Tag: Inspiration

Natural Insight in “Crossings”

Recently published in the Fall 2017 edition was “Crossings”, a story by Douglas Anderson writer Rafael Pursley. This whole edition, in particular, had a number of pieces which struck me deeply for their power in creating and enlivening images, bridging an emotional gap between the natural world around the more interior, personal conflicts. As an artist with a passion for science, particularly environmental and natural disciplines, I was thrilled to see such pieces filter through our reading process. “Crossings”, in particular, manages to sum up the distance, the closeness, the power of the natural world on our human lives often deemed entirely separate.

The range of imagery struck me from the first time I read “Crossings”. It has one of those near-perfect balances of the gritty, nasty and all too real of a mucky wood pond, but also the ethereal, the breathtaking of a solar eclipse. As someone who is constantly trying to fit her all-consuming connection to the natural world into her writing, I found the accuracy of these images exciting. It can be so difficult to represent both the beauty and the obnoxious about nature in writing. The story didn’t just use physical description, however, it fit the adjusting landscape into the conflict of the story. This was one of the most impressive qualities of all: managing to demonstrate a threaded-throughout dynamic and interaction with nature to a shifting personal dynamic. Too often, I find myself trapped in making nature one-dimensional. It’s either all beautiful, or all destructive. The ups and downs represented in “Crossings” were not only more accurate, but also managed to create a more real, immediate emotional conflict for the reader.

Within the story, a narrator explores their complex and changing feelings towards an old friend. The eclipse is a sort of climax to their tension filled relationship. Only when the two are set in the midst of something gorgeous can the narrator see in sharp relief the built separations between themselves and this person they aren’t sure whether to love or to hate. That eclipse isn’t just a random, outside factor. Much of the short fiction I read today possesses a sort of skepticism and mistrust of the world around us. Characters are doubtful of anything that is supposed to be beautiful, unwilling to see or believe in the reality in front of their eyes, and they rarely tend to change. “Crossings” seemed to catch this world, to understand it, without being isolated in this behavior or out of it. It recognized both sides, and in that, captured a growing cultural divide between the total immersion in a human-built world, and the need to exist in what is beyond human. I’m constantly thinking about this divide, trying to find ways to place my fiction on one ledge or the other, usually failing and landing somewhere in the easily categorized “nature” art. “Crossings” has inspired me, given me valuable insights into how to innovate my own fiction, my own attempts to capture a personal understanding of the world in my art.

In this way, “Crossings” represents Elan as well as any piece we’ve published. Elan, being a student literary magazine, is all about finding ways for young thinkers to express the world they inhabit, a world often forgotten because adults are the voices of our culture. By capturing some growing, new cultural divides which teenagers must try to navigate, “Crossings” speaks to the modern teenage experience, wrapped in skillful writing, lively use of imagery and insightful mixing of the emotional world and the physical world.

– Ana Shaw, Senior Editor in Chief

Defending Writing

winnie picAlmost mid-way through my sophomore year, I just lost writing. I felt no want or even a need to write and the work that I was producing I didn’t care about. Having lost this practically innate feeling that had always been a part of me was strange and I wasn’t sure what I was doing wrong. Can there be a wrong way of writing?

            At this time, in our creative writing class our teacher, Ms. Bundy, had us studying Magical Realism, which I didn’t really like anyways, so I blamed my not-so-enthusiastic attitude towards writing on the fact that I just couldn’t write Magical Realism. It was denial in its finest form. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to write, but that I just couldn’t. Or this is what I told myself.

At this time, my life was the epitome of a teenage movie. I bathed in my teen angst. Writing seemed trivial in comparison to everything else happening because it seemed like everything was happening to me and I had no way to stop any of it. In the spare time I could wedge into my day, I used to write. I carried my journal with me everywhere I went. And now, my journal laid haphazardly in the space between my desk and my bed, mocking me, so I hid it underneath schoolwork and that was my new excuse; I was too busy with school to write more than I already had to.

