No Man is an Island

Courtesy of my dear friend Kate (and Hemingway):

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." - Ernest Hemingway

I find that visual disturbing, to be honest, because I imagine my wrists gushing all over my laptop and ruining the glitter that's in the plastic the keys from which they are made. (Yay Asus!).  Secondly I find it fascinating to think of my thoughts flowing so freely and easily as blood does, forming some profound entity that would either captivate or cause one to vomit.

What am I doing, talking about blood and puke? Ew.

I don't think Hemingway was wrong here, some of my best writing moments, that even to this day are my favorite, are things that simply spilled out of me, stuff I didn't even know was there. And I'm finding that the writing that comes the easiest and that I still like the next day is the stuff that comes most naturally.

Sometimes I feel I am working so hard to contrive EXACTLY what I want to say, or what I have prejudged to be what I want, and then afterward I discover that this is, well, pretentious.  I think that my desire to write something phony is more of a fear to cover up the secrets of my brainwaves, because if I write the way I really think.....[insert irrational Lie here]; it probably wouldn't settle well with quite a few people.  They might even throw up.

(Get it? Eh? Ehhh?)

I guess that also means that some would be fascinated, and it the end, that would be beautiful.

"No man is an iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee...." -John Donne 

Ok, so the dude couldn't spell.....



RMVB

Etymology: We really must get around to thanking the Brits....

...because they have given so much to our U.S. culture and language. Here they go again, giving us a lovely phrase like "basket case."

I was listening to this song and wondering what the heck it really meant because I couldn't think of how a picnic supply container had anything to do with heartbreak.

Back in the day of WWI the Union Jacks weaved their stretchers, because this is where the term orginiates. "Basket case" was how soldiers referred to the men who had lost all of their limbs in battle and needed to be carried from the field in a basket. Since then it has evolved into something that also means "one made powerless or ineffective, as by nerves, panic or  stress," or "a person who is mentally incapacitated or worn out" (Wiktionary.com and merriam-webster.com)

Although, I honestly don't think the evolution of the phrase is a far cry from it's historical parent: I would probably be driven to mental incapacity if my body was only a torso and a head.

Not quite what Sara Bareilles meant, either. Though if I'm wrong about that, I don't know how she played guitar.

Cheers!

"The history of a linguistic form..."

Merriam-webster.com is fun to read.

I thought I would start this morning with some writing, and, hearkening back to my last post, wanted to include the word "batten" in whatever it was I would write. But, being the exactness freak that I am, I wanted to look it up and, (here I am revealing what a huge dork I am), find out what the origins of the word were so I couldn't screw it up. Funnily enough, I haven't yet had time to write what I had planned.....

Pet peeve: when people use a word/phrase because it sounds familiar or similar to something that is familiar when it's not actually the correct word of phrase. Like when people say "I could care less," and mean that they don't give a darn. Really? So it IS possible for you to care less than you do now? How much less? A lot less? Someone who cares a whole heap about something, cares the most about it that they ever could care, could also care less... (It's I couldn't care less. "There is no way I could care less than I do now".....) I'm getting off topic a little.....

Anyway, here is what I found for "batten."

I saw that it really meant to fatten up or eat-so-much-you-want-to-chuck, or step on someone else's face to get to the finish first. Imagine my horror at the idea that I had been using and understanding this word incorrectly for 24 years! I thought it meant something along the lines of "fasten" or "secure" or "keep out robbers!"

Thanks to the Good Ole Gentlemen, (Mr. Merriam and Mr. Webster:)), I was able to read the three main definitions, one of which included the robbers repellant.

But I thought it was interesting how the word has evolved over time. Batten comes from the Norse word which means to improve: and from there a "batten" is used to reinforce a construction join, certainly improving it (and keeping those thieves out!).

This was way too much fun for me to pass up doing again. Now, not only will I use batten correctly, but I can also use it in more than one way, stretching it to it's full capacity. So I think I'll make today "Etymology Saturday," and try to keep with the tradition.

It's Advent. Good time to start things.

