Category Archives: Writing

Writing at 6AM

Posted on by
3

I woke up early this morning to start writing. It is still dark outside. The birds are just now starting to sing. I have no idea what I’m doing or why I am doing it. I had the thought that writing might be easier first thing in the morning, and that I might sneak my way back into the story by jumping into it fresh from last night’s dreams. A bit like ledge jumping from one roof to another. I didn’t make the leap.

194 words. None of them particularly interesting or useful.

I am not complaining. I only want to document that this moment happened. I woke up at 6am. I got dressed. I started writing. I was here. I understand that this is how this works.

More Than Content

Posted on by
3

I have been thinking about Jim Rettew’s comments about the Idea Industry and how treating ideas and inspiration as commodities limits how we can interact with and use those ideas.

The Idea Industry is way bigger than TED. It includes writers like Jonah Lehrer and Malcolm Gladstone, podcasts and, yes, bloggers.

As one of those bloggers, I sometimes wonder what it is I am actually doing when I write for other people to read. Am I just moving ideas around from place to place, pointing to interesting sites that others might find inspiring or, at least, amusing for a short while? Or does my work as a blogger contribute something greater?

We often talk about blogs and books and articles and movies as content, as if it were something physical that resides inside something else. A specific, discrete something with its own properties than can be placed in a vessel, carried somewhere else and then transferred to another vessel. That is the connotation of content. In this model, art is about information transfer.

Blogs and books and articles and movies can be more than just content. Content is information. If blogging is just about information transfer then it is easily done and pretty much anyone can do it.

My best blog posts, the one’s that get comments and get people interested, are the posts that tell stories. Good blog posts share something from personal experience and connect it to the experience of other people. That is what we can do here to add value. We can tell stories. We can tell stories about ourselves, people we know and people we invent. We can tell stories as a way to connect insights to experience.

Come to think of it, this is what great teachers do, too. They move beyond lecture and tell interesting stories to help students make their own insights.

Come to think of it, this is what Jesus and Buddha did. They didn’t lecture or preach a lot. They pretty much went around telling people interesting stories that connected ideas to experience. That’s how major movements get born.

The way we think about what we do determines the value of what we do. If we trap ourselves into the act of creating content, that is all we will ever have to offer. We can offer more of ourselves and help make the best ideas come to life.

We can tell stories.

Flash Fiction: Sometimes Writing Feels This Way

Posted on by
Reply

A quick work of flash fiction. Tried to write something very different tonight. This came out instead.

*****

Harold had no idea what time it was or exactly how long he had sat staring at the empty white field on his screen. She was gone. He had no idea how long she had been gone. It felt like weeks. He hadn’t heard her go. There was no final closing of the door, no last flip of the switch. She had been there when he was not paying attention and now she was gone.

Harold thought about getting up to look for her. It would do no good. He had called her name five times already, each time expecting her to bound into the room with an offer of help. The right word. Some lascivious whisper. One delicious sentence to get him started.

There would be no more of that. She was gone.

The screen was blank. His eyes ached from the glare. Was he watching the screen? Was the screen watching him? It was hard to know which was which.

He hadn’t heard her go. How long ago had she left? He felt like he should still be able to catch her scent in the room. There must be some trace of her perfume, some phantom tendril to remind him of her. She wouldn’t have been gone that long. She wouldn’t have left him completely empty. She would have left him with something with which to remember her.

He looked around the room, confused and crippled feeling from his time spent hunched over the chair.

Had he slept? Impossible that she had left while he was staring at the screen, not writing. He must have fallen asleep. He must have slept.

Harold pushed away from the desk. He was trying to remember the last thing she had said to him. What had it been? Was there some clue contained inside?

I’m going out. He could certainly imagine her saying that. He could hear the words in what he believed to be her voice. I’m going out. So casual. So normal. She was going out, just like had a hundred times before. She would be back. That was how it worked. She went out then she came back. He tried to satisfy himself but the words sat false. That was not what she had said.

Harold stood up, unsteady on his feet. He was drunk with exhaustion. It was hard to keep himself steady. He walked across the bedroom, ready to grab for balance if needed. The room was moving around him.

The bedroom door was open, a mouth open to the long dark hall beyond. Seeing it made him panic. He had not left the door open. He always closed the door when he was writing. Or not writing. She had opened the door. She had left the door open.

He thought of calling her. Certainly not the first time he had thought of that. The idea was no good. She didn’t have a phone.

What kind of person these days doesn’t carry a phone?

