29

The Handbook of
Creative Writing

Writing as Experimental Practice

Thalia Field

My husband and I make 'experimental dinners': we open the cabinets and create some
thing from whatever we find. We never know what's going to come of it and often we don't
even know what to call the results other than 'tasty' or 'barely edible'. It doesn't hurt that

Edited by
Steven Earnshaw

we have experience with traditional cooking, we know what to expect with foods or how
to take a shortcut when needed. But when it comes down to it we enjoy the challenge and
surprise of meeting the kitchen head-on. When I was asked to think about experimental
writing, this is what immediately came to mind.
When it comes to writing, I often wonder if designating something 'experimental' is
more a public, critical or personal act? Most attempts at defining 'experimental' dead-end
into 'you know it when you see it' tautologies, or result in descriptive catch-all-isms where
'experimental' means 'non-traditional'. Tradition in this context mostly implies formally
recognisable poetry and fiction oriented toward epiphany, closure, and a neat and tidy nat
uralism where visual details correlate to psychological ones and the author and characters
are clear and coherent. In the opposite corner and equally generalised, the qualities of
experimet'ttal writing include writing which is polysemous, indeterminate, polyphonic,
multi-genre, documentaty, meditative and puts the reader in an unstable position vis-a-vis

the work's meanin .

Of course these only describe a spectrum, and most writing exists

somewhere in between these extremes. Still, lists of attributes tell us more about the past
than the present, so is there a less forensic and more useful way to determine a literary
experiment? Are there material differences between experimental and other writing prac
tices in terms of creative process? Let's get back to this in a minute.
Looking historically, there have certainly been normative aesthetic traditions against
which various experimental avant-gardes positioned themselves. Staging innovative liter
ature as a critique of dominant art practice, and by analogy a critique of dominant culture,
requires faith that language takes action, that writing functions as a privileged social gest,
or mirror. In this way the history of aesthetic forms can be read as the dialectical content

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of history and formal eve/revolutions as evidence of culture's mutability. T he revelation

that no aesthetic attribute is ontologically fixed or sanctioned by God or King was an eye
opener of the early modern period, leading individual artists to work outside the patron
age system to display other 'knowledges' and experience.
Meanwhile, the term 'experimental writing' emerged from the scientific work of
French physiologists in Second-Empire Paris. The new laboratory science positioned

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The Harulbook of Creative Writing

'experimental' medicine in oppo

sition to the reigning paradigm
of medicine as intuitive,
quasi-religious art. The introducti
on of 'scientific method' was usefu
l for debunking non
empirically tested beliefs about
disease and treatment. Through
the new experimental
approach, knowledge emerged
based on testing hypotheses in
controlled laboratory con
ditions and 'going on the evidence'.
This was a stricter method in whic
h one's ideologies
take a backseat to the experime
nt's ongoing results. The experime
ntal, in this idealised
form, asks a practitioner to shed
all notion of what 'should happ
en' in favour of a blunt
realism, a moving aside of ego
for the sake of the work. This so-ca
lled objectivity, this
'materialism', challenged preva
iling (mostly religious) systems
wherein long-dominant
norms determined a priori what one
would 'find' in practice. Nowadays
the 'objective' ideals
of scientific method have been
rightly problematised, but in the
late nineteenth century
Emile Zola took up the charge
for an 'experimental literature' whic
h could translate the
scientists' realist vision into a more
materialist literature, a hard core
presentation of life's
facts without a moralising or trans
cendental lens. Of course escaping
the lens of one's own
ideas proves difficult, and realism
atrophied into naturalism, becom
ing a style all its own.
But perhaps what is most important
is that experimental writing began
as oppositional and
radical, self-consciously construed
as a methodological way out of a
prevailing symbolism,
idealism and absolutism.
To show unadulterated 'truth', artist
s paid attention to presenting 'wha
t is' rather than
what 'should be' thereby opening
the way for literature to follow the
visual arts into an alle
giance to perception over ideas and
phenomenological (temporal) proce
ss over static ahis
toric objects. That social issue
s could also be addressed throu
gh a materialist/realist/
phenomenological language came
from the modernist belief that struc
tures of representa
tion reveal the 'unconscious fanta
sies' of the cultural psyche and there
fore making new
forms is tantamount to remaking
the inheritance of old ways of think
ing.
Metaphors and
discourses of science, from relativity
theory, chaos theory, quantum theor
y and information
theory, have continued to find stron
g affinities and provide analogies
for the experimental
arts. That models of self and world
are represented in culturally const
ructed (rather than
'natural') forms, that artistic expre
ssion is not 'innocent' of individual
perspective, allows
any writer to create agency (and
share this with readers) using the
same tools (language,
narrative, discourse, performance)
as the cultural mainstream.
It might therefore be argued that
experimental writing has played
a dominant, even
essential part in the modem indu
strial/democratising period, as integ
ral to its character as
it can seem oppositional within
it. In this way one could say that
the history of modem
European/American art is the
history of experimental artists
breaking down familiar
:Hchotomies between museums and
streets, 'high' culture and 'pop' cultu
re, masterpieces
md Xeroxes, noise and music, thou
ght and event, performance and
object, process and
oroduct, author and audience. The
list goes on to include the total hybri
disation of estab
lished genres and the larger impe
rative that no matter what else
one does, one should
1ddress the audience's perception
, 'make it new' or 'make it strange'.
This basic commit
nent to the practices of defamiliari
sation (a concept popularised by
the Russian Formalists
)Ut expanded across a range of avan
t-gardes) shows that artistic devic
es (formal structures)
epreseri.t the life of the artwork
in history. Art forms must chan
ge so that a distance
)etween art and 'everyday' perce
ption can be maintained or reviv
ed, renewing the audi
!nce's sense of themselves as citize
ns of their time and agents of perso
nal and collective
1istory.
If artwork thus made 'strange' was
also challenging for the audience,
this slowed or dif
icult reading was a sign of poetic
potency, a measure of its distance
from the comonali-

