All writers have a process that allows them to create. However, the art of "Writing" is often mistaken for that "Process." Hopefully this blog explains the difference, and inspires people to develop their crafts, become writers, or just keep on writing.

Friday, October 25, 2024

What Is Your Ritual?

I am sure that most readers here are familiar either with the Stephen King novel, Misery, or the movie adaptation of the same name. It's okay if you never read/saw Misery - the point is fairly simple. While the two versions are at times wildly different, they each portray something about writers that shows up more often than not. The main character, author Paul Sheldon, is a creature of habit, and has certain ways about him that are more than just things that he does simply for the sake of doing. They are rituals, and they feed his writing process. The individual actions have very little to do with writing itself - champagne and one cigarette after he finishes every manuscript, for example - but they are a part of what makes him feel complete as a writer.

Now, having quirky little rituals might seem like a weird routine to engage in to make yourself feel like a writer. However, there is a certain mind-over-matter power that takes hold here, and it is a strong one indeed. Again, it's not the action itself that makes you better, but rather the meaning of the action. When Paul would celebrate his manuscript with champagne and a cigarette, he was indulging himself in a way that was important to him. This had meaning that might not resonate with anyone else but him, but he is the one that matters, so it works. Furthermore, such a ritual drives home the subconscious feeling that this is how things are supposed to be. Even when everything else is chaos, one ritual, one habit will put that part of the world firmly on its axis.

I often mention how, as a child, I would sit by my mother as she wrote and edited her news stories. It was just her, a legal pad, a pen, and her Cutty Sark on the rocks (maybe with water or soda - I don't know. I was four at the time). She would read, re-read, mark up, change, and rewrite those stories to perfection as I watched in utter silence, but in my mind, I picked up on the little notes of what made editing possible. Of particular note was the smell of that blended Scotch whisky - that wove itself into my mind as an integral part of the process. Scotch whisky in itself does not launch the process (and too much can impede it), but the smell brings me into a proper frame of mind to where I am very much an editor. It simply helps me put on my editor's hat; it fits better with a scotch at my side.

Unfortunately, this has become problematic of late. When I would get together with other writing friends for sessions of editing each others' work, they would supply the scotch much to my delight. It was my ritual, and it brought the experience together for me. The part I did not expect, however, was that I fused my ritual with these friends. Sometimes I would visit and socialize, and have my scotch on the rocks as we just chatted. It became something more than just my editing ritual. It became a bonding ritual.

The last of these writing friends recently passed away, and now that glass of scotch takes on a new meaning. It isn't about editing. It's about loss. The smell reminds me of all the writing friends I've been with who I will never share a written word with again. It actually interferes with editing now, because there's still grief to be dealt with. The scotch didn't make the grief, but it's a constant reminder of it.

The takeaway from this? If you develop a writing ritual (and I hope you do), keep it exclusive to the writing process you want to bond with. Like Paul Sheldon's cigarette, only have a smoke as part of the ritual, and at no other time should you even smoke (a good life lesson, actually). Make your writing habits sacred, make the rituals personal, and respect them. Otherwise, you might end up staring at a bottle of scotch, wondering why it no longer has the power it once contained.      

Friday, October 18, 2024

Why?

I am sure one of the most relatable experiences across all cultures is when a little child starts responding to every single statement with that dreaded word, "Why?" You explain that they have to eat their broccoli. "Why?" Clean your room. "Why?" You shouldn't put the cat in the washing machine. "Why?" This phase is the fodder for plenty of comedy sketches, and actually a good sign that the child is now inquiring about the world around them. They grow into it much to everyone else's chagrin, bombard the world with questions, and then, sadly, grow out of this phase thinking they know everything. Hopefully they maintain a curious mind afterward, but that's not the point. The point is that we can learn something from this inquisitive yet annoying child.

A lot of people I know want to write The Great American Novel. They clearly have the skills, they can generate the time, and yet... no novel. They might even talk about their desire to write that one book, make that one profound, 78,000-word statement, and sit back in the glow of their accomplishment. Yet somehow, not one page gets created. Are they just all talk? Is this a way of them suggesting they could do something if they wanted but they just don't want to? Or is it something more?

When I started writing, I wrote about things that were on my mind, wild flights of fantasy, and other fictitious things. Then people who knew my past and had an idea of my deepest, darkest secrets (usually because I told them these things) suggested I write about growing up in the south suburbs. Well, that sounded like a great idea, so I did. It was, without question, genuinely horrible stuff. It was one-dimensional, it was just a bunch of stuff happening rather than a complete story arc, and it wasn't really the kind of thing that made readers care about the character - even though they knew that character firsthand. What went wrong? The answer is simple. When people started saying I should write about my life and times, I never said, "Why?"

