Creative Writing: "All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.”

...said Ernest Hemingway and I said that too yesterday...

I thought I was seeing, or rather hearing, a word for the first time. In fact, I didn't even think it WAS a word. (How little respect I have for Mayor of London Boris Johnson's intellectual capacity!)

Yes, hmmmmmmmm!

The word was ACCULTURATE...

'Boris Johnson is sending Prince George a tricycle modelled on London's hire bikes as a gift to "acculturate him to the joy of cycling" at the earliest opportunity.'

The radio presenter was of a similar opinion. 'Did he just say acculturate?' he said.

Some words are just plain UGLY and that is one of them. I won't be searching for opportunities for slipping it, all casual-like, into conversations.

I'd much rather make up my own words.

I'm working on a word to describe someone who uses the word acculturate.

Creative Writing: Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.

Inspirational  Pema Chodron said this, not referring to creative writing classes but to life. But then, a creative writing class is a microcosm.

A wee planet by Alexandre Duret-Lutz

All human life was there.

SO...my homework of yesterday, my damned inspiration, my piece entitled 'Hidden' which I wrote in one mad flurry.

I didn't think too deeply about those words on the page. They were very personal, very black, very revealing. The irony doesn't escape me...there was the title and I was left anything but hidden once I'd read it out.

More...a bit shell-shocked.

So, the lovely people of Lewes asked the question, 'Where did that come from?' and I floundered.

'You don't have to answer that if you don't want to.'

'It was...from my past.'

A strange experience to be able to visit my past, an itinerant memory-catcher, and then to leave as quickly as I arrived.

By Steven Puetzer

Was it cathartic? I suppose, yes, in so far as it was a powerful experience to know I could go to a dark place and not be trapped there.

I found something indestructible.

Creative Writing: How to find inspiration #37b

Soooooooo...tonight is my second creative writing class. Remember the homework?

I do. Hidden. No, I haven't hidden my homework. That's the subject. And it has been. Hidden. As hidden as a very hidden thing in Hiddenville.

I have been searching for inspiration like Sir Galahad on the quest for the Holy Grail...

By Alice Popkorn

 only with less success. And no maidens in distress. Except for me.

This morning, I decided to give up, slink into class and make myself as small as possible so Roddy might not notice I was there.

Half and hour later,  inspiration came while waiting at traffic lights, not thinking about anything in particular.

Creative Writing: How to find inspiration #37b: Stop looking for it.

DAMN YOU, INSPIRATION!

Now I'm going to have to write something.

Creative Writing Class: Homework, I have discovered, involves a sharp pencil and thick books and long sighs.

Aside from the thick books (perhaps replace the word 'books' with 'head'?) I would concur with author Katherine Applegate.

I have homework to do for my creative writing class. Ironically, the theme is 'Hidden.' Yes, that would be about right. Hidden somewhere in the recesses of my imagination.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE INSPIRATION FOR MY HOMEWORK?

Here's what I'm going to do. Find an image that inspires me. Go from there.

Come on inspiration. I know you're in there somewhere.

Creative writing class - a Dam-Burst of Dreams?

 A Christy Nolanesque tumult of poetry? (Note to self: Must read Dam-Burst of Dreams again.) A Joycean stream of consciousness?

My Emotional Dam Burst by Astrid Dahl

In my case, more of a damn burst of dreams. These dreams I have; this idea that writing comes easy.

It most often doesn't, let me tell you. It especially doesn't when faced with a timed writing challenge.

It was a lovely group of writers, reassuring and welcoming. I felt cherished. Roddy, the main man, made me a cup of peppermint tea. And still my brain froze.

The exercise was to choose a couple of words at random - words which were completely unknown to me and turned out to be Yiddish - and craft a story round them, giving them meaning, any meaning. Oh and in your spare time, the theme was...

Title still from the movie by Shueti

 My words were Tsuris and Plotz. Their meanings, it transpired, were trouble/woe and to burst/explode. How wonderfully ironic!

I froze... and then I thawed a bit. It was SUCH a good exercise. There were some brilliant writers there who, in twenty minutes, produced complete stories with beginning, middle and end. I managed the first half chapter of something a lot longer starring Uber-Captain Zincbath. Yes, I know...

Then everyone read out wot they had wrote. It didn't feel too threatening at all.

I learned that I CAN write even when my brain is telling me it wants to crawl under the duvet with a hot water bottle. That it's important just to keep going, no matter what.

Like Ray Bradbury says, in Zen in the Art of Writing: "An athlete may run ten thousand miles in order to prepare for one hundred yards. Quantity gives experience. From experience alone can quality come."

So thank you Roddy Phillips ,and all the members of the Lewes Creative Writing Class, for an inspirational and thought-provoking evening.

I will return. And I will do my homework. Honest.

Watch this space?

 This is the space you were watching to see if my alcohol-caffeine-sugar-meat-free diet made a difference to the fluency of my writing.

Here it is:

Writing is not forthcoming.

The good news is that the noble headache has gone.

The even better news is that tonight I'm going to my first creative writing workshop.