Harold shuffled down the long, dark hallway, feeling like a person in a horror film about to stumble across the dead body. And it would have been some kind of relief for him to find her lying there. Then he would not need to know that she had left him and was not coming back. Dead was better. If she was dead, that was one thing. But she wasn’t dead. At least, she wasn’t dead in his apartment, and Harold was left alone once again with the more awful truth.

She had left him. He had not heard her leave. She was not coming home.

Creative Advice from Ira Glass

Posted on by
Reply

I have been writing off and on for 24 years. I’m not really sure why I do it. Sometimes I write because I feel like I have to. Sometimes I write because I feel like there are stories stuck inside of me. Sometimes I write because I have ideas in my head that I don’t really understand and I want to understand them better.

I take writing pretty seriously. I stress out about writing. I talk about writing. I read about writing. I pretty much obsess about writing. The one thing I don’t do enough, it turns out, is actually writing.

The writers I admire most say that the secret to being a great writer is writing everyday. Just writing and writing and writing. It makes sense, but it isn’t particularly encouraging advice when the writing feels so thin and poor on the page.

Ira Glass says that’s normal. In fact, mediocrity is part of the process. All good artists start out being mediocre and they are dissatisfied by their own mediocrity. This dissatisfaction dissuades most people from sticking with it. Don’t give up. The cure for mediocre art is to create lots and lots of mediocre art. The fact that you recognize your own art’s mediocrity is a sign of good taste. Keep working at it. Work at it for years. Slowly, you will close the gap. Someday, your art will be as good as your taste, but only if you stay with it and only if you do it a lot.

Here’s how Ira Glass says it:

Keep doing it.

Poems Belong Everywhere

Posted on by
11

I love poems, but I don’t always particularly enjoy poetry.

I like the way a really good poem slices through the baggage of words and gets to the truth of things. I like the way a really good poem makes familiar objects seem unfamiliar. I like way a really good poem can surprise you, catch you off guard and force you to acknowledge beliefs you did not realize you held.

I love poems, but I have a terrible time with Wordsworth, Yeats, Keats and the crew. There was a time when I assumed that Eliot, Stevens and cummings spoke with ideas and a voice more rarified and brilliant than my own. I bashed my mind against their verse, trying to unlock their elevated ideas. It never happened, so eventually I stopped.

Then I started reading Kerouac and Ginsberg, Billy Collins and Mary Oliver and I began to understand poems again. Poems are a kind of meditation. Poems are moments of complete attention where the object and the subject disappear. Poems are acts of gratitude. Poems are declarations not of how things should be but declarations of how things really are. Poems are prayers.

Poems are useful. They have a purpose in every day life. The problem is, too often, poetry gets in the way of poems. Poetry makes poems into an abstraction, an idea of a thing rather than the thing itself. We teach ourselves to fear poetry in high school and then feel ashamed about that fear for the rest of our lives.

I particularly like the way Billy Collins puts it, “It is a good thing to get poetry off the shelf and more into public life.” His 2012 TED Talk shares some ideas on how this might work. I was particularly amazed by the animated poem mashup he undertook to bring 5 of his terrific poems to a new kind of life.

Take a look:

What do you think about the idea of poems in public life? Where does the world need poems? How can we get them there?

An Open Letter to the Muse

Posted on by
2

You won’t have noticed this, but I have been sitting at this desk off and on all day, wanting to write something. Nothing profound. Nothing special. Just the pleasant flow of words through fingers and keys then onto the screen. I’m not sure what I had wanted to say. Even now, writing this, I’m not sure what I want this to say.

I am wondering why you can’t stay put. Or, if you really must wander, why you can’t be someplace I can reach you when I am ready. You could leave a number that I could call when necessary.

Where do you go when you aren’t here with me? Is there someone else, some other writing person who is smiling even now, getting words on his screen? Is he getting my words? Is that what’s happening?

I don’t want to sound small or jealous. That isn’t me. It just isn’t right for you to sneak off that way and leave me alone and a little bit afraid that I may not write again.

We have a good thing, don’t we? I mean, I know I get busy and a little distracted. Maybe sometimes a few days goes by before I sit down in our place to feel the words. Maybe sometimes I rush things a little or simply go through the motions to get the time in, not really present, not really participating.

I can do better. Sure. I know I can. But so can you. Where are you? Where did you go? Why are you always running away when I have time to write and then hanging close when I have no time at all?

You are a fickle creature. I deserve better.

I’m sorry. That last thing was wrong. You are right to go. I don’t deserve you. I’m just glad to have you in my life.

