Write Something

There is Something looming in the dark, can you feel it? It’s a big footed Something. It’s a pointy toothed Something.

The Something is getting closer - you can hear it breathing now – and, as you sit down to write, you can feel it leaning over your shoulder. You feel its fetid breath upon your cheek as it whispers in your ear.

“What are you going to write?”

“I was…,” you reply. But you find that the foggy breath of the Something has permeated your mind.

“I was…,” you repeat feebly. For suddenly it strikes you that the very thought of writing is ridiculous. The idea that you might have an idea worth sharing is laughable.

The Something is grinning.

You recap your pen. You close your notebook’s cover. You think the pointless thoughts of a writer who sat down to work but who has just recapped their pen and closed their notebook.

You do not turn to the Something and slap it across its furry chops. You do not turn to the Something and give it a big hug. You sit in the silence, and you do not move.

The Something sneaks quietly from the room. You did not confront him. You did not embrace him. But you feel better - for now, anyway.

Writing is nothing but controlling anxiety, says Janet Fitch, author of the best seller White Oleander.

I agree.

Limitless

I am intrigued by the number of movies that include struggling authors as characters.

A recently released movie kicks off by introducing the hero: an author struggling to write his first novel. He is down on his luck. But then, something happens. The author has a rush of inspiration. He is brilliant. He is writing a novel overnight. He is writing a brilliant novel in record time.

He finishes his brilliant written-in-record-time novel. He is amazing. The world thinks he is amazing. He moves on. He is not an author any more: he is a stockbroker.

Hang on. What?

He is a stockbroker now because, let’s face it, brilliant people are stockbrokers, not authors.

This movie is based on a first novel and it starts with an author trying to write his first novel.

I can imagine the real life author sitting in front of his computer thinking, “What am I going to write?”. He does this day-after-day.

He writes a few sentences and then deletes them. He starts to panic. He starts to get that feeling you get when you have an assignment due in and you haven’t done any work yet. He gets this feeling even though no one is telling him to write a novel.

He starts to get desperate. He starts to type:

Blocked. Blocked. Blocked. Blocked. Blocked. Blocked. Blocked. Blocked. Blocked. Blocked. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blaaaaaaaaaaaah.

He stops. He gets up from his desk. He makes himself a cup of something warm. He sits down in front of his computer again. He thinks about what he is doing. He types:

Bradley was sitting at his desk, staring at a blank screen, when his girlfriend called…

Modern movies are full of characters who are authors that can't write. That just seems a little bit too easy to me; a little bit too obvious. The fact that these characters know that they are living a cliché doesn’t make them any less cliché.

But then, who am I to talk? Not an author who has had their first novel turned in to a Hollywood movie, that’s for sure.

It was a pretty good movie, by the way.

Gorse Language

Gorse is an unfriendly bush with prickles instead of leaves. It has long been used as a hedging shrub in England and was brought to New Zealand in the mid 1800’s for this purpose. However, farmers quickly learnt that, when grown in New Zealand, gorse wouldn’t confine itself to neat rows. Gorse became a major weed which now covers almost 5% of New Zealand’s usable land.

My childhood home was on one side of a steep valley, a valley whose slopes were almost completely covered in gorse. In spring the gorse would array itself in an abundance of delicate flowers and the valley outside our windows would turn from dark green to bright sunny-yellow.

Many years later I noticed that gorse, the enemy of many New Zealand farmers, was the friend of young native trees. The young trees would grow beneath the protective branches of the gorse bush. They would grow up through the gorse, and the gorse around the mature trees would diminish beneath their new masters.

More recently I have learnt that gorse is a legume, and, like many legumes, it is nitrogen fixing. Gorse not only protects young native trees, it prepares the soil for them as well.

Gorse is a complex character: a weed that heals the land.

There may be times when you feel that your writing is nothing but word weeds. Perhaps, from another angle, your words are a sunny-yellow valley. Or perhaps the word weeds are just the first step, they are the nursery from which giants will arise.

Writer's Block

I’m going to start today’s blog with a rather lengthy quote from American author, Ray Bradbury:

A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You’re there now doing the thing on paper. You’re not killing the goose; you’re just producing an egg. So I don’t worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It’s a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I’ve heard about it. I’ve felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I’d much rather go fishing, for example, or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, “Well, now it’s writing time and now I’ll write.” There’s no difference on paper between the two.

On first reading this quote may appear to contain a number of quite different ideas: but it does not. Bradbury is talking about inspiration. He’s saying that sitting down and writing is a fundamental part of the writing process. Writers cannot expect to be inspired if they are not actively trying to write.

Bradbury is saying that there is no golden goose. There is no magic that drops awesome story ideas into your mind. Writing begets writing.

I’ve heard other authors say what Bradbury says here: that they cannot detect in their own writing a difference between those bits where the ideas flowed like a flood, and those were the ideas did not flow at all.

In my experience, keeping notes of your ideas as they come to you - noting them down before they evaporate from your mind - will help you when you are sitting at your desk chewing your pencil, trying to decide what to write.

Let your words be the wick for more words.