Category: Writing

Writer’s block?

by MAÔ, posted in Writing

I haven’t been writing much lately. I had intended to be, and yet it hasn’t happened. I could blame it on writer’s block, though it’s not entirely accurate. Well, it is and it is’t. Writer’s block to me seems a form of catch-all for the various excuses we use to say that we’re not writing.

Julia Cameron asks something like, “Why is there no engineer’s block?” That sounds not quite right, but you get the point.

Mainly, my lack of writing has been an issue of prioritization. Other things on my mind, and distractions abound in those times when I would typically do my writing. My journal entries have been sparse, my reading lax, and even the well of ideas that would pop into my head had seemed to be reduced to a trickle.

Now why this happens I can’t say. But I am aware that if I don’t write, regardless of if what I write is any good or not, the symptoms are only going to worsen.

So, here’s to a prolific and creative 2018!

On the weather

by MAÔ, posted in Writing

It’s wet outside. Rainy and dark. Thunder crashes shake the hotel that I’m staying in, and the lightning illuminates the cloudy night sky. Looking out the window on this third story hotel room, I see into the back parking lot and the hotel that is somehow either behind us or beside us. I’ve no idea which way these hotels are oriented in comparison to each other.

The parking lot is wet, and there are few cars down there. Street lamps are shining around the lot, wet metal on the cars reflecting up light.

A thunder-clap shakes the window I’m looking through, and I take a step back into the room. I decide to write a bit, before it gets time to go to work.

8 Rules from Vonnegut

by MAÔ, posted in Writing

Started on some fiction based on a creepy dream I had. This was sitting nearby, and has come in handy.

Eight rules for writing fiction:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things – reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them – in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1999), 9-10.

Just play

by MAÔ, posted in Writing

Why have I taken to writing every month that first post about the books I bought and the books I read? It’s a blatant copying of the format Nick Hornby created for his column in The Believer, and I can’t imagine that I could do it better than him. Yet, I still write the post.

the simple fact is, I do it because I’m searching for my voice. It’s a voice that gets stuck inside me. And when it finally comes out as I hear it, I’ll be doing (what I hope will be) wholly original work. Until then, I play. I experiment.

Neil Gaiman has talked extensively on writing, both about his process and on the craft as a whole. One piece of advice that I find particularly pertinent to this post is a response to a Tumblr question: “…try things out. Enjoy yourself. If you find a writer you like, write like them. And then sound like something else. Write anything. Don’t worry about it being good or read by other people. Just play, and play a lot.”

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

-Ira Glass

Why I write

by MAÔ, posted in Books, Writing

I was cleaning out some drawers today, and found an old note, possibly ten or twelve years old. It made me laugh.

It said: "I’m struggling to write. I’m searching for inspiration in an automobile drive. ’91 Lincoln Town Car around Chicago. Lights, towering buildings."

Not sure what my Town Car had to do with Chicago, because I don't recall ever driving it there. But, it's possible. There were some crazy weekends back then.

The thing that stuck out was the struggling to write. I don't recall ever wanting to be a writer. But I liked writing. Always. I used to write poetry, and stories. I have numerous scripts and longer stories, started or abandoned. Ideas always popped up, but I never took them to fruition.

I was actually taking all these old papers out of the drawer and getting them on my cloud in a document called Collected Junk Writings.

But, in a way, this blog is the creative interpretation of my enjoyment of writing. Things I think about I get down in a post, I leave it up for whoever happens across it, and I'm honing an activity that I like doing.

I'm passionate about so few things right now, in this awkward between state that I'm in. Now I'm looking for a job, having quit my other one. I'm thinking about whether I want to stay in Central Florida or move away. About whether to try and start a Ph.D. program next fall, or wait another year.

All these things rattle on in my head, and still I give this blog weekly attention. Now, it's three posts a week, and I'm ahead (for the most part) by about a week. Which means I'm writing this on Tuesday, and you may not see it until next Friday.

I'm sure that when life comes crashing in, and the Universe points me in that direction, I'll not be so ahead on my blog. I'll probably be scrambling for deadlines.

51YdazcA5yL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_I love the bit in Terry Pratchett's A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction, where he describes what he calls "A bit of writing about writing."

"Get up, have breakfast, switch on word processor, stare at screen.
Stare at screen some more."

This staring at screen, plus elements of procrastination come in for about the next thirty paragraphs. Finally: "Midnight…"

"Stare at screen. Vaguely aware right hand has hit keys to open new file. Start breathing very slowly. Write 1,943 words. Bed. For a day there, thought we weren't going to make it."

This is my blog. I write I because I like it. It's not an exceptional blog, and it's not terrible. But it's mine, and I get to share with you, the reader.