I can remember an incident from primary school. We had all been given an outline picture of two hands shaking and asked to colour them in. Most of the class coloured their pictures in various shades of pink, yellow or brown. I coloured the two hands in red and green because....well why not? I liked strong primary colours. The teacher congratulated everyone on the class for the work but I was told off for being stupid because 'no-one has red or green hands' (The fact that no-one has hands that just float by themselves in the ether didn't occur to her. There was a lot of this at my primary school. A later teacher expressed her opinion that speech bubbles in strip cartoons were stupid because people didn't have big bubbles containing their words in real life, conveniently ignoring all the other non-naturalistic aspects of strip cartoons)*
I don't want to trace my complete lack of any visual artistic ability whatsoever is as a direct result of this incident; it may be that I am just one of those people who are naturally shite. However, I am always irresistibly reminded of this incident everytime I read Keith Johnstone's book, 'Impro' and his short section on his art teacher Anthony Stirling
"Stirling believed that the art was 'in' the child and it wasn't something to be imposed by an adult. The teacher was not superior to the child, and should never demonstrate, and should not impose values: 'This is good, this is bad...' "Johnstone's argument all through his book is that too often education is a destructive process which crushes creativity and destroys spontaneity and his aim throughout his book is to try and discover this spontaneity.
"Most schools encourage children to be unimaginative. The research so far shows that imaginative children are disliked by their children. Torrance gives an eye-witness account of an 'exceptionally creative boy' who questioned one of the rules in the textbook...She was also upset when the boy finished the problems she set almost as quickly as it took to read them"
Much of his book discusses games his uses with his students to try and restore this lost creativity. It is a fascinating process; upon presenting a box to a student and asking her to describe its contents; he notes that she goes to say 'orange' but pauses and says 'cabbage' instead feeling that 'orange is too ordinary.'. Too often, people asked to say an object are scared of what this may reveal about them and resort to the safe and the ordinary. Much of the improvisation process is devoted to trying to remove this self-censorship and get people to trust in their instincts.
I've been thinking of this in connection with the writing process. Much of my problem with the process seems to stem from exactly this self-censorship. This is, I suppose, why games are so useful to the struggling writer; as well as sparking inspiration, they also absolve you from the blame. "The random sentences I drew out MADE me do a story about a secret service officer importuning a journalist in a dark alley. It wasn't me". One of the most interesting passages in Johnstone's book is the section where he gets a supposedly uncreative student to produce a post-apocalyptic story about giant ants destroying buildings - all the while convinced that the story was coming from outside of her.
Later on in this blog, I may well review the hilarious book "How not to write a novel" which sets out a number of rules that any beginning novelists (or writer of any description) would be wise to follow. Does it contradict what I've said above about spontaneity? No, and if you're very good I may even explain why not.
For anyone interested in improvisation, writing or even just human nature; Keith Johnstone's Impro is a must buy.
* If this story seems vaguely familiar to you, it may because it turns up in a modified form in 'Bed of Crimson Joy'. Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief etc. v
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