I recently set out to challenge myself, to write something other than a post for this blog, a communication strategy or a copywriting job. Set a goal, people encouraged me. Writer folk espouse that competitions can provide the necessary impetus, setting a deadline for you without compromise, a looming date whereby a piece of work must be polished, printed, proofed and posted.
I am used to crafting careful messages, sharply defining the complex, crystallising a blur of technicality into a stark transparency. Sure, I sometimes weave in a witty repartee and experience the odd flash of (dare I say) brilliance during my personal indulgence in developing prose; but generally, I have made my living by making the confusing, clear and the indifferent, meaningful.
So, when faced with the task of drawing outside the lines, dancing with the shadows of subtlety that deliberately push a reader into the dark, I was more perplexed than I expected to be. Skills I learned long ago seemed to elude me. I had put them down somewhere and could no longer locate them. What I had deemed a minor professional transition was suddenly exacerbated to overwhelming. The elephant I had planned to eat in small bites multiplied into a herd, and I began to lose my appetite.
Extracting the required story from my creative being proved similar to the intricate game we played as children called Operation, where you lay on your stomach wielding tweezers to remove tiny plastic bones from an inanimate, two-dimensional man.
My procrastination was excruciating and the blame splashed everywhere but on me. I couldn’t write in an unclean house. I was hungry, thirsty, tired, could not resist watching endless repeat episodes of Californication. I struggled to be creative at the same desk where I conjured up the corporate devil. Fed up and in a flabbergasted effort to refresh and re-boot, I took myself out and down the street to put pen to paper, the good old fashioned way.
Our strip of ‘urbia offers a plethora of options for caffeination. I select the most eclectic of places, the one that vibrates pure, haphazard, hippie randomness in order to enhance the flow of my so called artistic juices. To the right side of the front door, there is a stout blackboard and on it I read a message. Had it been delivered in a bottle, I would have sworn it had been (pre)scribed, just for me:
If you will it, it will no longer be a dream.
How encouraging. After my third latte, it is not only encouraging, but occurring. Ink and paper finally connect and there is more evidence to speak of than when man made contact with the moon. Scribbles return home to be relayed to trusty Daddy Mac. Words front up to numerous iterations and renunciations on screen. Cobbled together, it’s parchment by patchwork and along with some inherent failings, a conclusive draft comes to exist. A story strewn from beginning to end, which in itself seems to be an act of protest against nature. My own nature, that is.
Mould of a masterpiece now etched, I pro-actively seek perspective from a deliberately diminutive number of supposedly like-minded commentators. This serves as a stinging reminder that it is always better to rip the band-aid off yourself. Getting someone else to do it... it is not designed to hurt them. My small band of merry people inflicted many wounds and they used a range of weapons. Some of them technical, some credible, some subjective and some intuitive. I see a bad moon rising and I am remiss to wear my armour. Resilience, I had forgotten, is the formal wear of the artist.
(And despair is the lonely friend, who always wears black and lives in a cold stone cottage, just out of town; close enough to visit occasionally.)
My recovery is week-long until a fresh day when I wake up clean and pick up an empty basket to start cherry picking the wreckage. The story I gave birth to is never the same and I accept that perhaps it shouldn’t be. I polish my beaten resolve and try chanting a more upbeat, mantra. Opinions are like bums and everybody has one, or so I am told.
I meet the competition d-day and after I mail the yellow envelope, I am still rumbling with mild dissatisfaction at the final product but I am relieved to let it go. I decide on a coffee, so it is back to 'caffeine ecelectica' for another dose. I pass the blackboard standing guard and today the message is even more fitting and profound;
Use what talent you possess. The woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best. [Henry Van Dyke]
Well. How about that.
Showing posts with label writing process. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing process. Show all posts
Monday, August 30, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
The Vented Spleen
One of my all-time favourite TV characters is Hank Moody, the writer from Californication. Hank says, "Being a writer is like having homework for the rest of your life." This my friends, is an unfortunate truth.
Today, my homework is almost day late. My dog didn't eat it. I don't even have a dog. My excuse is simple; I have a wedding in less than three weeks and I had to construct a polystyrene model of my seating chart.