I kept coming up with different excuses to defend the fact that I just could not stand writing. It wasn’t something I wanted to do. Writing became a chore. I watched episodes Criminal Minds, instead of revising a story or a poem, and I saw no problem in this. I went on like this through a good portion of the second quarter because it was fine. Ms. Bundy didn’t comment on how my pieces were lackluster or the fact that my notes turned into chicken scratch.

It wasn’t really until winter break when I realized how much I missed the act of writing. I missed having the drive to want to sit down and write anything whether it be amazing or absolutely horrendous. Winter break meant that I had an excessive amount of time on my hands. With winter break came a tsunami of various emotions, ranging from joy to desperation to anger. I felt heavy from everything I wasn’t writing.

So, I forced myself to journal. Every day, I made myself sit down and write. It didn’t matter what I wrote as long as I was writing. Honestly, it was a chore and I loathed it, but I still did it. I still sat down with my journal and wrote. Slowly, it began to feel familiar, less mechanical. I felt light again. I had to learn how to love writing again.

Winter break ended and I worried that I would fall into the same habit of creating excuses to not write and slide back into the same funk I was in. I refused to make writing my New Year’s resolution because no one ever commits to those and I needed to commit to writing. Making time for writing is hard and I don’t write every single day and I wish I could say that I did, but that’s not how it is. For me, writing is a way to take a weight off of myself and put it onto paper. If I could weigh my journal, it would weigh 2000 pounds.

There are nights where I choose writing over sleeping because I know I cannot carry that weight anymore, which is okay. Writing is a matter of making life easier because that is the only way I know how to.

–Winnie Blay, Junior Managing Editor/Submissions

Rejuvenation Of Writing

KB PicTo be a writer does not mean that that piece of you is always going to be accessible. Sometimes, you can go weeks or months without feeling the need to put anything of value into this outlet. Often times, it is a certain circumstance that takes this fire from you. Ironically, this becomes a cause of misery that works as fuel to start back up again on the individual’s journey as a writer.

Personally, the experience that made me temporarily quit writing was when I got my first speeding ticket. It was not the ticket that really took my motivation, but the fact that this fine resulted in me losing my car for several weeks. In addition to this, I had to work to gain the funds to pay for it. Without this transportation, I realized how much freedom I didn’t have before I gained my license. This confinement resulted in me remaining indoors, wasting my time with sitcoms and the drawn out plots of video games.

While this may sound like a pleasurable alternative to leaving the house, as it usually is, it quickly became lonely when none of my friends could be reached through anything other than text and the occasional phone call. I lost my motivation to try to do anything. It seemed that with my loss of freedom came the loss of responsibility and admiration for the kind of life I was on the path to living.

As I noticed more frequently how far behind I was on the lives of those I once cared about, I decided something would have to change. I found the old bike that I had once been closely acquainted with before the introduction of a car. The wheels weren’t deflated yet so I kept riding north until they gave out to the sand they met. I seemed to have forgotten how close the beach was to where I once lived. By this time, it was nearing sunset and the sky lowered its eyes to cast shades of violet, grey, and pink along the thin space between the sea and the sky. I sat beneath an abandoned life guard chair as people left the spectacle of the shore behind. I remained stagnant, moving the sand gently over and under my toes thoughtfully.

As dramatic as it sounds, I felt so filled and peaceful then that it only felt appropriate to pull out the notebook that followed me everywhere and its accompanying pencil; I had to write. Though what I wrote wasn’t anything incredibly eloquent or beautiful, it was enough to make me feel as if I had rejoined the untied ends of my disconnected attention together. From there, I suddenly began to turn back to my methods of using writing as a form of release. This practice allowed me to gain peace with myself and my decisions.

As an appropriate accompaniment to this rejuvenation, the next week was the beginning of school. The reconnection with my friends and a well-planned schedule made it much easier to remain consistent with the art I practiced and how often I produced it. Since I have begun again, I feel as if I am reconnecting with an old friend. Though I am behind, I am confident that writing is something that will follow me through everything, despite its ebbs and flows. In my experience, it is the most underappreciated foundation of the human temple. I hope to one day not neglect this pillar as often as I have, as I clearly see that this practice only truly has a positive impact on the life of the writer and, if the writer is successful, the reader.

–Kathryn Wallis, Junior Art Editor