"The weekly workshops take a student-centred approach to creative writing, offering a range of strategies to help you develop as a writer. Members are encouraged to explore their creative writing potential through self-awareness and self-discovery."

(I'm hoping one of the strategies might be a rocket up the backside.)

"There are timed exercises and participants are given relevant homework each week and receive appropriate and constructive feedback."

HOMEWORK?

Thank goodness I have the dogs.

 

Writing is bad for your health

 It's official.

The thing is, there's something inside my brain that murmurs incessantly - "You need coffee to write. It clears your head. Makes you more productive. Staves off the sleepy moments. Come on, Caroline. You know it makes sense."

Okay, so I only have one cup a day.

Today, however, I'm starting a week long Food Doctor diet. (I've been feeling sluggish and achy. Could be the muggy weather. Could be too much caffeine. It surely can't be my time of life?)

Today, the highlight is pumpkin seeds. No coffee. No sugar. No alcohol.

That's another thing. I do like a glass of wine in the evening. The words seem to flow more freely from the recesses of my brain. They sometimes make sense as well.

Interesting experiment of the week:

Will my writing be more fluent or less without alcohol and coffee?

Oh my goodness. Damian Sowers writes, "Choose your drug: alcohol, marijuana, mushrooms… Any one of these will make your writing better" and "Sober writers love to use fancy shit like semicolons. Nobody likes to see a semicolon."

This is worrying; I use semicolons even after the Prosecco.

Writing Tip:The first rule of intelligent tinkering is ...?

 "...to save all the parts," says Paul Ehrlich (but then, he was a physician and scientist.)

In novel writing, I hereby declare that the first rule of intelligent tinkering is:

Saul Steinberg

I hardly dare tell you how much and how often I've tinkered with the first three chapters of Falling Awake

O, that way madness lies.

I have to ask myself WHY DO I DO IT?

Once I've completed the novel (she says, optimistically) the first three chapters will surely change anyway.

Tinkering totally inhibits any forward progress with the rest of the story and saps me of inspiration and enthusiasm.

SO - NO MORE.

(but there must be a better word than 'flaming' I could use on line 1, page 4? Let me just consult Mr. Roget and his oversized Thesaurus...)

AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH...

Three things you need to become a successful novelist

Allegedly.

According to Michael Chabon, "an acclaimed and bestselling author whose works include the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay " so I guess we'd better listen to him.

Here they are:

"Talent, luck and discipline. Discipline is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have to focus on controlling, and you just have to hope and trust in the other two.”

I'm very like an octopus on rollerskates then. (That's assuming I have any talent.)

My writing friend, Chitra Soundar, puts me to shame. Every day.

She works full time in a bank. She gets up every day between 5 and 6 and writes 1000 words.

I truly admire her. 

This morning, I got up at 5.59 a.m. I wrote 1000 words on a piece of paper.

Then, just to be on the safe side, I wrote it again.

I didn't feel the hoped for sense of achievement.

Am I missing something here, Chitra?

How to solve writing problems: “Of all the thirty-six alternatives, running away is best.”

A wise Chinese proverb.

It's one way to look at it, anyway.

This is my writing problem: I'm not doing any (not creative writing, at any rate)

I think I must have Chinese blood coursing through my veins because, having looked at all the alternatives, I'm favouring running away.

...running away and hiding behind a lot of very valid excuses to explain why it is now August 1st, the deadline for the screenplay is August 31st and I STILL HAVEN'T STARTED.

My excuse of the day: Boll weevils ate my gym shorts.

Give up? Moi? Never!

I hereby pronounce that my writing schedule in August is as follows:

Every day I will write a minimum of three pages.

I'll also post progress reports on this blog. Not that anyone is in the slightest bit interested - but public humiliation is quite a good motivator, I find.

 Better get on...

But first, I must just...

The power of small

Or - how little things can make a huge difference.

By Carly Allen-Fletcher at http://carlydraws.com/

So yesterday, there was the Goliath in my life that I was battling, my feelings of resignation about my creative writing, my thoughts that I'll NEVER be J.K.Rowling - for that is Peter's idea of the successful author he would like me to be (which is not actually my ambition!)

Funnily enough I do believe Peter's aspiration for my future has little to do with the quality of the work or my creative fulfilment...more the size of the bank balance. Hard to imagine, eh? Quite often when I'm struggling away to perfect a recalcitrant phrase, he'll say 'Why can't you just write something like J.K. Rowling does and then you can keep me in the manner to which I'd like to become accustomed?'

I could almost hate J.K.Rowling...

Anyway - I was girding up my loins (as I am in biblical metaphor mode) to write a query letter to an agent when...David arrived in my In-Box, fully armed with anti-Goliath sling and handy pebble...

...in the form of a film producer from Connecticut requesting one of my scripts and also wondering about me being involved in a rewrite of a feature.

I'm not stupid. I KNOW that a) he's probably sent the same e-mail to a zillion other people and b) in all likelihood, nothing will come of it....

but, boy, did Goliath collapse at once into a crumpled heap.

So far, he hasn't got up again.