Well there ya go, from wild urges to throw your child into the wind, and learning to rein in, the second thoughts and doubts seep in to turn the gold to straw.
Stall with "necessary" research, online all day today, tomorrow at the library, to organize by genre, deadline, style and all those guidelines.
Or admit with honesty, the fear to be acknowledged and overcome.
A mix of chickadees, titmice, sparrows and bluejays. The Cardinals show up. But early morning is no longer the white quiet of winter, the cheeps and chirps and trills precede their coming to the feeder. They sense the spring and happy, sing their birdsongs to announce its coming.
In reading and editing some of my own work, I’m sometimes surprised by little hidden meanings or connections that I swear I wasn’t consciously aware of writing into the story.
I wondered about this, hoping obviously that it’s some sort of genius at work, but there’s a simpler answer. As a story is revealed to us as we write, what we would do, or would want to do, is invariably in the back of our mind. While we’re writing, we’re constantly making connections, pulling out information filed in our minds that we’re not required to stop and search for, it just comes naturally to the surface with no effort needed.
If I’m writing about a beach, all the beaches I’ve seen since I was a kid are there to draw upon as to senses, how they felt, smelled, the salt water taste, the noise or quiet, the touch of wet sand, dry hot sand, the horseshoe crabs, all of it. These things will all show up in my description.
The nuances, the subtleties that I may not be aware of will come out as well. Probably as hidden within the words as from memory, they sneak out when we give them the opportunity of a story to be told.
While I haven’t been writing as much here lately, I indeed have been writing up a storm. Most of it is in short story form, and the rest is in Learning to Spin, my Creative Writing journal. I’m on a mission. Write–>learn–>read–>learn–>write.
Yes, this is my life. Only one of the many things my parents taught me was dedication to duty (remember the New Media course postings? Don’t you wish I’d have opened a different blog for that at the time?). With a little rationalization, I have managed to elevate my schoolwork (in this class, at least) to top priority level. Writing really is important to me, not to the exclusion of all else, but it does seem that when I separate myself from the mundane necessities of life, I am at a creative high. God bless those you have the sanity and intellect to manage to mix. Not me.
But I will not neglect Spinning as perhaps I have been in the past couple weeks–though I still don’t think vacuuming’s important.
The wind is tearing around the house tonight. Brash and bold in playing with the earth. Yet I’ve not the heart to shush it, as with a naughty favored child. But laugh along. For abandonment and freedom is contagious, and a delight.
Plan to have your septic system cleaned in late winter. I’ts real easy to find–under the melted patch of snow.
How embarrassing.
Learning some great things in the Creative Writing course. Not new, perhaps, but maybe I’m just listening better now, changing the process a bit. I should probably have posted this in the class journal, but I’ve been spending so much time in there and away from Spinning lately…besides most of you are writers as well, and I’ve known you a lot longer!
Just noticed something interesting that came of just a slight change in writing style. Working on two stories at once–or at the least, overlapping them timewise–I find that the editing mode at the tale end of one has helped me develop the second one as I go along, spotting poor word use, chopping simultaneously as I go into the story.
It helps in many ways. As I’ve mentioned, it fills in the lull between brainstorms, and by the end of the story, much of the editing work has already been done. In further editing, I feel more focused, not lost in a forest of words. It’s become easier to find weak points, and even as I write, I highlight them in red if I’ve needed to work beyond that, avoiding a certain stall.
I’m not sure whether this is to become part of my writing method or not; I’ve already noticed that I haven’t just sat down and spilled out a whole story lately, but take it in layers, clothes to try on. There’s a lot of fun in saying, "what if?" when the furious typing’s calmed down, and take it from there. Sometimes, you’ll consider what’s logical. And if feeling frisky, take the opposite path.
There’s nothing more satisfying than to be typing out story and giggling to yourself at the same time.
I’ve been busy on stories, well one story in particular that is near ready to go, so I haven’t been writing here as much as usual. I also have tons of notes to transcribe for my Creative Writing weblog, and loads of reading for both that course and Western Civ.
It amazes me though, how the editing process–once you stop sniveling and dry your tears–becomes a ruthless quest to slash and hack your way through a story. I am becoming quite nasty to my own work, and have even wandered back into destroy mode when reading published stories!
I wanna be an editor. The power, the quenching of bloodthirsty destructive instincts…I love it!
David St. Lawrence (goodness, just remembered my husband’s mother’s maiden name was St. Lawrence!) of of the excellently written and informational Ripples, made a comment to a recent post wherein I once again questioned the purpose of writing in a weblog. This is what he said:
"Stay the course. Write like there is no tomorrow. Fill the empty void with emotions. Let your passion run free, and you will be the better for it."
