WHAT IS GOOD IS GIVEN BACK (my ego, super-ego, and id talk about my writing life)

For every great idea articulated by a single individual there are a dozen that take shape in conversation with others, that rise up out of engagements with one’s community. The notion of a writer or an artist or a philosopher struggling alone in a garret to create great art or great thought is essentially a romantic notion. —Barry Lopez [1]

Cafés and a Conversation with Myself

Sitting in the Fehrenbacher Hof café in Portland today, typing on my laptop, gives me feelings of, all at once: freedom, happy singularity, and communion. I can focus on my writing embraced by all the other people chatting, reading, writing, typing, or holding meetings here. And I can eat curried cauliflower soup at the same time.

It is in the nature of food to be shared out. Not to share it with others is ‘to kill its essence’, it is to destroy it both for oneself and for others. — Marcel Mauss [2]: 

Even being ‘alone’ in a café eating soup carries a sense of sharing out, though these fellow diners are not dipping their chunks of bread into my soup, and I’m not sipping that guy’s double latté. Writing in a café feels similar, especially when you can imagine writers all over the city and the world writing while their coffees or soups cool beside them.

It is in the nature of writing to be shared out.

Freedom, happy singularity, communion: powerful feelings for just the cost of a bowl of soup! But of course I need more than the community of cafés, so during my five months in Portland I have participated in five different literary groups/workshops, not all at once, but some overlapping. I have jumped into them because they teach me, encourage me, inspire me. They’ve been my bridge from full-time executive director to full-time writer. They are precious. Wonderful. Valuable. Invaluable. (These words roll easily off my tongue.)

Though … maybe I’m overdoing these groups … perhaps I ought to nix one or two? What if they just feel good, rather than genuinely advancing my work? They take considerable time. How to assess them, and should I continue with them?

These questions have led me back to poet Lewis Hyde’s book, The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World [3]. The beginning of my title, “What is Good is Given Back,” is from the epigraph of his book. He takes Marcel Mauss’s work about gift-exchange and applies it to the making of an artist. Maybe his honest voice will resolve the conversations that have been running through my mind lately, which go something like this:

—“Tricia! You’ve taught writing and literature classes yourself! Why do you insist on putting yourself in the position of perpetual student?”

—“Well it’s just for poetry, really, not for fiction, though I’ll need an editor for the novel when it’s done …” [pause] … “Bev in Nova Scotia is really helpful giving feedback on the novel and the stories, and my husband is a good reader too, and I still do have a lot to learn, despite being 61, there’s always more to learn, don’t you think so?” … [now rushing] … “I certainly think so, though you’re right, there’s not much time, I’m no spring chicken…” [tapering off]

—“Looks to me like your usual prepare-way-too-much procrastination.”

—“Well …”

—“When will you realize that no guru is going to change your life?”

—“Oh for Pete’s sake, I’m just looking for feedback, not a guru. If anything, I interrupt the guru—I mean teacher—too much in these classes, even when I try to keep my mouth shut. But everyone needs feedback…”

—“Just hole up and get the f***ing job done. Take your own advice and shut your mouth, then get the f***ing books done.”

—“Books! You said books! I never told anyone I imagined writing two books at once…”

—“Yeah but I’m your super-ego, so I know.”

—“Don’t mention this to anyone, OK? Because I know that’s crazy…”

—“Your craziness is there for all to see! Do you think you’re invisible?”

—“Shhhhhh, can you keep your voice down?”

And so on… (with apologies for my super-ego’s atrocious overuse of the f word, and for my ego’s lack of, well, ego).

This from my id: being part of a writing community is really important for a writer.

Writing and the Spirit of Giving (a more organized response to my internal heckler)

Mauss noticed … that gift economies tend to be marked by three related obligations: the obligation to give, the obligation to accept, and the obligation to reciprocate. —Lewis Hyde

Speaking very simply, Hyde talks about the “gift” as our talent, and our obligation/yearning is to transform our talent into something worthy of giving back in such a way that it fertilizes its source. So much more could be said about this (and has! read Hyde’s book!), but my interpretation of Mauss’s three obligations as it relates to writing workshops is:

The obligation to give—When someone is really good at something, like the writers who have been life support to me as a writer (and who I’ve named, with links, on this page on my web site—check them out!), it is the right thing for them to share what they know. The obligation to give is an ancient obligation to pass, from generation to generation, knowledge that will be carried on and developed for eternity (or, in the context of this blog post, at least until the last writing workshop ever held in the universe!).

