Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants

Category Archives: Writing

Daunting Deadlines

Daring to dream

I’ve been thinking about deadlines a lot lately.  Not surprising, really.  After all, I’ve just started a blog.  People can talk all they want about “blog” being short for “weblog.”  It’s really short for “OMG!  I haven’t written today’s post yet!”

The really ironic thing about this plunge into blogging is I hate deadlines.  I don’t join writers’ groups because I have such a horror of them.  The idea of 10 pages a week freaks me out.  I can’t imagine being a journalist with a story due every day.

And yet…here I am.

I didn’t think about the deadline part of the blog when I began.  I thought about the social media aspects, the marketing possibilities (eek!), the opportunity for self-expression.  And, yes, I thought about giving myself a reason to write regularly.

This never translated in my mind into having to write regularly.

You know.

A deadline.

The odd thing is that when I have a deadline, I am more than capable of meeting it.  I have pulled all-nighters to write papers and computer programs, to get a website up, to learn software and/or 17th Century French history (L’etat c’est moi – and that’s about the extent of my French1), to learn lines, and to drive to Charleston.2

So, why does a writing deadline seem such a burden to me?

I honestly am not sure.

But I guess I’m going to get over it, or crash and burn here.  And I guess it’s also true that you always invite into your life that which you need to learn.

So, today’s Monday Miracle is that I made this deadline.  And I haven’t run screaming into the night at the thought of all the other deadlines to which I’ve committed.    (We used to call them “drop dead dates” at one place I worked.  It doesn’t make it sound any better.)

I’m giving myself this opportunity to get past my dread of deadlines.  It wasn’t what I thought would come out of this blogging adventure, but it should be useful.  After all, as Napoleon Hill once said, “A goal is a dream with a deadline.”

Deadlines are good. 

Only, let’s think of another word, okay?

(Comments open for suggestions.)

1 Except for that tour I did of The Little Prince and those few scenes I learned phonetically.
2 Charleston. Also The Little Prince tour.  Van broke down, transmission had to be rebuilt overnight, 8 am curtain at a school – long story.

“We don’t always KNOW how it ENDS!”

Ain’t no crystal ball

Ok.  So the headline of this post is a quote from one of my favorite TV shows ever.  The West Wing.  Specifically, it is from the episode ‘NSF Thurmont’ from Season 6 which I happened to watch again just the other day.

In it, there is a whole lot of political stuff going on (no kidding, right?), and the amazing John Spencer (as Leo) is talking to the equally amazing Martin Sheen (as the President).  Actually, he is yelling at the President.

I didn’t know people could do that, did you?

But that’s beside the point.

The point is Leo wants the President to bomb some people, and the President doesn’t want to do it–because nobody can tell him what happens next.  “He doesn’t like chaos,” Leo says.

And I realize that some of my procrastinating about submitting my script is because I don’t know what happens next.  I mean, often not much happens.  Except a rejection letter.  And I know how to deal with that.  But there’s always the possibility it could be accepted.  And that leads to an awful lot of questions and decisions and problems.

Chaos.

What if it’s the wrong place?  What if the production turns about badly, when there was something around the corner that would have been the right place if only I had waited?  What if… well, actually, all the other ‘what ifs’ stem from that one, so there’s no real need to go into the fears about casting, about contracts, about directors, etc.

But here’s the thing.

If I don’t submit, it ends right there.

It’s important to be able to live with the uncertainty that comes with the possibility of something better, instead of clinging to the security of knowing all about the nothing that’s going to happen if you don’t put your work out there.

We don’t always know how it ends.

A lot could go wrong.

A lot could go right, too.

And, by the way…the President in The West Wing?  He didn’t bomb anybody, and he managed to pull off a major peace accord.

The lesson, I guess, is you step into the unknown and do the best you can.

There could be bombs.  There could be peace in our time.

Mowing your script

Landscaping and writing a play—something in common?

So, I was mowing the lawn yesterday.  And it occurred to me that writing a play is a little bit like creating and maintaining a beautiful yard.  (Full disclosure:  I don’t have a beautiful yard.  Yet.  But I’m working on it.)

Your first draft is the planting stage.  The grass seed goes in, the sod gets laid.

Second and third, maybe even fourth and fifth, are the cultivation stage.  This is where you do the watering and fertilizing—and the cross-pollination of submitting the script to theatres and producers.

Once it grows to the point where you are having readings, however, you’ve got to get out the weed-whacker and start trimming.  Clear out the underbrush, cut down the weeds.  Put things in order.

If the audience can’t navigate around that lovely flower bed of a plot complication you planted in scene two, you’ve either got to lay some paving stones and make a path, or you’ve got to dig it up and throw it out.

If the sub-plot has turned into an invasive plant, sprouting seedlings all over the place and distracting people from the point you were trying to make, you might want to get a machete and chop it down.

Even if the landscape is looking pretty good, there are going to be a few weeds sprouting up here and there.  Some judicious trimming never hurts.

I don’t know.  Possibly it’s a pretty obvious metaphor.  Maybe I’m in danger of pushing it too far.

