Category Archives: writing process

It oughta be fun!

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I’m still at it, slogging away at a freelance writing project. I’m about two-thirds of the way through but today my brain snatched up a grenade and threatened to blow us all to hell. You can’t do that, I told my brain. We have to finish. We’ve never missed a deadline — until now. But my brain was like Trumbo’s wounded soldier. It couldn’t communicate except by banging my poor skull against the wall.

Despite my brain’s act of rebellion today, I’m not complaining. There are worse things you can do in life than write for money from the comfort of your own home. And mostly I enjoy the work. But it is just that: work.  And today I couldn’t seem to make any progress no matter how bleary-eyed I got reading over the materials.

I was avoiding Facebook but it lured me like the false-hearted siren that it is, and I clicked on it out of habit, out of boredom, out of desperation, anything to distract my brain from the live grenade. And lo and behold, the lead “status” on my feed was from Frances Lefkowitz with a list of words that she used to create a short-short story. I am not sure if these were words Frances came up with or if they came from a friend of hers. I only know that Frances hones her writing skills and garners fame if not fortune, whipping up micro-fictions based on these word lists.

I usually look at the word list when she posts it and think that looks too hard. Not tonight. Tonight I glommed onto that list. I can do this, I thought, and bam in about five minutes I had a short-short story that delighted me. It made me laugh. It was fun, so much fun, and my brain set down the grenade and started dancing in joy. And then I remembered why I am here, why I do this — for the sheer unadulterated joy of it.

To paraphrase Bukowski, if it’s not fun, don’t do it. I’m not talking about the writing you do to pay your bills, I’m talking about the writing that feeds your hungry soul, the writing that shouts out the secrets of your heart, the writing that feels like a lover’s mouth against your bare shoulder.

This is just one more way that transformative writing transforms: it makes you happy. What more could you want?

Some games for you to play:

  1. Here are some words to play with: time, milky, uncle, hey, fancy, coping, necktie, bent, bookcase, cat’s paw, sweat, choir, lake, white, childish, magnetic, forgotten, breath. Can you come up with a short-short story (say 300 words or less) around these words?
  2. Write a nonsense poem. Out Jaberwock the Jaberwocky.
  3. Write a funny sex scene! Let there be wardrobe malfunctions or . . . well, I’m going to leave it to your imagination.

Gestation is a Necessary Part of the Process

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I went a couple of weeks without writing a post for this blog — or writing anything else, for that matter. I was tired and there were some personal issues that were on my mind. I didn’t even write in my journal.

Writers tend to beat themselves up if they aren’t writing, but I have learned (finally after many years) to give myself a break and to have faith that the creative urge hasn’t gone anywhere. I also comfort myself with the knowledge that my favorite writer Toni Morrison says you should never force the writing. She says she can always tell when a writer is pushing the writing out instead of letting it evolve organically. So when it’s not there, I let the fields remain fallow.

I don’t know exactly what is happening in the brain during those fallow periods, but I do know that eventually the words come pouring out in a torrent. That’s what happened this time. I hadn’t touched my notebook in a couple of weeks. And then that first line started dancing around my brainpan. The narrator in my head started explaining things to me. It was my story but it was really happening to someone else. All the things that were going on in my life fell into some kind of pattern and over a period of two days I wrote and rewrote. It seems like I wrote the story in a couple of days but it was really working itself out over the weeks. The story was like one of those children who wait to begin talking for so long that the parents become worried, but when the kid does finally start talking, she does so in full sentences.

That’s how it worked this time. Other times it may be different. You may need to prime the pump by writing in a journal or going to a writing retreat. Sometimes spending time with a friend in a coffee shop where you both commit to writing for 15 minutes can get you going again. The thing I’m trying to say is trust your instincts. If you need to stop writing for a week, a month or even two or three months, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Relax. Find some quiet time. Give the narrator in your head a chance to find the story. When it’s time you’ll hear it, and you’ll be ready to start taking dictation.

WIY: Winter is a time for the busy natural activity of the planet to slow down. You may need to slow down a little too. Take some time to relax. In mid-February (just before you go stir-crazy) my friend Angela, whose last name happens to be Winter!, and I will be offering a Winter Writing Retreat. We’ll be engaging in exercises that will help free up those trapped ideas. Think of it as a chance to play, to discover, and to deepen your writing process.
http://www.sevenoakspathwork.org/programs/workshops.php