Where are you? When are you coming home?

The first line

Posted on by
1

Two takes from a prompt: “What is your metaphor for the fear of writing that first line?”

*****

Take one:

The first line contains the entire story. It is everything. Once the first line is written, everything else is inevitable. The entire story unlocks itself in your head. And you are stuck with it. You have to do the work. You have to set it down on the page or it will grow inside of you and press against the inside of your skull and make you sick with inspiration. Sick and angry and agitated, dangerously altered and off-kilter. Once the first line happens, the rest of the story leaps up inside you, fully formed if only partly seen.

Once the first line escapes your head, you have only two choices: swallow it down or vomit it out.

Take two:

They are lying in bed, unclothed, not speaking. Sunlight spills in through the curtains, filling the bedroom with a holy light. They are waiting. The sound of their tandem breathing excites him. He is eager to veil her face with kisses. He does not move. Not yet, he tells himself. Say something clever.

She shifts slightly under the covers while he is thinking. The rustle of her bare legs beneath the sheets piques exquisitely.

Not yet, he tells himself. Too soon. This is not yet enough, he tells himself. She is only just shifting to make herself more comfortable. He wants to help her writhe.

The sound of their breathing, an anticipatory rhythm gradually cooling until it becomes a thing between, a thing that separates them.

And now he stares up at the ceiling, mind reaching for words. Say something brilliant. Say something devastating. There is nothing.

And now he begins to panic. This perfect moment is tilting away from him. Two bodies, familiar and eager, caught in an uncomfortable space, trapped by thoughts and ideas. He is captured inside his mind and he can only look out at her through the narrow turrets of his eyes and see her there waiting, wondering what is taking so long. A moment ago she had been perched on the precipice of pleasure, a women ready to dive down headlong. Now, she was a woman waiting for a bus. A woman of great restraint, assiduously not checking her watch. A woman with places to be.

Say something, his mind screams. Say one simple thing to set this into motion. The words all scramble away from him, darting and scattering like a school of tiny fish.

She rolls over onto her side. They lock eyes. He is no longer staring at the ceiling. His mind no longer reaching for words.

“I’m right here whenever you are ready,” she tells him and he realizes in that moment there is nothing that needs to be said. He reaches out for her. His fingers find her skin. There are no words that need to be found. There is nothing he should do to improve this moment.

He is there. She is there. This is the first line. Their bodies know exactly what to do.

Kill the Main Character

Posted on by
6

I like stories where important characters die. Sometimes violently. Often suddenly. Always by surprise.

I am reading George Martin’s Game of Thrones series. I am deep into Book 4 and have lost count of the number of seemingly major characters who have died over the previous four books.

My favorite TV show of the moment is The Walking Dead. I just caught up with the first half of season 3. ***Spoiler alert: from the beginning of the show to the most recent episode, people die. Lots of them.

I grew up reading both horror and fantasy novels. I read both genres for years and then just stopped. My complaint with both genres was lack of surprise. No matter how unique the adventure, how bold the quest, how vicious the monster, you could rest assured that the hero would survive and overcome. Dull, dull, dull.

When you know the hero is going to survive, there’s really nothing at stake. I love the moment of frisson when a major character fails. The whole narrative spins. Every assumption about the rules of the story get reexamined. Everything is fresh and uncertain and the characters who remain get a lot more interesting because there are no guarantees. Everything is suddenly at stake.

This works best in stories of epic scale, tales with plenty of major characters to spare. But you can’t just stock the shelves with disposable bodies. You must first make me care about them. I need to relate to their motivation and root for them to succeed. Don’t let the death be entirely meaningless. The death should be quick and merciless. It should happen suddenly from an unseen direction, but it cannot be random and it must advance the story and increase the dramatic tension. The death must diminish the hopes of those who remain and then, inexorably,  force them to grow and inhabit their potential in unexpected ways.

Don’t write the same story over and over again. Invent new rules. Twist the old rules. Be brave. Force your characters to be brave. Kill your major characters. Don’t let the reader get too comfortable. I don’t read to be comfortable. I read to destroy my beliefs and unmake my assumptions. Surprise me. Don’t let me relax. Disturb me. I will thank you. I will read your books.

You Fall Down. You Get Back Up.

Posted on by
1

This has not been a good writing week for me, which is a shame after my major proclamation last week (Inspiration is a habit). I started back to work after 3 weeks off. Naturally, the days before returning to work were suddenly filled by constellations of ideas and epiphanies. I made a commitment to myself to wake up half an hour earlier (6 rather than 6:30) so I could develop the habit of writing first thing in the morning. That did not happen.

