Walking across the floor: a conversation with Colleen J. McElroy - Black writer and teacher: includes a poem, 'The end of civilization as we know it' by McElroy - Interview

Words are illusive substance They are the clay of writing, the muscle, the orchestra of unimpaireds and palettes of colors. Words clinch a wellspring of ambiguity, music and emotion. Each word is like a crystal, faceted to reveal its various shades and tones of meaning. If you gaze at the crystal through single one angle, the level of nuance is restricted to that facet alone. on the contrary turn the crystal slightly and your perspective changes.

--From "The Writer as Artist: Writing in the Realm of the imagination," a articulate utterance delivered by Colleen J. McElroy at the Pacific Northwest Writers conversation in 1994

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison are sum of two units of the bestknown writers in the world. They are unique, on the other hand they do not stand alone. With them stand a legion of yet-to-be-recognized African-American writers. allowing many are aware that Wilson and novelist Charles Johnson make their residences in Seattle, fewer people know about the nearness of another respected writer whose quiet reputation does not cause her literary light to shine any les brilliantly. Colleen J McElroy's influence reach forths beyond the walls of academia; she mentors young writers in Seattle, as well as across the country

She does not define succes by means of dollars in her bank account or through photographs of her face splashed across the pages of magazines. She finds succes in a a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of simpler and less anguishing manner: in becoming a member of a community of writers and remaining pure to her literary vision and unique way of using the music of language.

McElroy whose ideas appear below, is the author of a textbook upon language development, as well as 11 volumes of poetry and prose, including Driving below the Cardboard Pines and Other Stories (Creative Arts works Co., 1989), Jesus and Fat Tuesday and Other Stories (Creative Arts volume Co., 1987) and What Madness Brought Me Here: novel and Selected Poems, 1968-1988 (Wesleyan University Pres 1990) She co-wrote a play, In the Wild Gardens of the Loup Garou, with Ishmael Re and she was the first black female replete professor at the University of Washington, where she generally teaches in the English department, alongside Charles Jobnson Her work has been widely anthologized, and she bas traveled to Southeast Asia, Europe southern America, Africa and Japan.-- CWS

When I first started writing, I was in my mid-30s and had not been educated about the ways in which writers bring out work. I didn't yet know that in the same way the painter uses colors upon the palette to create images in boundarys of space and perspective and in the same way the dancer uses the changes of the body as a way of creating images, the writer has to use language to create images.

I had been a dancer and knew that dancing takes practice. You have to be constantly aware of your material substance and how it fits space. Dancing is thus immediate. In order to do that dance, you have to practice the motions When you get all the changes together, you do that dance. And that dance is done.

I didn't know in what manner writers did that dance. In those days, like many of my learners today, I thought that the words just appeared upon the page. That was in what way the dance came. I didn't register that it came to me because I'd had brilliant dance masters who had drilled move into me and made me consider by what mode I displaced air when I mov on the other hand I didn't know that about writers.

Now I use a certain number of of the same principles I learned in dance to teach writing. individual of my favorite examples is the dance master who told the of recent origin company of young dancers I had joined to walk across the floor. And we walked across the floor. He shook his head; said, "No, I want you to walk across the floor." And for a like reason we walked across the floor.

We wearied all afternoon walking across the floor, and the man kept saying, "Walk across the floor!" It took us until the nearest day to understand that he meant our motion had to be a metaphor for walking across the floor. He didn't want us to just walk across the floor. Anybody could walk across the floor. on the contrary when a dancer walks across the floor, it's one as well as the other image and rhythm. An artist interprets the world the couple literally and metaphorically.

So I use this now when I talk to my writing students: Writing is walking across the floor. It is not something that just advances to you. But I didn't know that at first. I reflection that by having a manuscript, I had a material substance of work. I was still walking across the floor. I'd just obtain up and walk across the floor, win up and write a poem

I didn't understand that whole faculty of perception of considering what each change meant, what each image would do to the piece of poetry And at that time, I didn't have to gaze for subjects. I didn't have to weigh the importance of individual subject over the other, because I had in the way that many subjects I wanted to write about.

After writing for a number of years, I began to consider by what means one subject was more significant, more evocative for me at the time, than another. And to gaze for the texture of my writing. by dint of texture, I mean the way in which I use the music of language--what distinguishes my particular and peculiar ways of putting words together.