Helping the Writer’s Mind

Oh my God! I desperately wanted to finish that story. Look! I have abandoned it. I had been working on it for the past one month. It’s been six weeks since I haven’t touched it. Would I be able to resume it? How could I do justice to the story, now, after such a long time of discontinuation? I do have some notes made from the times, while I worked on the stuff. I do not think those notes are of any help, anymore, though. 

It is clear to me how vague the classification of writers would be if I categorized them based on such feelings as above. A writer, at almost all stages of his or her growth feels this way. Most of those super-successful writers may not experience it the same way, because they have the ability to pursue writing without bothering much about another day-job, but apparently have other issues that affect them the same way.

If writing gives a person immense pleasure or joy, and the person is forced to work in a bakery in order to make a living, the resulting conflict could damage the mental equilibrium of that person. Those person(s) who have no aptitude for working in a bakery, when forced to compromise their psychological ecosystem with the sophistication of an altogether different system of things, creative writing suffers. This is when one feels; “Oh my God! I desperately wanted to finish that story. Look! I have abandoned it.”

The fear for being not able to do justice to one’s work of a lifetime deserves wise handling. If not, it will consume the writer, wholly. The totality of all fears has their common grounding in the unknown. In the case of the above-mentioned writer (let us call him Paul), the unknown part is the quality of his work. Paul does not know and fears this fact: how would it all turn out to be. How could I do justice to the story now, after such a long time of discontinuation?

In order to undo the fear of the unknown, the simplest method can be the Jungian concept of assimilation of psychic realities. Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) was a German psychoanalyst, whose groundbreaking theories on human mind, guided the world into a modern-renaissance. He argues about a specific course of action through which a human being can bring out the contents of his unconscious and experience it in the conscious level in order to alleviate the pressure from the unconscious side.

This same method is useful in undoing the fear for the unknown in Paul’s case. If Paul is uncertain of the results his work could bring him after a considerable gap in the process of writing, he should first, look at the results. There is only one way he can get the result—by completing the work. Paul just needs some gut feeling to cross the initial fear.  

If one is stuck with the fear of how the work would turn out to be, the possibility of writing a book or a story is obliterated entirely. It is up to you to take that step courageously. Your work deserves to be born, simply because you have such strong feeling for it. Let your fears not obligate the stopping of your creative work.

About Anu Lal
If you liked this article, you might like my book too. Take a look.

Anu Lal is the author of Wall of Colors and Other Stories. He lives in Kerala, South India. He blogs at The Indian Commentator 

You can catch up with him in Facebook too.      

The Weather-talk

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Meet your neighbor in the bus stop, or a relative, an old colleague, or acquaintance at a party, the most convenient and approachable topic of our conversation—the no-fire zone of our lives—is weather talk.

“What a weather! Hadn’t felt anything like this in years!” It could also be ‘rain-talk’, or even ‘snow-talk’, and vary in accordance with the environmental peculiarities of the place one inhabits. Here, in Cannanore, Kerala, the Southern side of India, it is mostly ‘rain’. Sometimes, ‘heat’ becomes a topic too.

What does this have to do with a writer?

The Writer’s Genie

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Firstly, I lied about the genie. There are no genies that can help a writer, magically sparing him or her from all the pain and fret of the work. Secondly, a part of this lie is truth. Of course, there is one thing that can help a writer. Guess what?

Type writer?

Computer?

i-pad?

Writing software?

If you are still following this sequence of guesses, you prove yourself to be a serious searcher of the art of writing. At one point in life, we all search for a support mechanism in our work. However, if you are guessing along the same lines, as mentioned above, you are going the wrong way.

Your Regular Job

Image Courtesy: Oprah.com

Regularity in action often turns the act into a habit and the habit is always capable of sustaining itself into time. Great many self-emancipation gurus contempt habit and ask people to move on and do things that are out of their regular rhythm and comfort zones. There is a certain truth about what they say. Especially, for a writer, it will do her great good if she prepares herself to experiment with the daily, the mundane, the spiritual, and the fantastic.

Even writing these words—fantastic and spiritual gives me goose flesh. Such is the power of the fantastic and the spiritual upon human consciousness. But in order to experiment with these out-of-the-ordinary-experiences, a writer must have a strong control over the craft. In this article, I am focusing on nothing else but how to manage this hold on one’s craft.

 It is an art in itself.

In order to hold onto one’s craft, one must be artistic enough to know that it takes the understanding of the rhythm of the art to do this. The rhythm indicates regularity. Regularity is the consistent interaction with a focused intention towards a cause.

Regularity with some intervals in its practice is rhythm.

To write is to follow the rhythm one’s mind allows one to be comfortable at within the premises of the art.

How one follows, one’s cause depends on individuals and also on the craft they follow. For a writer, she should decide the frequency of practicing their art in consideration with what their art wants from them, what time, what attention, what diligence.

In the case of writing, it wants from the artist—everything.

Sustaining frequency is very important in developing style and craft. In order to achieve frequency, a ‘habitualization’ of the craft is crucial. Turned into a habit, the craft of telling stories will accompany the frequency, unaffected by the interventions of the outside world—the nagging family, the demanding wife, the short tempered boss of your day job and a particularly bad day in the coffee house.

But how does one achieve this? How can a habit be useful tool for a writer?

As one can see, in cases of human metabolic activity such as the activation of salivary glands at the sight of food items and the initiation of hunger at the usual lunch time, that habits can leave such tremendous impact upon us. They govern our responses both physically and mentally. Salivary glands in their daily action indicate this very truth. The ejection of saliva is both a physical and mental action. In this manner, if a writer habituates his writing activity, the act as such can flow uninterrupted at the precise time or manner that the writer practices daily. At least, the mental and physical preparedness can precede the real act of writing.

Still, it is a matter of debate whether creativity is time bound or if it could be habitualized.

Perhaps, it is not.

Hemingway said there are no great writers, but only great re-writers. This means, you have a chance if you have a draft, although not much ‘creative’ in its appearance or impact, to think about and depend on in your writing journey. The life of an uncreative story ends in the editor’s waste bin. But for a blank page, there is no life at all.

Anu Lal is the author of the up-coming collection of short stories Wall of Colors and Other Stories. He lives in Kerala, South India. He blogs at The Indian Commentator 

You can catch up with him in Facebook too. 

A review of Conversations with a Dead Man by Doug Lucas

Doug Lucas is a retired marine who has worked as both a combat photographer and forensic photographer.   He is part of Pipe Dreams Publishing - and if you're thinking of submitting work to his publishing house - visit his website first - cos he's got something to say to you: http://tinyurl.com/co9h8r6    In fact, just visit is website anyway - it's really funny!

Conversations with a Dead Man

A young man idles away his time in a rural church yard and finds himself deep in conversation with John Wesley Elder.  Nothing unusual in that you might think, but John Wesley Elder is dead.   The young man soon finds out that being dead doesn't mean you have nothing to say, or that what you did in life should be forgotten, and the story of John Wesley Elder's life unfolds.  The Elder family escape from the feudal hardships of life in eighteenth century Ireland and come to the New World.  Here they build a new life and John learns the importance of hard work and self-sufficiency.  His life is full of hard knocks but he is nobodies fool and he tell his tale with wry humor.  He describes the hard work and community spirit involved in building the Elk River settlement, the growing unhappiness with the Crown and taxation and the hardships and struggle of the American War of Independence.  And threaded throughout the story is the tale of his relationship with the Native American Ester, the love of his life.

The Tripod of Short Stories

Courtesy: Google

Brevity makes a “short” story. But a short story is not just about length. As a genre, the short story is complex. Many other aspects, along with length decide the genome of a short story. Some of these elements are still unidentified. In fact, it is apt to say that those elements that are identified crucial elements of a short story are few in number. Short is just a metaphor, short stories are actually tall.

W. H Hudson and many other scholars, suggest that length is the crucial aspect and a story that you can read in single sitting is short story. If we take this as our measure, we cannot hail Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach or The Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway or The Buddha and the Terrorist by Satish Kumar, a short story. The Old Man and the Sea might be a bit longer, but consider Jonathan Livingston Seagull; with all the photographs, that adorn the pages, it is just about fifty pages long. Many of the short stories in Stephen King’s collection, Full Dark, No Stars are longer in length, in fact longer than Jonathan Livingston Seagull, usually called a novel.  

What is, then, the magic potion that delivers its spell in the making of a short story?

Let us remind ourselves, once again, that there are only “major” elements to discuss. The minor elements, still evade our attention, as they are all part of the subjectivity of the author and the wiring of creativity inside our brains.

Creative writing classes and ‘How-to’ guides often suggest many systematic steps in producing literature. The problem with such a systematic, limited academic method is its side effects—all the crap you write and all the crap you evaluate ‘wonderfully artistic and deep’. Once you are into the struggle to create stories with flesh and blood, stories that earn, you will know that the first thing you need to do should be to unload the garbage, you accumulated as a student. Practical experience makes you wiser and stronger. From my experience as a writer, I have learnt my lessons and here are a few for your consideration—the three cornerstones of short stories.  

Voice

Terrain

and

Trigger

With this minimum number of components, you can create a short story. As we have already seen, the rest of the magic comes from within you, the writer. It is an alchemy, much like how Sodium and Chlorine combines to give a product, very different in quality and use from the two parent components—Sodium chloride; salt.

Next: What is Voice?

Anu Lal is the author of the up-coming collection of short stories Wall of Colors and Other Stories. He lives in Kerala, South India. He blogs at The Indian Commentator 

You can catch up with him in Facebook too. 

Have You Hit the Ground Yet?

What is ‘terrain’, in storytelling?

Image Courtesy: Google

This part will mostly help those who have difficulty in understanding what ‘plot’ means. I know it is a bit shaky when we talk about plot, but most often, I have seen people using this term interchangeably for theme or action. No one says it aloud, though, but everyone is a bit confused if asked; what is plot?

Interview with Jane McBride

Welcome to the Wonderful Jane McBride!

Hi Jane, tell us a little bit about you.

Well, I live with my husband Don, my two little boys and my Mom in Taylorsville, Utah. I’m from a small town called Medina in Western New York. I went back there to live a couple of years ago and the area turned out to be the perfect inspiration for A Little Hair of the Dog.

Is writing your full time career?

I suppose you could say it’s my career. It’s the only thing I do that pays me anything! But really I’m at home full time with my two sons. Both are on the autism spectrum and are definitely full time jobs.

Do you have the Voice?

What is voice in a story?

 

Image Courtesy: Google

Voice is the dominant leg of the tripod of storytelling. It could be the voice of the narrator, the voice of the main character or the voice of the story itself.

Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling

These rules were originally tweeted by Emma Coats, Pixar’s Story Artist. Number 9 on the list - When you’re stuck, make a list of what wouldn’t happen next – is a great one and can apply to writers in all genres.

1. You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
2. You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.
3. Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
4. Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
5. Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
6. What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
7. Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
8. Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
9. When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
10. Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
11. Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
12. Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
13. Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
14. Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
15. If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
16. What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
17. No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.
18. You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
19. Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
20. Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
21. You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
22. What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.