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.

Prosaic

Poetry, in my experience, can be impenetrable, it can be esoteric, it can be self-indulgent, and it can be overly sentimental. I’ve always been a bit suspicious of poetry. I believe I’m not alone in my suspicion.

There was a time when poetry ruled the English speaking world. People at that time saw poetry as having charisma and life, intelligence and feeling, elements which they saw as lacking in prose. At that time many considered prose to be, well, prosaic.

I think our forefathers were wrong about prose. But perhaps there is more to poetry than I had given it credit for. Perhaps my dislike of poetry was caused by my reading the wrong poetry.

Good poetry, in my opinion, is that which helps us see the mundane world in a magical way. It can illuminate us or give us a sense of comfort.

‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ by Samuel Coleridge was enforced reading when I was in school. I still remember this stanza:

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

My mind finds this combination of words utterly captivating.

I am beginning to realise that there is a lot the writer of prose can learn from the poets – the good ones, that is.

The time has come for me to add poetry to my reading list.

Dissecting Soap-Bubbles

Analysing one’s own emotions - trying to put them into words - can be like using a scalpel to dissect soap-bubbles. Trying to label a feeling is a sure fire way of destroying it.

Writers don’t generally describe feelings. Instead they describe emotional situations and rely on their readers ability to interpret those situations in the intended way. The writer still has to understand the emotion that they are trying to evoke. They have to understand the essence of the emotion and its causes.

Good emotionally evocative writing doesn’t happen by accident; it takes time and often requires the writer to delve deep within themself. The process of writing this kind of prose can force a writer perilously close to the point at which they might be tempted to minimise and label their own feelings.

For some writers, trying to capture emotion in their work, particularly a negative emotion, might lead them to truly feeling that emotion for the first time. The process of writing in this way can be fraught; but it can also be cathartic and therapeutic; it can lead to self-knowledge.

Perhaps it is something everyone should attempt.

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.

A Write Funk

One way to tackle thoughts you can’t let go of – the thoughts that keep you up at night – is to state the facts.

I have been reading a Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) resource that recommends taking an objective look at your problems; be like a Reporter and record the facts. Taking an objective look at the facts can help you untangle yourself from the emotions that surround tricky problems.

You can even take this a step further: write your problem into a short newspaper article.

Here’s an example:

A simple car service went wrong for Perth resident, Matthew Dalton, when the garage he took his car to failed to complete the agreed service.

“It’s a disgrace,” said Dalton. “They should’ve told me they weren’t able to finish the work.”

Dalton is accusing the garage of charging him a service fee for balancing and rotating his cars tyres, work Dalton says was not done.

Dalton noticed that something was not right when he saw his car in the collection area.

“It should’ve been cleaned as part of the service but it wasn’t,” said Dalton. “I had a look around the car and noticed that the wheels hadn’t been rotated and there was a grease stain on the backseat.”

A spokesman for the garage says that they are sorry this has occurred.

“Sometimes things slip through the cracks,” the spokesmen said. “Obviously we will do our best to rectify the situation for Mr Dalton.”

Dalton says that he feels that this is a poor excuse, but he is prepared to give the garage a chance to put things right.

Writing can help you deal with your problems.

Is there anything it can’t do?

Endgame

You are less likely to accomplish your goals if you tell other people about them. This is the finding of psychology professor, Peter Gollwitzer.

What happens is this: you set yourself a goal – you’re going to be a novelist –; you tell your buddies your goal and they say, “Wow, that’s awesome dude - you’d be really good at that”; their praise makes you feel good about yourself; this good feeling tricks your brain into believing it has achieved its goal; you’re now less likely to do the work necessary to actually achieve your goal.

It would have been better for you if your friends had laughed at you and told you that you’ll never make it.

“I’ll show you,” you would say. And you would put your heart and soul into becoming a novelist, spurred on, at least in part, by a desire to prove your friends wrong.

The brain sure is a tricky thing. For example, I really felt like I’d achieved something once I’d finished putting together my ‘writer’s blog’ website. Good for me, I thought, I am finally doing something towards my goal of becoming a novelist. But, of course, setting up a blog is not really a step towards becoming a novelist.

It seems there is no formula for success. However, perhaps being aware of some of the pitfalls one may encounter on the path towards one’s goal will improve the chances of arriving at the destination.

Peter Gollwitzer’s research on ‘how goals and plans affect cognition,’ is summarised by Derek Sivers in a short talk he gave to TED.com in July 2010. It’s worth watching.

Think and Grow Lazy

Yesterday I started a new notebook. The notebook was a Christmas gift from one of my brothers ten years ago. Ten years ago I made a note to myself on the front page which reads like this:

Between you and me, I have always fancied myself a writer, an inspirer of hearts. This despite the fact I cannot spell.

My cheeks coloured as I read this wee note from my younger self. The original contains a large number of spelling mistakes, which gives validity to one of the notes assertions. But the first part, the bit about being a writer, that was a complete fabrication.

As far as I can recall I hadn’t done any writing ten years ago. I didn’t even think about writing. Apparently I was too busy deluding myself. In fact it was a good five years before I made my first attempt at writing a short-story.

My brush with ‘The Ghost of Christmas Past’ made me wonder what else I’ve been kidding myself about: that I might be a published author one day? Is this something I have been telling myself which, in another ten years’ time, I will have done nothing to achieve?

Ah, and if I had grabbed a pen and paper ten years ago - started to learn how to write - where would I be now?

I can only wonder.

Sigmund Freud said that:

“Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.”

This is advice I intend to take. At the very least it will save me from future encounters with a smug former self.