Emily Has A Great Vocabulary

For proof, reference this (note "shenangegans": http://movementofcolors.blogspot.com/2011/11/losing-battle.html


50,000 words is just not going to happen, folks. I blame you all, mostly. Also, I blame flying and driving and National Youth Worker's Conventions and weddings galore (I have another to attend in Dec.) that keep me so busy that even when I do find time to sit still and be exhausted, I fall asleep. In a fluffy Mariott-cloud bed, or sitting up on my headboard with my neck at a 90 degree angle. I also realized this weekend, when the author Doug Fields was talking that he mentioned behing completely wiped out when he was writing his book, and begged for his work to be through, and that I have not pleaded to anyone for an end to my book yet, so therefore, I must not be quite putting myself into it the way I could......

Emily had a good idea when she challenged me to use the word "battened" in the novel I am writing (still writing, just not gonna meet the deadline.  Let the militia swoop down upon me Dec. 1), and I really hope that you will participate, all you creative and/or snarky people (like, all 6 of you). My request quite easy.

Give me some not-so-traditional words to use! Give each other the same thing! In the combox! Those old words that still work even though one might sound like Shakespeare when using them in regular language. Like "musn't," or "tarry," for example. Or, an option would be to suggest words used commonly by our fellow English-speakers under H.M. the Queen, such as "queue," or "boot" (for car trunk) which make sense in context but never alone for us poor Estadosunidense. Or perhaps some math vocabulary. Bring it on.

I know many of you have them.  "What a spectacular word!" you say to yourself. "The objective noise it makes somehow expresses exactly it's meaning! Why did this phrase die out?! How exact is this little definition exactly what I really meant to convey!"

Go crazy, kids. (Definitions to more unique words appreciated. But in light of our search engine world, it won't be hard to figure it out if you are typing with one hand because you're eating an apple.)

Cheers!

This Calls for a Show on TLC

The maid of honor flowers are hanging and half dry, November is looking more like Thanksgiving (as I type the rain is pummeling my window), and I am less than a quarter through my novel. 

I'm not super concerned, which is wierd because usually I beat myself up about not finishing something to which I committed.  Don't get me wrong, I am a little upset. It would be great to have this book rolling and be on the way toward the end, but I am not and there is nothing I can do to change that. I just don't have the time to make up what I have lost, but I'm certainly not giving up yet!

And, I do have two 8 hour drives ahead of me this weekend.  Perhaps those will help me catch up a little!

How do authors do it? The real ones? It strikes me that I have never looked in to this, but only noted how the big events of authors' lives panned out. Shelly died at sea, Greene was a philanderer, Austin an old maid, Hemingway an expat. But how did they write? before they were famous or paid well, when they worked in mills and cafes and whathaveyou - what techniques kept them at the table?

When did you find time, Dickens, when?!?!

 What was it? Insomnia? Reclusion? Total abandonment of all non-writing related activities and whithered away from loss of basic sustainance?

(That sounds about right, actually.)

This was much easier to do last year when I was frigthfully unemployed and lived with my mother. Humpf!

I could learn to manage my time more efficiently, however. I won't deny that. Although, I'm not willing to defer grocery shopping and showing up to work in order to write.

UGH! My moaning and wailing and gnashing of teeth will have to continue on my own time.

Here is a somewhat appropriate tribute to my slackerness. But be warned, the lead singer has a big mouth and it wierd to watch. But the video doesn't make any sense anyway, so don't worry about what you see.

Writing is such sweet sorrow

Seriously, people.  Sometimes it sucks.

NaNoWriMo Day 5 aaaaaaand I'm already behind.  This of course, is my own darn fault because I have not exactly been devoted to my plot line and I think that my charachter is SO boring.  It's quite possibly this in itself that I can't get around. But who am I to blame but myself?  I mean, I made the dude and what's happening to him....grr! Mea culpa!

But at the same time I feel locked in to the story so much that I can't really manipulate it to be, well, interesting.

It's pretty bad if the author is already bored by day five. However, I have hope, because most people get bored with thier story about half way through.  Perhaps I'm just getting past it early?

So what am I to do about this? I've been scrambling around my story, writing blip by blip of different parts that I think should or will come up.  I figure I can turn back to them should anything important change. I'm tossing around the idea of just sitting down and writing a story line...I know, I'm such a radical.

