and interact or a simple joy for the possibilities and an eagerness to learn.
    On the other hand I don’t know the classical, pre-internet structure of building an audience, publishing or getting published, so I don’t miss it and it therefore doesn’t bother me if it would disappear or diminish.
    Personally I don’t think that much has changed, there are more possibilities but that is not per definition entirely positive. It is up to the individual to make the best out of the situation. In the end one just has to write good and interesting stuff and try to get it out somehow. Who knows what can happen from there. Just like in the old days.

  • Charles Lamb – Old Familiar Faces

    I am slowly going through a book published in Sneek (of all places) in 1887 called: “A Casket of Jewels – selected from poets of the nineteenth century” by E. J. Irving. It contains a small selection of Poems by 42 English and American Poets. As I know virtually nothing of  English or American literature (or any other literature actually) I am reading through it poet by poet to see which are the ones that somehow draw my attention. Today I liked reading this poem by Charles Lamb (1775 -1834):

    THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES.

    I have had playmates, I have had companions,
    In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days,
    All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

    I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
    Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies,
    All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

    I loved a love once, fairest among women;
    Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her—
    All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

    I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man;
    Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
    Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.

    Ghostlike I paced round the haunts of my childhood.
    Earth seem’d a desert I was bound to traverse,
    Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

    Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,
    Why wert not thou born in my father’s dwelling?
    So might we talk of the old familiar faces,—

    How some they have died, and some they have left me,
    And some are taken from me; all are departed;
    All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

    Source: gutenberg.org

    The main reason why I initially got interested in this poem was the fact that it seemed to be honest and timeless. Always keen on finding answers on why, what, how, what for etc. I want to write I was pleased to see that a poem like this could make it into this casket of jewels. Nothing seems to be made up in this poem and it is actually so bare in it’s cry of sorrow that I felt that it was almost inviting an extra strophe in with some more details about place and setting of the writer.
    The line “Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces” sounds adorable self critical to me and with a hint of nature in the next strophe: “Earth seem’d a desert I was bound to traverse” the poem has all my interest.

    I knew nothing about the dramatic background of Charles Lamb, so after looking up the poem on the internet I spent the next our reading the details about his life around 1796. A remarkable story indeed, shining another light on the poem.