There have been several self improvement projects I have been working on lately, all inspired by the "stuff". One of those lately (among others) is to get my grove back, my flow, that used to come so easily in school. I would spend hours and hours a day, writing in little one subject notebooks when class got boring (which was 80% of the time). I was like addict and cursed the ringing bell, because I would have to pack up and change classes. I was never tardy; I was always eager to get back to my loved notebook. I would just write about anything, everything, whatever was going on with me at the moment. I usually had a number of short stories going, and my school notebooks were peppered with them. I never had problems writing papers in school, as I could spin on any topic. Everyone loved my writing, and I was sure that I would grow up to get some of my work published one day.
I always wrote in pencil; perhaps that was a bigger mistake than I knew. Because like the graphite on the page, my drive and ability to write was smudged away, until it was just a barely legible gray mess. I spent part of my 8th grade year writing with a fountain pen, which I loved, but did not like the way I couldn't write on both sides of the page. I loved to write in pencil. Bic mechanical. Three clicks of lead. I usually kept 5 or 6 of them in my backpack at all times. I like the feel, the drag of the lead across the paper. The soft scritching sound as I drew the shapes of words. You could always write angry with a pencil, the firm pressure and heavy strokes honing the lead into a sharpened weapon. Pens were too slidey, they were dark and always left impressions. Some pens were crap, light colored and just not right. I'm very picky about pens. It has to feel right.
I always had something to say. I could spend all day in the worlds I had created for my characters, wandering around their lives and their homes. Penning victory here, defeat there, leading them down paths of struggle and pain only to crest the hill and see the pot of gold at the end of a perilous rainbow. After killing the main character at the end of my first book, I always chose to have the protagonist come out on top at the end. Because when I was a kid, I became disillusioned with TV and movie plots, and how suspense was a lie. In the end, the good guy always wins, the bad guy always looses. So often I found myself secretly rooting for Skeletor during most He Man episodes. Because I felt bad for him. He always tried so hard to accomplish his goal, and was always struck down by He Man. I always wanted him to win, just once.
Now, I can sit for hours and spin plot lines, character ideas and story directions in my head, but when I try to get them out they just disappear. As soon as I move to record them, bam, they're gone. I can even come back to it later, to no avail. But this "stuff", it urges me. Telling me "Write, damnit! Write! Who cares what? Just DOOOEEEEEET!" So I oblige. And it's helping, I think. It's one of the things I like about the "stuff". That inner monologue becomes deafening, un-ignorable. Sometimes they'll get so insistent, berate me so harshly, I'm compelled to right the wrongs echoing in my head. The litter box is dirty. The water bowl is low. The carpet is dirty. The laundry is out of control. You haven't played with the dog today. It's why I started this blog, and why I started my second blog, The Passers Thru. I'm determined to write. I just had a good friend get his book published. Took him 5 years from start to finish. I can handle that.
It all starts with a scene I'll see in my head, brought on by an emotion or a conversation or a memory. I'll see a plot path, see a character come to live and live the scene. So far, I have a good number of out of order sequences and no logical path to align them. Concept but no ending. I started calling these "people" the wayward travelers, the passers through on their way, lost in my thought. Sometimes it's a place my train of thought passes through, and I get off at a stop and wander around a while. I always thought this concept of "Writer's Block" was ridiculous; I couldn't imagine not being able to write. Now it's a personal hell.
So begins the project, the squeezing and wringing out of my writing, all the pages I know that are up there, the stories to tell, the characters to meet. I know they're there. I just have to find them. I'll be forcing out the scenes, no matter how jagged they become in my mind when I start to type them out, I'm going to cling to them. If they slip away, I'll find another. No matter how seemingly boring, inane or pointless. I used to find such joy in writing like that. I must find it again.
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