Well, off I go then. A cup of tea would be nice to ease the pain.

Our Lady of Victory, pray for me. (I'm not kidding, Mary.)

National Novel Writer's Month: November 2011

Last year I entered and actually accomplished the National Novel Writer's Month challenge: complete 50,000 words of a new novel in 30 days.

The first time I heard of a friend of mine who had entered the contest, I thought that she was ENTIRELY INSANE. Who in their right mind could possibly manage that!? Hearing that she had worked through the 30 days wearing mostly pajamas and eating icing straight out of the tub, I began to wonder if I too could accomplish such a feat.  I was unemployed at the time and so joined the legions of ameateur writers with their caffienated beverage of choice in the 2500 words-a-day requirement (I gave myself 10 days of 'rest days' so as to not go insane.)

Some days I would speed through the assignment, but most days I would sit upstairs in my rocking chair with my cat and computer perched in my lap and stare out the window, wondering how not to make my action scene NOT seem stupid. And make sense. And fit into the plot. And not be completely pointless other than meting out 2500 words that day. And be somewhat interesting to read. All in all I would find that conjuring up that many words in a day would be as difficult as getting a cat out of a pile of warm laundry, if not knocking on impossible.

When thinking about if I would do the thing again this year, I assumed that since I'm working and so freaking busy with my job in youth ministry that I should let myself of the hook. Scoff! I'm too important for such things! 

Some saint in heaven has got it out for me about this writing thing, because he or she is really good at making me feel guilty and impractical when I find excuses to delay or eliminate writing. "How are you ever going to be the writer you want to be if you don't start now? Who cares if you have a job! Most authors HAVE to have one! When do they write? When they make enough to buy a time machine?!?!"  I get a pit in my stomach. I sigh heavily. I think about running, but realize that St. Writes-a-lot is probably in better shape.

Thanks, communion of saints.

Not that I think I'm oh so wonderful of a writer and so should grace the world - My story from last year has not been touched since.....Dec 1, 2010.  And it certainly has not gotten any better, nor have those giant chunks of missing plot been found.  I'm doing this because the only reason I've got against trying is that I think that I can't.  Or rather, that I'm afraid that I can't.  Personally, I think that's the dumbest reason in the world for anything.

So here I go, November 2011! I have absolutely NO idea what I will write about! Perhaps some of you could join me and then we could bemoan our lot in life together.  If not, I am perfectly open to ideas for plot lines, characters, etc. If it ends up being THAT good - one day I'll write your names in the "acknowlegements" section of the work.  On the first page, in bold and 76 point font.

"Yeah, that'd be awkward. Especially after that lovely eulogy."

Today I wrote my eulogy. :(

Not because I wanted to, mind you, but because I was asked to as an assignment by my official employer.  I took the wider path and wrote a short, general statement somewhat in jest. The whole time I was creating, I kept thinking "What a strange thing to be thinking about!!!"  I mean, why would I want to write what people will say about me at my funeral? (Of course, it will be New Orleans style.) I mean, is anyone ever honest in a eulogy? Hecks no! Everyone stretches the good parts of people out into lengthy, maudalin phrases, turning a man who paid his taxes into a noble patriot who's money saved homeless people from missing a few suppers, therefore, a hero. Who's going to talk about someone's bad habit of not putting the toilet seat down?

This doesn't seem to be a horrible thing in my book, however.  I tend to think it would be extremely awkward to be at a funeral where the horrible sins of a man were ousted, or even the good things read as if from a dictionary. ("Well! He ain't gettin' any deader! Back to work!")

But this left me feeling rather self-glorifying in my assignment.  I also knew that this was probably going to be an exercise in setting standards for one's life, the whole "live your life to the full" and "you only get one life" bit. So working from that I had better set my accredations high for this! No mediocrity here! "Renee saved thousands of babies from burning buildings and was assumed into Heaven, only after painting a masterpiece which contained so great a beauty that it united all the nations under one banner of politics and economy, and she significantly reduced the amount of bicycle accidents." 

Mmmmmm, no. Blasphemy, anyone? Or a Dos Equis commercial. Either way, certainly I needed to find some sort of realistic view of what I wanted my life to be, without resorting to the heart clinching "she loved Jesus with her whole heart," kind of generalities, a Messiah complex.

