Topic: WC - Daily Practice
Sunday 3Dec06 4:18pm
As you all know I've been focusing on writing practice as of late. Bought all those new books that basically tell you to make a daily practice of writing. Although I've been pretty good about blogging daily it's been getting too journal-ly again. Which is what happens when too much is going on in my life and I don't have the time to sit down and find things to add here or talk about.
When my blog had her little nightmare the other night I happened upon my page that tells me how many people are coming across this blog and it's been close to a hundred people a day. It made me realize that I probably should stop the navel gazing and add some sort of substance every once in awhile anyway. Thanks for stopping by, by the way! It's strange because I honestly believe that there's only about 4 people reading and then when I see stuff like that ... "Oh yeah there are people out there!"
Let me just remind you that the writer's life is indeed boring as hell and most of us, me in particular, are pretty neurotic and flip flop between sure footed confidence and that maniacal indecision and low self-esteem. ha ha. What do they say? The fine line between creativity and madness? Yes sirree!
Any way, after my book purchases of last weekend, I came home and pulled off my numerous book shelves other books that were in keeping with the books I bought. I think, still, one of my favorite books is Zen in the Art of Writing, by Ray Bradbury. He really lives writing practice...
In The Joy of Writing, Page 7, he writes:
here is my formula.
what do you want more than anything else in the world? What do you love, or what do you hate?
Find a character, like yourself, who will want something or not want something, with all his heart. Give him running orders. Shoot him off. The follow him as fast as you can go. The character, in his great love, or hate, will rush you through to the end of the story. The zest and gusto of his need, and there is zest in hate as well as in love, will fire the landscape and raise the temperature of your typewriter thirty degrees.
In How to Keep and Feed a Muse, Page 45, he writes:
The muse must have shape. You will write a thousand words a day for ten or twenty years in order to try to give it shape... By living well, by observing as you live, by reading well and observing as you read... By training yourself in writing, by repetitious exercise, imitation, good example, you have made a clean, well-lighted place to keep the muse.
I love this book because Ray Bradbury so clearly loves writing. That's who you want to mentor you even if it's just through his printed words. Enough with people telling us that you can't get rich off writing. Enough with people telling us that we may never be published. Neither of those things makes us a writer. A writer writes because she has to, because there are thoughts and things and incidences and behaviours that she wants to figure out and creating a character to live through it is the way that we process it.
Like Aries and Leo whom I mentioned yesterday, the real question is, What would possess her to sleep with the love of Maxine's life? What kind of thoughts would she have in her head that would make it okay for her? Is it really only about sex? I want to know the answers because it's not something I would ever do but I don't want to look at them as one dimensional people and just chalk it up to sex. I want to find a way to understand them and like them both even though in real life I would side with Maxine's heart break. At least I think I would, until I've figured out a whole story with the knowledge that all of us have good and bad aspects/qualities. And on the flip side, with no guarantees in life, what if Leo is the person that Aries could love for the rest of her life? And vice versa? What if you had to break someone's heart in the most devastating of ways to have your one chance at true happiness? Could you do it? That's why I write.
There are enough people out there who are going to question your passions and tell you that your dreams are futile, because they love you, because they're jealous, because they gave up on their dreams, because they want you to face reality. Fuck reality. The reality is that one of us could be the next JK Rowling or Dan Brown and no one can predict who that will be. NO ONE!
EY
