So. I'm apparently not done blogging for the night, as I'm still in the mood to write. Read it or not, but here's some more food for thought. In talking over why I have such trouble writing, I've come to the more concrete notion that when I was young and my teachers talked about what a gifted writer I was, they were absolutely wrong.
I'm not going to be falsely modest - this is a blog, not a job interview. I have a great talent, and I was quite gifted when I was young. Just not at writing. My gift is my creativity, my ability to come up with fascinating worlds and stories instantly, and to immerse myself within them and discover them to possess more depth than I'd ever thought possible. As C.S. Lewis put it memorably in "The Last Battle," to find the true world, one must go "further up and further in." I can, and do.
However, as an actual writer, I'm really only average. No head for lovely descriptions (although I have a keen admiration of them), nor any particular talent with putting the right word in the right place at the right time. The best you could say is that I rarely ever have to double-check a paper or a post. I'm a grammar and spelling fiend, and I have a reasonably large vocabulary, if not an eloquent one.
Still, it is something, and I'm about to introduce you to more. What you're about to hear is not anything I've told anyone in my family or circle of friends. What I'm going to divulge, in bits and parts, are details of my creative castoffs over the years, the ideas in a 62 page file called "The Big Index" that are highlighted in green and blue.
"The Big Index" is a list of every story idea I've ever had, and where to find notes on them. My story files, scattered across two computers, three large notebooks, and a backup drive, have quirky titles such as "Bizarre Bazaar of Words," "Alpha Files," and "Middle School Mix." Files don't match titles, nor are all story details always contained in a single file. They're disorganized, and more often than not, make sense to no one but me (if they make sense at all). But having the list to help me sort through them keeps me sane.
Green in that list signifies stories I've grown out of, ones that I've decided are just too silly or juvenile to bother writing. Often, if the plot is good, it evolves and finds its way into another, more mature story. Good characters migrate to more defined universes. Blue indicates that a story is good, but fan-fiction. For instance, if I think up a sequel to a story that ended unhappily in my mind, it makes me feel better and it might be good, but it's still illegal to sell it. So it sits on the shelf, lonely and untouchable.
To begin - directly before I end this ridiculously long post, I'll start with the last section of my list: Musicals.
The Basic Facts: I have written ideas for 36 musicals. I've written outlines for 10, and 2 of them are complete, with lyrics, script and all. I wrote one in 6th grade, and it is absolutely horrible. I never know whether to cringe or laugh looking at it. The other, called "Summer Romance," was written at sleep-away camp, and is a sappy, ridiculous, musical romance novel, wherein four girls and their counselor fall in love with the four boys and counselor of a neighboring bunk. I showed it to the theater counselor. After that, I haven't shown it to anyone else, nor do I think I ever will again. There's only so much humiliation a person can take.
There are three musical ideas that I might actually write someday, and you're not getting the details of those. They're based on myths and fairy tales I love, in particular, "Eros and Psyche," "Pomona and Vertumnus (look it up, it's sweet!)," and "King Thrushbeard (the most under-used good Grimm's fairy tale)."
But maybe in another post I'll tell you some more about the rejects. There are some spectacular ones. Fun, isn't it, watching the writer crash and burn? Meet me back at Pyrakanthe's Place in a little bit, and maybe you can hear about my two separate ideas for a Phantom of the Opera spin-off and sequel. I promise, you they can't be worse than what's playing in London right now. :)
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Sunday, October 24, 2010
The Blank Page
For all of you viewing this post in its published state, which is all of you (minus my boyfriend, who is sitting next to me as I write), you cannot see what I see now. It is the writer's personal canvas, the window into another world, and often the picnic area for muses, characters, and plots to come together. It can also be a writer's worst nemesis.
The blank page.
All that empty space. Horrible, isn't it? I'm sure you've had this feeling: it's the day of the test you didn't study for, and you're faced with that dreadful essay question, the one where you have no thesis, no evidence, and no hope. Only for a writer, it's even worse - you aren't even given the essay question. You just put down what's in your heart and mind, and hope that it works.
For me, the writing process has always been a struggle. I'm great at ideas. So great, in fact, that they don't stop coming. I'm constantly being bombarded by inspirations from all around me, on TV or the radio, in books and articles I read, or even in everyday situations. Where do I get my ideas? Where don't I?
But when an idea arrives, and I scribble it down on a notepad or some form of paper (which I'm never without), often it remains as notes. When I was younger, I took less notes, had less direction in my stories, and far less technique. But I had stories. Over time, I've been taught to be careful with my words, and with that care came a wariness that has shadowed the last six years of my life.
In college, I studied poetry for the first time. I learned to write in a new form, and it changed the way I thought about writing. Using a shorter form forced me to be more creative with words, and less so with character and idea. I learned to take an archetype and dig deeper into the generic. I still had story ideas, but in seeing the beauty my classmates brought to the written word, I was convinced that nothing I wrote could ever measure up.
Six years later, I've managed to put together two half-finished novels, two partway begun pieces of fan-fiction (fiction based in another creator's world), and notes for a brilliant medieval-style world that absolutely sings with color and detail. I got out of college, went into grad school, and stagnated.
As I've said previously, it's not that I haven't had anything to say all year, but that I haven't had the courage to put forth the words. These stumble, they're verbose but not encompassing, and as usual, the post has gotten too long already. But they're a start. The page isn't blank anymore. Maybe tomorrow there will be another news article, and I'll be more in my element, with my typical self-assigned essay question: what is your opinion?
But until then, you lucky few readers can have a look into the head of a budding writer. And then, presumably, be grateful not to be one.
The blank page.
All that empty space. Horrible, isn't it? I'm sure you've had this feeling: it's the day of the test you didn't study for, and you're faced with that dreadful essay question, the one where you have no thesis, no evidence, and no hope. Only for a writer, it's even worse - you aren't even given the essay question. You just put down what's in your heart and mind, and hope that it works.
For me, the writing process has always been a struggle. I'm great at ideas. So great, in fact, that they don't stop coming. I'm constantly being bombarded by inspirations from all around me, on TV or the radio, in books and articles I read, or even in everyday situations. Where do I get my ideas? Where don't I?
But when an idea arrives, and I scribble it down on a notepad or some form of paper (which I'm never without), often it remains as notes. When I was younger, I took less notes, had less direction in my stories, and far less technique. But I had stories. Over time, I've been taught to be careful with my words, and with that care came a wariness that has shadowed the last six years of my life.
In college, I studied poetry for the first time. I learned to write in a new form, and it changed the way I thought about writing. Using a shorter form forced me to be more creative with words, and less so with character and idea. I learned to take an archetype and dig deeper into the generic. I still had story ideas, but in seeing the beauty my classmates brought to the written word, I was convinced that nothing I wrote could ever measure up.
Six years later, I've managed to put together two half-finished novels, two partway begun pieces of fan-fiction (fiction based in another creator's world), and notes for a brilliant medieval-style world that absolutely sings with color and detail. I got out of college, went into grad school, and stagnated.
As I've said previously, it's not that I haven't had anything to say all year, but that I haven't had the courage to put forth the words. These stumble, they're verbose but not encompassing, and as usual, the post has gotten too long already. But they're a start. The page isn't blank anymore. Maybe tomorrow there will be another news article, and I'll be more in my element, with my typical self-assigned essay question: what is your opinion?
But until then, you lucky few readers can have a look into the head of a budding writer. And then, presumably, be grateful not to be one.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)