Writing as Experimental Practice

307

ties which are useful in social interaction but deadening in art. This formulation of aes
thetic revival through fresh language reveals a link between experimentalism and roman
ticism. When the critique is made that experimental writing feels perfunctory or empty of
felt experience, this indicates both the critic's longing for this mmantic aspect as well as
what may be the writer's allegiance to form over practice. Bad experimental writing, like
bad writing generally, fails to create the sublime shock of something surprisingly and sud
denly true.
I introduce the word 'true' as a gamble, a provocation. Though experimental literature
has been aligned with post-structuralism and often foregrounds the non-essentialism of
identity or the complex features of post-colonial cultures, its practitioners put forth the
possibility that theirs is a more genuine literature in the sense of 'filled with the shock of
truth' even if that truth presents itself as non-sense or new-sense. That experimental prac

tice engages the complex, multifarious, non-generic world does not necessarily exclude the
role of radical subjectivity. In fact, bringing together a writer's unique experimental process
with the material givens of the world results in what Gertrude Stein called the 'continu

ous contemporary'. In this condition, an and/both phenomenon occurs between self and

world relieving the pressure of previously intractable binaries into a new and productive
interdependent space and time.
So now we may ask again: what makes experimental practice different from other habits
of writing? Certainly many writers confront the infinite and open possibilities of their art
and world. Still, traditional writers take their discoveries only as far as normative limits of
form or material allow. Where a poem reaches some sort of crisis, a more experimental prac
titioner makes an important swerve away from the habitual approaches to material and
toward a radical 'not knowing', allowing the work to stay open, to be completed in the
encounter with a reader. So perhaps what makes a writing practice 'experimental' is the
intention of the writer to continually re-open their ways of proceeding, their habits, as they
encounter the world. A text held open may go beyond the parameters of both familiar
forms and habitual creative process. The results do not necessarily have to be complex or
difficult, but they are surprising.
The blank page has been the location of much excitement or trepidation. Fear of it can
result in a writer's retreat into stale and prefabricated choices. Confronting the blank page
in a traditional practice is just as challenging as for the experimentalist, and yet I think the
traditional writer filfs in the blank page as though it were a pre-formatted space awaiting
content. A sentence makes sense. A character emerges in a situation. A concrete detail, a
situation to describe ('the objective correlative'). Pretty soon, one finds oneself in a con
ventional fiction or poem, a single human protagonist described in adjectival prose, 'life
like' against a scenic (cinematic) backdrop. The frame of the camera's view provides the
scale and time of the action, an antagonist will be there, a tragic flaw. The conflict will take
the hero into some revelations, the resolution will provide a catharsis from the event.
Language is only that which delivers this content in a clear and descriptive way from author
to reader with a minimum of confusion. There is a tidiness to the symbolism, the events,
and no messy confusion for a reader to grapple with. Language does not intrude upon the
telling, but stays grammatical and 'transparent' to the intention of the author. Formally
there are paragraphs or line breaks and type left-justified between wide margins. There is
dialogue and there is plenty of visual and psychological description. Characters, plots, lan
guage remain stable and constant throughout the piece. You need to dream up the specifics,
which constitutes the main writing practice. Perhaps you brainstorm on the blank page,
troll for details and clues as you 'discover' the piece, even your 'voice' (your style within

