The Writing Experiment by Hazel Smith

(Jos van der Sman) #1

alone and be independent, but also fears loneliness and becoming old. But
the piece is not simply about personal experience. The author is exploring
what feminist ideology means to her (women not defining themselves in
terms of relationships with men, enjoying and making meaningful their
own space, and so on).
In Exercise 2 I’ve suggested that you might make this model relevant to
your own experience and social situation, and write ‘notes on being a
student’. One of the keys to making a success of this exercise is to introduce
formal variety, for example, chunks of dialogue or lists, so it doesn’t
become monotonous. You can also employ what you have learned about
narrative technique (such as changing between first, second and third
person) if you wish.
Although the exercise is attractive because it is quite expansive, it is
important to keep it reasonably tight: it is very easy for the writing to start
to ramble.


GENERIC CROSS-DRESSING


A multi-genre piece (Exercise 3) combines and ‘cross-dresses’ various
types of writing. It may mix fiction and non-fiction, the literary and the
non-literary, and different literary genres. It is neither entirely prose nor
poetry (just as a cross-dresser assumes an identity which is neither entirely
male nor female). The strength and interest of multi-genre or cross-genre
writing is that it creates considerable variety, and brings together different
voices, attitudes and ways of approaching the same idea or complex of
ideas.
The piece below is a short extract from the piece, ‘The City and The
Body’, which is an example of mixed-genre writing. The piece can be
viewed in its entirety, and in a hypertext version, on The Writing Experi-
ment
website (Smith, Dean & White republished):


Example 9.4

200 The Writing Experiment

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