Wednesday Writing: Originality

I talk to a lot of writers and other artistic types about what it is that makes the difference between someone who is merely competent at an art and someone who is outstanding and makes people think--that is what it is all about. We call it "originality," I think, but I often wonder how useful it is to tell a writer who wants to improve to be more "original." Maybe not much.

Let's say you have a student who wants to be a writer and all of her verse ends up sounding exactly like a poor imitation of Dr. Seuss. Or even a good imitation of Dr. Seuss. Both are equally unsellable. Why? Because only Dr. Seuss gets to be Dr. Seuss. A student might argue, saying that Dr. Seuss was a great writer for children and trying to imitate Dr. Seuss is just like an art student going through Europe, imitating all of the great artwork there.

Yes, it is like that. But that is what an art student is doing. Learning the craft. An art student will not sell copies of the greats as original work. Such an artist might be hired to produce artwork to hang on the walls of wealthy people's homes who want to pretend they have the original or in hotels or restaurants. It's certainly a living. But no one will ever go up to the imitation and think of the art student's name. No one will ever imitate the art student herself. Because that is still student work.

What is strange about our current system of learning about art is that those people who are most likely to succeed in the classroom are actually the ones least likely to succeed outside of the classroom. And vice versa. The student who cannot for the life of her sit down and bother to imitate The Mona Lisa, but instead creates a completely different piece of art that is a critique of that one, but that no one else would understand without some help, is actually the far more interesting artist. Also the artist most likely to get an "F" in art class.

We Americans say that we value originality above all else, and maybe we do in some way. But I'm not sure that it is in any way that is useful to the artist in terms of surviving to keep creating art. The sort of originality that we value is more like outrageousness, with an underlying dose of mediocrity. That's the way I see it, anyway. And maybe that's all that originality really is. Or rather, maybe there really is nothing that is truly original. I'm willing to accept that. I'm not sure that I like the sort of pretend originality that forgets to draw attention to its roots, but that might be a quibble.

I copy everything I do. In that sense, I am still a student. I copy Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Lois Bujold, Jim Butcher, Holly Black, and just about every author I have ever read. I do it by reading a book, loving it almost all the way, but not quite, and thinking--if I tweaked that, then I would like it more. Or thinking, I would do it this way. I suppose this sometimes makes it look like my "retellings" are more like inspirations. I'm OK with that criticism. I start off somewhere and then let myself go wherever the inspiration takes me. I hope that this means when people look at my versions, there is NEVER any question that the version is my own. I'm pretty sure I'm the kind of art student who couldn't for the life of her sit down and copy a previous great. I know there's something to be learned in imitation, but it is so BORING! I would make a bad student in some ways.

It's easy to teach other writers craft. What I have found is that the impossible thing to teach is that refusal to copy, the need to make everything stamped with your own special fingerprint. And then, to recreate that fingerprint over and over again in a thousand different ways that no one expects, on things that no one would think you are interested in. I don't know how to teach it. I see some students who seem to do it without thinking and others who come to it slowly, gradually growing in confidence, then others who seem to never grow anywhere and I don't know what makes the difference. I like to say that everything comes with hard work, but this may be one of those things that doesn't.