Writer's Notebook
inkspots and old plots
Volume 1: Issue 1 (People Watching) | Issue 2 (Editing) | Issue 3 (Conquering Writer's Block)
Issue 3, Volume 1. Hello again! This issue will focus on revving up. I'm sure you know what I mean. Sometimes it's hard to come up with those brilliant ideas. Here are a few tried and true methods to get started: 1) The Free Write: Take a sheet of paper. Get a good pen. Find a nice, quiet spot. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Start writing. Don't think! Just jump from one word to the next and write whatever comes to mind. If what comes to mind is nothing, then write several lines of "nothing nothing nothing..." Just keep going, and don't let your pen off the page. When you've filled the whole page, look through the gibberish. Even if there's nothing there, it's a job well done. You've conquered an entire sheet of paper! Sometimes just getting beyond that is all you need. However, in most cases, you'll have said or thought something important that you didn't think was important before. Or maybe you didn't even know you were thinking it. 2) The People Game: Sit down and write the names of all the people you know. Your friends. Relatives. A character in a book or on TV. The DJ on the radio. Write the names of the people you don't know. The man who rides the bus at your corner. The woman who sold you shoes. 3) If These Walls Could Talk...: Pick an object. To make things interesting, pick a tangible noun out of the dictionary and use that. Now, picture that object. If it could talk, what would it say? How was it born? What was the first thing it saw? Where did it end up? Did it meet any people? If so, who? Did it see others of the same kind? Was it all alone? Write about the object's journey, from birth to death. This technique is especially good for poetry. Even if you don't like the story, you might want to think about how the object reacted to certain things and the people it came into contact with. Sometimes there's a whole other story in those things. These revving exercises usually don't produce anything that will become a finished product. What they're meant to do is get your writing processes started up. Then you'll feel ready to write your masterpiece!
Issue 2, Volume 1. Sorry it's been so long since the last installment... this issue we'll be discussing editing. Just today a teacher told me that if you like a quote, you're probably going to have to cut it. She then proceeded to tell me that my entire second paragraph had to be cut. I agreed with her. Deep in my gut I knew it was true before I even sat down to conference with her. Still, I shrank another two inches at the thought of rewriting the paragraph from scratch.
Issue 1, Volume 1: Let's open with a little secret mission. Here's your job: clear out an hour or two from your day. Go to the mall, or the airport, or a cafe, or a park. For some of you, this will be a stretch; if you don't have time, rush hour traffic is a good place to start. Watch people. (Don't stalk them! Watch discreetly.) Pick out someone who acts differently, or who's way too normal, or does something strange with his/her hands: anyone who makes you sit up and notice (subtly, of course). It can't be someone you know. You've got your pad and paper, right? Describe them. What made you notice them? What are they wearing? Are they alone? What do you think they do for a living? What are they thinking? What kind of life have they lived? Bundle up your notes and go home. Write a story or poem about them.
© 1998 milesphile@hotmail.com
After about fifteen minutes, stop writing. Close your eyes and pick two random people on your list. Hopefully they won't know each other already, but if they do it's all right. Now think about these two people. How do they talk? What are their favorite foods? What are they wearing? What are they interested in?
Here's the hard part: these two people will meet. Pick a spot, like a park or a bar or a skating rink. What are they doing? How do they meet? What would they talk about? Write that down. Even if it doesn't make sense, it should remind you that you've got a whole treasure trove of people. And you meet new ones every day.
Editing may be the most painful and unnatural part of writing. It's painful because the misplaced passage is usually the one we have labored the longest and hardest on. It's unnatural because as writers, we are creators. Eliminating something special is against our nature. What's the point of working hard on a project if we're just going to destroy half of it?
The truth is that writing is just as much about what we don't mention as what we put on the page. And what isn't on the page is not necessarily bad. It could be extraneous or irrelevant. It could be utterly brilliant.
Take heart. Think of writing as a sculpture. The negative space is as powerful a statement as the form of the stone. Real sculptors have it easy: they get a big ugly slab of rock to start with. Writers have to make the rock from scratch. So we get attached to it, and when the time comes to trim away the extra material, we hesitate.
So here's this week's challenge: take some piece of writing, find your favorite part (no cheating), and get rid of it. Don't make them permanent changes; it might have been right the first time. Then rework it so it's readable. Ask yourself: does it sound better? Or worse? Is the piece going in a completely different direction?
Be brave. Have fun.
There! You're a writer! The next step is: observe people you do know. Don't recreate them completely; just grab little gestures and ways of talking and general observations and put them in a character who's entirely different. Or, spend ten minutes making a list of everyone you know, real and fictional. Close your eyes and pick two people on the list. What if they met? Where would it be? Would they have much to say to each other? People are never-ending treasure troves. Mine them carefully, but mine them well.
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