Uncreative Writing

Half way through reading "Winter," a section of Weather, I felt like killing myself. It was all just meaningless to me. I couldn't go on and yet I forced myself to. I skimmed the rest of it and clicked on "Spring." I made my way, slowly and painfully, through the rest of the seasons. I did not enjoy reading Weather, and yet I am oddly happy for its existence. If someone could help explain to me why I feel this way, feel free. I look forward to discussion in class to help me better understand my feelings here.

But reading this made me realize that we can only take in the weather in small doses otherwise it becomes meaningless. Well, it is meaningless once the day has passed as well.

There is a form to Weather. It seems to be a paragraph for each day of the year, in order, but I cannot be sure for there is no date mentioned which seemingly makes it more useless. I found it interesting that each paragraph was generally about the same size. This must mean that newscasters must fit the weather in a certain amount of time, regardless of how much there is to say. The same-size paragraphs did help to keep the piece unified. As Kenneth Goldsmith writes in "Sentences on Conceptual Writing," : "...it is best that the basic unit be deliberately uninteresting so that it may more easily become an intrinsic part of the entire work. Using complex basic forms only disrupts the unity of the whole." He succeeded in having a unified piece, for sure.

The many "uh's" also made the reading more painful. I am not used to that. This is something that is generally only said orally. In writing, we do not have to type "uh" because we have time between words to think and write. Orally presenting, one feels the need to fill in the gaps of silence and I can usually ignore it. I could not while reading.

I also did a little experiment with the work. I searched the work for repetition using the "ctrl F" method because as I read, I felt like I was reading the same words over and over. To my surprise, there was hardly any repetition! Well, there were 70 "sunshine's" in Winter, but "rainy" appears only once, and there are few mentions of "cloudy" and other words that one would expect to hear (or see, in this case). I think I am analyzing this piece of work more than it is supposed to be. Most people don't read it at all. But in this modern era (or post-modern era), I am used to analyzing things way too much. My generation has been trained to be so creative that it ends up not being creative at all. Some people have formulas that they use to create things (In Petty Theft, Britney Spears is mentioned as an example, which I agree with). Kenneth G., as quoted in Anne Henochowicz's article Petty Theft, says, "What passes for creativity in our culture is actually vastly uncreative.Think of the flood of worn-out narratives, passing for originality, be it novels, films or music, and you'll find that what we term creative is nothing more than repetitious formulas, spun over and over." What comes to my mind for recent work that is deemed as "creative" and is not is Twilight. Don't hate me. The truth hurts.

"To work with a plan that is preset is one way of avoiding subjectivity" is another quote from Kenneth G. Part of me wonders what he means by this-- is he saying that avoiding subjectivity is a good thing? Or is he trying to say that controversy and subjectivity are good things because without it, you get a book of stock quotes or a book on last year's weather reports. I think he meant the latter :) Or it is how I would like to interpret it.

Additionally, I know that Soliloquy, mentioned in "Petty Theft," a record of everything Kenneth said during one week is supposed to be uncreative writing, but I think it might be interesting!