I ended up combining a little bit of everything I didn't want to do: sarcastic humor, touching sentimentality, and incredibly interesting cause of death. The experience, all in all, was a little bit like creating a short story.  But this one was wierd, because it needed to be grounded in a very intimate reality: me! Even though I didn't really enjoy the project, nor did I complete it with all the gusto and effort I could have, I still kinda appreciate the experience. When else will I be writing something that is not only something I'm making up as I go along, but also something that I should want to have happen to me.  Flaming motorcyle death and everything.  I had to think of what my life wants to be in the highest standards, including all the aspects that I think should be included in my own personal life.  It's not like I could settle for a boring life, or one that didn't show a scrap of what I value and love.
Hmm. 

I guess my eulogy was more significant for learning to write than anything else. Let's hear it for left field assignments!

"And They Lived Happily Ever After!"

I've been thinking a lot lately about endings. Mostly because I tried to end a short story that I've been working on for a few months now, and I stared at the page for a few blank seconds before I gave up.

The truth is, I am no good at ending things.  When I give talks I usually wrap up with a "Yeah, soooo, now you need to stand up and...," or someone will come to my rescue by walking across the front of the room and demand the attention of the audience.  Even in face to face conversations when explaining things I will ramble on until I can find some statement that suffices as a conclusion. Usually, it's rather lame. "And, yeah, that's all I have to say. I'm done."  And I've heard on more than one occasion that I leave a super awkward voicemail.

Bringing a story to its end seems to bewilder my poor little mind. Is this just me? I begin my approach to the last two or three sentences, when suddenly cohesive thoughts escape from me like animals from a zoo and begin beating their little limbs on every surface and peeing and skwaking so that I can no longer tell what they are supposed to be or what they ever did look like, much less am I able to catch them and strap them back into their crates....
I have a great feeling that no on understands what I just wrote.  Let me put it this way: I get to the end and cannot for the life of me think of anything else significant to say more than what just happened in the plot. I feel as if I have conveyed all the necessary information and now can not possibly need to take more of the reader's time.  If I do try to contrive some end phrase or statement, I feel as if it immediately cornifies the entire story making it suitable only for t.p., no matter how riveting the body of the work was. Like if I end it with the "moral of the story" it makes that very moral out to be superficial and fake, and the same goes if I were to divulge the mystery which I crafted from the get go. But I also can't just end the story without coming up with something and let the reader fall of the cliff following after it, nor can I just suggest that all the characters just went back to their Sunday tea without declaring some sort of purposeful statement, or look too far into the future and therefore start a whole other plot line altogether, or....or....or...
You can see where I'm going with this? The escaped animals? The poo flinging?

Most of the time in my school work I would end essays with some "inspirational" statement that basically read, "and that is that!" (cue Reading Rainbow music [Ba dah da!] and over-exaggerated wink.) For some reason my teachers and professors ate that up, or at least seemed to do. Perhaps they were as sly as the Grinch: "And his fib fooled the child. Then he patted her head, he got her a drink, and he sent her to bed. And when Cindy Lou Who was in bed with her cup, he crept to the chimney and stuffed the tree up!" Or in reference to the my sappy ending, gagging into their sink. I hated those endings of mine.

I've digressed... Sometimes the ending just comes all on it's own, but mostly not. I would love to learn to avoid the animal confusion.

Ideas, comments, and hurtful criticisms are welcome if you so choose to leave them in the combox. 

And because I like pictures: (Google search "wild animals loose in ohio.")

All This Nothing

I love the movie You’ve Got Mail.  Goodness, what a terrible stereotype I am, am I not?  Yes, it’s a love story.  Ugh.  And they wear muggy clothes that were popular in the 1990’s. Gross.  It quasi- copies from Pride and Prejudice and is also a remake of the 1940 film Shop Around the Corner.  Scoff.  I often get it mixed up with Sleepless in Seattle because both of the main characters are the same actors. (Not that this is no good; let’s be honest, they work well together.) Still:  frustration.

