Write On Wednesday-Serving Two (or Three, or Four...) Masters

For most of my life, I've been obsessed by two things - words and music. Of course, I've had obsessions about other things along the way - a purple sting ray bike with a white banana seat and sparkle streamers, Robert Redford as Hubbell Garnder in the movie The Way We Were, chilled Chardonnay from the Monterey Valley - but those things all pale in comparison to the two constants - words and music. Ever since I was a tiny child, I have craved one or the other of these things. I can clearly recall the first time I set foot in a library and was surrounded by the amazing sight and smell of all those books - millions of words all to be devoured at my pleasure. My greatest desire was to grab them all up in my tiny three year old arms and carry them home with me. It was just about the same time that I fell in love with a toy piano my parents gave me for Christmas - fell so much in love that I tried to turn everything into a pretend keyboard, even the handle of the grocery basket, or the little white keys of the radio in my dad's big Buick.

Throughout my life, my heart has been torn between these two loves. Do I write? Do I play? Why did it never occur to me that I could do both? Is there something in society's expectations that subliminally deters me from trying to practice more than one art at a time? Does the world allow only just so much artistic expression in the life of one person?

I might have thought that was true, at least until recently. For much of my life, it seemed as if I had to partition my artistic interests - if I was mostly playing music, because of a job, or the circumstances of my life, then I stopped writing. And I have always been drawn to the piano in the way I thought that a "true artist" should be, often feeling a physical need to play, almost like a smoker needs a cigarette or an alcoholic needs a vodka tonic. But recently, I've begun to feel the same draw to this computer screen - this other keyboard that brings my words alive and sends them out into the world, like the keys on my Kimball grand piano send music into the air.

This shift in perspective has largely come from my experience and acquaintances in the blogging community. Getting to know so many of you who are marvelous writers and poets, as well as photographers, painters, collage makers, quilters, has hushed that nagging little voice that was saying "you can't do both things well, so you have to pick one or the other." I'm beginning to believe that not only is it possible to serve more than one artistic master, it's even preferable. The more I write, the more sensitive I become to the world around me, the nuances of life that I can express in words, in poetry, and also in music. And I'm developing interests in totally different artistic pursuits, which I've been having some fun dabbling with over the past couple of weeks.

So, what about you? Do you think an artist can execl in more than one creative area? How many creative masters are you serving?

Write On Wednesday - Wordplay

Percolate~Oblivious~Meretricious~Postulation~Meander~Convoluted~Mesermizing~Vivacious

Those are some of my favorite words. Yes, I have favorite words - I suspect all writers do. Words you want to say out loud, words you want to write with a fountain pen on thick parchment paper, words you want to link together to form a profoundly meaningful sentence that will touch the hearts of your readers. Writers play with words like artists play with color, photographers play with light, and musicians play with sound. We maniuplate these miraculous little tools of our trade to create atmosphere, character, and emotion, all brought to life by black and white letters on white paper.

In Poemcrazy, Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge writes about her word collection. "The great thing about collecting words is they're free; you can borrow them, trade them in, or toss them out. Words are lightweight, unbreakable, portable, and they're everywhere." One of Wooldridge's favorite exercises with her writing classes is to create a "wordpool" - everyone in class starts tossing out words which she writes on the chalkboard. Soon, she says, the words and voices begin to take on a rhythm of their own. Words evoke other words, and the students find themselves creating poetic combinations almost effortlessly.

You can even play this game by youself. The other day I was sitting in the mall waiting for my mom to finish shopping. I pulled out my notebook and started writing down any word that came into my head. Out of the list came combinations like apricot illusions, feathered whispering, illicit muses, percolating clouds.

Author Barbara DeMarco Barrett uses her word collection for free writing prompts. She collects meaningful words and phrases from her reading of favorite authors and copies them onto small slips of paper, which she tucks into an antique box. When she's looking for inspiration, or a way to prod her imagination, she reaches in, picks one out, and free writes for fifteen minutes, using this word as her starting point.

Both Wooldridge and DeMarco-Barrett advise keeping a notebook for words you love the sound of, would love to use, that impress you, that you've never heard before.

As much as we love to play with words, Stephen King has a dire warning for us when it comes to our vocabulary. "One of the really bad things you can do," he advises in his book On Writing, "is to dress up your vocabulary, using long words just because you're a little ashamed of the short ones. The basic rule of vocabulary is use the first word that comes to your mind, if it is appropriate and colorful. If you hesitate and cogitate you will probably come up with another word, but it probably won't be as good as your first one, or as close to what you really mean."

So, how about you? What are some of your favorite words? And how do you like to play with them?

Write On Wednesday-Get It Done

I've got a couple of interesting ideas rolling around in my head, ideas that could evolve into good short stories. The thing is, they've been just rolling around in my head for several months now, and I haven't done a single thing to bring them out and put them onto the page. So what am I waiting for? Why don't I just start writing and get it done? One of the big reasons is motivation. There's much to be said for the power of the deadline. When I partcipated in NaNoWriMo last November, the scimitar of November 30 was hanging heavily over my head - write those 50,000 words by then or you're a loser! Added to that was the personal competition of several of my close blogger friends, making it feel somewhat like a horse race with our fingers pounding the keyboard like Secretariat's hooves on the racetrack. Now, as interesting as those story ideas are, I have so many other things to do - like traveling, and eating out, working and shopping, and writing this blog. There's no reason to hurry ~ I can write those stories anytime at all. But at this rate, that anytime could turn out to be the twelfth of never! The other thing barring the door on these stories is my inner critic. That's the voice that says "Why bother wasting time on those stories? What's the point? No one's ever going to read them." In an essay entitled Calming the Inner Critic and Getting to Work, novelist Allegra Goodman wirtes that "the only way out of this trap is to concentrate on writing itself, for itself. The writer who is enamored of her material forgets all about censoring herself." Goodman also accuses this inner critic of being the writer's number one scapegoat. "There is no better excuse for getting nothing done than to lock yourself in battle with the the famous demons of self-criticism and doubt." In Pen On Fire, Barbara DeMarco Barrett affirms this advice. "Write because you love doing it, because you like how you feel when you write... because the stories you long to tell are important." I would add to that last sentence, "even if only to you." As I learned in completing NaNoWriMo, the momentum of the story carries you forward, and you find you must learn the ending for yourself, even if for no one else. Writing is definitely a challenge, and I need a challenge to myself - get those stories down on paper because they need to be told. Silence the inner critic that urges you to set them aside because they're "not good enough." Here's my challenge to myself, in black and white for all of you to see. I will complete one of those stories by January 31, 2007. I will get it done! How about you? What writing (or other creative project) do you need to get done? And what's holding you back?

