The Art of Writing - by Rona Rivera

In her critical review of Peter Yang’s, THE ART OF WRITING, Jaime Kristal suggests
that applying a dogmatic approach to the creative process essentially defeats the
purpose expressing oneself through writing. When Yang demands that any writer worth
their salt must understand their motivations before taking pen in hand, Kristal
rightly pushes back.

"I was troubled when the author says to 'ask yourself what justifies your writing’s
existence'. Most aspiring and even established authors can struggle with
confidence, doubting their own talent, and find difficulty in believing anyone will
want to read what they have to say. This demand does nothing but discourage someone
from writing and could silence a voice from sharing something the world needs to
hear."

Kristal is correct. Struggling writers don't need further constraints on their

creativity, nor do they need to justify their motivation to some dogmatic literary
rule, much less to any self-appointed rule-maker. The writer's nagging inner voice
of inadequecy is plenty loud enough without Mr. Yang chiming in.

The purpose of most all creative writing is expression. The author has a thought
(or a group of thoughts) and needs to press those ideas onto a page. Once that
happens, viola! Writing has taken place and the newly-birthed creation can be read
by the writer (or perhaps) by others. Mission accomplished. And it was all done
with out any navel-gazing. Amazing.

A freshman student once inquired of me how they would ever use this stupid creative
writing process when she was planning a career which didn't seem to require this
skill. I asked her how she assessed her current emotional health. She couldn't
understand how my question related to hers. I suggested that she take about two
weeks to journal daily about her life, about our conversation, and then share the
results with me. Here's what she wrote.

"I hated that you asked me to do this. And I found that your asking about my
emotional state was none of your f-ing business. So I decided to ignore you and
this stupid assignment to journal. The problem I had though was that I was pretty
much ignoring my feelings about things. The shit going on in my family was killing
me and keeping me from sleeping. That's when I started writing to myself about what
was going on. And once I did that, I began to see your point. It's not about the
writing. It's about me being able to empty my head out on paper so I can unravel
things and start sleeping again."

Mission accomplished.

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Rona Rivera is a creative writing instructor, writer, author, world-traveler and

creator of the Girl’s Writing Workshop.