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The Handbook of Creative Writing

the larger constraints of this overall style) and probably your characters, conflicts or
themes. This describes the sort of psychological naturalism prevalent in our time. Yet many
writers spend a lot of hard work and joyous exploration in the brainstorming/dreaming

309

Writing as Experimental Practice

Consider this an area

of new language or image practices.
telling retain vitality in the face
different methods of
uses
h
whic
work
of
: make a piece
as open and complex as life itself
r art or media.
l print or writing with some othe
creative expression - mix traditiona

practice of this form. So why isn't that experimental?

I think the blank page for the experimentalist doesn't exist to be 'filled in' in the same
way. Because form and content are indistinct, one does not conjure the work from the
imagination as though it was something detached from the world it emerges into. There is
never 'silence' or 'emptiness' (or perhaps even a blank page) in the laboratory sense of a
Newtonian idealised world in which art exists coherently and untroubled, to be looked in
on as though from outside. Writing as an experimental practice assumes no convenient
originating vantage, no way to present tidy geometries of symbol, culture or identity. And
with the blank page troubled by the shadows and sounds of a world always already moving
around it, there is material already present at hand. Writing in this sense is a finding, a fol
lowing, a listening, and not only in the sense of going along with what's in one's mind. The
many ways one enters the conversation with the world's shadows and sounds provide the
myriad of forms experimental writing takes. Finding content is never other than finding
form. In what has been called an 'organicist' or ecological encounter, the fullness of the
blank page becomes, then, a way of waking mindfully into an inseparable world.
Experimental practice and the project of deep ecology come together where writers relate
not to landscapes but to 'being worldbound'. This awareness of a different definition of
subject, object and action, results in work where the normative human-hero-centered con
ventions of representation are replaced by more polycentric, polyrhythmic, or stochastic
processes. Whether these are mental or environmental, the very notion of 'event' and
'character' may reflect the collapse of distinctions such as those between nature/culture and
media/message.
So now let's look at some specific ways one might proceed 'experimentally' in practice.
These categories are intended to provide a few of the infinite approaches a writer might
take as you move away from habitual strategies toward the play of the unknown. It is para
doxical to sketch examples as an invitation to ignore them and go on your own, but here
we go.

Mixed media, mixed genre

To some, writing in conventional forms feels insufficient to express the fullness of creative
energy, and though the usual print genres have their potency, an abundance of other

Other languages
traditionally consid
is the use of discourses or languages
Related to mixed genre writing
of the writer squir
igm
parad
with 'creative writing'. T he
ered unsuitable or incompatible
muse does not
and
rce
resou
as
on
inati
, dreams and imag
reled away with only their mind
or vocabulary and dis
incorporates multiple languages
easily give way to writing which
on, science, etc.).
religi
s,
plines (such as television, sport
course methods from other disci
le enough to
flexib
book
the
.to
ach
l began with an appro
Though the history of the nove
ed with the rise
reced
ness
open
this
etc.
ises,
gues, treat
contain letters, found texts, dialo
ible' author and seam
l and the convention of the 'invis
of the naturalist psychological nove
ct languages or texts.
distin
four
or
with a collage of three
less narrative. Instead, try playing
untranslated parts
and
s
edge
ed
braid
the
let
whole but
Don't smooth them over into one
form of writing
one
ther experiment might be to take
create fortuitous connections. Ano
and the so
one
of
form
lled
another such that the so-ca
and try filling it in entirely with
approach is
ther
Ano
.
both
in
rent
appa
new meanings
called content of the other make
ds of words
soun
by the
text from English to English only
through translation. Translate a
what you
wing
follo
by
know
n from a language you don't
(homophonic), or do a translatio
r words
othe
by
s
word
g
itutin
subst
by
translating a piece
think is the sense. You could try
appear
that
s
by word
onary (a procedural approach) or
which appear near them in the dicti
asking
by
text
te
priva
very
Perhaps you could translate a
in the same place in a second text.
s and
word
in
certa
hear
they
when
word comes to mind
a random sample of people what
even
t
migh
gers. You
public 'translations' done by stran
then make a number of these
in
dable
unrea
ely
entir
is
her to make something which
collage different languages toget
thing
some
is
there
erns,
conc
local
world with ongoing
only one language. In a globalising
ted to some of the
nts in multi-lingual form. Rela
rime
expe
these
t
abou
rich
potentially
which contain
essay
lyric
called 'documentary poetics' or
above are writing practices often
nt events or
curre
on,
mati
infor
rial or 'outside' sources of
a high degree of researched mate
a hermetic
into
them
ming
subsu
out
(with
ative sources
news. Work which uses these altern
work, and
their
alone with
the process model of the writer
authorial style) again challenge
by new
ed
iliaris
defam
rials to be redeployed and often
allow historical or cultural mate
context.