But there’s something in it.  It seems to me that I might have an easier time cutting some of my favorite lines, if I think of it this way.

I want the grass to grow well.  And lavishly.

But I still have to mow.

Why aren’t you writing?

The obstacle course

You say you want to write.  You start a project.  And then you stop.

Why?

It’s pretty fashionable these days to attribute all lack of forward motion to fear.  Fear of failure, fear of success, fear that your mother will be mad that you used her in your novel (she won’t—she won’t even recognize herself), fear that you won’t have anything to say (you will), fear that your writing will reveal something about you that you don’t want people to know (yes, but probably not the way you think).

Some of those fears can and will stand in the way.

But sometimes it’s other stuff.

You’re lazy.
You’re busy.
You’re tired.
You’re bored.
You’re on Facebook.

Set a timer for ten minutes if you’re lazy.  You only have to write for ten minutes.

Are you busy with what you really want to be doing?  Don’t let the urgent crowd out the important.

Resolve to get more sleep.  Write first thing in the morning.  Before you have time to get tired.

You’re bored?  Best cure for that…tell yourself a story.  And write it down.

You’re on Facebook?  There’s no getting around that one.  You’ve gotta get off Facebook.  Just for a while.  (You can always set up a blog and link it to Facebook.  Two birds.  One stone.  It could work.  When I’ve figured that part out, I’ll let you know.  Except I won’t have to announce it.  If you’ve already friended me on Facebook, you’ll see it happen.)

The point is there are always obstacles.  Are you going to let them stop you?  Or are you going to get past them?

Over, around, under, through.

Whatever it takes.

Finding Your Voice – pt 2

What are you about?

A while back–something like 10 days or so–before I went to Maine–I posted about “Finding Your Voice” and how, if there’s really only one plot, the originality in your writing lies in the way you string your words together, and the tone you use.

But how do you choose?  How do you find that voice?

Well, first, finding the right voice for your piece has a lot to do with what it’s about.

There’s a larger question, though.

What are you about?

One of the things writing how-to gurus say is you have to know what you want to write about before you start.

This is one of those lies the world tells you.

You don’t have to know before you start.  You just have to know before you finish.

(We’re talking fiction, now.  If you’re writing non-fiction, it’s pretty clear that you’ve got to know you’re writing about jelly fish before the first word goes down on paper or up on the screen.  Otherwise, you could end up with an article on grizzly bears, and your editor is not going to be happy.)

Don’t get me wrong.  It would be really helpful to know your entire plot, to say nothing of every bit of your characters’ back story, and the themes and symbols you’ll include.  And I am sure that there are some writers who are fortunate enough to have all that worked out in their heads before they begin.

I’m not one of them.

For a long time, I thought that meant I wasn’t a writer.  But, guess what?  It doesn’t.  A writer writes.

Almost everything I’ve ever written has been worked out in the writing.

It’s only after I’m in the middle of it that I begin to have some idea of what it’s about.

And, guess what?

I’ve written enough now to begin to have some idea of what I’m about.

You will, too.  Just get started.

Oops!

Sorry Sunday

Traveling today!

Not enough thinking ahead!

No substantive blog post.  Ooops.

Use this time to write something of your own!

Finding your voice

The secret to originality

If there’s only one plot, as we discussed yesterday, where does originality come into play?

In your voice.

The way you string your words together.  The tone.  The vocabulary.  The choices.

This blog has—so far—a light and breezy tone.  I speak to you here in my playful voice—mostly because I can’t imagine posting day after day in total newscaster-reporting-a-disaster seriousness.  If we can’t have fun, what’s the point of being here?

But I have other voices.  I do have the newscaster-reporting-a-disaster voice.  I just don’t like it much.  I definitely have the Eeyore-voice wherein everything is gloomy, and I anticipate disaster at every turn.  I could give you melodrama or sweet sunshine or. . . .any one of thousands of voices.

We all could.

Some will come easier than others, but you’ve got to figure out what your writing project is about and what’s appropriate.

Some voices don’t work for some things.  Like when you were a kid and your mom would say, “Use your indoor voice.”

Next up:  How do you find your voice?  (Hint:  It’s probably not your ‘indoor voice.’)

The One Plot

Da-da-da-dah!         (Beethoven’s Fifth, remember?

Yesterday, I talked a little bit about my search for the 8 Plots, those mysterious archetypes, paradigms that I had been hearing teachers and fellow writers reference over the years without ever actually listing them.   I went searching and re-discovered something I have long known.  Humanity has a passion for lists!  Maybe we’re overwhelmed by the vast array of knowledge and feel like if we can just reduce portions of it to a definitive list, we would be able to master it.  (Ain’t gonna happen, but that’s another story.)

In the course of this, I found list after list of plots — The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, and 20 Master Plots (and How to Build Them), for example.*  Lots of lists and lots of numbers.  But, for some reason, I couldn’t come up with the more ubiquitously cited eight.

Having a pencil and paper at hand, I sat down to noodle and doodle, and I scribbled away furiously, until it suddenly came to me.  All these variations I was devising could be boiled down into one.

