A Writer's Notebook, Day Forty-One
As planned, I began working on a timed writing block today. It was not particularly easy to get myself started, and I had a few times that I began and stopped, even erasing the work and going back to the beginning (I restarted the timer a few times to accommodate this), but once I got myself going, I was able to writer 649 words in twenty minutes, which I feel is quite respectable. Of course, that is not the only criteria, as it does not take into account the quality of the work, but I trust that I know how to craft a sentence, even when I do so at speed.
I did not feel fully comfortable starting today, but once I was going, it become a lot easier to keep at it, and I expect that it will become even easier with repetition. I am quite hopeful that I can get my word count even higher in that time period, with some practice, as I was not prepared for the task. I could feel how out of shape I was, just as one might if returning to physical exercise after a time. Of course, increasing my word count is not my current goal, merely something I am anticipating as a positive result of keeping at it.
The work I did today was not easy to start, and I am really not certain that it is anything that will even be a real story. Knowing that I was lacking in a certain sense of confidence, a condition which precipitated my many false starts, I gave myself freedom from the pressure of worrying about what I would produce by choosing to write a bit of a background history piece to inform my writing in terms of the Florida stories project. Specifically, I began a piece that describes Captain John Alexander Carlisle, a fictional historical figure who will be in the background of these stories. I suspect that the work I began today might not actually be a full story itself. It is a bit, for me, as if I am writing my own primary sources, materials that I can draw upon as the background context for the stories themselves
The real reason that I chose to write that piece was the freedom that came from saying to myself that this was not for anybody except me. By doing that, I freed my mind to consider the question without worrying at all about what I was writing. As I have said in other entries of late, my conscious mind keeps getting in the way. The desire to perfect the work becomes a hindrance in those moments. While, later, reading a passage back, it is natural to consider the craft with care and attention, but when creating it, these concerns can be stifling.
By giving myself the option of writing material that I knew was important for me to do, because it does connect with that larger project, but which, itself, does not need to be perfect or even entirely coherent to anyone else, allowed me to focus instead on just doing the work without thought. It was only when I came to that point that I really did get started Prior to that, I had been attempting to work on one of the actual stories for that project, and I could not crack the beginning. I suspect, had I forced myself to keep going, I might have gotten their eventually, but I want to be in control, and I don't want to stare at a blank page. The point of the exercise is to cultivate that control and transform my once haphazard process into something reliable and effective.
I recognized, as well, that one thing which made it far easier to get myself into the work was the use of a strong and distinct voice. The voice, for me, becomes the central guide, and it is by considering the construction of the language that I find my way through the story. A particular set of sounds comes to mind, as well as a specific consideration about the construction of sentences, the diction, the tone, and many other more subtle details. All of this provides me with a compass. I might know the overall events, but the specifics of the telling, that is a different issue. By cultivating a strong and unique voice for the narrator of a particular story, parameters are developed that allow me to know what the sentence should sound like. If I have a sense of the plot, then it becomes a matter of putting the moments into the language. Of the two, it is possible to write a story without knowing, in advance, what the events will be, but not having a voice for the story makes it impossible to put the plot down in any meaningful way.
This may, in part, explain why I am drawn to telling stories in unusual ways: they often make the voice necessarily very specific in technical ways. The requirements are obvious, and they create limitations that provide can be used to guide the creation of a voice. As well, I think that I may just be calling it voice, but really what gives the energy the linguistic play. This also is a major part of what creates the voice, but it is the process and the voice is the outcome. For me, playing with the words is joyous, and figuring out the ways to fit them together is fun for me. I like playing with the words and the sentences as a thing in and of itself, and so when I am writing, that part is the thing that must be primary.
All these little insights might seem silly to some, and it may well be that I know or realized many of these things already, but the experience today was positive and I know it is only the beginning. I am rather excited by just how much I feel I needed to unpack about that experience, as those insights suggest to me that this is a valid and valuable approach, at least for me. Just knowing that I have seen so much of my process in a single day is a positive sign.
