“Do not come soft to the blank page.” It is only a page. You have the authority to fill it or leave it blank. Your thoughts, your ideas are what will bring it’s mocking under subjection. Write. The pages demand it.
Happy Writing!
writing is work
Encouragement Pages: Brainstorming
Don’t be afraid of your thoughts or where they may lead you. Your job this week is just to get what is in your head out. Everything else is secondary. You control the flow and are the master of its fate.
Research Made Yours: The Power Of Making Your Own Myth
There is a blessing in creating your own world.
And with all that creation, you need something that will hold it together. You need the thread that belief and myth provide.
When I began my writing career, I was in a sort of tailspin. I knew that I wanted to write, but I also knew that I wanted to write about a great many things!
(This is where I must plug the necessity for you as a writer to have a tribe or network by which you are engaged. It can be life saving! Don’t knock social media!)
I follow several writers on Twitter. None have been so gracious as the magnanimous Tananarive Due. She is a published writer (NYT Best Selling, mind you) and she teaches at UCLA. The fact that she would have time to even answer me, a struggling, have drowning writer in the social media ether was monumental.
I asked her about making time to write. I asked her about how she made time. I even asked her about research and work. Tananarive Due gave me a piece of advice that I will give to you:
“Make it up.”
She told me this in response to needing a myth, specific research for a topic. Her advice was if I didn’t see it, couldn’t find it, just make it up. Tananarive Due didn’t know that she had just shattered the glass ceiling of my imagination.
With imagination being my fuel and conduit to express my thoughts on the world, I did not know I could do that. I did not know I could make up what I needed independent of what I had seen in a book. I didn’t know I could do that–be allowed to do that!
In reminding me of what I am, of what I am allowed to do, that freed me is a writer. It let me explore with a more fearless stance. It allowed me to research, to read, not just to take as gospel fact–but to analyze. To bend. To reinterpret. To make my own.
As a writer, a teacher, I give you this same freedom. I free you from the staunch mechanics of your imaginations! You are a writer, so write. You have to absolute right to construct and deconstruct the worlds you create as you see fit! You must make up what you need, by simple virtue of needing it.
Go forth and create. Challenge your imagination, and see what the fruits are and become of it. Remember the guiding light from the Dark Tower of Stephen King as you do: “Do not come soft to the blank page.”
Why Writers Need Homework
The imagination of a writer is a marvelous thing. It can be freeing, nonrestrictive and provide seducing conversation. Yet, as a writer, you must understand that you have to feed it.
What do I mean?
Well, the adage is that writers should always be reading. There should be an a book that you are reading, would like to read, and of course have a TBR list. Reading allows you to critique, critically think, and check out the competition. A writer needs homework. The greater thing? Unlike when you were in school, you get to pick the amount of homework.
If you like horror, you should be reading it.
If fantasy and romance are your jam, you should be reading it.
If you like sci-fi, it’s not enough to watch SyFy.
Reading is the simplest way to fuel your imagination. To stretch it! Find new things that you like. Find out what else you could branch out to and towards. What challenges you? What inspires you? Or, what genre or topic do you escape with.
Being a writer means you will have homework forever. This is not an exaggeration. This is the blessing and the curse of being a writer. There may always be a portion of you that is intrigued by something said, overheard or read. From that, the gears of your imagination may turn–even without your conscious knowledge. Don’t fear that. The homework is what you make it. The homework is to strengthen, to encourage and remind of you of this:
If you are a writer, you have to write.
Ergo, you need something to write about.
Do you homework, my scribes, poets and oracles. Do your homework.
[image from pcthandbook.com]
Research & Genre
When branching out into new genres, this is always going to require some work. However, but researching for a specific genre is another sort of work. This research allows you to see where it is your imagination may be naturally bent towards.
Anne Rice says it this way:
“Go to wear the joy is.”
In researching where your joy lies, it may take trial and error. It make take several changes for you to find your beat and bearings in it.
How you write for fiction isn’t the same as non-fiction.
How you write romances isn’t the same as how you write horror, fantasy or speculative fiction.
In finding your beat, you must know what the basic rules are in order to bend (or break) them to your liking.
In research, this includes writers groups and workshops. Research isn’t limited to Google, old wives tales and Reddit.
You’re a writer. By nature of profession, you get the freedom to change something and no one notice straight away. Use that to your advantage.
Research.
Rewrite.
Find what works.
Keep bending pages.
[Image from slideplayer.com]
The Value Of Book Knowledge
Writers are readers!
There are things in your imagination that sometimes need verification.
What do I mean?
That means that for all your imagination can fuel, if there are certain things which are based in reality—you’re going to need information.
The goal of any story is to have your reader keep reading! The ultimate test of any story is cohesion–even with fiction.
Research is the homework writers must do–have to do–for their writing careers. There is no way around it! The bulk of the work is and will remain powered by your imagination. Research is the rocket fuel to that. It is the foundation that allows your imagination to leapfrog or even recreate it as you see fit.
Consider research to be your stepping stone, or your rocket booster. However, I consider research my mental exercise. It gives me a starting and finishing point to anything I may do. It gives me parameters or borders to challenge.
Research can be annoying and cumbersome, but remember why you’re doing it. Your characters may need to know what you do. Or you may have to now how to rescue them from some predicament.
You’re building a world. Research helps it to all hold together. Do your homework. There are people waiting and depending on it.
[image from oregoncenterfornursing.org]
Encouragement From The Crates
Things I Ponder:
(c)JPHarris, 2014
One of the most upsetting things to encounter for those gifted to be scribes/writers is to be silent. It is dangerous for a writer to be silent. It is dangerous for our pens to be still, screens blank, skills dulled to the point of collapse. Our eyes seeing with no faith to believe for change, no words to create to draw attention. Words which have power to stir thoughts to instill or stimulate change. It is the artistry of imagination where possibility is created, exposed and changed. Writers are misfits. We see the unseen, name the unknown and touch what is hidden. Yet, these things must be seen and said. The atrophy of time must be rebelled against. We must race against the light given to us, race against it. We cannot curl up with the words, the word inside us. The unsaid, the unwritten must still be said…even in dreams.
[image from Kai Ellis, all rights reserved.]