Every plot, at its essence, is the Quest for Salvation.  (Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, this turns out to be very similar to Joseph Campbell’s research.  Check out “The Hero With a Thousand Faces” or “The Power of Myth.”)

Test it.  Think of a book, a movie, a play.  Once you strip away the details (the mere bagatelles of setting, location, psychology, time period and so forth) and you figure out exactly how “salvation” is defined in this particular world, I think you’ll find that it works.

In all romantic comedies, Salvation = Happily Ever After.

In murder mysteries, Salvation = Solve the Crime, Catch the Murderer

In many sci-fi stories (“Independence Day,” The Terminator series), Salvation = (literally) Saving the World

The difference between a comedy and a tragedy is whether or not salvation is attained in the end.

I think that our entire body of literature can be distilled down to this one plot.

So, the good news is, you can’t come up with an original plot.  All you can do is come up with an original voice in which to write about some variation of recognizable circumstances.

And we can all do that.

 

* Lists of plots

Hasn’t everything already been said?

Why even start.

One of the big fears in starting a blog—or any other piece of writing—is that you won’t have anything original to say.  Hasn’t everything already been said?  You’d think so, wouldn’t you?  There are those billion other blogs.  And 147 million items in the Library of Congress with 10,000 more being added each day.  Seneca tells us we lost an estimated 40,000 works when the Library of Alexandria burnt.  Nobody’s quite sure, but that could have been in 48 B.C.  48 B. C., and there were already 40,000 books on the shelves!

How could there possibly be anything new to say?  Why even start? 

Just because every single person is made up of the same building blocks (ever heard of DNA?), so that we can all be traced back to some common ancestress , none of us look exactly alike.  Our fingerprints are different.  Our brainwaves are different.

You and I can start with the same thought and spin them together with all our other thoughts, and the tapestries we weave aren’t going to be identical.  Similar, maybe.  Identical.  No.  (Unless, of course, you plan on plagiarism.  If you do–don’t.)

But, in many ways, it’s time to stop worrying about originality.  “They” say that there are only 8 plots. 

Actually, there are variations on this.  There are three plots.   Twelve.  Twenty.  Thirty-Six.  Whatever.  But when I was in grad school, I would hear, over and over, that there are only 8 plots.  Many years later, in NY, when I began to write, it finally occurred to me to ask someone what those 8 plots were.  Nobody knew!  I’ve since discovered the origin of the dictum and what the 8 plots actually are.   (A good overview of the usual suspects can be found here.)

But, before I found that overview, I spent a good few hours scribbling lists of plots and trying to arrive at the definitive eight.  Along the way, I made a discovery.

There’s only one plot.

So, yeah.  Everything has already been said.

On the other hand, nobody has said it quite the way I will or you can.  So, it’s okay for us all to go ahead and write our own stories.

Stop worrying if your vision
is new.
Let others make that decision.
They usually do.
Just keep moving on.
 — Stephen Sondheim ‘Sunday in the Park with George’

So, we’ll keep moving on.  And tomorrow, I’ll tell you about the one plot.  (Seems like it should have an organ chord, doesn’t it?  And big Gothic lettering.

Tomorrow.

The One Plot

Da-da-da-dah (imagine Beethoven’s Fifth embedded here.)

And. . .we’re off!

Welcome to my very first blog post!

It’s a little scary to launch a new endeavor–especially one so fraught with narcissism as blogging.  You know those voices in your head? The ones that like to shout–or, more often, whisper insidiously–Just who do you think you are?

Well, they are working overtime today.

Who do you think you are to start blogging?  To have a website? A bookstore? Who do you think would ever be interested in anything you have to say?  What’s wrong with you?

But I’ve decided to tell the Tyrannosaurus Chatterboxicus to sit down and shut up.

I would like to point out to that garrulous TC that I am interested in what I have to say, and that’s enough. If nothing else, this should get me writing a bit every day. And if other people decide to come along, that will be great.

There may be interesting things here.

I’ll be talking about writing and creativity and what gets in the way. I’ll be talking about theatre and what I’ve learned as an actor, a director, a playwright. I’ll be talking about computers and website design and the bruises I’ll be getting from beating my head against the brick wall of trial-and-error programming.

I’ll be talking about visibility–oh, the shame of poking your head up and saying, “Here I am. Look at me.“–and having to combine all manner of esoteric business-like disciplines (marketing, pr, research, compliance, data design, accounting, etc.) with all manner of other esoteric creative-like disciplines (plot, theme, structure, imagination) into the more or less coherent whole of an Artist Entrepreneur.

Sometimes I’ll be talking about how hard all that is, and sometimes I’ll be pointing out some tricks and tools that have made it easier for me–and might work for you. And sometimes I’ll probably just be talking, and we’ll all wonder what the heck I’m talking about.

I’m learning this blogging software as I go along. Weird things will happen. The TC wants me to wait until I understand it perfectly, but you know and I know that just means it will never get off the ground.

Leap, and the net will appear. — John Burroughs

I’m leaping.

Bookmark this site if you want to see what happens next.


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