Tracing a path towards creative writing
By Zaynab Chida
When people ask me if I expect my English degree to make me an author, I say things like “I don’t do creative writing,” or “Creative writing isn’t my thing.”
The thing is, I don’t write stories or poems. As a child, I tried my hand at writing stories and poetry, but quickly gave up and never touched the art form again. I used to joke to myself about how bad I was at it. Over the years, that became my feeble excuse to stay away from it.
I have written essays on various subjects, heavily influenced by my academic background. But I haven’t thought of them as creative. I do like to think and play with ideas that I’ve gathered from the books I’ve read. I try to capture the feeling I experience reading a book, and then I attempt to use it in an otherwise mundane article I’m writing.
Let me put it this way. Think of tracing paper. I have used it to outline a book’s cover art, or to figure out the way a flower’s petals bend over the edge of the stem. It felt like cheating at first, until I realized I wasn’t really trying to claim I had made the original. Tracing paper was just one approach to finding my way into art.
That’s what I do with writing too. I love to play with what has already been done, and done well. I could write for hours theorizing and sketching ideas about what Henry James meant every time he said “There you are!” in The Ambassadors. I like to think creatively, but in the context of another’s work.
While I know what sort of writing I enjoy, I have come to realize that I’ve been looking at my own writing through the wrong lens. Experimentation and exploration are creative endeavors too. And literary tracing paper is my stepping stone to creative writing.
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