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.

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!

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.

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.

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.