This week: Write It Out Edited by: Fyn  
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One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to send it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes. ~~Annie Dillard
I kept always two books in my pocket: one to read, one to write in. ~~Robert Louis Stevenson
Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open. ~~Natalie Goldberg |
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She had tried to move a sleeper couch down a few stairs, out to the sidewalk and then down to a dumpster that in no way could hold a couch even if she could levitate it into it. Maybe 5'2, possibly 110 pounds wringing wet. Small, but I'll give her the point she is feisty. Oh, the reason she needed to get rid of the couch? Her cat had an oops. Nothing worked to get it clean and smell-free. She, by herself got it out of the apartment and halfway to the dumpster. Rather than help her, her neighbor starts yelling at her. Someone else calls the cops. Meanwhile, the neighbor is yelling, she's yelling back. The policeman takes the hubby's side, tells her the cat has to go. Her certified emotional support cat. So, she's out in the parking lot fighting a huge, heavy couch, being yelled at by two men (and the one's wife), and the cop keeps repeating that she has to get rid of the cat. Cue tears. Cue fears of being evicted.
Tearful phone calls fueled by a full-blown anxiety attack. Way too many rational calls (on my part) but I found someone to haul the couch away today, talked to the complex manager, and got my friend calmed down.
Walk away next time. Don't waste your breath because you know you will just totally wind yourself up with no good outcome. Go write it out. Nothing polished. Don't be poetic. Just write it out. Turn it into a fun exercise and say what you couldn't and probably shouldn't say in public. Then (if I hadn't already) figure out what to do with the darned couch.
Talked to another friend today. She lived in Lahaina. Now she's on the street, in a line of about three hundred people to get her name on a list for possible emergency housing. She, as are 90% of the folks who live in Lahaina, is resilient, strong, shattered, and hopeful. "We just go on going on. It's what you do," she said to me. She left with a shoulder bag containing her cat, her wallet, her cell, and a picture of her mom. "Everything else is just stuff. I'll get more stuff." She told me the other thing she grabbed--her notebook because she knows she needs to (her words) write it out. She said she was happy it was a newer notebook as she expects she will have much she needs to write.
Years ago, when I was (stupidly, in retrospect) in a horrible relationship I was so positive could be fixed, that I hung in far longer than I should have. After I left (with broken body parts) I had me and my dog. Stuff shoved in a rattletrap old car. I had no destination and limited funds. What I wanted was a distance to get away, far away and not to be found. I wanted to be safe and I'd never felt more unsafe in my life. All I had was the pooch who a pretty darned good listener, my notebook, and a gazillion questions I couldn't answer. In firelight, as we camped our way across the country, I wrote. I wrote to fill the emptiness. I wrote to light the dark. I wrote to understand. I wrote to heal although I didn't know it at the time. Somewhere in the quiet of a Pennsylvanian forest, the silence became a friend and my heart began to listen.
I wrote pages and pages. I spent money on a new, thick notebook. I ranted, I mourned, I railed, and eventually, wrote myself back into being. Listening to waves breaking at a campground on the shores of Lake Erie, I began to hear music again. My words began to, hesitantly at first, dance along. The next day, I sang as I drove, my pooch howling along although whether in agony or empathy I have no clue. But in the writing, I discovered answers that were tough to swallow. Despite being told repeatedly over the years that I'd never be a writer, I most certainly
was! (Ha!) Most importantly, I found that I did, indeed, have a voice that had been silenced for far too long.
Without that interlude, I wouldn't have explored the possibilities of writing sites when I landed in Michigan. And I found WDC. I was still on a tough road, still quakey, still unsure. But even though I was living in a rusty old trailer in a crappy trailer park, I found WDC and home. I found writers who encouraged, prodded, and poked at me to write more. I found friends that I still have eighteen years later. Writing it out and WDC saved me. |
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I am an ongoing process...of evolution and revolution.
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Quick-Quill  writes: The last line you wrote resonated with me. Often we(writers) or I will try to fix a story that isn't working. If you have already put it aside for a while and when you went back to it the story still wasn't moving in a specific direction. " Scrape your plate and wash your dish There are other stories out there to be written.
Thank you for this admonition.
:)
Annette  says: I am glad that I am not the only one who can't write "in the same place/ time of day every day." That is unnatural. Ideas come at any time and in any place. Better to be ready then instead of hoping that it comes back when the "official writing time in the official writing spot" has come.
Yup!
QueenNormaJean maybesnow?!  comments: Get a handle on dialogue. I love writing dialogue. The more I write it, the more I like to write it. I have to be careful to add more detail at times since the voices in my head start talking faster than I can write.
Know that feeling! :)
tracker  says: Advice from so many good writers on here, all in one place, was a treat.
Thank you! |
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For Authors: August 16, 2023 Issue [#12130]
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