Contemporary Women Writers Network: San Diego Conference
Conference first day in San Diego. Excellent opening lecture by Susan Stanford Friedman which highlighted the importance of looking at the influence of religion and spirituality on contemporary women writers.
Beginning of my paper...
A woman must have money and a room of her own,” declared Virginia Woolf, “if she is to write fiction”. In 1928 Woolf felt that “nobody cared a straw... for the future of fiction, the death of poetry or the development by the average woman of a prose style completely expressive of her mind.” In her famous essay she concludes that the “bluestocking with an itch for scribbling” must indeed have a room of her own, and money (“£500 a year” in 1928); earned, if and as necessary. But A Room of One's Own was not merely a practical strategic plan. It was a speculative enquiry as to the nature of a woman's prose writing, which, curiously, is compared to poetry: “some new vehicle for the poetry in her” ; a female prose which defies straightforward generic categorisation and runs its own non-linear course.
Times have changed. And although the need for a secure location and adequate material provision are still highly advisable for the sustained composition of the lengthy (novel-length) text, opportunities for publication and self-publication are myriad. The internet has created spaces for self-expression and discussion; it has opened up an almost infinite domain for newly created texts. Today it is a laptop and a blog spot that a woman needs in order for her itch for public scribbling to be satisfied. Time itself has become a precious commodity: it is free to blog, but requires a temporal commitment. ... Do blogging and poetic composition constitute a beneficial dynamic for the woman poet: a synergy for the poetry that is in her?
The classic description for a blog is (from Rebecca Blood in we've got blog “a frequently updated webpage with dated entries, new ones placed on top” (Blood ix). These dated entries may, suggests Blood, typically offer “daily stories, impassioned reactions, mundane details, and miscellanea”. Images (still and moving) are also important, as are links and comments. But the core criteria offered by Blood are very similar to the page-bound journal, traditionally, though not exclusively, a female domain. “Often denied a voice in the public realm and the possibility of publication, women have kept diaries in order to communicate with themselves, to explore the meaning of their lives, and to give form to their creative impulses” write Marlene Schiwy and Marion Woodman in Voice of Her Own: Women and the Journal Writing Journey. This is not to deny the publication of women writer's journals by Anais Nin or May Sarton, which the authors acknowledge. They compare the structure of the journal, published or private to that of a spiral. Furthermore, “every now and then – the pattern emerges and things shimmer” they conclude (308). This shimmering of an emergent literary gem is reminiscent of Virginia Woolf's own journalling practice of writing haphazardly to review later, seeking out the invaluable “diamonds of the dust heap” of the daily text, perhaps to be set later in an appropriate narrative chain. This is certainly one way to run a writers' journal. But there are additional pleasures to be derived from the reading of a whole text; an unedited writer's diary which comprises a palimpsest of micro-texts that add another dimension to the depiction of the writer herself. Sometimes it is the juxtapositions themselves which form the angle of readerly fascination. Sometimes comic, sometimes poignant, such journals can be more revealing by way of a stitched-together record than would the smooth curve of a polished biography. So we have Dorothy Wordsworth, who famously first recorded the famous flash of Wordsworthian daffodils, amongst the practicalities of her life with William. She reads Shakespeare, she shells peas. When William marries she quietly records her retreat to bed with a headache.
Unless a diary is specifically created for publication, the traditional journal is a womb-like place of gestation, where ideas and literary gestures of the self may in due course emerge. But if a woman wants a room in which to write, why shouldn't that room have a window? A window is a rich resource. The dweller within looks out, is able to see, and connect with the wider world. The visitor or passer-by can look in. The window connects. But it also protects and implies the possibility of retreat. If I am looking through a window, I am not standing on the open road. If I am blogging, I have agency over the presentation of my thoughts and material and I have the opportunity for readership and communication. But I can draw the curtains whenever I wish. Quite literally, a blogger is often an individual writing in her room, the laptop screen providing a visual echo of a window onto the world and a practical window in terms of providing information and communication. Conversely, the blog site itself can become the room to which she can retreat and be with her thoughts. It is her virtual, if not her secret, room: other-dimensional.
This idea of the blog site as the virtual extra room is one I first considered after listening to the podcast (edited from the 2009 Aldeburgh poetry festival) online at The Poetry Trust on “The Female Poem”. Poet Annie Freud mentions the “secret room”: “what woman does not dream of discovering a secret room in her house?” While such a room signifies female interiority it also indicates, I believe, the ability to inhabit creatively a virtual space, relatively independent of life's other practical obligations. This essay will look, through their online windows, at the rooms which different women bloggers furnish and inhabit...
The essay is currently being considered for publication so I'll stop there, but I had a great afternoon - only enhanced in excitement by an earthquake measuring 5.5 when resting afterwards in the hotel room! Still I survived for some excellent cocktails and dinner with accompanying jazz in the Gaslamp district afterwards.
