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September 2009
Juicing Up and Jump Starting Your Writing By Shaking, Rattling, and Rolling
Annette Bowman is a thinker, explorer, writer, artist, student, mathematician, and whatever else strikes her fancy this week whose physical body occupies space in the region of Michigan. Her imagination drags her mind all sorts of odd places.
Sitting. Sitting. Squirming. Ooooo (start to put a word on paper). Nope (the idea goes poof like the Great Gazoo from the Flintstones). Check the e-mail. Hmm. Nothing new from the last time I checked. Darn this is my time to write. Sigh. Look at the clock. I have a part of an idea. Ratsim catsim — can't pull it out. What is going on? I'll just go and check out fill-in-the-blank site on the internet. Or alternatively. You have just finished the most amazing story. Yup. This is the one. The one that Analog and Asimov's and SF&F will fight over. The surefire Nebula winning masterpiece that will garner you instant fame, a hefty advance from the major publishing house of your dreams, and buff beefcakes manning your own private yacht. And your writing group hates it and tells you so in five different ways. Sigh. Or you sent off your latest surefire Nebula winning masterpiece a week ago and there is your SASE in the mail from the magazine that you sent it to. You've been down this path before and still as you open the envelope you are praying to the goddess of print, 12 point Courier, that maybe this time.... Maybe? Sigh. How do you keep going... when it seems that only a small percentage of the folks who write anything ever get published and you haven't yet figured out that guaranteed way to hypnotize editors with your mesmerizing prose? When everyone knows that writers make no money and your mother is willing to tell you this every time you are on the phone with her? When your writing is critiqued by people's opinions that you trust and found to be less than stellar? When the ideas dry up and leave you wind-swept and arid as the Mojave desert? When you receive more rejections than a gawky, teenage boy who idolizes Linus Torvalds and has fetid dreams about the next generation of HP calculators that have reverse Polish notation? There are actually two potential problems wrapped up in the scenarios I have outlined. The Horsemen of Writing Apocalypse — morale and dwindling creativity. Together they choke off the imaginative lifeblood of would-be writers and banish their aspirations. Together they are a vicious cycle. When a writer's morale is down, she oftentimes is less creative. When she is less creative, then morale plummets and anxiety sets in. This creates a kind of artistic panic where the writer sees gloom and doom in her future of a nature that not even Madame Blavatsky would have predicted and plunges the writer further into the abyss of writer's block. Now, you may say, "I know how to deal with writer's block." But when you are feeling down, discouraged, and playing Johnnie Lee Hooker on your iTunes, if you google "overcome writer's block" you will get quite a large number of results. For me, these were not very useful. Some of the sites listed are academic sites which are primarily designed to help college students write analytical or term papers. Other results point towards sites like About.com or Wikipedia which do list advice for would-be authors under specific web or wiki articles. In many of these articles, I repeatedly saw an overlapping common list of suggestions across several web sites. You have probably seen these suggestions before as well. Just to give you an idea of the list that I am talking about, look at Ginny Wiehardt's article, "Top Ten Tips For Overcoming Writer's Block." The tips that she recommends are as follows:
These suggestions are great tips. Perhaps these work for you. If they do, great. Keep at it. I have tried or considered many of these and they have not been helpful for me. I need something different. So what does get the mojo on and the writing flowing? For me it involves something I refer to as Shaking, Rattling, and Rolling. Shaking is shaking things up. A wise person once upon a time ago told me that insanity was to continue to do the same things that always produced the same result but to expect that something different would happen. If I am not producing any writing, then doing the same things over and over again is not going to help. And if my mood is in the dumper, it is going to stay there as if affixed with Super Glue. I need to shake things up. This is when I get out of my routine and go looking for fun or do something out of the ordinary. Sometimes creativity needs a little extra input to stimulate new output. Doing things differently could mean putting novelty into one's routine or encountering and considering novel ideas and new things. For instance, it could be stepping out of the normal routine and putting on music, dancing, going for a walk, or going to a movie. Or it could mean listening to reggae if you always listen to rock-n-roll, going roller blading if you always walk, or going to an action movie if you usually prefer romantic movies. It could mean doing freewriting if you usually blog or it could be going to Dr. Wicked's Write or Die site and spending fifteen minutes free writing with the site set on kamikaze and strict if you usually just freewrite. If you usually turn to the same writing resource