Elaine Smith Writes

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Tag Archives: Writing

Morning Pages and Forward Motion

A Friday Re-Find

It’s been 20 years since The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron was first published.  Almost 4 million copies have been sold.  (I bought at least 5 of them myself.  They make great gifts!) So, it seems like most of the readers of this blog will have, at least, heard of it.

It’s worth reminding you about it, however.

Of all the self-help books I’ve read in my life–and I have read a few!–The Artist’s Way is the most transformative.  You are reading this blog because of Julia Cameron–(and because of my good friend Hope Nunnery ,who first gave me a copy of Ms. Cameron’s book).

Hope and I embarked on the odyssey of the 12 week workshop outlined in The Artist’s Way with the idea that it might improve our acting skills and help us with some of the things we felt were holding us back in our acting careers.

Hope is now a recording artist with a fabulous and critically-acclaimed CD to her credit, and I have a completed novel, a sheaf of short stories, and an award-winning full-length play.

I can’t speak for Hope, but that is not what I expected when I began doing my morning pages and going on my artist dates.  But it has been a wild and fulfilling journey.

I get lazy sometimes.  I forget to do the morning pages, or I lose confidence in them.  What constantly astonishes me, however, is that every time I go back to that practice, I also regain forward motion in creativity and in the practical aspects of getting the work out into the world.

So, I suggest–if you haven’t already read/done The Artist’s Way–give it a try.  It’s a book designed to be used as a 12 week workshop.  You can do anything for 12 weeks.  Go to JuliaCameronLive.com, and get an overview.

If you’ve done it and forgotten about it, dig out your copy.  Refresh your memory.  Do those morning pages, and see what happens.

You could be amazed!

 

Weeding sorties

The value of incremental progress

I am not a champion gardener.  If you’ve been following this blog, this will not come as a big shock to you.

And I believe I mentioned before how I live in a sub-tropical climate.  Plant life has a tendency toward the over-exuberant.  Unless it’s dropping dead from heat stroke or complications due to my lack of green-thumbness.  Mostly, however, it is over-exuberant.   There’s a vine thing, for example. . .well, let’s just say, it won’t surprise me if it creeps in the window and strangles me in my sleep one night.

Anyhow, it must follow as the night the day *(I knew I could get Shakespeare in here somewhere!), that Weeding 101 would become a required course.

The problem is it is also extremely hot down here.  Extremely hot.  Hotter than hell, eggs frying on the sidewalk, where’s a cooling shelter hot.

I am a person who likes to finish what she starts.  Preferably within minutes.

Back when I was doing a lot more programming than I do now, working on large and complex projects with shifting requirements and ‘scope creep’ of epic proportions, I was most often hired by Tony Coretto, the CEO of PNT Marketing Services, Inc.  Tony is a most excellent boss.  In the midst of chaos and looming deadlines, he would talk with unfailing optimism about “incremental progress.”

I’m sorry to say that I never totally appreciated the value of that way of looking at things until it came to weeding the flower beds in a hot, humid July in Florida.  It is not possible–unless you have greater masochistic tendencies than I do–to eliminate all weeds in one marathon session.  A person can, however, make incremental progress.

Going out before the sun is high enough to beat down on the flower bed, you can work for a half hour or so in the shade.  Taking out the weed whacker in the late evening, around 7, there might be a breeze coming off the water.

It will never all be done at once in one shining example of impeccable landscaping.  The campaign is not one of shock and awe.  It’s guerilla warfare with intermittent weeding sorties.

Incremental progress.

And you know what?

It turns out that’s the only way to finish any piece of writing.  A little at a time.

So this Tuesday’s Tip is to make a sortie.  Set a timer and write for five minutes.  Ten minutes.  One minute.  Any increment at all leads to incremental progress.

 

* Hamlet, Act I, sc.3

“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.)


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