Is My Writing Really Just a 'letter to the World'?

Emily Dickinson wrote in her poem 441 “This is my letter to the World”. Naturally, writers are likely to want to communicate something important to a larger audience. I think that quite a lot of published works are letters to the world. Emily Dickinson coined this phrase in her poem 441: “This is my letter to the World”. I see my work as partly a letter to the world but also a note to myself, a journal, in which I am able to express my views and feelings on various aspects of my own life.

Sometimes, it seems, we write things that possess very powerful messages and meanings to ourselves and to others. One person might take a piece of my writing and say that it is quite clear that I have something to say about a specific aspect of my life that had a significant impact on me. Another person might choose to find meaning in it that fits in with the own life situation. You can see in poetry and in song lyrics how people re-interpret their meanings in order to suit them – they want something to relate to emotionally during good and bad moments in their lives.


It could be that our self-conscience is writing this ‘letter’, wanting everyone to know what really goes through our minds; what we despise, what we love, people we care about, and people we don’t. Answering a question such as this is down to how a piece of writing is understood by the reader. The only one who will truly know the original intention behind it is the author.

'What Influences and Inspires You as a Writer?'

People tend to believe that the characters a writer creates are representations of various aspects of the writer’s self. If this is so then surely what inspires anyone is themselves? I won’t lie and say that my life is filled with novel-worthy stuff (because it really isn’t) but it is however useful to base a story on such simple things as the people or places within it. I learnt to write believable dialogue through listening to people conversing around me. I thought up emotions and reactions by experiencing them myself. I expanded on what I already knew, like what it is like to work in a shop, and made up situations within that experience (however uninteresting the original experience may have been). 

As a writer, modern society is quite likely going to influence the way I write. Writers should not linger on clichés; they should reshape them to fit in with life as it is today. A clichéd simile like ‘as black as coal’ can be contemporised into ‘as black as an unplugged television’. Or ‘to feather one’s nest’ might become ‘to wire one’s network’ and so on. This is only scratching the surface of the ways in which people can approach writing in this contemporary world. Realising this excites my imagination, making me want to experiment creatively to no end; making me search for originality to no end.

 

"A protagonist that embodies the flaws and weaknesses of the writer distracts the reader from the narrative itself" Well...

Unless a writer were to live a life of total seclusion, it seems highly unlikely that they would not expect their work to be contextualised. For me, a reading of a text cannot be complete without finding layers, or links to a context. My interest is to find them and to draw my own conclusions of what the purpose of a text might have been. When I began reading some of Emily Dickinson’s work I was reminded of my two years in sixth form where I looked in depth at the poems of Sylvia Plath. Everyone found it so obvious that the persona in Plath’s poetry is almost always herself creating metaphors for her life. You can see that in Dickinson’s poetry there also is some sort of assumed connection that we can make between the metaphorical image and her personal context. In her poem 754 some might argue that the narrative voice (Dickinson) speaks of unrequited love and the power it has over them: “My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun…/…For I have but the power to kill/Without – the power to die –” 

The reading between the lines and the many assumptions that we make is probably a big part of what interests people – I don’t think that the majority of the literate population would read something that didn’t have a message or any meaning. And even if they did, they would probably attempt to apply one nonetheless.

Creative Piece: For the New Yorker

That same woman stands there on King’s Parade. She seems to be waiting, or perhaps looking for something to happen. She looks to be in her late twenties and is dressed appropriately for the cold in a thick fur coat and a black bobble hat. I have passed her many times wondering the same thing – why is she standing there, like that? Perhaps in all this time, day by day, she is aspiring to be like everyone else who walks along King’s Parade. Some are leaving or entering one of the grand colleges, some are theorists, biologists, artists, and comedians. It’s not like she is completely self-absorbed, she seems to be observing (I suppose as I am too). I have sometimes seen a shines of ambition in her eyes, although standing there all alone won’t get her anywhere – unless perhaps that is her wish; to be noticed as I have noticed her. I thought that maybe she would be gone sometime during spring when I began to smell promise of the annual crocuses along the backs. I thought that she might find something else to do during that hopeful time of year. But as you can see, it is now November and she still stands like a monument; in between the hope of life, and the fear of death.

