Skeletons and imagination

Just a short post today. How has your imagination been lately?

My 5 year old nephew came over to my house for the weekend, and we played on the swings outside. He told me stories about his "Team Skeletons". Apparently, he has 5 skeletons that go with him wherever he goes, each with their own names and personaliteis. He reminded me that playing is a part of what I do, an esential part. You can't survive if you can't play in your own mind.

When was the last time you talked to YOUR imaginary friends? I'm trying to reconnect with my old pals. Maybe I'll develop my own team of skeletons. What do you think?

Truck Tires Can Cure Brain Farts

It's happened to all of us at one time or another. You're talking to someone you know, maybe even quite well, and the words coming out of your mouth aren't the same as the ideas in your head. People get offended, you embarass yourself, you get that hole in the pit of your stomach. It feels AWFUL.

This tragic condition has come to be known as the "brain fart". It's akward when it happens in conversation, but even more frustrating when you're writing. Some days your mind is so ready to write, and there are ideas pounding in your head, and as soon as you read over what you've just written, you wonder who wrote it. It certainly isn't the mental narration you pictured when you started.

I went through a really annoying period where everything I wrote turned out to be NOTHING like what I imagined it to be. I couldn't figure out what was going on, so I did what I always do when I can't figure something out. I took out the notebook I always keep in my pocket, (which you might consider doing too, by the way, and soon you'll go crazy if you're without it) and I started noting the things I was doing each day, and the results of my writing the day following. I found I most often have difficulties saying what I want to say after days I don't exercise.

In order to test my new theory, whenever I started writing and hit that annoying point where I wasn't saying things right, I went outside and tossed an old pair of truck tires around for a while. They were heavy, and I would come in sore, but without fail within a few minutes things were coming out right on the page.

So, in short, here's your mental Beano to relieve brain farts.

1. Find out what's causing them,
2. Remedy the situation.
3. Try, try again.

It's really that simple. As always, continual effort is what's necessary to succeed in writing or any endeavor. Just don't give up!

What makes a writer a writer?

So it's been almost two months since I last posted. My apologies to the one or two people who may have checked back here on occasion. Mostly what happened was I got swamped with some other projects, so this one fell into the corner. How am I going to remedy that situation so it doesn't happen again, you ask? Well, I'm going to make it a bigger priority. How, you ask again?

Simple.

I'm going to make this blog a DAILY blog.

From now on the entries will probably be shorter, more targeted, and as chock full of fiction factoids as I can fill it.

But that leads me to the subject of today's post. What makes a writer a writer? From the time I was a child, I wanted to "be a writer". I would go around telling people about it, carrying a notebook with me everywhere I went, and read how-to books by the master storytellers of the past.

Then, one day, when I was in High School, I got into a conversation with my friend Diana about writing, the creative process, and all the associated fun that comes with it. After talking for a while, she said "I'd love to read what you're writing right now."

It hit me like a ton of bricks in cement sauce. I didn't have a project I was working on. Not even a short story, and I had been sitting there talking like I was some master of the art. In short, I wasn't a writer. I was just a dreamer. Because, as it turns out, the only way to be a writer...

Is to Write!

So get started. Write something every day. It doesn't matter if it's a page of a novel, a short story, or a cookie recipe. Get started.

In her blog "Fiction Writing ~ The Passionate Journey!", Emily Hanlon has a fantastic article on this for her April 30, 2007 entry. Check it out.

http://www.thefictionwritersjourney.com/archives/blog.html