In this unique approach, the model is constructed using the back of a child-sized, thermoplastic mobile phone courtesy of your local JB Hi-Fi store. Cue one black texta, a fiancé with the artistic capacity to juxtapose an A4 table plan onto a larger canvas, and 87 toothpicks with guests names sticky taped around them. I am now the proud owner of something that looks like a strategy plan for the 2010 AFL grand final.
Before you ask, it is a completely normal part of the wedding planning process to model your guests as toothpicks. More broadly, the wedding is also an excellent excuse for procrastinating other things and putting the rest of your life, "on hold". But, at a minimum, the blog must go on.
The thing is, I refuse to bore you or be repetitious. I was jotting in my journal yesterday, the launching place of most pieces, and while the content was pleasing, your shiny little heads kept popping into my mind, telling me it just wouldn't do.
Being conscious of my audience is a professional hazard. This awareness is not an act of deliberation, it is purely instinctual. The "known" audience, however, is a much more frightening phenomenon.
Australian author, Tim Winton believes that writing is a process of venting the spleen. While cathartic, it can also be excruciating. It has been a tumultuous fortnight and everything gleaned from my spleen seemed either too provocative or was tied by puppet strings to one of my previous topics.
I do my best to avoid the soap box here, although it often finds me as I pour my thoughts on to the page. It bursts from the ground like a jack-in-the-box and I have to force myself to step over it, tempting as it is. Unsolicited ramblings are one thing, unwarranted ramblings are another.
In a quest for inspiration, I serve only to intimidate myself with other people's highly developed, visually pleasing and amusing blogs.
I read about a writer who believes it should take no more than an hour to write a blog post. This was a startling and disturbing revelation to me, who spends anywhere from three to seven hours crafting my post until it no longer nips my fingers as they leave the keyboard. To this writer, the blog was a simply another tool in the toolshed. A no holds barred device for unzipping the soul.
From herein, I pledge to worry more about what I want to write and less about what you want to read. After all, my "homework" is not really work at all. There is a very fine line between the editor and the edited.
I want to be neither.
Today, my homework is almost day late. My dog didn't eat it. I don't even have a dog. My excuse is simple; I have a wedding in less than three weeks and I had to construct a polystyrene model of my seating chart.
In this unique approach, the model is constructed using the back of a child-sized, thermoplastic mobile phone courtesy of your local JB Hi-Fi store. Cue one black texta, a fiancé with the artistic capacity to juxtapose an A4 table plan onto a larger canvas, and 87 toothpicks with guests names sticky taped around them. I am now the proud owner of something that looks like a strategy plan for the 2010 AFL grand final.
Before you ask, it is a completely normal part of the wedding planning process to model your guests as toothpicks. More broadly, the wedding is also an excellent excuse for procrastinating other things and putting the rest of your life, "on hold". But, at a minimum, the blog must go on.
The thing is, I refuse to bore you or be repetitious. I was jotting in my journal yesterday, the launching place of most pieces, and while the content was pleasing, your shiny little heads kept popping into my mind, telling me it just wouldn't do.
Being conscious of my audience is a professional hazard. This awareness is not an act of deliberation, it is purely instinctual. The "known" audience, however, is a much more frightening phenomenon.
Australian author, Tim Winton believes that writing is a process of venting the spleen. While cathartic, it can also be excruciating. It has been a tumultuous fortnight and everything gleaned from my spleen seemed either too provocative or was tied by puppet strings to one of my previous topics.
I do my best to avoid the soap box here, although it often finds me as I pour my thoughts on to the page. It bursts from the ground like a jack-in-the-box and I have to force myself to step over it, tempting as it is. Unsolicited ramblings are one thing, unwarranted ramblings are another.
In a quest for inspiration, I serve only to intimidate myself with other people's highly developed, visually pleasing and amusing blogs.
I read about a writer who believes it should take no more than an hour to write a blog post. This was a startling and disturbing revelation to me, who spends anywhere from three to seven hours crafting my post until it no longer nips my fingers as they leave the keyboard. To this writer, the blog was a simply another tool in the toolshed. A no holds barred device for unzipping the soul.
From herein, I pledge to worry more about what I want to write and less about what you want to read. After all, my "homework" is not really work at all. There is a very fine line between the editor and the edited.
I want to be neither.
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