However, this movie intrigues me:  mostly because it was well written, and essentially is about two writers.  Writers who would, if not for the invention of the internet, a quirky chat-room encounter, and riches enough to purchase a then-very-expensive laptop on which to type, not be writing.  Writers who would not have known that they were authors if it were not for circumstance. 

My favorite thing about this movie is that it makes me want to write more.  A great portion of the script narrates the couple’s latest emails over screen action, and these emails consist of the character’s thoughts as they move about the day.  Their observations, their likes and dislikes, insignificant questions and personality struggles.  As the heroine Kathleen Kelly says “…mostly we talk about nothing, but all of this ‘nothing’ has meant so much more to me than so many other ‘somethings.’”

I am always taken aback when reading a great book at how little truths about life, society, and the physical universe can make a story instantly relatable – it makes the scenario visible in one’s head.  It’s like sympathy.

“Don’t you just love New York in the Fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies.”

Perhaps this is just me: but I immediately associate the briskness of Fall with the old responsibility of stocking up on paper and pencils. I can smell the Trapper-Keepers, and see the Lisa Frank zebras in front of my eyes.  Before I even knew I did this, Joe Fox put it into words. He verbalized my subconscious through his random life observations.

Sometimes, when I'm traveling mostly, I "write" in my head, with my thoughts. It's as if someone could hear my thoughts or they are being recorded by a little leprechaun scribe as I think. Occasionally, these thoughts are actually recorded and turn out to be something akin to quality writing, and sometimes that is not the case. (I.e. I go back and read it and HATE it, or I forget the genius entirely and it remains eternally lost to the abyss of brainwaves.) However, the surge of inspiration is usally based on things that I have seen before and about which I have come to some in/significant conclusion.

Isn’t that what stories eventually become,  the world from the point of view of the author, delivered in small doses of seemingly insignificant detail? Kathleen saw the caviar as a detail for beauty; Joe saw it as something to be used – but those two differences magnify the identity of the characters and what they value in life and thus for what they choose to live.

So, I like You’ve Got Mail because it inspires me to write random thoughts, and to notice tiny truths because in the end, these are the things that convey truth in stories.

What are your tiny truths?  What sort of things inspire you to write or create?

 

The Return of The Return of the King

"You WILL suffer me!"

Today, alas, I am fatigued, so I wont be writing much; and that, I'll be writing about reading, which is not technically in my job description.  Let's be honest, though: anyone who is/wants to be a good writer is always a nerdy reader first.

I have great news! Finally, after 7 years, I have moved on from the half-way point and have finished The Two Towers! I know, I can't really be a more horrible Catholic. Somehow I got lost as a teenager in the tangents that Good Ol' JRR takes.....perhaps that's why I put it down and let it get dusty....

Now I've cracked open The Return of the King, which I literally made my mother hide from me back in my sophomore year of high school so that I wouldn't read the end and find out if Frodo made it to Mordor to destroy the Ring or not. Well, I've watched the Peter Jackson movies about 1,395 times, so I do already know the end.

I'm still going to read it, so I can enter the realm of well-versed Catholics. Now all I have to do is catch up on Chesterton....

Numbing Faceless Nameless Lifeless Abstraction

I'm going to try to be shorter winded today:)

"You are a person, not a number. You don't see digits in the mirror, you see a face. And you don't see a crowd. You see an individual.  So you and I relate more powerfully to the reality of a single person than to the numbing faceless nameless lifeless abstraction of numbers*."  - Paul Slovic, as taken from Paulo Coelho's Blog

This is the hardest part for me as a writer: essentially creating a character who is a dimensional person.  Often I need a character to fill a role in a plot, and so I'll give them a personality that fits what choices they'll make or who they will influence, etc. But I don't want them to turn out like this:

 I don't even remember this character's name - and, neither does the person who uploaded the pic to the web (the url includes her as "transformer's 3 girl.") Really, that is my point. Now, I didn't see the second movie, I skipped it, but in the 3rd movie I saw no reason why the main character was in love with her at all, other than the fact that she was hot and wanted to sleep with him: what she looked like and what she would do for him were the only motivations for his "love," and for her being in the movie at all, really.  "Numbing faceless nameless lifeless abstraction."