Twice my daughter woke up at 4:30 and wanted me to hangout in her room while she fell back asleep. I crept back to bed at 5:30 feeling dazed and bedraggled. Twice I stayed up later than I intended the night before and ignored my alarm. Once I didn’t even bother.

So there it is. My first week back to work and already my resolve was derailed. I know I am not alone. Creating an intentional habit is a hard thing.

I’m not giving up. I will keep working with it until I have made space to do this thing that I love. That is pretty much the entire recipe for success in life. You fall down. You get back up.

Inspiration is a habit

Posted on by
6

I used to think that blogging was a self-indulgent, narcissistic pastime for people who couldn’t write Serious Things. Serious writers, I thought, struggled in private to set down their most important thoughts on pages that would be read only when a publisher recognized their native brilliance and invested in getting those thoughts out to an expectant public starved for brilliant ideas. I was wrong.

I didn’t write much while laboring under this belief. Writing was painful — a burdensome chore that must be suffered to encounter those rare moments of flow, where idea, intention and action all align.

This blog is rescuing me from that stultifying belief.

I started blogging seriously in September 2011. Before then, I had posted sporadically to LiveJournal and a few other random places. This blog at present is 109 posts strong. I feel like I am just now getting started. I now have personal goals for my blog. I keep an Evernote folder with ideas for future posts. I have met some dedicated writers and have discovered connections with friends I didn’t recognize before blogging. All to the good.

I write this blog for two reasons:

  1. To develop and sustain a daily writing habit.
  2. To overcome my crippling aversion to sharing what I write.

I read a bit about the craft of writing and have noticed a somewhat obvious correlation. Strong, successful writers write every day. Obvious, perhaps, but it struck me as a bit profound. Most successful writers, when asked to share their secret weapon, say write every day without fail. Write if it is easy. Write if it is hard. Write if it is good, bad or indifferent. Write every day. Constantly move forward. I think of this as “holding my seat”.

Holding your seat is about cultivating a practice of writing when you don’t particularly feel like writing. This is necessary to escape the belief that we must wait until we feel inspired before writing. Inspiration feels good and the best writing is often accompanied by that feeling. I cannot wait for inspiration. Inspiration comes at awkward, inconvenient moments — in the shower, laying in bed, driving my chair, sitting in a meeting. I can’t always capture the words in these moments and, when I have the time and tools to write, I can’t always be showering, lying in bed, driving or sitting in a meeting.

Writing everyday is a way of bottling that feeling of inspiration and using it when you can actually sit with it and visit for a while. This blog gives me a focus for writing every day. I am learning not to depend on inspiration, which is fickle and capricious. I believe inspiration can become a habit. Blogging cultivates the habit of drawing inspiration when I need it and can use it most effectively.

I used to write in private, guarding what I wrote from discovery until polished to perfection. The irony was that I rarely finished anything I wrote. I never stopped polishing. Writing was a secret fetish, a lonely compulsion I practiced in complete isolation. Sometimes I wrote things I thought were pretty good. Sometimes I wrote things I thought were pretty bad. It became hard to tell the difference. I found myself endlessly polishing both the good and the mediocre until it all pretty much looked the same. Blah.

I was crippled by an unwillingness to share. The act of writing is solitary but the results of writing should be shared. This isn’t because most writing deserves reading. Most of what I write probably does not need to be read. Most of what I write is not brilliant. Blogging is my way of surrendering the idea of brilliance as a worthwhile goal. Blogging allows me to shortcut that old, anguished practice of hording my words until they merit attention. It has become a creative lifeline and a source of focus around disparate ideas and inspirations. I am grateful to the people who follow what I write here and post comments. I appreciate every visit, every like.

When people read my writing, it affirms my path. It keeps me focused and protects me from feeling overwhelmed by inadequacy. I don’t share everything I write. I don’t incomplete drafts of stories or poems or notes for longer works. Those things can stay private until they feel ready.

Blogging takes the pressure off. Blogging makes writing feel more natural and relaxed. Blogging reminds me that there are lots of other people doing the same kind of work that I do, feeling the same kind of pressure or inadequacy or stress. Those feelings may be a natural part of the process but I don’t have to be captured by them. I certainly don’t have to be imprisoned by the need to wait for inspiration. Inspiration is a habit and, like all habits, can be cultivated, prepared and grown.