Something That Makes You Uncomfortable to Write

Hi friends of reading and writing,

Maria Popova, in her online magazine BrainPickings, has written about F. Scott Fitzgerald's correspondence with aspiring young writers this month.  He advises them that writing well is hard and may require you to invent a new form to fit the exigencies of your urgent message.  He also says that the stronger your technique is, after years of practice, you can write about anything.  But early on, while you're a writer-in-progress, you need the power of pain and bewilderment, anguish, misery to propel a story and make the reader sit on the edge of her chair.  So you have to use those things you'd rather not bring up, rather not delve into, definitely don't want to write about for public consumption.  Only those things carry the emotional weight you need.

My friend Gayle Brandeis suffered though a time of excruciating emotional turmoil in her life when her mother committed suicide soon after the birth of her child.  She wrote about it in ways that gave readers some sense of her feelings.  Why should something so specific, that almost certainly does not match what each reader is going through, have such power to attract and hold the reader?  I think it's the authenticity.  When the emotions are raw and powerful, the writer does not pretend or posture, but just tries her best to capture them. They come through and resonate with times each of us has experienced those types of emotions, whether or not they were elicited by the same events.

So don't hide away the secret events of your life.  Get them out of your brain's deep freeze, remember and re-experience the emotions, and write them into your work, whether it is fiction or non-fiction.

cheers,
Laura

Inspiration Invitation

Hi friends of reading and writing,

Writing something I'm proud of can be as elusive and mysterious as the flash of a firefly.  I know that some authors believe in BIC (butt in chair) and say go ahead and type gibberish if need be until good words come to you.  But that doesn't work for me.  I can go with the BIC part, sitting before the paper or the computer.  But then I need to have something worthwhile in mind to start typing.  I'm not saying I don't produce the kind of terrible first drafts that can never be shown to anyone.  I'm just saying, babbling without purpose, hoping that a thread of gold will appear in the monkey clickings, that's not for me.

I get frustrated by my inability to catch the moonbeam I'm after, yes.  But if there is no moonbeam, no tangled life, no torn letter, I couldn't care less about pounding the keys or scribbling.  Something has to be at stake.  I call it the inspiration invitation.  I need to sit down with the intention to think and write about a specific time, place, person, problem, waterfall, dead butterfly, melted chocolate bar, whatever.  The intention invites the inspiration.  It doesn't always come up to my desires and expectations.  The firefly dies without a flash often enough.  But knowing what I want to capture is the drive to put BIC to begin with, and for me, I can't get to inspiration without that invitation.  If you're frustrated trying to start writing, try looking for your invitation first.  Say to yourself, I must write about this.  Then write.

best,
Lorelei

Inspiration from Anne Lamott

Dear readers and writers,

I just saw a fascinating selection of ten things a writer named Leeann Tankersly learned from Anne Lamott, one of my own favorite writers.  For my part, I have a top two.  The first is, I feel AL gave me permission to write "shitty first drafts" instead of waiting until it's all perfect to write anything down.  If I waited, perhaps nothing would ever appear on that sheet. The second is the advice her father gave her brother about how to write a long paper about birds, "Bird by bird, buddy."  Just start. Do something. Go forward. It's easier once you've begun.

So what did Leeann Tankersly pick?  I'm only going to spoil one of hers.  Do click on the link and read her whole posting, it's full of interesting ideas.  But here's the quotation I liked best: "'having a child can help you slow down, which is one of the first steps toward paying attention' – love this, though, I will admit a certain level of agony in the slowing down. makes you feel mental, like you are forced to crawl through life stopping to look at every last rock, leaf, ladybug. perhaps AL is saying, yeah, that’s the point."

cheers,
Laura
photo credit: Creative Commons, with thanks!