Self-Taught

As I wrote last week, I have been making prints of a new
lino-cut I made. I hung two mixed media pieces in the
Colorado Mountain Art Gallery in Georgetown and am
still messing around with more of the prints. I don't know
how much the messing has to do with being an
"under educated artist!"

In so many ways I feel like a self-taught artist. I say this not to excuse or over-praise myself. It’s just that way. Here’s one instance of the situation that sometimes is a problem. 

A few years ago when in my writing I realized I was working on a novel and not simply the collection of short stories I had imagined, I came to the awful realization that although I had read hundreds of novels and recalled from them plenty of characters, scenes, and situations, I had never seriously studied the novel as literature, had never read one under the tutelage of a professor, and had never analyzed the plot, character, or even writing style that makes some stories work so well. So with M.H. Abrams' Glossary of Literary Terms in hand, I set out to learn about these things. Using his articles on various story-related concepts, I began analyzing short stories; then I turned my attentions to the novel. I would read a novel and if I liked it enough would select one aspect of it to further study. For example, in one novel I compared and contrasted the opening sentences of each chapter. In another book I found and compared the contents of each place the author changed from present tense to past. In yet another novel I searched to find the dramatic turning points in the main character’s transformation. I went on to analyze how secondary or even one-dimensional characters entered and left novels. I was serious in my pursuit of this knowledge.

Then I turned to books I’d read in the past that seemed somewhat like the book I was writing. I analyzed The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin, Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, and House Made of Dawn by M. Scott Momaday. Somewhere along the way realized I had mostly read novels to enjoy exotic and unusual experiences and to find out what happened. This proclivity was bolstered by my habit of reading murder mysteries in which the big task is to figure out ‘who dun it’ as if that were the whole point of reading stories. That seemed my dominant approach. Finally I turned to Ethan Mordden and reread and analyzed several of his Buddies cycle that opened with what seemed to me appropriately titled I’ve a Feeling We’re Not in Kansas Anymore. I liked novels that told the stories of many different people. My novel search for understanding was moving me far away from how I had read them before and, like Mordden’s title far away from all my home state represented. And then there was the really big question: why was I trying to write a novel and how could I do it without making a big fool of myself?

I kept at it subjecting my writers group to my chapters. I read and re-read the manuscript to understand what I had done and what I had yet to do. It’s still in that phase a couple of years beyond asking a few folk to read it and critique it. Perhaps this coming summer would be a good time to finish it up. The action of the novel took place one summer. I guess this summer is as good as any other and better than most. Then I’ll find out if I made a fool of myself or not! If I have, I'd better sign up to work with a teacher.