Write On Wednesday-Dear Diary

The idea of keeping a journal has always appealed to me. I love the thought of having a special book to write my secret feelings in, or record my impressions of people and places, even keep track of my "social engagments." As much as I love the thought of journal keeping, I've never been very good at actually doing it, at least not for any significant period of time. And when I have, often the pages have turned out to be nothing but whining and kvetching about how awful things were going at that particular time.

Last summer I started reading The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron's popular book which outlines her method for unleashing the "inner artist." One of the key elements in this process are the "morning pages," three pages of free writing done every day. The key element here is "free" writing - there are no topics, no list of must-includes. You just pick up the pen, and write whatever comes to mind. I started doing morning pages last July, and I've filled six spiral notebooks with all kinds of things, from shopping lists to plans for my future. Sure, I've done some whining, but I've also come to some pretty interesting conclusions and had more than one "light bulb" moment in the process of writing out my feelings about a dilemma.

Cameron isn't the first to advocate free writing as a means of tapping the well of creativity that lies in our subconscious. Back in 1934, in her classic book Becoming A Writer, Dorothea Brande wrote "if you are to have the full benefit of the richness of the unconscious you must learn to write easily and smoothly when the unconscious is in the ascendant." Her prescription - "rise half an hour or an hour earlier than you usually rise, and, just as soon as you can, without talking, without reading the morning paper, without picking up the book you laid aside the night before - begin to write. Write anything that comes into your head." In this manner, she says you learn to train your mind to release words easily and freely, words that can later be whipped into some sort of shape.

I also love reading the published diaries of well known authors, and one of my favorite is Virginia Woolf's A Writer's Diary. Back in 1919, she had this to say about her own diary writing:

"I note that this diary writing does not count as writing...I am much struck by the rapid haphazard gallop at which it swings along. Still if it were not written rather faster than the fastest type-writing, if I stopped and took thought, it would never be written at all; and the advantage of the method is that it sweeps up accidentally several stray matters which I should exclude if I hesitated, but which are the diamonds of the dustheap. But what is more to the point is my belief that the habit of writing thus for my own eye is good practice. It loosens the ligaments."

I've become quite accustomed to "loosening the ligaments" of my mind each morning as I sit in my favorite chair, warmly snuggled in a cozy flannel blanket, with a steaming cup of coffee at the ready (sorry, Dorothea, I have to get up and make the coffee first!) I just replenished my supply of spiral notebooks - I've found that if I use just an inexpensive school style notebook, I don't feel any constraint about writing something worthy of a lovely bound book full of nice thick paper. I do like a smooth writing, fine tipped pen - right now my favorite is the Vision Elite by UniBall - it's gel ink glides effortlessly across the page but doesn't soak through.

How about you? Do you have a journalling habit? What kind of journal do you keep?

Write On Wednesday - Finding Figment

Do any of you remember "Journey into the Imagination," one of the original attractions at Epcot Center in Walt Disney World? There's a little purple dragon called "Figment," who pops up all over the place as you're riding along in your automated vehicle. Through the power of the imagination, he becomes an astronaut, a mountain climber, even the Mona Lisa. Of course, the whole idea is that, if you let your imagination guide you, there is no end to the possibilities that await. Those figments of the imagination are particularly vital to writers, who are always on the lookout for the next great idea. In her classic book, Becoming a Writer, Dorothea Brande talks about the "writer's coma," those times in our lives when we feel a desperate need for solitude and detachment from the hustle and bustle of life. At those times, she writes, it may seem as if our mind's are "barren," when in actuality, "something is at work," and will later make itself known in a flash of insight. She also says we can learn to "induce at will" this "artistic level of unconsciousness" where the "artist's magic" lies buried. It is our unconscious that sees the world around us on a different level - it's the place where all our impressions and experiences mingle and simmer in a savory broth of ideas, waiting for something to spark the imagination and allow the mixture to bubble up into our conscious mind.

I don't know about you, but my "figments" always seem to appear when I'm doing something totally unrelated to writing - like walking the dogs, vacuuming the floor, standing in line at the grocery, or even driving (which is the most frustrating of all, because there's no way to write it down!) I'm always certain I'll remember such a great thought, or phrase, or idea for a poem or post, but most times it escapes me before I have the opportunity to write it down. I don't always have a notebook handy (although I know every writer worth her salt is supposed to carry one), and even if I did, there are some situations where it's impossible to drop everything and jot it down.

According to Brande, it's quite normal for our "genius" to assert itself when we're involved in monotonous, repetitive tasks. In fact, she advises us to play around with such tasks until we find the one that's most receptive to calling forth our unconscious. Every writer, she says, has learned to put herself into a state of "light hypnosis," where the attention is "just barely held" by the activity at hand, but far beneath the surface level of her mind, a story is being "fused and welded together."

So tell me, how do you capture the figments of your imagination?