An Introduction to the Text "I shall retire to write a book, and at another point, I shall retire to construct a labyrinth. Everyone pictured two projects; it occurred to no one that book and labyrinth were one and the same." Jorge Luis Borges Excellent writing comes from excellent reading. As a student of creative writing, you must be prepared not only to constantly revise and rework your own writing but to also review, consider and implement the work of other writers. We see farthest by standing on the shoulders of those who precede us. This book aims to compile, in one volume, innovative and inspirational writing from the last four decades. The works here defy traditional categorization while delivering accessible and instructive examples of the writers creative art. Jorges Luis Borges, the celebrated librarian, poet, essayist, and short story writer worked throughout his life to push the act of creative writing into strange and fruitful new territories. His work was necessitated both by his need to create as a writer and by his need to learn from what he created. As the narrator of his experimental short story, "The Garden of Forking Paths" explains, the act of creating a new written work is often carried on between the acts of making decisions and of having decisions made for you. The writer must respond to not only his or her own need to write, but to the need of the subject to be written.
"In all fictions", he reminds us, "each time a man meets diverse alternatives, he chooses and eliminates the others." However, in his story, we are offered an alternative. This story, "The Garden of Forking Paths" describes a book entitled "The Garden of Forking Paths", in which the main character chooses not just one alternative, but, miraculously, all alternatives simultaneously and "creates, thereby, several futures, several times, which themselves proliferate and fork."
We believe that this book is, itself, an immense (and perhaps labyrinthine) garden of forking paths that all creative writers can enter, no matter what experience they bring. There are wildly divergent writings selected within each genre, here, and their coexistence provides proof that the act of writing can take many forms. This anthology aims to represent as many of those forms as possible. There are, we hope to show, as many paths into and through the garden as there are persons willing enter and explore and to read. Furthermore, your participation in the world of creative writing will expand those paths and options even further. Poet Theodore Roethke hated the term "creative writing" because, as he said, all writing is creative. It is our hope that this anthology will provide undeniable evidence that this is true: the possibility for creativity resides in every word. Within these pages, you will find that the creative spirit rises above all genres and infuses every form with vitality and exuberance. Every aspiring writer -- whether you consider yourself a poet, an essayist, a novelist, or none-of-the-above -- when faced with the impulse to create a piece of writing, must choose the form that will best express his or her thoughts and ideas. The beginning writer faces a single, primary, two-pronged problem: what do I wish to create and how do I wish to create it? We believe there is no right answer. Rather, in these pages, you will find that there are as many right answers as there are questions. We feel that you should approach the blank page with a working knowledge of as many approaches to writing as possible. We also believe that all writers learn their craft primarily by reading excellent and inspiring writing. Within these pages, you will find that we have gathered a representative and voluminous sample of the most invigorating and creative writing today.
Guided by fiction writer, essayist, and poet Robert Creeley's belief that all writing is essentially the act of articulation and that "form is content, content form," we have brought together as many successful examples of ideas and styles as possible. We have grouped these writings by genre for ease of use so that you can choose how you want to spend your reading time. From science writer E. O. Wilson to psychiatrist Oliver Sacks, you will find in our garden that each author has labored to articulate at least one of the seemingly infinite possibilities that the creative spirit can bring into being. Many of the authors collected here have successfully created works of written art using more than one genre: Kim Addonizio, Jim Harrison, Margaret Atwood, Charles Simic, to name but a few. We hope their example will inspire you to experiment in multiple genres as well.
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