In the past year and a half, I have slowly shed some inhibitions and let a lot of feelings out here–both good and some that probably I could have held in a bit. But the anonymity of weblogging, only in that it is not face-to-face communication, allows us to be freer than we often find ourselves in our surroundings. In turn, I think I am a bit looser in "real" life due to the confidence and new sense of open honesty I’ve allowed in Spinning.
I think that it is this honesty that sometimes gives me pause. Not to those of you who have come to know me and have returned to maybe know me a bit better–to you, I will always be indebted and open. What makes me feel vulnerable is the random wrong numbers–the googlers who only wanted to find a bit on Cheever and got much more than they bargained for. This is what makes me draw my coat a little closer together at times. Hanging your heart on your sleeve and then imagining someone thinking "what the hell’s with this broad?" kind of makes me cringe.
It’s not admiration I seek; it’s the laughter I fear.
Anyway, read the rest of David’s kind words; they’re a wise boost to all of us.
What makes a three-hour history class even longer: Two students vying for who can ask more questions that are unnecessary, had they read the assigned text. Another who wants to know "why" a man long dead made a choice that he did. Five brown-nosers who sat in during the break then head for the restrooms a half hour later, one gone for another half hour. Asking the instructor to spell what’s written on the board after he noted the names were in the text. And this gem brought up in the back of the room, "Isn’t it funny, I mean really ironic, that two religious important figures five hundred years apart had the same name of Martin Luther?"
Yeah, kid. Just like George Washington Carver.
Sometimes, ya just gotta. Sometimes, eight hundred words can depend on a few. Tonight in our Creative Writing class we picked them out of stories, tossed them about and saw them fall back into place. The right word, whether it does the job of ten, or if it has impact that would be lost without it, is sometimes the hardest part of editing.
This is becoming known to me as the good professor pronounced it, the “hair exercise” because for two days I have been hung up on describing a character’s hair. It is important to the story–I think–because it is the character’s image in a mirror, her reflection of self, and because despite the character revelations in her choice of home decor and in the preparation of a special dinner, she is very pleased with herself at this moment, and what she sees, what she has put a lot of effort into achieving.
I can’t tell you the grief this is giving me, and there’s another word within this story that’s been bothering me even more. Maybe another one, to a lesser degree. But I’ll search for that right word, the phrase that produces the right picture, because it’s all got to feel right, or it’s not the best it can be.
Is that January 19th that is seeping into the ground? Or sooner; when was the first snow that re-covered the ground? February 4th sits on top, but the sun melts it back into the days that came and stayed before it.
Winter is funny that way. It will take freezing rain and keep it around, out of time, out of place, it will hold onto the day that it fell. Like layers of rock, the snow is a clock, a calendar of events of the season. Not centuries, true, but enough of our lives to mean something.
Makes you wonder; if we could separate snowflakes, brush away last Thursday’s snow, what day would it be?
You can watch the super bowl, I’ve got Fried Green Tomatoes on tv. What story, what acting, what emotion! It’s real people, it’s involving.
Ruth is dying, and her best friend is telling her a story…
Just noticed (and I should have, long ago) something that can certainly affect a reader, and the writer, in this day and age of technology that didn’t come up in the days before e-mail or online submissions.
You know all those red and green squiggles underlining your misspellings or possibly grammatical errors? Well, when you attach a document to an e-mail, whether it be for class work or submission in the hopes of publication, those little lines are what the recipient sees as well.
It is pointing out what it considers to be errors in your work.
Probably the last thing you should do is go over the piece from the top, and consider each suggestion. Take it and make the change, but if you disagree, click the ignore option to eliminate the lines.
Sure wish I’d have thought of this in four years of academic entries and the few submissions I’ve made in the creative pieces I’ve sent out.
Well, there you go. I lasted all of about two weeks wearing a nightgown to bed. It was the cold spell, the knowing I have all these lovely gowns, and probably had a little to do as well with the fact that as an EMT, I had often stumbled into the rather unpleasant scenarios of old folks naked in their beds, that gave me the great idea to don nightclothes.
But the same thing happened just as it always did and does, and I’ve once more sworn off the habit. I am a restless sleeper; move around a lot at night. Could be running away from monsters in my dreams, or could be dancing with Willie, I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter; a nightgown ends up bunched around my waist or on a bad night, under my armpits.
Last night it warmed up a bit and I found myself on top of the covers, butt naked to the pale morning light.
Honest, I think nude under the covers is much better.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology