{"id":1306,"date":"2010-01-17T13:10:47","date_gmt":"2010-01-17T21:10:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/?p=1306"},"modified":"2010-01-17T14:08:58","modified_gmt":"2010-01-17T22:08:58","slug":"the-tricks-writers-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/?p=1306","title":{"rendered":"The tricks writers play"},"content":{"rendered":"

For several months, I was focused on revising my novel. Then I participated in NaNoWriMo<\/a>, which was exhilarating and empowering and exhausting. I let myself take a little break from creative writing in December, with the goal of revisiting my NaNoWriMo novel in the new year. But now that January is here, I’m not sure I want to. I reread it, and underlined some good, funny stuff, but the overall plot… I’m just not inspired by it right now. So I’ve spent the last few weeks avoiding creative writing and feeling like a failure because of it.<\/p>\n

Pity party’s over. I’m making an effort to get back into my writing routine. (Which means writing for a few hours in the morning—no going online “just for a minute” first because that never works!) This week I cracked open a book I got for Christmas, called Room to Write<\/a>\"\" by Bonni Goldberg. Back in August, I claimed I was going to read all of the writing books on my shelf<\/a> but in reality I only got partway through Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write<\/a>\"\" before that resolve went out the window. Lots of people love Cameron’s methods and she does have some great advice, but the book was too New Agey for me. I worried Room to Write would be similar, since Julia Cameron is quoted on the cover, but am finding it to be a wonderfully practical book full of exercises to stimulate the good ol’ creativity.<\/p>\n

In the book’s introduction, Goldberg writes:<\/p>\n

Writing, like any spiritual undertaking, has many paths, but only one direction—deeper. Whichever path you follow, a few fundamental rules apply:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The most important action you can take is to show up on the page;<\/li>\n
  2. The more you can give up control over what you write, the more genuine your writing will be;<\/li>\n
  3. Making room in your life to write generates even more room for your writing;<\/li>\n
  4. The only true obstacle to writing creatively is a lack of faith that appears as fear and self-judgment.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    This all makes perfect sense to me, especially that last point. It’s strange that even after finishing a novel, and having work published, and spending over a decade participating in creative writing workshops, and taking the ballsy move of quitting my day job to devote myself to writing, I still allow myself to slip into that “I don’t know what I’m doing” mentality. But I do, and “a lack of faith that appears as fear and self-judgment” is exactly the way to describe it.<\/p>\n

    One issue I’m having right now (or maybe it’s more like an excuse I’m making) is that my novel, on which I’ve spent nearly seven years, is finished. The characters I know so well aren’t around to play with anymore. The story I’ve been telling, with its beginning, middle, and end already figured out, is complete. Now I need to come up with new characters, new settings, new stories. Clearly I’m capable of doing this—I did 50,000 words’ worth of it in November—but the idea of sitting down and coming up with something out of thin air is daunting. I know the only real failure is not writing at all, yet I avoid writing, in order to avoid failure. It’s a pretty lame paradox.<\/p>\n

    So I’ve been flipping through the exercises in the book, and this morning I tried a great one that I thought I’d share. Not because I think a truly amazing masterpiece came out of it, but because it was such a simple task that tricked me into writing. And not just writing, but also inventing, creating, conjuring. Three characters, a setting, a situation—they flowed out onto the page. I didn’t think about them beforehand. I don’t know where they came from, but there they are—described in my handwriting, so I must have had something to do with it.<\/p>\n

    The exercise is called “Chain – Chain – Chain,” and the idea is to make a list of random words, and then write a short piece that includes all of them. “Sometimes the only way through the gate of creativity is trickery,” Goldberg writes. No kidding.<\/p>\n

    Today, try a trick. Write one of the following words at the top of the page: fence, road, boil, or fall. Now without thinking or stopping, write whatever other words come to mind down the middle of the page until you reach the bottom. Write a piece in which each line uses one of these words in the order in which they appear.<\/p>\n

    Room to Write<\/a>\"\", page 41<\/em>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    My output (with the listed words highlighted) is posted below, if you’re curious. I’m under no illusion that this is stellar writing. At the moment I’m just happy to have made it exist. These people might have a story waiting to be discovered, and I never would have known…<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    \n

    The fence<\/strong> keeps them inside the yard. “Stop<\/strong> laughing at me,” Julie says. They balance on the stoop—there are alligators<\/strong> in the grass. That’s what Bobby tries to convince her, in the twinkling summer twilight<\/strong>. “I’m not a sucker<\/strong>,” she says, but he’s so earnest, she starts to believe him.<\/p>\n

    “Sorry?<\/strong>” It’s their mother, inside the house on the telephone; she called the gas company about the fumes<\/strong>. Julie tumbles off the stoop and falls into the grass<\/strong>. Down the street a scooter’s motor<\/strong> sputters to life. <\/p>\n

    “You’re crazy<\/strong>,” Bobby taunts. Julie thinks, There’s beauty<\/strong> in this,<\/em> but she’s embarrassed to say it out loud. Bobby lies in the grass with her and night falls over them in silence<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

    It’s like a swordfight<\/strong>, getting through to someone, and their mother’s exhausted with the effort. She lightly rubs the tender<\/strong> burn on her wrist that the frying pan gave her. She’s grasping<\/strong>, calling these people for help. They won’t come out, they never do, and this makes her even more anxious<\/strong> about the chemical smell that hangs in the kitchen. She steps to the screen door, hearing<\/strong> the quiet talk of her children outside. She herded<\/strong> them out there when she smelled the fumes, wanting to keep them safe. <\/p>\n

    Now she joins them, stepping onto the stoop with the phone under her ear, thinking that smoking<\/strong> a cigarette way out here couldn’t hurt. They could stay out here until morning, sunlight<\/strong> kissing her children awake in the dewy grass. Bobby is eager<\/strong> to try it. “We don’t need a tent,” he insists, gripping her knees with his grimy<\/strong> hands. Julie, lying beside him, is tired<\/strong>; she rubs her eyes with her fists like a baby. <\/p>\n

    It’s been a tumultuous<\/strong> month for all of them, the mother thinks, extracting a cigarette from her skirt pocket with a shaking hand. The scooter’s grinding<\/strong> wail retreats down the block. The phone cord tethers her to the kitchen, snaking<\/strong> under the screen door and across the floor. This is serious<\/strong>,<\/em> she reminds herself. “We can’t stay here—this is not a titular<\/strong> experience,” she mutters to her children, who are now mostly sleeping in the grass.<\/p>\n

    Julie says, “I don’t know what that means,” her voice light and simple, like that of a skeptic who has finally experienced the ecstasy<\/strong> of God.<\/p>\n

    “Okay, ma’am,” the gas man says, snapping the mother back to the task at hand, “now let’s see if we can pinpoint<\/strong> the problem.”<\/p>\n

    \n

    An incredibly simple idea, and it worked. It got me writing instead of worrying. Next time I\u2019m going to try it with a list that\u2019s twice as long, and I’m also eager to keep going through the book to uncover more writing tricks like this one. (Amazon sells this book for a crazy low bargain price<\/a>\"\", if you want to check it out yourself.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    For several months, I was focused on revising my novel. Then I participated in NaNoWriMo, which was exhilarating and empowering and exhausting. I let myself take a little break from creative writing in December, with the goal of revisiting my NaNoWriMo novel in the new year. But now that January is here, I’m not sure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts","category-writing","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1306"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1327,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1306\/revisions\/1327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}