Frankly, for a long time I never considered this to be an important question, so I never asked that question, but the answers would've explained a lot of how those stories failed. If I asked, "Why?" and my friends said the stories were funny and people would enjoy them, that would've given me a frame of reference on how to write the story. If they were inspired about the tragedies I've overcome, well, that's an entirely different voice for the story, and a different reading audience. However, just by asking "Why?" I now had some information about just what made those stories valuable to them, and I could express the funny stories with a bouncy, humorous voice, and so on.

Let's now look at the friends who want to write The Great American Novel. "Why?" If their answer is, "It would be great to be famous," well, that's probably not the best food to nourish a writer. If they want to be  an inspiration and their generation's Harper Lee, well, they had better discover something timely and deep that will resonate throughout the years. Asking "Why?" is the inquiry that forces us to better understand our motives and our drives. When we feel the need to write a story, ask, "Why?" The answer will instantly inform us about how we need to broadcast that story. And if the answer is, "Because I need to get it out of my system and onto the page," then that's a perfectly valid answer and something to work with. 

Lastly, if you find yourself unable to answer that question about something that feels important to you, don't give up. Poke around and try to draw something out. Sometimes those truths are a little scared about coming to the surface, but when they do, they will reveal a lot more than the story to you. Once I answered my own, "Why?" I rewrote plenty of my life stories. They came out incredibly different, and very satisfying. More to the point, I could read them afterward and feel that they were the answer to my, "Why?"         

Monday, October 14, 2024

Is Our Writing Ever Done?

I was actually going to do a piece today about how writing is a part of our broader thinking process, and how sometimes when we get tied up in our story and can't find our way out, we can use this connection to resolve a lot of our conflict. However, that whole concept kind of fell apart after I wrote Friday's post, and now I want to make a very special point about the things that move us to write and what we lose when we stop writing.

A few hours after I wrote my last post, "Being Haunted By Words," the author I mentioned in that piece, Linda Berry, passed away. I can't say her passing came as any surprise - she was 85 and in declining health. When I visited her last Friday, it was to help her get her affairs in order and make sure her final wishes would be seen to. Quietly, I knew it would likely be the last time I saw her. It was. Fortunately, I did get the chance to tell her how she and her husband were the writing mentors that turned me into the published author that I am, and that I was thankful for her guidance, her wisdom, and her friendship. Letting her know that leaves me with no regrets. However, there's still a frustration I will never be able to resolve.

I can't help thinking about all that she left behind as a writer. In the time when her health started to slide, she talked more and more about the things she wanted to say, the poems she still had in her. She wanted to express so many things about so many subjects, but it had become difficult for her. The writer in her was alive and well, but there were fewer and fewer ways for her to get those stories out. She couldn't type anymore, her hands were too arthritic for writing, and I can't help but to think that the loss of her husband - a fellow writer - placed too much of an emotional weight on her. She still had so much to create, but in the end it never came into existence. In some ways, that's just as terrible a loss as Linda's passing, because it was a part of her I never got to know.

Now that she's at rest, the mind naturally turns inward and I think about my own mortality and my own writing. Granted, I am three decades younger than her and in better health than she was at any point in the past year, but I still think about all those stories I have yet to write. I've shared plenty of my humorous anecdotes and silly experiences. I have also gone through writing and processing my own amount of trauma. However, both categories still have plenty of stories to be told. Some are not Earth-shaking, others I still haven't mustered up the courage to write about because they damaged me to the core. But whatever the reason, I am no different than Linda in that I haven't gotten around to doing something that deep inside I want to do, and if I don't make it to tomorrow, all those stories vanish along with me.

All of us writers are the same. We write things we feel compelled to produce, we create things for the joy of writing or to purge them from our soul, and each story - fictitious or factual - is a modest revelation on some facet of our existence. And for all that we create, there's plenty that we just never get around to. And no matter how boring those stories may sound to ourselves, someone else might take an interest in that because a part of you resonates with a part of them. However, it will never happen if we never write them.

Tonight, write something. Write anything. Post it on social media. Say something about yourself. Make yourself a little more known than you were yesterday. It might not make a difference for you, but it gives someone else a chance to see you a little more clearly. And someday, you will no longer have that chance, and people out there will wish they had one more thing to know about you.

Rest in peace, Linda.             

Monday, October 7, 2024

Being Haunted by Words

This post is about the closest I will get to a Halloween-themed post this month, given that I will be very busy in the next few weeks, and, of course, NaNoWriMo is approaching - the real holiday for writers. That all being said, I did want to talk a little about some stories that stick with us, for better or worse, and we are left with them seared into our brain. There is no one definitive way to say how this is done, since it is a very unique effect and no one story will resonate with everyone. However, analyzing the story that haunts you might be an insight as to what pulls at your personal heartstrings; what can make you a better writer.