Of course, I want to mention that I also continued on with the Bimble story, and I do feel it has made a positive turn. I had a real sense of what is coming in the story immediately after what I just wrote, and I have a sense of how that connects to the whole piece, now. I didn't necessarily write as much as Icould, but I know that I am getting things moving again in that piece. For days, I have been doing small bits each day, waiting for an insight that would push me to the other side of the current hurdle, but now I have reached that point and I am prepared to keep things moving in the right direction.
I did not feel fully comfortable starting today, but once I was going, it become a lot easier to keep at it, and I expect that it will become even easier with repetition. I am quite hopeful that I can get my word count even higher in that time period, with some practice, as I was not prepared for the task. I could feel how out of shape I was, just as one might if returning to physical exercise after a time. Of course, increasing my word count is not my current goal, merely something I am anticipating as a positive result of keeping at it.
The work I did today was not easy to start, and I am really not certain that it is anything that will even be a real story. Knowing that I was lacking in a certain sense of confidence, a condition which precipitated my many false starts, I gave myself freedom from the pressure of worrying about what I would produce by choosing to write a bit of a background history piece to inform my writing in terms of the Florida stories project. Specifically, I began a piece that describes Captain John Alexander Carlisle, a fictional historical figure who will be in the background of these stories. I suspect that the work I began today might not actually be a full story itself. It is a bit, for me, as if I am writing my own primary sources, materials that I can draw upon as the background context for the stories themselves
The real reason that I chose to write that piece was the freedom that came from saying to myself that this was not for anybody except me. By doing that, I freed my mind to consider the question without worrying at all about what I was writing. As I have said in other entries of late, my conscious mind keeps getting in the way. The desire to perfect the work becomes a hindrance in those moments. While, later, reading a passage back, it is natural to consider the craft with care and attention, but when creating it, these concerns can be stifling.
By giving myself the option of writing material that I knew was important for me to do, because it does connect with that larger project, but which, itself, does not need to be perfect or even entirely coherent to anyone else, allowed me to focus instead on just doing the work without thought. It was only when I came to that point that I really did get started Prior to that, I had been attempting to work on one of the actual stories for that project, and I could not crack the beginning. I suspect, had I forced myself to keep going, I might have gotten their eventually, but I want to be in control, and I don't want to stare at a blank page. The point of the exercise is to cultivate that control and transform my once haphazard process into something reliable and effective.
I recognized, as well, that one thing which made it far easier to get myself into the work was the use of a strong and distinct voice. The voice, for me, becomes the central guide, and it is by considering the construction of the language that I find my way through the story. A particular set of sounds comes to mind, as well as a specific consideration about the construction of sentences, the diction, the tone, and many other more subtle details. All of this provides me with a compass. I might know the overall events, but the specifics of the telling, that is a different issue. By cultivating a strong and unique voice for the narrator of a particular story, parameters are developed that allow me to know what the sentence should sound like. If I have a sense of the plot, then it becomes a matter of putting the moments into the language. Of the two, it is possible to write a story without knowing, in advance, what the events will be, but not having a voice for the story makes it impossible to put the plot down in any meaningful way.
This may, in part, explain why I am drawn to telling stories in unusual ways: they often make the voice necessarily very specific in technical ways. The requirements are obvious, and they create limitations that provide can be used to guide the creation of a voice. As well, I think that I may just be calling it voice, but really what gives the energy the linguistic play. This also is a major part of what creates the voice, but it is the process and the voice is the outcome. For me, playing with the words is joyous, and figuring out the ways to fit them together is fun for me. I like playing with the words and the sentences as a thing in and of itself, and so when I am writing, that part is the thing that must be primary.
All these little insights might seem silly to some, and it may well be that I know or realized many of these things already, but the experience today was positive and I know it is only the beginning. I am rather excited by just how much I feel I needed to unpack about that experience, as those insights suggest to me that this is a valid and valuable approach, at least for me. Just knowing that I have seen so much of my process in a single day is a positive sign.
Of course, I want to mention that I also continued on with the Bimble story, and I do feel it has made a positive turn. I had a real sense of what is coming in the story immediately after what I just wrote, and I have a sense of how that connects to the whole piece, now. I didn't necessarily write as much as Icould, but I know that I am getting things moving again in that piece. For days, I have been doing small bits each day, waiting for an insight that would push me to the other side of the current hurdle, but now I have reached that point and I am prepared to keep things moving in the right direction.
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