Time Outs

Heading into the new year, it struck me that the one thing that would help my personal writing is a time out. I'm talking about not doing anything considered productive. Just sitting.

We are taught to keep going. So I hear people undergoing cancer treatments say that they aren't doing enough. As if they aren't in the battle of their lives and need to rest, maybe for the first time since they learned to walk.

If you have created New Year's resolutions and the need to organize, clean or take an extra class is on that list, take a deep breath and put it aside for a moment.

Take yourself somewhere that doesn't look out on the room that needs cleaning or the papers that need organizing, or the book that needs editing. Close your eyes, if you just can't resist list making if your eyes are open. Try just five minutes and hum or count or recite poetry, if it gets your mind off everything you "must" do. This isn't meditation, just a few minutes to regroup.

I'm going to put myself into a time out after finishing this post.

If I don't get back to the blog before 2013, Happy New Year!

Tis the season...to write!

It has been awhile since the last posting, but many months of research and writing for university courses.

Now, I'm teaching myself jQuery, JavaScript, Ruby and SQL. In other words, one of the best aspects of being a writer to me is the ability to create worlds with HTML and the codes above, which make it possible to turn a vision into an immediate visual.

For now, and between class sessions, I want to talk about passions and how those translate into doing what we love instead of watching the clock and measuring our lives by the seasons.

Do we write for the pleasure or to survive? The answer matters because writing should be a passion, not a way to get through a day, a week, a month, a year, to the next vacation or holiday.

The flow touted as a creative nirvana is open to any creative individual who wants and needs to focus on an hour or a day of sheer exhilaration. It's a breath of inspiration that comes only from committing to the vision you have and following it without anticipating where it will lead. If you have ever been writing and looked up to find that three hours had passed and it felt like 15 minutes, you have tasted this creative flow.

So this season, gift yourself with an afternoon at a coffee shop, or bundle up and sit in your backyard, with a pencil, pad of paper, or your computer. If you can let yourself go,  you might rediscover a passion for writing that knows no season or even a reason for being. It exists because you do.

Think Big! Write Small...

I'm working on several projects for school that involve research, writing and visuals. Over time, this blog, which is an endeavor of the heart and mind, needs to evolve. This will be the next step in adding video, albeit a short one, and animation to the dialog.

The overall philosophy, however, is that we build our writing talent and muscle over time by taking the small and writing it into a whole. No matter how each person accomplishes this feat, it starts with a single thought, an observation, a smell that triggers an emotion, the anger or joy that is followed almost immediately by an urge to write.

As I emphasize over and over again, this process is organic. It grows from our need to communicate and to make something amorphous into something concrete. The one desire we all share is to write, but how we get there is uniquely styled and yet familiar.

First comes the thought, the feeling, the experience... It starts with the smallest breath of inspiration.

Finding Our Way Home

I'm not talking about a home page, more that writing is where my heart is for the long haul.

On any given day, I'm thinking about a character, closing my eyes in a movie theater to picture another scene triggered by the sound effects and finding ways to look at a different story angle spurred by an encounter with family or strangers.

It is surprising at times what triggers the urge to follow a story line to its quite unnatural end, if that is where the whim takes me. Fortunately, as writers we find ourselves constantly moved by events both seen and imagined.

This pull away from the mundane is the true charm of writing, even when we write about everyday feelings or events. Just as each of us learns in our own way, we also put together words based on that unique styling we call our own.

Again, our home as writers lies in the writing inspiration we wrap ourselves in at any given moment.

The Organic Writing Path

In looking at adult learning theories for a class I am taking, it struck me that we write despite everything we have been told about why we should or shouldn't create through words.

Look at the history of communication and we share a very basic need to share our stories, to warn others of possible dangers ahead and to imagine better or worse worlds. This is the organic path we take in writing because we need to, not because we must.

Writing is as natural to human beings as breathing. We get beyond the basic need to survive in this medium, just as visual artists do through paints, chalk, clay, marble and textiles, and musicians via sounds and instruments.

We may have been taught to write, to understand the common rules that allow others to understand our works and to assign the correct meanings to words, but not everyone feels this urge. So give yourself credit for every word, idea, thought, desire and slash mark you commit to paper or digitally.

 

The Short-Short Version of a Writing Vacation

On the downhill of one semester and into a new educational experience, it's hard to even catch my breath without wanting to write it out.

That's right, writing may be what I do for a living, but living to write and having two weeks to edit one book, continue on another and flesh out a third sounds like a delightful creative vacation. However, with school starting again on Monday, and so many necessary distractions like cleaning and fixing things around the house, there's so little time to play with words. And for the next semester, research will influence everything I write, and provide another focus. (Just what I need....)

For now, let's just imagine how a vacation that concentrates on writing would feel and how to etch out a day "away" to make it so. First, it requires the best pen, ample ink, a journal, notebook or paper pad and leaving electronics, except for music, at home. Getting away means having something solid to show after you are done and no hesitation when you are in the flow that you don't control.

I can't write at a bookstore because of too many distractions, so for me it would be a vacation to write at the zoo or the Biopark. And while I may have my phone with me, it must be turned off.

Finally, rain or shine, I would give myself at least two hours with no preconceived notions of what should be finished or finessed.

That's my version of a vacation in town and immersed.

The Pull of Writing On- and Offline

Considering that children and adults from age 4 to 90 have access to smart phones and interactive computer pads that encourage quick and easy creative expression, does this ease motivate former non-writing writers to write again?

I come by this question naturally, because my teenage son who says he hates to write is writing a 1.500 page book spurred by Google documents and the worlds created in the visual games he plays. From what I understand, because he won't let me read it, he describes actions and his characters vividly. He's also gathering readers.

He also tells me that he will finish this first "book" before I stop rewriting and editing my first science fiction novel. As a direct challenge, it is more than welcome. Although publishing is not the only reason to write, writing teachers (they can also be reading ones) have recognized the opportunities for students of all ages to publish online or in local papers or magazines. The National Writing Project at http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/doc/about.csp provides a thorough overview of this issue, although it also touts its writing programs and consulting service. 
 
Unfortunately, in many schools throughout the U.S., the emphasis is on reading and math, not the writing that would help both learning areas. Less than a quarter of  American 12th graders were proficient in  written expression in two studies, in 2002 and 2007, sponsored by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The remedies, culled from years of studies, include:   students analyzing models of good writing; explicitly teaching students strategies on how to plan, revise and edit their work; students collaboratively using these writing strategies; and students receiving specific goals for each writing project. This study can be found at http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/northwest/pdf/REL_20124010.pdf.

In terms of inspiration, this knowledge is useless, at least to me. I have seen young students who write outside such boxes get discouraged because teachers cannot differentiate. On the other hand, all of us could use the basic tools this study describes to frame our forays outside these far too restrictive walls.

Also, for those of us who write because it is a creative expression of our inner imaginings, it may still be necessary to create more standard pieces to survive and to grow. That is where all these studies come in. Doesn't it make you feel good to know that you may be in the quarter of those students who can write, or that despite not being in that quarter of students thought of as good writers, that you still write, and write well?

In other words, at some point you became a writer despite all odds against, or for you. Celebrate that knowledge.