Yes, writing.
I seem to spend most of my waking hours writing something. It’s one of those magical pursuits where you can dream up a story, taking place 210 light years from Earth, in a different time and under two suns instead of one. Err.... not too much detail... you’ll have to buy the rest!
If I ever finish the thing!
On the other hand, my story could be just down the road, a few minutes walk from the Post Office, or the Co-op. It could be fiction, or fact. Writing about people, places and events is always interesting. I was sitting in a car, just resting, from a hard day’s work, waiting to go into Tesco’s supermarket. I thought of a story about the car parking space I was in; the lives it had seen, the life I was leading at that time. My story would follow the lives, events, the heartaches and the joys of the people who use that car park space.
Writers have a hard time getting life into their books. Every now and then, a writer conveys that spirit of life into their story. You can put yourself into their space, their place and feel their wonder, their fear, their incredulity of the fantastic things that happen to them, as well as the mundane, the everyday things. These things are just as amazing, and just as hard to do well, when I set them down before my reader.
Sometimes, it’s not just one story, but the other that follows it that enhances the whole experience. I’m talking about Doctor Who, the new series, series 2. I’d just seen “The Girl in the Fireplace” set in pre-Revolutionary Versailles. An alien race from the 50th century was stalking a young woman in the 18th. Although very sci-fi, the story belonged firmly to the 18th century.
The Doctor, Rose and Mickey, left 18th century Versailles and materialised on a parallel Earth, in a parallel modern England and met parallel versions of themselves and their families. At their new destination they were also facing an old enemy in “The Rise of the Cybermen”.
I was very conscious of the story it had followed, and I think it was a very powerful illustration of how incredible the Doctor and his TARDIS is. It was sheer brilliance to follow the “The Girl in the Fireplace” with “The Rise of the Cybermen”. It showed how amazing travelling though space and time is, let alone falling out of our universe altogether and ending up in a parallel one.
Like many rookie writers, I suspect, we are like the stereotypical American tourist, who is, in my opinion, is very culturally honest when he says, “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like!” As though we are supposed to have read all the classics, all the great works of literature. If I read all that I’ve been told I am supposed to have read, as my literary ballast, I would have live as long as Doctor Who!
Learning all of the devices, like where to end the narrative and let the dialogue do the story telling is a skill worth knowing. Omission, where you allow your reader to imagine for them, is a very powerful technique and a holy grail for the writer. There’s a parallel in art, where you leave white space, which adds dimension to what you’re drawing, or painting. I read a review from last Saturday’s Guardian of an eclectic band of writers who give advice to the aspiring writer.
Some of it appears contradictory and yet taken together, it, nevertheless, makes sense. A bit like that last sentence! I’ve heard of stream of consciousness, studious outlining and then drafting before committing to the main road writing. I get the idea that there are, after all, as many different approaches as there are writers. This would appear to lead one to assume that there is no right or wrong way. Just a way as individual as you are.
There is some wonderful core stuff the writers all seem to agree on. Make a space for your writing; Physical space being a kitchen table, a desk, preferably in a private, quiet study. I have a desk listening to music from KCRW an eclectic radio station that streams from Santa Monica College, before it streams over the Internet to me. So I hope that’s a recommendation.
Mental space, or schedule space. Do your writing at specific times. It should be inked in, (as opposed to pencilled in, which you can rub out!) After all, wouldn’t your writing evening class be inked in?
The other thing is to do the writing.
It is amazing how many of us tell people of our writing. And yet, the finished product is less grand than our enthusiasm. When I’m not doing the writing, it does seem to be something you seem to want to put off. This makes you conclude that you can’t be much of a writer and you lack that vital dedication. This might be true. If you’re like me, you’ll find that perhaps it’s the daily routine that detunes you as a writer. Usually when you write regularly, you find you can re-tune back quicker and you can enjoy it quicker, even though it is very, very hard work indeed.
My enthusiasm is very genuine, otherwise, I guess, I wouldn’t be able to write. What I do lack is a solid grasp of project management, which plagues many writers, I am certain. Effective project management seems to go against the grain with our artistic and creative natures.
Why? Is it real? Or is it something we tell ourselves?
I can’t do recipes. Never have, never will. Instead, I learned some very rudimentary ideas about ingredient combinations, (usually based on my being reluctant to visit the supermarket!) I’ve developed an instinct about food. I learned one day, I was doing “art” with food. This empowered me to try other things with food and it occurred to me that I could transpose this to letters and paints too. The “storehouse” idea, where you store your ingredients for your writing, crops up quite a few times. So yes, those books on writing were right after all!
While I’m writing this, I am not finishing the story I’ve started. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether or not I’ve learned from my experiences, or my mistakes!
Happy writing!
