Tag Archives: Arts

Writing and Dancing in the Puddles.

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When the clouds get dark, the rain decorates the valley and the sun finally comes out, life feels better, though without thinking about it, our lives follow this path.

Life gets dark, bad things happen, but the bad things eventually go away, as do the bad people.

Throughout our lives we’re left with the people we work with, live with and are associated with one way or another.

These people can be forgiving, loving and supportive, but then there are the others.

The other people, they’re the ones who criticize what we do. They think we’re wasting our time writing and creating. They ask us when we’re going to be published, not because they’re curious, but so they can mock us.

Each writer has dealt with this, sometimes there are multiple people like this in our lives, we have to get rid of them one way or another, only then can we create without the unneeded distractions of being told we can’t write, we do that enough ourselves.

After a rainstorm the desert smells fresh, the cacti look greener and the animals are scurrying about, almost seeming to be playing in the puddles the way my kids do.

We only see the day in front of, the storm, but afterward our lives are greener, we see things clearer and we’re free to dance in the puddles left over.

Enjoy the rainstorm, seeing clearer and the puddles, without every rainstorm we don’t see life as something to enjoy, instead of something to tolerate.

Get out and enjoy the puddles.

 

Writing the First Draft: Fast and Frenetic

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Our first draft is always furious and frenetic. It comes out like storm gathering on a plateau and when it’s ready, it pours out of us like a massive supercell destroying what we thought we were capable of and making us think twice about why we write, but in a good way.

We’re sometimes not prepared for the strength pouring from our fingers and it can frazzle our minds and make us drink more coffee or maybe something stronger.

The best part of writing is the first draft, the pace seems impossible to sustain, the breadth of the story amazes us and the characters and their lives remind us why we love to write.

Pacing of the story isn’t our worry in a first draft or spelling, grammar or whether we get the characters names correct, it’s all about the discovery.

Each story happens this way and we keep writing because we love how much our beautiful stories fascinate us.

From the opening sentence to The End, we’re mesmerized by the story.

Finding ourselves wrapped up in the writing, ignoring everything but discovering who these characters are and why they’ve been in our head is the best part of the first draft.

We never have a greater time than the frenetic courtship of the first draft.

Are you chasing the White Rabbit?

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I don’t like the idea that I’m not in control of my life. ~ Neo

In life we’re the controller of our destiny; regardless of your feelings on fate.

Each one of us decides to wake up, go to work or school and go through our day, oblivious to what goes on around us.

Last week I talked about the time we have left, the minutes ticking away our lives.

It’s what we’re doing with the minutes we have left that matter. The used minutes are like hanging up the phone, you just talked to the person, but there’s no longer the conversation, it’s just dead air.

Your used minutes are like the phone call, used minutes. They’re in the past, they don’t matter.

The minutes you have left are the future phone calls or text message you have yet to send.

The idea of fate tells us that what we’re doing is meant to be, but if you believe that why are there so many people not doing what they’re capable of?

The fear that fate is real stops people from doing other things. It stops the potential of so many artists because they think, “I’m living the life I should be.”

But what if you do as Neo does, jump down the rabbit hole and see where it goes?

Your motivation should be doing what you want,  not what you believe fate has thrown at you. Fate is the same thing as fear.

IF you believe you’re living the life you should be, then you’ve found your calling, but if there’s that slightest bit of hesitation that you could live better, do something meaningful, then you should tumble down the rabbit hole.

The hesitation in your thoughts marks a change in what you believe you should be doing. It is that little voice saying, “No, you’ve tried this, and it’s not working.”

That voice is one you should listen to; it’s your creative side trying to get out.

It’s the same voice my 9 year old hears when he makes something new with his Legos or my 4 year when she creates a new story for her toys.

It just takes some tapping into before we know it’s there.

Are you chasing the White Rabbit? Answer in the comments.

A Fiction Writer should be their own Platform

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Stress can kill you, take away what you believe in and recently for me, make you sick as hell.

The stress came about because of my worries for my NaNoWriMo project, a project which, like last year, fell on its face and hasn’t begun to start moving, even though I’ve prodded it.

The biggest reason for its flop is Platform.

That word is such a buzz word in blogging and writing right now. It’s very hard to get away from it.

The biggest problem I see with that word is another word, fiction.

Fiction writer’s create worlds. Sometimes we don’t know where the story is going, even with an outline, and because of that we can’t truly set up a Platform.

A Platform is supposed to be a guide for a project. 

If you’re a fiction writer, that’s more difficult because you may not know where the story is going from one chapter to the next.

Those who write self-help books can use Platforms really well, while the rest of us are left wondering why it doesn’t work when we try it.

Here are reasons why I believe Platforms don’t work for Fiction Writers:

  1. Most fiction writers don’t write for an audience, and those who do already have there established group of readers.
  2. Platforms don’t allow for movement. If things change in your life, you have this Tribe that knows you as one person, but if you go through a spiritual awakening that is different than the one your Tribe knows you as, you have to start over.
  3. Change. Life is filled with change, some of it under your control, most of it not. If your writing changes or you choose to write in another genre it may alienate your tribe.

You may want to create a Platform, but in creating a Platform you may not be taking into account your life changes, your writing changes and the biggest of all, You Change.

The change you go through personally may alienate your tribe or may create divisions in your life.

Creating a Platform shouldn’t be something difficult, for fiction writers maybe it shouldn’t be something at all.

Writers create stories, some of them have similarities that when put together as a collection ofr work show those similarities, but as we write we may not understand the similarities and may become annoyed by those telling us to write another book like our past book.

For me who’s never published, though I’ve written two novels, I just want to get a book on the shelf.

Looking for a Platform for my writing caused me so much stress in the last few weeks I became ill and with that I swore I’d never do what people expect me to write.

My Platform is I’m a writer of different genres, mostly Science Fiction or Fantasy based, but I’ll never limit myself to those two.

I choose that Platform because trying to pigeon hole myself made me sick.

Your Platform should be what makes you the person you’ve lived with for your life, never limit yourself to who you are, or your Platform.

Be your Platform!

I’d rather be my Platform than do something I wouldn’t be proud of.

Fear and Loathing in Writing

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“Buy the ticket, take the ride.” Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Writing is something I’ve grown to love, and loath. It always feels like one or the other, never anything other than that.

Waking up, the sun shining through the blinds, my kids playing in the hallway as my wife tries to wrangle them for school, I often sit in bed, pen in hand and write what I hear in the house.It’s these little observations that make a writer.

We’re often trying to get the next story written, plotted or struggling to make sense of the story we’ve just finished.

The ride of writing is one which, though the rails seem to slide off at times, buying the ticket for the train ride is more than worth the price of sleepless nights of worrying about the next sentence, thinking about the next story or wondering if you’re going to make it.

Every writer thinks these things. We all have days when we wish we’d have burned the ticket for the ride, or when we would have jumped off the train when the rails felt unstable. These moments are the clarity moments, the ones where the best writing happens.

The ride of writing and discovering what we enjoy writing is nearly better than the act of writing.

Each journey of the story we’re pulled into a world we never knew existed and sometimes a world we’d like to live in.

With each story we purchase a ticket into Neverland, where we take the ride and whether we enjoy it are up to us.

Are you enjoying the ride? Answer in the comments.