books for inspiration, try reading something new for new ideas. Turn to the web instead of books or vice and versa and go looking for new things. Recently, a friend pointed me towards the site tvtropes.org. This site is a gold mine for would-be writers and lists all sorts of tropes and character types. Reading this spurred me to create a whole assemblage of new characters. Another suggestion to get out of the ordinariness of everyday is to go to an art, natural science, or history museum. Considering the art, displays, or artifacts in new ways can stimulate creative thought. For instance look at some images of Art Nouveau glassware sometime and try to imagine the alien culture that they could have come from. Or look at masks from the Native American cultures of the Pacific Northwest and create in your mind a fantasy world where these play a significant part. The point being that different input is needed. In order to get this input, the writer needs to shake off the humdrum of ordinary existence and needs to go looking for something that loosens up the creative gears. I have had times where I sat and stared at my computer screen for hours chasing ghostly images of story concepts around on my laptop and had them elude me until I got up and went out for dinner. Then the change of scenery, seeing different people, smelling different smells, and everything associated with being out of the house seemed to bring on inspiration in an almost magical fashion. Rattling is putting out the call to other people, looking for support, and offering assistance. The act of writing is solitary, but the very nature of the written word assumes interaction. I go looking for community. This for me takes a few forms. First, I turn to friends for discussion of topics that are of interest. I send long, meandering e-mails on topics that I am thinking of and ask for other people's thoughts. I don't just e-mail my writing friends. I e-mail different people from different backgrounds. Often friends enjoy the opportunity to discuss different topics, get excited, and point me towards books and other references that might give me good background material. The discussion stirs up further thinking for me and helps me to consider things from angles I hadn't thought of. I recently sent out an e-mail about whether or not it would be possible for intelligent alien life to arise on an ocean world. I received back from friends over thirty pages of truly fascinating thought and the offer of loans for four different books and a list of links to various online articles. This type of e-mail discussion sometimes can provide the jog that I need to dislodge a story from a stuck place. Secondly, I turn to other writers and willing readers for critique of my writing. I listen to what suggestions for rewriting that other people offer and try to make notes. These notes are a kind of bank against future writer's block. Often I cannot rework a piece immediately after writing it, so I file away the story or poem along with the critique notes. Then when I am stuck due to writer's block, I reconsider stories from the past and the comments that other people gave me. Sometimes simply starting on rewrites when nothing new is flowing, primes the pump and often new work emerges as well. But I could not do this without the help of others. Lastly, I look for new writers to mentor. The world is full of new writers. They can be found in every level of the public school system and in online critique groups. This to me is the thing that rattles me out of a writing slump better than anything else. When I review someone else's writing, it helps me to clarify how to compose a story, use words to build ideas, and in general sharpens my thinking for my own writing. It keeps me talking and considering writing and in this way helps my writing to progress. Rolling is keeping things rolling along. Now, you may say that if I can do this then obviously I do not have a writer's block, but I would disagree. Writing is an activity that one chooses to do. It is not prescribed into the autonomic nervous system of human beings. When I am in the midst of feeling discouraged and blocked with regards to my writing, I allow myself the luxury of easing back and seriously considering whether or not there is another activity that might give me more joy. We all have only this life to live. Pulling back and not continuously forcing the process of writing helps me to ease up the pressure and panic of the writing block. It gives me space and allows me to consciously choose if I want to write. If after some consideration, I do want to continue to write (and I have been plugging away for a few years now on my assemblage of poems, short stories, and two novels in draft form) then I reaffirm my commitment to my writing. This is when I pull out the writing prompts, set goals for writing on my blog, and jump in in earnest into the activity of writing. My writing does go in ebbs and flows despite that I spend every spare moment pursuing it. I have come to accept this and to accept that the writing for me continues as long as I make the decision to continue it. Shaking, rattling, and rolling helps me to juice up and jump start my imagination and to revitalize my thoughts and desire to write. Resources: Wikipedia article on Art Noveau with some interesting images of architectural examples |
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