Sunday, December 09, 2007

Reason and Rhythm, Part 2

For me, my passion for writing had it's beginnings in 5th grade. One of my teachers, Mrs. Douglas, required her students to keep a journal. At first, I viewed this assignment as a chore and was unenthusiastic about journaling. I mean, what about my 10-year-old life was worth writing down in my stupid blue, wide-ruled notebook: nothing... or so I thought.

It wasn't long before my little notebook began to become a repository for all of the important goings on in my life and the lives of the people I thought were cool. I wrote about basketball, cute girls, strange dreams, books I was reading, spiritual encounters, toys, and just about everything else. Ever since then, I've had an undeniable compulsion to chronologically catalogue all of the highs and lows as they occur.

The principle that Mrs. Douglas was trying to instill in us is that of making writing a habitual occurrence. I would encourage you to do the same thing. Set aside a notebook and an amount of time specifically for journaling.

You may, as I once did, view this as an exercise in futility. You may think that you can remember all you need to remember about life in your mind or with photographs or in video recordings. However, you'll find no better way to capture the richness of the emotional texture in your life either in the daily grind or the most unique of moments.

With a little discipline, you'll may come to find view these moments spent journaling as an investment into your future. Think of each entry as an opportunity to snapshot some otherwise un-keep-able gem of your life that would otherwise disappear into the folds of time. Sometime, you'll crack open this treasure trove you call a journal and feel like the wealthiest time traveler.

Monday, November 05, 2007

A Mind-Blowing Breakfast

I had a very strange dream a few nights ago.  In keeping with my advice from my last post (read that here), I decided to write down what I could remember.  I peppered in a few embellishments here and there, but the story remains just as bizarre as the night I experienced it.



     Adam stood in the center of a blacktop basketball court, having no idea how or why he would have gone there. The paint lines were faded from the countless footfalls they had received, and the nets were worn to almost nothing.

     The tall brick buildings looked oppressive. They appeared to have received the same amount of wear that the court had experienced. But for all of the use that this place had seen, Adam could not find a single person. He walked.

     After having walked for a few blocks, he found a courtyard in the center of a few of these apartment buildings whose only tenants must be ghosts. The courtyard had been overgrown before a lack of care had resulted in the death of any plant life. Brown foliage hung limp from every bush and tree.

     Then he heard a percussive shuffling noise from behind him. Startled, Adam spun on his heels. An gaunt-looking young woman stood with hand on hip. Three younger girls, identical triplets, hid behind the woman and stared from behind her waist.

     "I've got what you need." The woman produced a cigarette from a pocket, lit it, and took long drag. She coughed as the smoke was pulled into her lungs. "Where's my money."

     "Um...I don't know... what are you talking about?"

     The woman let out a raspy sigh and walked away. Her girls followed in a straight line, skipping along in playful manor.

     Adam, as confused as he was, felt compelled to obtain whatever it was that she held. "Wait! Can I have it?" The woman turned to face him as he searched for his wallet. It wasn't in any of his pockets. For that matter, he couldn't recall ever having owned a wallet. "I'll pay you later."

     "That's not how it works." She turned to walk away.

     "I promise I'll pay you." He found himself pleading for it, although he could not remember what it was that he wanted so badly. "I'm a good person. I'm trustworthy."

     Her facial expression turned from irritation to concern. "No one who buys is trustworthy."

     Adam was struck to the core with some unknown shame. He dropped to his knees as the dead foliage around him seemed to turn black and decay. The woman had disappeared. It seemed as though time had sped up. He felt dizzy from a heightening despair. He shut his eyes and shook his head.

     Looking up, Adam found himself in the basement of a friend's house, a plastic bag sitting in his open hands. Carefully, he unrolled the bag and broke the seal. A delicious smell leaped up out of the bag and into his nostrils: Reese's Peanut Butter Puffs cereal. He couldn't resist the urge to eat.

     As the first few puffs hit his tongue, pleasure receptors throughout his brain fired off and he nearly jumped. However, this pleasure slowly transformed into something very different. The bland-looking basement began to become brighter and more full of color.

     Colorful cartoon mushrooms began to sprout from the floor in bright red and white. Large blossoms sprouted from the walls, emitting 60's era music to match his psychedelic euphoria. From somewhere animals, as of yet unimagined, danced into the room, harmonizing with the joyous songs. Even the lights in the room seemed to gain significance as they alternated through every color of the visual spectrum.

     Adam sat down on top of one of the mushrooms and took in the brilliance that surrounded him.

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Reason and Rhythm, Part 1

Sometimes the strangest of life's occurrences are things that don't happen in the waking world. I would encourage you to write about your dreams. Most often these incoherent sequences of image and sound won't yield anything that makes any sense, but once in a while, your subconscious might fabricate something more unusual and elaborate than you could in any other state.

When you write, feel free to add or remove details as you see fit. Your purpose in this doesn't need to be accurate retelling of your REM sleep adventures, although you may choose it to be that way. Personally, I feel pretentious when I write in first person, so I write in third; you should write from any perspective that you prefer.

This might seem like a frivolous exercise, but it serves an important function. Any reason to spend sometime activating the part of your mind that thinks creatively is cause to write. Hopefully, you'll begin to establish a regular rhythm in writing. Your goal should be to feel the desire to write on a daily basis, and to be able to find something to write about just as often.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Find Your Happy Place

One of the things I've learned recently is how easy it is to loose sight of ones inner craftsman. We become discouraged with our writing. We allow the manic nature of day-to-day living to steal away the joy we once found in our writing.

Do not loose hope, my friends!

