Although at first confusing, Game and Metcalfe’s (1996) reading contained some valuable insights into writing, and also reassurance. I found profound comfort in the significance of the “purification ritual” (p 96) which now allows me to openly confess my obsessive need to clean before I sit down to write. The other pleasurable part of the reading that spoke to me was the idea of transformation through writing (p 91). If transformation is in mind while you sit down to write, it can really take the pressure off the individual to get it right the first time. Instead, writing may be considered as a journey or a learning process which allows for straying off track at times without admonishing yourself.
The film that first came to mind when thinking of the transformative process was Spike Jonze’s Adaptation (2002). The film centres on the protagonist, a screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman who is desperately trying to adapt a book to film while doing it justice. The quirk in this however, is that the audience is watching what he writes unfold onscreen, whether he makes changes, has input from his twin brother or have the producers dictate how the script should be written. In essence, the audience is privy to the transformation process which takes place when one begins to write.
The book that struck me as relevant was Will Self’s The Book of Dave (2006). The story is set in post-apocalyptic England where the people of that time worship ‘The Book of Dave’ as would today’s Christians worship and follow the bible. The interesting part of this story is when it flashes back to the present day where a misogynistic cabbie called Dave is writing a book. Dave’s motivation for writing his book is that his wife has left him. She has also taken his only son away from him leaving him disgruntled and at times slightly psychotic. He writes this book, venting his life frustrations, and then buries it in his ex-wife’s garden in the hope that one day his son will find it and see his side of the story. The reader watches Dave transform from quite a balanced man to a frail psychotic shadow of his former self. The reader then has an unfortunate foresight of what rules and laws the people of the future have interpreted from Dave’s crazy writings.
Finally, I saw fan fiction as a form of “poaching” (De Certeau 1984), where an individual who is particularly fond of the style of a book or film can take the already existing text and make it their own (Schaffner 2009).
In conclusion I have sworn to embrace this transformative style of writing in order to calm my terror of putting pen to paper. Never again shall I be afraid!
References
· Adaptation 2002, motion picture, Demme, J., Landay, V., & Saxon, E., Los Angeles.
· de Certeau, M., 1984, ‘Reading as Poaching’ in The Practice of Everyday Life, transl. S. Rendall, University of California Press, Berkley, pp. 165-176.
· Game, A. & Metcalfe, A., 1996, ‘Writing’ in Passionate Sociology, Sage, London, pp 87-105.
· Schaffner, B., 2009, ‘In Defense of FanFiction’, Horn Book Magazine, Vol. 85, no. 6, pp 613-618.
· Self, W. 2006, The Book of Dave, Viking Press, Bloomsbury, UK.
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