Beginning of my paper...
A woman must have money and a room of her own,” declared Virginia Woolf, “if she is to write fiction”. In 1928 Woolf felt that “nobody cared a straw... for the future of fiction, the death of poetry or the development by the average woman of a prose style completely expressive of her mind.” In her famous essay she concludes that the “bluestocking with an itch for scribbling” must indeed have a room of her own, and money (“£500 a year” in 1928); earned, if and as necessary. But A Room of One's Own was not merely a practical strategic plan. It was a speculative enquiry as to the nature of a woman's prose writing, which, curiously, is compared to poetry: “some new vehicle for the poetry in her” ; a female prose which defies straightforward generic categorisation and runs its own non-linear course.
Times have changed. And although the need for a secure location and adequate material provision are still highly advisable for the sustained composition of the lengthy (novel-length) text, opportunities for publication and self-publication are myriad. The internet has created spaces for self-expression and discussion; it has opened up an almost infinite domain for newly created texts. Today it is a laptop and a blog spot that a woman needs in order for her itch for public scribbling to be satisfied. Time itself has become a precious commodity: it is free to blog, but requires a temporal commitment. ... Do blogging and poetic composition constitute a beneficial dynamic for the woman poet: a synergy for the poetry that is in her?
The classic description for a blog is (from Rebecca Blood in we've got blog “a frequently updated webpage with dated entries, new ones placed on top” (Blood ix). These dated entries may, suggests Blood, typically offer “daily stories, impassioned reactions, mundane details, and miscellanea”. Images (still and moving) are also important, as are links and comments. But the core criteria offered by Blood are very similar to the page-bound journal, traditionally, though not exclusively, a female domain. “Often denied a voice in the public realm and the possibility of publication, women have kept diaries in order to communicate with themselves, to explore the meaning of their lives, and to give form to their creative impulses” write Marlene Schiwy and Marion Woodman in Voice of Her Own: Women and the Journal Writing Journey. This is not to deny the publication of women writer's journals by Anais Nin or May Sarton, which the authors acknowledge. They compare the structure of the journal, published or private to that of a spiral. Furthermore, “every now and then – the pattern emerges and things shimmer” they conclude (308). This shimmering of an emergent literary gem is reminiscent of Virginia Woolf's own journalling practice of writing haphazardly to review later, seeking out the invaluable “diamonds of the dust heap” of the daily text, perhaps to be set later in an appropriate narrative chain. This is certainly one way to run a writers' journal. But there are additional pleasures to be derived from the reading of a whole text; an unedited writer's diary which comprises a palimpsest of micro-texts that add another dimension to the depiction of the writer herself. Sometimes it is the juxtapositions themselves which form the angle of readerly fascination. Sometimes comic, sometimes poignant, such journals can be more revealing by way of a stitched-together record than would the smooth curve of a polished biography. So we have Dorothy Wordsworth, who famously first recorded the famous flash of Wordsworthian daffodils, amongst the practicalities of her life with William. She reads Shakespeare, she shells peas. When William marries she quietly records her retreat to bed with a headache.
Unless a diary is specifically created for publication, the traditional journal is a womb-like place of gestation, where ideas and literary gestures of the self may in due course emerge. But if a woman wants a room in which to write, why shouldn't that room have a window? A window is a rich resource. The dweller within looks out, is able to see, and connect with the wider world. The visitor or passer-by can look in. The window connects. But it also protects and implies the possibility of retreat. If I am looking through a window, I am not standing on the open road. If I am blogging, I have agency over the presentation of my thoughts and material and I have the opportunity for readership and communication. But I can draw the curtains whenever I wish. Quite literally, a blogger is often an individual writing in her room, the laptop screen providing a visual echo of a window onto the world and a practical window in terms of providing information and communication. Conversely, the blog site itself can become the room to which she can retreat and be with her thoughts. It is her virtual, if not her secret, room: other-dimensional.
This idea of the blog site as the virtual extra room is one I first considered after listening to the podcast (edited from the 2009 Aldeburgh poetry festival) online at The Poetry Trust on “The Female Poem”. Poet Annie Freud mentions the “secret room”: “what woman does not dream of discovering a secret room in her house?” While such a room signifies female interiority it also indicates, I believe, the ability to inhabit creatively a virtual space, relatively independent of life's other practical obligations. This essay will look, through their online windows, at the rooms which different women bloggers furnish and inhabit...
The essay is currently being considered for publication so I'll stop there, but I had a great afternoon - only enhanced in excitement by an earthquake measuring 5.5 when resting afterwards in the hotel room! Still I survived for some excellent cocktails and dinner with accompanying jazz in the Gaslamp district afterwards.
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