John Cheever: 'Uniquely American'?

To be uniquely anything is to be human, isn’t it? John Cheever’s work may have been referred to as ‘uniquely American’ due to its distinctive use of characterisation and the general direction of each short story. The prominent figure in a few of the stories has an aim, or an American dream, which they try to pursue without a doubt in their mind. In The Swimmer, Neddy has the ultimate aim to swim across the county and he sees no reason to question the consequences of such a task. He persists and ends up running into problems. The playwright in O City of Broken Dreams leaves his home, taking his family to New York to pursue his dream of fame and fortune. All he finds there is a dead-end along with a court-case. Some would say that a uniquely American aspect to Cheever’s work is the search for individualism and the aspiration to be the best version of oneself. On the other hand, to be uniquely British in literature there would be a sense of desire to fit in with society as opposed to focussing on what the individual dream of the protagonist might be.

Personally, I find that what makes a piece of writing different is primarily the person who is writing it, but also the context surrounding them. When George Orwell travelled to Burma, his writings were greatly impacted – he was able to connect and present the true essence of the culture. Therefore, I think that it is a pleasure for someone to read a piece of writing that identifies with their cultural background because they can connect better with the story as a whole.

A Writer's Fragmented Existence

If a writer’s life had no influence over their own writing there would be no place for those seedy critics who like to claim that there is. There is a general presumption that any personal experience of life is what shapes a person. I like to think that the history in my family line makes me view life uniquely - I mean, one grand father owning a dairy and the other a thespian - how could I not?

Sylvia Plath is famous for her tragic life and the depression she endured until the end of it. Her only book, The Bell Jar, can be read as almost autobiographical – the events in the narrator’s life seem to run along-side that of Plath’s (attempted suicide, father’s death, and negative feelings towards her mother). Similarly to Plath, Emily Dickinson installed personal reflections and experiences within her poetry through the use of metaphors. Sylvia Plath’s poem titled Medusa is a metaphor based on her feelings towards her mother; “Off, off, eely tentacle!/ There is nothing between us.” Dickinson’s poem 251 uses the image of strawberries to stand as a metaphor for her virtue. Whether she intended it or not, a small part of her upbringing has made its place between the lines of that poem (and many others) – a woman must be virtuous but a man is free to choose what he does; “I guess if He were a Boy -/He’d – climb – if He could!”

In John Cheever’s short story The Swimmer, a connection between his own alcoholism and the protagonist’s desire to forget can be noted. Every time the man in the story swims, he gets more delirious and forgetful. The man is swimming in an attempt to replace the sad situation that he is in with fond memories of the beautiful weather and his friendly neighbours. When he arrives at a dried-out pool he is suddenly depressed – perhaps a feeling Cheever had when he began to sober up?

Dickinsonesque

In my second Author Study seminar the class was asked to think of metaphors for occurrences in our own lives. These metaphors were to be inspired by the work of Emily Dickinson. I composed this poem after the seminar based on losing fear of death, which proved to be a very difficult task but this is what I came up with (any feedback would be much appreciated):

 Losing

The door was ajar and making noise

Against the wooden frame. She heard

The noise and felt afraid. There

Could be a knife in hand, a rope on

Neck, a cat wanting slumber, or the

Wind pushing in through the open window.

At the dinner table she asked for the

Window to be closed over night. It

Was closed for the first night but for

Two nights after that her mother

Forgot about the window. For those

two nights the girl lay awake in sweat,

Over-thinking;

Forcing herself into fear.

After the third night of her mother’s

Forgetfulness, the girl fell to sleep.

She was awoken deeper into the night

By the sound of that door against the frame

again. It was the wind pushing in through

the open window.

And to sleep she fell.