resources gets overlooked. For example, could a story be written from an array of digital
sounds? How about poetry as radio play, CO-Rom or site-specific installation?
Experimental practice has long embraced multiple genres within a given work: photogra
phy and poetry create visual and aural images that abut, collide, overlap, or sculptural
writing moves text away from two-dimensional pages and the conventions of the book form
and brings print into social space and time. Perhaps a short story could gain poignancy by
being printed on a length of fabric and read by being gathered in one's arms or sorted
through in piles, like laundry. Perhaps there is a piece in which writing and digital images
are alternately projected on a dancing body. Any inter-genre experiment proceeds through
1

variety of drafts in which the expressive material takes different forms. These expansive

estures entice an audience to consider the act of 'reading' in surprising and poignant ways.
A..s technology and new media increasingly impact cultural production and as questions of
Jerformativity become prevalent, one can see artists foregrounding how poetry. or story-

Confound, invert, 'make strange' traditional genre expectations

There is a long history of writers combining poetry and prose forms, and functionally this
hybrid comprises a tradition in itself. Prose poetry, sudden fiction, so-called 'new narrative',
even L==A==N ==G==U ==A==G==E poetry all consist of renewing the uses of the prose sen
tence and non-lineated form. As an exercise, a writer might ask oneself what they think is
the limit of what can be called a story or a poem. Must it be written down? Must it have
words? Must it have a character? Then ask yourself what exists on the other side of your
own limits? Write something which is definitely not a story, according to you. Or definitely
not a poem. The message on the answering machine? A grocery receipt? A single word? A
scream? A gesture? A joke? Now find a way to make stories and poems from these things
without turning them into traditional poem or short story forms. Then, for fun, find writing

310

The Handbook of Creative Writing

in the world which is not intended to be either a story or a poem but which could be, and
find a way to 'publish' this on a page. Another set of potential experiments might come

311

tice
Writing as Experimental Prac

is performed by
t through the mail? Or
ut a piece which gets sen
cards, stamps? What abo
day?
e in the same spot every
actors at a particular tim

from asking oneself what the parts and pieces of genres are, and examining what happens
if these are radically altered or removed. Let's say you feel a story must have at least one
character. Try writing a story in which there is nothing that could conventionally be called
a character. Or a story with at least a million characters. Do you think a poem must contain
at least one image? Try a poem which has only sound. Any of these experiments would,
through association to common understanding of aesthetic expectations, make visible a
rupture in the expectations for that form. Rather than being merely oppositional, this
rupture can provide a point of awareness, a way to reveal the habits of our story- and
meaning-making culture.

Meditative poetics, automatic writing

A different lineage of experimental writing has emphasised what happens when the author
applies contemplative or meditative practices to writing in an attempt to trouble author
ial ownership (re: the ego) and habitual mind. These are strategies which foreground the
cultivation of awareness without conceptual or intellectual filtering. Writing which is a
record of these practices reveals relationships and qualities of things unseen when names
(nouns) and other habits of mind constrain the open field of perceptual possibility. If you
imagine writing in which you do nothing but transcribe bare awareness, allowing it to
emerge unforced and without fabrication, you can see how different this is than writing
which is modelled on what you 'think' about something, content conceived in conceptual
terms. That a writer thinks of a specific tree and then transcribes that thinking as the
general word 'tree' is diametrically opposed to writing that functions as thinking itself, a
mind getting out of the way so that the tree is described from the 'pure' perception of it
without ever using the concept-name 'tree' at all. There are several ways to try this, includ
ing the 'automatic writing' or 'free writing' approaches where you do not stop moving your
pen for a certain length of time. This practice doesn't allow you to stop and think and then
write what you think, but keeps the writing and thinking moving apace. Historically, auto
matic writing was considered vital for revealing hidden aspects of the unconscious or intu
itive associations between thoughts, images, etc. Meditative poetics functions slightly
differently in the sense that one does not merely fill space with words but tries to employ
the meditative equipoise of awareness to allow perceptions to pass unfiltered, recording
those that seem particularly insightful or genuine. It is helpful for these if the writer also
has a meditation practice, but not essential.