I would encourage you to secure the border that separates your happy place from the harsh wastelands of rationality. Handcuff the Watcher to a light post just outside the city limits of the creative capitol in your mind. Then go to the steps of your town hall and shout aloud as to how excited you are to write: to create.

Or... perhaps a more practical idea: go to that location where you find the most inspiration and write for a few minutes. Write about how happy writing makes you feel. Write as quickly as you can. Deliver your thoughts to the page with as little filtering as possible.

And if all of life's frustrations have stolen this joy from you, write about how you want to feel when you write. Think about how proud you want to be when some small seed of thought blooms into a matured writing. Remember that, published or not, you are an artist: your words are valuable.

Then when you finish this verbal snapshot of your good-feeling, frame it! If you're like me you may even glean great pleasure from looking at this in its rawest form (sloppy script, misspellings, grammatical errors, and all). If not, feel free to pick out a key phrase or two and write them in your best penmanship on your finest sheet of paper. Now, place it in the aforementioned inspiration location, where you will see it whenever you write.

And when the time comes—and it will—that you begin to feel frustrated or uninspired, look to those words and find your happy place.

Sunday, October 07, 2007

The Watcher

In Discovering the Writer Within, Bruce Ballenger and Barry Lane make reference to an entity inside of all of us that they call the watcher. This watcher is the internal critic that can—if left unchecked—take all of the joy out of writing.  Beyond that, it can rob you of any creativity.  It's nasty, and the your success as a writer begins by silencing this beast.
  • When you write, write as quickly as you can. Don't allow the watcher enough time to jam your creative process with thoughts of penmanship and spelling and syntax.
  • Write whatever you feel like writing. If the ideas that present themselves are disjointed and incoherent, write them down. If you wander off your selected topic, write it down.
  • Enjoy yourself. Don't worry about what other people would think if they read your scribbled words; you should write for yourself first and foremost!
There will be a time for editing and criticizing your work, but it is not now. The best of what you will write will likely prove itself to be that which you spent the least amount of time planning out. Think about the most memorable conversations you've had:  weren't the most alarming and intriguing insights birthed from words that were uttered without forethought.

And as for the watcher... eventually he will become a valuable ally to you in the editing process to use when you see fit. But until then, outrun him!

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Tod Isn't Part Of It

     It was approaching the cool of the day when she sauntered through the commons area, past Tod, and toward the darker parts of the campus. She was accompanied by a young man: an odd pair. The awkward juxtaposition of his clothes, too loose; and hers, too tight; that highlighted the excess of her exposed flesh. She was clean and possessed a style that Tod found cute, but just on the edge of what he considered provocative.

     Tod palmed his forehead, and his body gave a quick, involuntary shudder as though to shake free the assumption of what intention the young couple might have for the point when the escaped an eye-shot of the sparsely populated commons area. His glance met that of another young man, who wore a shirt with the word "DOOM" painted across it in a unfriendly-looking font.

     Tod had never seen him before, but the young man, just out of normal speaking range, nodded toward the awkward pair and then too him. Tod reciprocated as if to agree as to what the two represented.

     Tod thought to himself that if he were someone allowed a great deal more moral leeway, he could see himself letting her try to take him apart and put him back together again. Then again, he'd be miserable if he had burdened himself with such an encounter.

     That'd make me part of the problem of the problem, wouldn't it? The problem. It was one thing to recognize the biological forces that compelled him to "mate" with any girl that met his fancy, but it was something else entirely to respond to this. Some people thought this process to be nothing more than a species-advancing imperative that was present in all of us, and therefore something not to be denied. Then again, we're not animals.

     Then Tod stumbled upon something inside of himself. A spark. He fed a few of these thoughts into that spark. A small flame: pride. It had not been all that difficult an accomplishment to buck against the primal up to this point in his life. A few more years of celibacy would be simple.

     Slowly, Tod's attention returned to the present time and to the real world. He shook loose a slack-jawed gaze whose focal point lay beyond a wall of columns that supported an over sized clock that dominated the grassy commons area. Late for class!

     Tod snatched his backpack from the bench next to him and shuffled toward the paved walk-way. Leaving the now empty commons area behind him, he hurried to class.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Craftsmanship?

I've heard it said (or perhaps I made up the idea of having heard) that a craftsman may only be as good as the tools that he uses. And, of course, this is likely a gross overstatement, but that's not to say that there isn't merit in this old adage. So, let's talk a little bit about what you tools you need to be a writer.
  1. Figure out what is the most comfortable medium for your writing: is it a sleek-looking new iMac, a sticker-laden composition book, or even a worn vintage typewriter. Whatever it is, recognize it's importance in your creative life. And like any healthy relationship, you'll need to set aside plenty of time to spend with it.
  2. I would recommend having something that is portable to carry with you at all times. My personal preference is a pocket-sized moleskine notebook (moleskine, incidentally, has a interesting and debatable history that you can read here). This will allow you to jot down ideas as they come to you. This is of particular importance because inspirations comes without warning and, more importantly, leaves in similar fashion.

Honestly, there are countless ways that you can record your ideas. Try a few, and learn what best facilitates the flow of your ideas. Then go forth and begin your collecting.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

First Things First

The word "fiction" is derived from the Latin word fingere, "to form, create".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiction

I've always thought that it was something of the good Lord inside of us that drives us to "create" things weather it be stories or music or paintings or even a really nice cake. Humans love to make things, and we take pride in what we make. However, the purpose of this blog is not to force my philosophical ideas on any unsuspecting reader, but rather to explore some of my ideas about writing (and, more specifically, writing fiction).

And of course, I'll probably choose to post some of my own works because I can do whatever I want.