The obligation to accept—I interpret this as accepting the workshop leader’s authority and view of things: while you are with the workshop, as much as possible see the world through the teacher/leader’s eyes. Do the same with your fellow participants. And most important, do the same with your literary ancestors! Don’t be a writer who’s never read William Shakespeare or Gwendolyn Brooks. Accept the gifts your workshop leader and your literary ancestors have laid out for you; be humble before the greatness of those who came before. And then once you’ve done that (or rather while you continue to do this), you are free to think for yourself about what you want to put out into the world.

The obligation to reciprocate— Some of my favourite workshops or study groups are those that involve little (Soapstone for instance) or no fee, but are of a group of people who can organize themselves enough to give to each other, like the “potlatch” that Marcel Mauss talks about, or what we would call a potluck nowadays. You bring the salad, I’ll bring the soup, etc., and we’ll draw on the intelligence and experience of each member of the group. That’s a wonderful reciprocation, and it complements and supports the “reciprocal labor” (Hyde’s phrase) of an artist apprenticed to her craft.

But even in a workshop with a fee, paying the fee is a reciprocal act because it supports the writer/leader’s ability to support themselves and continue writing and teaching. The obligation to reciprocate also includes supporting a positive atmosphere of learning within the workshop, for yourself, your fellow participants, and the leader/teacher. And it includes telling others about the workshop if you think it was of value, to share some of what you learned there, and perhaps to become a teacher/leader yourself in the future.

The three obligations above feel very real to me. And as I look at my evolving annual schedule of some months in Oregon, some in Nova Scotia, I think that a rhythm may be emerging. That is, Nova Scotia is for the “just hole up and get the job done,” and Oregon is for “conversation with others … engagements with one’s community.”

I know that I will write year-round, and that my literary community will continue to develop naturally in both places. But I think every writer can benefit from being reminded to:

• protect your writing time,
• make sure your writing groups are worth the time spent,
• pay attention to each year passing, and how it passes.

A final word to my super-ego

Writing workshops are indeed valuable, but some are more worthwhile than others. Here’s my list of the most needed elements:

1. A leader who creates a clear structure and guides the discussion without pedantry but with authority.
2. Content: reading of the work of superlative writer(s) that informs and inspires the writing of the participants. I’ve been in a few of these lately, with Soapstone, Andrea Hollander, and John Brehm, and I clearly see the difference it makes if the group is reading and discussing good writing as they go. Everyone’s writing moves to a higher level because of the examples being studied. Workshops that focus only on participant work feel narrow and uninspired in comparison.
3. Participants who bring their individual perspectives to the discussion with enthusiasm and energy, but who don’t seek to dominate.
4. An embrace of craft and concrete ways to assess your own work, combined with an atmosphere of creative criticism that is honest and at the same time encouraging.
5. A venue that is comfortable, and even better, visually stimulating (with coffee nearby!).
6. Start on time, end on time.

While it was a long time ago now—probably 1995 or 1996—I once sat in my favourite Portland café, called the Common Ground Café, around the corner from where I used to live, with Lewis Hyde.

At that time I was the executive director of the Alliance of Artists Communities (where my love of artistic communities bloomed!), and he was a speaker at our American Creativity at Risk symposium.

We discussed the symposium, plus I gave him my thoughts on part of a draft manuscript he had shared with me. The manuscript was for Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth and Art. Now that was a gift, that he took me that seriously. And I will never forget it.

NOTES: [1] From a February 27/2018 Facebook post of Barry Lopez’s, taken from “An Act of Citizenship,” a speech Lopez gave to the Texas Association of Museums in April, 2014 [2] The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (Marcel Mauss, 1924, translated by W.D. Halls in Norton’s 1990 edition) [3] The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World (Lewis Hyde, 2007, reissue of Hyde’s 1983 book named The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property).