Life is a Picture

In my quest to become a writer, I attended a writing workshop last weekend at the SA Writer's Centre. It was entitled "Writing from the Inside Out". Although only three hours in duration, it was a very rewarding experience. As it was a practical workshop, we got to write (what else!) and read the fruits of our labours to the class. Although potentially exposing one's vulnerabilities, this is an invaluable task for a writer, aspiring or experienced. Writing, although an engaging and at times satisfying activity, is essentially a very isolated one. One labours away, waging a war with the blank page and hopes that what emerges from the intellectual wrestling match is something half way reasonable. You never really know though, at least not until you get to the stage of submitting work to a publisher I suppose. The capacity for self-delusion is alive and well in every one of us, and there is always the nagging fear that what may seem flights of rhetorical brilliance at the time, will be little more than self indulgent drivel on re-reading, or worse on reading by someone else.

Be that as it may, it's not really what I meant to say. The theory behind the topic of the workshop was that to write well, we should be able to draw upon images and develop the ability to translate them as settings for our stories. In other words, it's not enough merely to create believable characters, a compelling plot and a well structured account of something (piece of cake though all that is!!), it needs a setting. It is in the setting that we have the opportunity to use what we know as well as what we can imagine. As an exercise, we were asked to bring along photos or images of a scene that meant something to us. Using this as inspiration , we then had to write a short piece in or around or somehow related to this scene.

What I found intriguing about this was how similar it was to painting. It was creating a landscape through words, rather than through the medium of paint. The method practically of course is different, but the creative process is remarkably, uncannily similar. So, for me because I have done some painting, this was an exciting and invigorating challenge.

I don't think you have to be particularly artistic in any medium to appreciate this. The human mind is naturally creative and imaginative and if you just sit and look at a scene, a picture, an image, whether it be a beautiful landscape, a person or a still life, I think you will find it speaks to you. This is of course the great joy of art, our eyes and ears and senses are captured by a skilful writer, painter or musician and transported to another world. It's nothing less than magic.