Had I a grave, I would roll over in it if a character I created came out like this: dry, dimensionless, unreal. Of course, the characters I would create/have created indeed are NOT real and never will be, nor were they ever.  However in order for the story to take on meaning beyond what I could write in an essay, the people in it have to be realistic as persons.  Otherwise, it's just a soapbox rant or a text book.

If you and I think about all of the stories that meant something to our lives, whether they be from our childhood or later, we would always admit that the ones that are the most powerful are the ones with "real" people in them. Characters we believe could actually exist and who are people who we can relate to as incommunicable** beings.

That is my fear, but also my inspiration to search for and convey unique, irrepeatable, individual human persons in a story that I write. So that people of all ages and all times can know him and befriend him, like this immortal character:

*I love that last bit. It's almost an excessive description, but as it causes the emphasis that was intended which no sole word could convey, it seems perfect. The Jews would think so too, with their "holy holy holy...." but that's another train of thought.

**Incommunicable is a word used in philosophy to describe the uniqueness of each human person: essentially how "no one can take your place" no matter their identical qualities and aspects.

Awesome People Ruin Lives

Today I was talking with one of the new Army Chaplains with whom I work.  In process of chatting, he ended a sentence with a preposition and then apologized jovially.  It was then that I knew I was going to get along with him just fine. We continued the conversation about people in our lives who correct such verbal flaws instinctively and how their presences have finely tuned our speech.

He then proceded to tell me that his English teacher in college ruined his life. (He paused dramatically. I turned my chair away from my desk and fully faced him.) Continuing his story, he spoke of how this professor forbade every one of her students from beginning a sentence with the word "there." (Again, convicting silence.)

(My face contorted into a quizzical expression.)  "It's not grammatically incorrect, but she wanted us to take the time to think of another way to state what we wanted to say." (Light dawned on my face, maybe even intrigue.  This time he bolted out the rest of his explanation.) "So, instead of saying "There are many..." you would write "Many of the...." Now everytime I read a book or hear people speak and they start a sentence with "there," I see how lazy it is.  Now that I've been restricted from this First Word, I realize that it's made me have to be much more creative in my sentence structure."*

"Great. Thanks, Chaplain. Do you know that you have now bonded my soul for all eternity to never begin a sentence with the word "there?" Thanks for passing on the ruining of lives. You just ruined mine!"*

I actually can relate to his burden of well-motivated restriction, but first through the challenge of dressing myself.  [Conglomerate "Hell yeah!" from women reading this.] If I had a dime for all the times I've overheard or taken part in this conversation, I would probably have....about 10 bucks.  Ok bad analogy. But at least I could go to a movie.

My point here is that belonging to a long suffering group of women who like to dress modestly but also dress well (I'm not really talking about the whole "men's-T-shirt-with-a-denim-jumper" crowd) is, well......long suffering! It's rough to go out to a store, finally find that dress that is perfect, or even stuff yourself into a dressing room with so many options, and then once the fit of the garb is truely revealed, you realize that it shows all your girl parts. It's too low cut. Or too short. Or too tight. Or practically transparent.

We all know the boys don't need to see it all with their eyes to be able to see it all with their minds.

And so, if we are the kind of women who feel dejected, unfeminine and like wimpy turltes recoiling in our shells when we are faced with a challenge, we load all of the clothes on to the Target employee's counter and slump out of the store. Or worse, we buy the stuff anyway and cause nice boys to think bad things.

BUT! If we are vibrant women who love all things Beautiful and understand our true identity as daughters of the Lord of All Creation, then we pick out what we like and march over to the thrift store, stocking up on camisols and tanktops, scarves, stockings, and all those other fun little things that we can use to adapt our objectifying clothing into subjective-wear.

Not what I'd wear to the beach today, but she's still beautiful.

We're utilizing much more of our creative juices and gels to put together an ensemble; no longer are we the automotons who wear whatever the department store stocks for us, no longer do we look just like every other girl who goes out to shop, our body parts (which, by the way, are not super unique) displayed like ducks hanging in a chinese store window. No more - we look like individuals. We display our individuality, something that is individual, irrepeatable, and profound: make us manifest our not entirely physical selves in the physical world....

I could go on. Maybe I will. (I just read this blog entry and it's making me think too much. More later.)

