30 Day Challenge: People

 “You see but you do not observe.”

I sat at a coffee shop with my notebook for a little while to day. As I scribbled it occurred to me that I'm not in the habit of people watching and I do not observe half of what I should. I noticed the different groups, couples chatting, three or four friends at a table, loners with their laptops; here for caffeine and free wifi. I wrote this down but little else about them, sketching outlines but no more. Maybe there is enough background there to set the stage for a scene or short story, but there are no personal details. The little things that make people real are missing. One guy in his twenties had red ear buds in as he focused on his black laptop. Another person with a laptop, a young woman, has tea instead of coffee, she puts honey in it, I know because she was fixing hers at the same time I was. I remember someone had on black and white converse, but I don’t know if there were more sweatshirts or jackets, purses or book bags. 

I never have been much of a people person, maybe that’s why I never thought about it before. But really how can I describe the shadow figures in my mind when I have never practiced describing the living breathing characters all around me?  

Maybe it’s time for another 30 day challenge: watching and writing down something about a person or people every day. As Sherlock says [BBC’s ‘Sherlock,’] “You see but you do not observe.” Maybe it’s time I started. 

[For more on 30 day challenges see my post  Write to be a Writer]

Awfully Hard Work Doing Nothing

I've been procrastinating again so in interest of keeping my deadline I decided to recycle a relevant post from my first blog; From Yesterday's Tomorrow. In a way it grandfathered my earlier post on procrastination, though I had forgotten it at the time.

"Calvin: You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.
Hobbes: What mood is that?
Calvin: Last-minute panic." — Bill Watterson

"It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don't mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind. -Algernon" — Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays)

"If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done." — Rita Mae Brown

"Never postpone until tomorrow what you can postpone until the day after." — Raoul Wallenberg (Letters and Dispatches 1924-1944)

"As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone. Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write. Having anybody watching that or attempting to share it with me would be grisly."— Paul Rudnick

All quotes courtesy of goodreads.

Writing Actively

Write: actively, brokenly, crookedly, doggedly, effectively, fantastically, gamely, hauntingly, ignorantly, Jovially, kinetically, laughingly, movingly, nervously, openly, pointedly, quickly, ravishingly, superbly, thrillingly, universally, vicariously, wonderingly, xerically, yearningly, zestfully...

And have fun with yourself 

Ten writerish things a procrastinating writer might do:

1. Make a list of things to write about

2. Read advise from other writers

3. Reorganize their book shelf, desk, or filing cabinet

4. Read a book, watch a movie, or start a marathon of their favorite TV show, and call it ‘gathering ideas’

5. Look for writer related pictures or quotes on Pinterest, Google, or in some other store for such things

6. Practice their signature for book signings and decide if they want a pen name

7. Shop for more office supplies and make a wish list for when they publish their book

8. Talk to their characters and do pretend interviews for their future fans, all out loud.  

9. Make a new slip cover for their notebook and wish they could afford a leather one

10. Draw flowers and tornados in their notebook’s margins while waiting for inspiration to strike

These ten things are not necessarily bad, in fact they can be very good things to do sometimes. BUT they will not help if you don’t remember a writer’s number one rule:

1. You can’t be a writer unless you write. 

The Midnight Questions

If the words that scrawl across the page by night were ever read by light of day, what would there be worth reading again? A desperate question, an unfounded hope, a memory fresh as new leaves? Or will the words be as dry as ink on the page?

 Is it all just a flash, here and then gone? Or will something stay, standing out in the morning bright? 

If I had never written, not one word upon the page, would I then find rest, untroubled by these lines? Would I wish it so? 

What words will come tomorrow night, when all is dim and clean? What echos of the day will sound, when night stars wake once more?

Write to Be a Writer

You can’t be a writer if you don’t write. So if that’s not something that you do every day you need to start. Get a note book, keep it with you, use it for any little snippet or idea that comes into your head. Open a word document, start typing. Get a stack of files and save everything you write, everything you’ve ever written.

In January of 2012 I set myself to write every day. I made a rough chart and promised myself thirty days of writing. I made that goal and have only missed a couple of days since then. When I started I was using a standard notebook, now I have a small one for my purse and a six by eight that I take almost everywhere, at the very least it’s in the car. I remember going into a panic one day when I forgot my purse, solely because it left me without paper and pen. Not all my entrees are long, some are just a few words strung together or even just pared up. Sometimes I write fiction, sometimes I make notes about my day, and often I don’t make any sense.