The story that won't let me go is a heretofore unpublished work called, "The Taste of Milk." It sounds simple enough, perhaps even so much so that this is part of its allure. The story is also very straightforward - a woman tells the story behind why she will no longer drink milk. This might just seem like a teachable moment about lactose intolerance, but the author has no problem with other dairy products. The problem goes much deeper.

The author tells a story from when she was seven - put yourself in a rural, southern, post-WW2 mindset - and enjoyed the fresh milk brought to to her house in the morning. The morning milk was a regular event and innocent enough, until the author's mother had what could best be described as a psychotic break. The story gets dark fast as the mother insists milk is only for babies, that the little girl wasn't a baby, and would never be allowed to drink milk again. In an uncontrollable rage, the mother takes all the milk bottles into the backyard and smashes them with a broom handle, spraying the yard with the milk the girl loved so much. The girl, traumatized, could not drink milk for ages, and whenever she tried to, she was repulsed by the taste of milk.

I wish I could drop a link to this story, but as I mentioned, it is unpublished (for now - I am working on getting it into print). This story stayed with me for a long time - easily ten years running - and it genuinely haunts me (this is part of my drive to get it published somewhere). However, what really stuck with me went beyond the words, and that's when the writer in me decided to figure out just why this story had traction. For the author it was obvious - she was expressing some painful childhood trauma. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that what really haunted me about it was that the story was honest and upfront in dealing with a terrible situation that a child could barely understand. The honesty and confrontation of the story had moved me. Now I just needed to know why.

At that point, the writer in me had the answer. Everyone has had their fair share of traumas in life to some degree. One of the reasons I write is to process my past trauma, and in some ways I am successful with this. However, "The Taste of Milk" stuck with me because it had an honesty I had not yet been able to achieve. I wanted to reach that point where I could take the most damaging moments in my life and put them on the page with dramatic, painful honesty. "Just sit in front of the typewriter and bleed" as Hemingway said about writing. 

So when a story, a poem, an essay sticks with you; when it lingers long after you've read it and put it away, don't think about what the writing did for you. Think about the content and purpose, and how you connect with those elements. Think about how that author walked in shoes that you want to wear. The real lesson in a good story comes from finding out what parts of you connect with it, then exploring that in the stories you decide to write.

And thank you, Linda Berry, for "The Taste of Milk." If I ever find the copy you wrote, consider it published.       

Friday, October 4, 2024

Learning From Our Students

It may sound a little odd to say that we learn from our students. After all, isn't it supposed to be that we learn from teachers until we know what we are doing, then we become the teacher? Well, that's very true. However, it isn't the entire story. Ask any teacher about when they stopped the learning side of their job and they will probably say, "What makes you think I ever stopped?"

In the broader sense, I was reminded about this the other day when I did some tutoring. This being the season for college applications and scholarship pitches, there's a booming market involving students who want to get things just right so they can go to the school of their choice or get a big, fat scholarship to help offset the costs. Fortunately, this also involves students who are fairly educated when it comes to their writing, but they want things to shine, to really pop off the page. For that, they bring in the tutor - that would be me - and I get to teach them the tricks of the trade.

Well, how does this amount to learning? Well, teaching someone how to raise their writing game is one thing. You discuss some techniques, you talk about structure and reader appeal, you go through their writing and work through the problematic parts - that's the teaching part. However, things really kick into gear when you point out how they need a hyphen in a particular spot, and they say, "Why?" Those three letters, that simple word has echoed through every parent's brain when their child first reaches the inquisitive stage. "Why?" That's when the teacher has to do more than say, "Because." They have to teach the answer, which means they need to remind themselves the reason behind a particular answer. This often means relearning what we now take for granted.

My favorite thing to teach is the compound modifier, which involves a hyphen. What is it? Well, in the sentence, "I took a fifty-mile ride on my bike," it is "fifty-mile." This is where we describe something - the ride - with at least two words that only work when combined, and those words get hyphenated. "Fifty-mile" describes the ride only when those words are used together in front of "ride," so it becomes this compound modifier. If the sentence was, "I took a ride of fifty miles," then there's no hyphen because we are separating fifty miles from the ride. This is used quite often when someone describes another person with a phrase rather than a word. "He's just a useless, no-good, couldn't-find-his-butt-with-two-hands-and-a-flashlight troublemaker," has three modifiers -  "useless," which is straightforward, "no-good," which is a two-word compound modifier, and that huge phrase that counts as one descriptor so the whole thing is a compound modifier and gets hyphenated through and through. (And I actually snuck in another compound modifier into the paragraph just for fun.)

So, when my student looks at me and says, "Why?" my job is now to teach them exactly why such a rule exists. When I do this, I also reinforce within myself the reason these rules exist, their purpose in writing, and just why they can be important. I give myself a refresher course on these rules of writing, all while teaching them, and my writing skills are that much better.

(And I get paid for it, so there's that.)