This brings me back to writing.  It makes us look like individuals too.  Take what my chaplain said about "there" and imagine if someone wrote a descriptive paragraph with every sentence beginning with it! It would be mechanical, objective and annoying as all get out! Partly because of its repetition, but also because it would be so fixed, so non-interpretive. Anyone, or anything could do it. It's not identifyable as human, as personal.

Also, if I have any dignity as a writer, how can I not take up a challenge to be more creative? How can I let the beauty of language slip by? I would beat myself up if I devloved into a state of misspelling or saying "me" rather than "I." This is about self respect, folks!

Yay! So, I now have enslaved myself to the "No 'There' Rule." Hopefully it will make me be more creative, and more of who I was made to be. If not, no one else will notice.

Cheers


*This is paraphrase. I do not have a recordic memory.

"You can't write such a comedy without some conspiracy." -Chris Rice

Surely a writer would never admit to not having a point to their poem or story.  Absolutely, everyone who creates art is filled with the vision, exact execution and stunning plot wrap-up before they even begin! Is that not the Source of all motivation for dipping quill in ink in the first place?
I agree, that there might be some authors who experience this.  Perhaps even every time they write, and of course that includes God Himself (of course, for Him, this sentence would be preterite).  But I say that I just don’t believe that the “what it takes” of author-dom resides only in those who have the foresight for every (or even most) of their plots and character developments.  I surely don’t possess this.

Whenever I walk into Barnes & Noble or the like, I feel a sudden overwhelm of insignificance. It’s like being at the Pacific Ocean shore at night, when you are enjoying the warm salty air and suddenly a wave of water powerful enough to rip you out to sea before you have time to say goodbye to your mamma slams into your knees (of course soaking the jeans you so practically rolled up), pushing your thighs backward while simultaneously lifting your feet up into its swarthy jaws, and you stumble, tripping and panicking, up the sandy dune, screaming….

Except when you're in a bookstore, all of that happens just in your chest and lungs and whatever gland it is which throws out hormones to the rest of your body and resides at the bottom of your brain.*

There. Are. So. Many. Books.

And so many authors! Those modern books and authors which will definitely become classics (such as The Kite Runner) and those that become pop-culture so quickly that movies are made before the final book of the series is even written (I do love Harry Potter), and then those that are famous only for those who like that sort of genre but famous nonetheless (think Beverly Lewis), hard cover books, reflections and spin offs and remakes of classics (try Pride, Prejudice and Zombies), books that are so much like the other 300 written by the same author that the cover design begins to resemble all of Stephen King’s novels, (John Grisham, anyone?) memoirs of presidents and founding fathers and the marginally well-known,  fiction books about non-fiction, non-fiction books about fiction…..

Don’t get me started on those that stock the shelves of “Classics,” I’m already out of breath just re-reading what I wrote.

In sum, I always am hit with the Surprise Pac-Coast Water Wall and Foot Sucker of identifying myself as white noise.  That same feeling overtakes me when I begin a new story, and brushes my forehead over and over again as I fight to create a character, or devise a plot that makes sense and makes change. Who am I to think my little inspiration will stand out when I cannot even lace together the shoes of my story?

I have come to the realization (or perhaps it is a justification, I haven’t really asked anyone else) that the story must unfold as I write, as if it exists in reality outside of my own mind; as I grope and battle for a point.  The beloved girl child learning to swim whom I can’t seem to really discover; the hellion for whom I can’t outline a travel plan; the nihilist who I can’t get to shoot at nothing: I think I won’t know their full stories until I have bashed out the dents of my initial inspiration.

Am I too sanguine in asking, ‘How can I?’ As I write, I have to fit things to make sense, and everything that is not trivial effects and changes the story of or the character himself.  The reader won’t know the real Betta or John before the last page, why should the author?

Perhaps that’s the comedy of being an author-who-is-not-God (or one of many): our lives and the stories we help to compose are not conspired by us from the beginning, but we merely discover them.

How glad I am that He is God and I am not!

Now, please help me conspire……

*I have never actually retreated from a bookstore screaming. Perhaps some have. I was thinking of the “I’m having fun” scream anyway, but there must be those who let out a blood-curdle at some point in bookstore history.