My notebook is a way for me to keep myself writing even when I’m discouraged or to busy to do much. I may not be going very far now, but at least I know I’m moving forward as a writer every day. You see I believe that every word we write makes it easier to write. We learn to think in words, to grab hold of little things and save them for later.

Just try writing a line or more a day. It takes less than a minute and if you don’t like it no one has to see it but you. Just write something, anything. 

On the Wall Sat a Cat

Free domain photo from wikipedia

     On the back courtyard wall of a long-standing town house, sat a calico cat. She surveyed a flock of sparrows, scattered on and below a little black feeder (set there for their use,) with the detached interest of her kind. She was Cook's favorite after all, and needn't worry about catching sparrows for her supper; besides mice were much fatter and the rewards ever so much nicer. (The last time she caught a sparrow she had been jabbed severely with the broom. Whenever she caught a mouse she received a fine dish of buttermilk and the choice leavings off the humans table, they were rather wasteful creatures weren't they?) 

     Her pastime was interrupted quite abruptly when, with a beating of many small wings, the sparrows took off all together in a cloud of brown feathered bodies. The cause of this disarray continued running, completely disregarding, (as humans are wont to do,) the disturbance he had caused.

     Now what is that human kit' up to now? wondered the cat as she stretched contemplatively. With a final twitch of her tail she set off along the wall to where, in a corner behind the little wagon cook used for market goods and such, the human child had stopped.

     Curling her tail around her paws, she settled down to observe this careless intruder to her domain: He was a breathless boy of seven or eight with sun faded brown hair and a jam stained shirt.  

  
     This was a writing exercise I set myself a wile ago. The first version was a very boring run of sentiences:There was a cat sitting on the wall. Below the wall there was a bird feeder. The cat watched the birds. Then a boy came running by. The boy stopped at the corner of the wall. The cat walked to the corner and watched him. Very dull, but it did serve to jump-start my imagination. I have no idea what comes next but I liked the way it came out. Who knew writing a cat would be so much fun? 

Also posted on my first blog, http://fromyesterdaystomorrow.blogspot.com/2011/05/on-wall-sat-cat.html  

Wish to be Weaving

  

   Sometimes all I want to do is write something, I want to dive in and have the words fall from my finger times like rain running off the eves. I want to wash the world away until nothing is left save my pen and I. I want to be swept away to some far off place and make it near enough to touch. I want to feel the rush of adrenaline when the hero, with myself beside him, fights to life and love. I want to feel the butterflies when she dances the last dance with him. Taste the blood in my mouth at a back handed blow. Smell the pine and cinnamon and the wood smoke from the castle Yule log… I don’t want to sit and academically think of what could happen, I want to be there I want to write it and feel it and see it clear as a sky in midsummer. How do I make it through brain storming and research when all I long for is that rush of discovery and creation? I tire too quickly of spinning and the sorting of many colored threads, I want to weave the stories at once, though I expect they would be poor at best if I were to do so, that is if they were ever finished at all.   

Why I Started this Blog

I am just starting out with writing, I’ve thought about it and sort of played with it but it never went anywhere. So here I am, trying again, and it's such a long road when you're sitting at your computer all alone.

Yesterday I had a bad day. Nothing was going anywhere. I’d written some stuff but it wasn’t real writing, it wasn't a scene or a plot. It was just nonsense, fragments and snapshots that are supposed to be helpful in making your writing better but don't look like much by themselves. I was depressed and frustrated. So I went looking for help. I searched the web trying to find someone who felt like me. No luck. There just wasn’t anyone else out there who was saying anything like what I was feeling. So here it is; a blog that will, hopefully, be admitting the simple fact that I’m a beginner and I’m scared.

My story ideas either have no plot or have no character. I have fragments and ideas and years worth of note books without any clear outlines or drafts. That’s right not a single completed story to my name. So I keep thinking what’s the point? If I can’t even come up with a beginning, middle, and an end then how can I even think of calling myself a writer? Oh but I want it. I need it. The words scribbled across the page or tapped out double time on the key board, a disconnected conversation growing until you can almost see the story behind it, a single line standing out on the page, the absolutely silly delight in something that wasn’t there five minutes ago; oh how I love it! If there is a job I could do for the rest of my life this is it.

 I know that the number one cause of writer’s block is fear. And I freely admit that I’m scared. They say that courage is fear that’s said its prayers. So here I am, saying a prayer and; jumping off the plane without my back up shoot, diving in the deep end, and going to a party without a banana. God Bless

Rita