On one of my loops recently, someone said that one of the ways she motivated herself was to imagine that she couldn't write at all. That her writing life was done and she just never wrote anymore. That, she said, made her fly to the keyboard to prove it wasn't true.
And I thought, yeah, good for you! And then I thought, if it were me, that wouldn't do it. Because writing is NOT all that important to me.
Now, before I seem nutty or like I don't appreciate what it takes to live a writer's life, I'm not saying that I don't want to write.
What I'm saying is that it's not WRITING that keeps me writing. I hate to write. I love to tell stories. If I couldn't tell myself stories anymore, if the pictures in my head dried up and no scenes ever appeared, yeah, I'd be seriously depressed. It's all about telling those stories to myself. Actually writing them down, well that's a pain in the posterior. I don't enjoy that part of writing. I enjoy the thinking and imagining and seeing.
I have always had stories in my head. I've even spoken the dialogue, pretending to be two characters (or three or four). When I was twenty and doing that, I thought that if anyone could see me, they'd think I was pretty crazy. Hell, even I thought it was pretty odd. I didn't know that I should write it down, that the act of writing it would release the tension from my mind and let the story flow across the page.
I'd always written things, mostly short stories, but it never occurred to me that what I was seeing in my head were scenes from a novel. Took me until 26 to figure that out. Once I did, I had a blast. Until the real world intruded and selling what I'd written wasn't very cut and dried after all.
The pictures didn't dry up, but the desire to put them on paper did. I didn't understand that I had to push through that, keep writing them down, and keep sending them out. Not writing isn't a scary prospect to me. Not having the scenes inside my head — yeah, that terrifies me.
But I'll keep writing, because now I know how this stuff gets done, how you keep climbing the wall, even when you slide down a few pegs, until you reach the top and get the contract. And then you have other walls to climb. 🙂 But telling myself that my writing life is over? Nah, won't work for me. Take those scenes away, however, and I'd be lost.
Anyone can learn, and by extension re-learn, the mechanics of writing, but storytelling is much more ethereal. How do you teach someone the way to have good ideas? I have no idea. I know how to handle the ideas when I have them, but I haven’t figured out if there is a way to actually them happen, so the thought of one day losing that is much scarier than suddenly being unable to craft a good story.
Keep sweating!
Yea, I understand, but I always wrote musicals. I would stage them and have my sisters act them out. LOL
Dreams made real.
I hear you, Lynn. If the characters ever dried up, if the stories stopped coming alive, if I couldn’t appreciate the land of ‘make believe’ anymore, then yes, I’d be dead and I’d have nothing but words without meaning.
That all makes perfect sense… usually I enjoy the process of writing.
Some days, not so much.
What I really love is actually shutting up the voices in my head. When they get too loud, I don’t sleep…writing makes them quieter. 😉
Thanks, StanManX! You keep sweating too. 🙂 I agree that you can learn to write, but storytelling is more ephemeral. I think you can learn better ways to TELL a story, but I think you need to have the desire. It’s not something you wake up one day and decide to do. 🙂
Musicals, Cynthia? I can see you doing that! 🙂
Hey, Tanya! Yep, it’s the stories in our heads that make us want to write, not writing that makes us want to tell stories. I think anyway. I guess there’s always an exception to the rule. 🙂
Shiloh, I hear you on shutting up the voices! Sometimes, just taking the time to enjoy the scene in my head will quiet them. Usually, writing the scenes is more effective though. Why are so many of us born with this compulsion to tell stories? 🙂 I used to act out so many things that were in my head. I really thought I was weird, but then I got involved with RWA and found tons of people just like me. 🙂 Thank God.
Lynn,
In my first year of treatment, I was having problems reading and writing (the cytoxan is a pretty terrible drug). It was like I was in the middle of a Jung collective unconcious. I learned that I would rather be more separate than meld.
(It can be very dark and scary). In fact for a few months, the hubby had to stop reading stories to me or even let me watch the T.V. because I would become the character.
It was the combination of the prednisone and cytoxan. I had really poor impulse control too.
It has taken me a few years to get back into writing because of that experience…