Process vs. Product
A few thoughts from someone trying to focus on the former this year
I haven’t made any real resolutions for the new year—over time, I have learned that making small and sustainable changes gradually works much better for me than pledging to do anything with fervor, so I have spent the first week of this year thinking about how I want to approach process in my creative life this year.
READING AND WRITING
I have a tendency to read in patterns. Suspense books or novels that aren’t too taxing when I’m busy or stressed (many of these on audio), more complex novels or deep dives into favorite books when I’m focused (I’m about to start my yearly re-read of Moby Dick with an eye toward studying the syntax more closely), always lots of poetry, and the occasional non-fiction book that catches my interest. I know myself well enough to know that I will not break these patterns anytime soon, but I can adjust them.
For example, I am making a concerted effort to read more contemporary poetry in translation this year. One of my hopes is to use these stretches in my reading process to help push me into new processes for my writing. To draft and try things with an eye toward what they can teach me rather than pushing to make everything a published product.
To that end, one of the things I did this week was to read my first poetry book in translation, Hackers by Aase Berg, translated by Johannes Goransson. It wasn’t available from the library in book form, only e-book, which made an immediate impact on my process.
Reading on the computer meant I had to take notes, and I enjoyed immediately putting my brain into student mode.
Since the book was in both Swedish and English, I could read the poems in English multiple times in a sitting.
Honing in on certain parts of the text made me interested in the author/translator’s syntax and use of repetition.
This lead to me making grammatical maps (mad-lib type patterns) from parts of Hackers that I then used as writing exercises, substituting my own words.
This lead to some strange and unusual writing that is different than anything I would normally produce. Will I do anything with it? As it is, no. Are there things that I liked about the drafts that I may pull out to use elsewhere? Definitely.
VISUAL ART
In a similar way, I started the year by working on a piece to try some new techniques and relearn the patience of making one change at a time. (I’m not good at that part…) So, I started with a scrap of cardboard. Not precious. Didn’t cost anything. Can easily be recycled. That immediately took off the pressure. I had three techniques I wanted to try.
Using watercolor over acrylic.
Using collage and painting together to create effects.
Using a black- line outline techinique I had tried on a small piece that interested me.
I decided I’d focus on trying to abstractly capture the myriad of blues and grays I saw in Antarctica, creating a sort of imaginary landscape. I moved back and forth between steps one and two multiple times, sometimes liking the results, sometimes not. After a week of doing a small bit each day, I decided today it was time to outline, but I could not find a fine black Sharpie, only a thicker one. No big deal. I used what I had.
Here is the progression over 8 days. Do I like it? Parts of it. Will I continue to fiddle with it? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Might it end up in the recycling bin? Likely. Did I learn from what went well and what did not go well? Definitely.
And the most important part of both of these activities/exercises/whatever you want to call them? I enjoyed the process.
A Process Prompt for You
Try the grammatical copycat exercise I mentioned. Choose a passage of text that you think is different from your usual style that intrigues you. (I recommend perhaps a short section of prose or 10-12 lines of poetry.) Make a “mad-lib” type pattern for yourself. I usually leave articles or conjuctions as is, and if a writer repeats the same noun five times within a paragraph, I will give the noun a number to indicate its repetition. An example of the first sentence of this paragraph might look like this:
Imperative/ the /adjective/ compound adjective /noun /pronoun /past-tense verb.
Once you have a pattern, put it away for a bit so that the original work isn’t immediately present in your mind. After a while, go back to the structure and fill it in, using your own words. You could focus on a topic you’ve been writing about a lot, or just use the first words that come to mind.
When the exercise is done, read through it to see if anything stands out to you as surprising or catches your attention. See what it has to teach you.