The Gilmore Book Club

If you want to be an artist, you need to read this

Little Women- Louisa May Alcott

Words have always been a thing of importance in my life. Although I was a shy child, there were always words surrounding me and coursing though my mind. Lyrics from the lullabies my mother used to sing me were repeated in my mind when I was sick, the repetition and cadence forming a soothing chant, imploring the powers of the universe to alleviate my pains. When I was bored or angry, I poured my words into a song, releasing my emotion instead of using it to harm others. And of course, there were books. My eyes raced with the black and white letters running across the page, eager to reach the next moment of revelation or excitement. And all those letters stitched themselves into the quilt of my mind until they were called upon to create stories of their own. And so, I started writing.

This is not a child prodigy story: my early works featured simple poems extolling the virtues of chocolate or describing the terrain of the earth’s biomes. (Yes, these were all school-related writings. I do love chocolate, but biomes are not in my normal areas of interest.) By the end of fifth grade, I was delighting in every journal entry we had to write in social studies, whether it be a journal of a civil war soldier or a suffragette. Middle school was characterized by snippets and chapters of fantasy stories. By high school, I was writing anything and everything: poems, plays, lines of dialogue or phrases, short stories of all kinds, letters from my characters, and chapters of novels- and all of that will probably never be published. But I wrote what I felt and what I thought, and I was always practicing, revising, and working to become better. Researching character names, drawing maps of made-up worlds, thinking of new ways to describe something- it all felt so natural. I was a writer. That was my past and my present, and I would make sure that was my future.  

Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, the story of the March sisters and their loved ones, has been a treasured book for generations. We begin our journey with the Marches in the midst of the American Civil War. Their father is away at the war, but Marmee, their mother, lovingly watches over the girls, helping them grow into, you guessed it, little women. But each girl has her own lessons to learn, her own journey to take, and plenty of fun to have along the way. Meg enjoys the finer things in life, Amy’s passion lies in the arts, and little Beth adores her music. But Jo, Jo is a writer.  She pens extravagant, fantastical plays for her and her sisters to perform on holidays. She’s editor and contributor to their fictional newspaper for which they have regular meetings. But most important, to Jo and to the plot of the book, are her stories.

In the early chapters, Jo is in possession of her first complete novel, only to find that Amy has thrown it in the fire to destroy it in a fit of anger. But like all writers, Jo mourns her loss and then begins again. She writes a new story, fusses over the edits, and produces a tale that is eventually published in a local newspaper. Jo then experiences something I believe to an important to the artists process: validation, not only from herself, but from others. It is this experience that allows Jo to see her future as an author and to begin to work toward that goal. No one has ever printed my stories in newspaper, but even the smallest “awards” from art contests in Elementary school gave me a similar experience and encouraged my journey as a writer. (There weren’t any prizes for these; they just displayed your work in the school, but hey, what more do Elementary school kids need?) Because as much as artists enjoy hearing praise from people they love, such praise has to be taken with a grain of salt; these are, after all, people who love you, and there’s a good chance they’ll love whatever you produce more than anyone because of their feelings for you. Jo’s stories were featured in the newspaper; I won awards at school. We were both on our way to becoming writers.

And then I went to college. I had applied to the fiction writing program and was accepted. But just because I was accepted into the program doesn’t mean they accepted me as a writer. I had a few good teachers who taught various techniques and ways to improve, but others taught that there was one specific way to be a writer. And according to them, I was not. They envisioned writing that was grotesque and unnerving, shocking and outrageous. Lots of blood and guts, lots of swearing, lots of sex. Now all of those things have their place, but they have their place when the story demands it, not to be oversaturated on everything like we douse our food in salt and pepper.

And I wrote about things I loved, things I cared about, and things I believed in. Some were more fantastical, others were about real-life situations I had experienced like dealing with chronic illness. Not as scandalous as the celebrated works of other students, but against their violent and extreme stories, mine seemed down-right exotic. And so, most of the students and teachers did their best to eradicate this kind of storytelling from my repertoire. There were a few who viewed my rebellious prose and attitude as “spirited” and continued to teach “their way” without completely crushing any desire I had to be a writer. The rest forced me into their writer’s process, squeezing me into the box of what they thought an artist and writer should be. And when it became clear that I was determined to do things my own way, they decided I wasn’t a true artist. They encouraged and praised the other students while criticizing most everything I did.  They graded papers based on their opinions rather than if I was using the techniques correctly or not. For them, an artist’s goal was to shock and appall. An artist was to stay within the guidelines, to replicate what has been done before, and accept a creative process not their own. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like the opposite of what an artist should be, and I feel like many artists would agree with me.

I had very specifically chosen an art school over the more traditional schools. I had always been good at school and my grades were high enough to receive good scholarships, but I knew that wasn’t the place for me. I knew was an artist, and I was going to study like an artist. I’ve always been very confident in my abilities and talent, with a recognition that I could always be better, but with so many people who had more experience and accolades and certifications to instruct others telling me I wasn’t who I thought I was, that’s when the threads out doubt begin to slip in.  What is it that truly makes an artist? Am I an artist? Am I a writer? And if I’m not, then who am I?

Continue to Part 2

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