Page and performance dynamics

The book form has its own conventions: print must be durable, legible, reproducible, non
phemeral, able to fit on a bookstore shelf or held in the hand, the writing should be on
Jages which tum, and so on. What about writing for a different set of assumptions: writing
1sing perishable materials, or 'published' as a sculpture or across a piece of architecture.
::: an you enhance the inherent performance qualities of text through spacing across the
>age or through a book? Can a piece put the issue of legibility at stake? How can secrets,
ies, and other forms of human language behaviour be translated to a book form? Can a
1oment of time, in all its performative richness, be captured through a series of pages?
Vhat about using pages 'unbound'- that is, flyers, broadsides, posters, postcards, business

Procedural writing

n they step
d they hear every day whe
they will take the first wor
ides
dec
er
er name
writ
a
prop
aps
a
en
Perh
h sentence of a story. Wh
it as the first word of eac
ent in
erim
exp
s
onto the subway and use
Thi
rd.
er name is hea
appears until the next prop
language
that
way
is heard, that character
a
such
in
t
acciden
bination of intention and
storytelling becomes a com
abulary, preferences of
language (habits of voc
er's
writ
the
tes
etra
ome. Thi s
from the world interpen
eterminate regarding outc
of narrative, certainly ind
ds surpris
yiel
ch
style) to create a new form
whi
n
atio
ent
experim
edural writing, a form of
proc
of
e
mpl
exa
ple
because they
is a sim
gate a method such as this
k. A writer might investi
ve able to
rati
nar
a
ing and often riveting wor
subway is integral to
nd language' from the
the found
rks'
'ma
have a suspicion that 'fou
er
writ
this
ld. How
ded and anonymous wor
crow
a
of
nce
erie
exp
'game' is one
enact the
er can participate in the
constraint) so that the read
ing not only
writ
language (the procedural
the
ng constraint to impact
cedural writing. Allowi
of acci
ness
rich
of the challenges of pro
the
s
loit
red genius, but exp
of the writer as unfette
esent the con
repr
challenges the notion
ch
whi
s,
tice
prac
-based
non-intention and rule
dents and obstructions,
ch the writer sets up
initial consmiint (in whi
the
,
ting
wri
l
ura
ced
pro
ning and impact of
tours of freedom. In
mea
large part of the
of proceeding') forms a
the material and the 'way
at'.
'wh
the
as
as much
ch matters to the reader
the piece, the 'how' whi
horship; collaborations
Alternative forms of aut
role of the writer
s where the traditional
e other creative practice
writer with a
the
From procedural work com
ent
lage or cut-ups pres
troubled or redefined. Col
p of artists,
grou
a
as sole creator/genius is
h
Wit
ing.
ve forms of writ
aborations and collecti
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inin
different role, as do coll
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ate full
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come up with a project
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s
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ch re-enacts the
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t
else create a prin
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work remains
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t
formance work which is
tha
is
nt
orta
most imp
on for readers. What's
rati
abo
coll
the
of
e
trac
a different kind of world.
vision and thus models
beyond a single perso'n's

about a
ental insofar as they are
practice are only experim
ing
writ
to
hes
e for
roac
com
to out
These app
ing to forego attachment
givens of their world, will
er
exp
of
ory
hist
writer at play with the
I realised that both the
material. In writing this
ainly
cert
are
re
the
the sake of following the
and
s
totally up for grab
se suggested exercises are
ical versions of an
imental writing and the
public, private and crit
ns,
stio
que
er
oth
ask
would
who
ts
alis
ent
ental practice is
erim
exp
from writing as experim
what ultimately comes
m, and yet are
the
unsolved riddle. Perhaps
ed
gin
ld as you hadn't ima
ing yourself and your wor
the surprise of present
shocked to recognise.